Home culture war recent The Publisher Censoring Roald Dahl is Suing Florida Schools for ‘Banning Books’
Home culture war recent The Publisher Censoring Roald Dahl is Suing Florida Schools for ‘Banning Books’

The Publisher Censoring Roald Dahl is Suing Florida Schools for ‘Banning Books’

Bertelsmann has been censoring and rewriting children’s books by Roald Dahl and altering the “unacceptable prose” of P.G. Wodehouse in the Jeeves and Wooster books.

The ex-Nazi publishing giant which operates under such names as Penguin Random House and Puffin Books, took a red pencil to Roald Dahl long after the author’s death, cut any references to “fat”, “ugly” or “crazy”, along with “mothers and fathers” and other un-woke terms.

It is the publisher for Dr. Seuss books, a number of which were banned and are being replaced with new “inclusive” books by “diverse” authors that Theodor Geisel never actually wrote.

Jeeves and Wooster books now come with “trigger warnings” cautioning readers that

“language, themes and characterisations” are “outdated” and some have been edited out.

But while Bertelsmann is purging classic adult and children’s literature, it’s waging a war on parents trying to keep graphic pornographic content out of schools and away from their children.

Penguin Random House’s former CEO Markus Dohle announced a $500,000 fund to fight censorship, not by ending the company’s purge of classic literature, but by fighting parents in court over efforts to keep graphic hate and sex out of schools. Now the ex-Nazi company has come after the parents and children of the Escambia County School District in Pensacola.

Schools already struggling to budget for education are now faced with lawfare from a massive publishing monopoly with billions in revenues fighting to inflict sexual content on their kids.

The Bertelsmann federal lawsuit complains that the school board decided to pull “All Boys Aren’t Blue” which contains graphic sections such as, “He reached his hand down and pulled out my d____. He quickly went to giving me h___.”

The lawsuit misleadingly describes the book merely as “a series of coming-of-age essays”.

The Ex-Nazi corporation also objects that its own book, “Too Bright to See” depicting a “transgender boy” aimed at 5th graders is still restricted pending review. Let’s review it.

A section of “Too Bright to See” reads, “Uncle Roderick was a drag queen, meaning he dressed up in dresses, makeup, and jewelry as part of a performance or show. Bug says it’s easier to think about putting on makeup and dresses if he thinks of himself as a drag queen.”

Bertelsmann’s teacher’s guide for the book encourages teachers to ask children, “Why do you think he didn’t realize he was a boy earlier? Have there been times when you have felt unsure of yourself, and then suddenly felt very sure of yourself?”

The lawsuit objects to the removal of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” which contains lines like, ”They did it doggie-style with one of the sandwich bags!” and “Sam used to be a ‘blow queen.'” There’s also an extended sexual encounter graphically described from a child’s perspective.

Bertelsmann’s lawsuit complains that ‘Push’ is no longer available. The book repeatedly describes a child being sexually abused by parents in the most graphic language imaginable along with racist rants like, “Do all white people look like pictures? No, ’cause the white people at school is fat and cruel.”

The same company that is busy censoring Roald Dahl and P.G. Wodehouse for “unacceptable” language is going to court and objecting that schools are keeping, “My c___ swell up think Daddy. Daddy sick me, disgust me, but still he sex me up. I nawshus in my stomach but hot tight in my t___” away from kids. And that may be one of the least objectionable lines in the book.

Bertelsmann thinks that language like “mothers and fathers” or “fat” is wrong and needs to be censored, but schools should be sued if they try to keep graphic sex scenes away from kids.

What kind of twisted book publisher would pursue such a campaign?

Before Bertelsmann had gobbled up classic American and English publishers like Random House, Penguin, Crown, Viking, Putnam, Bantam, Del Rey, Golden Books, it was serving the Third Reich by putting out “The Christmas Book of the Hitler Youth”.

Under Hitler, Heinrich Mohn, the head of the family business, was a member of the SS Sponsors Circle, and Bertelsmann became the largest supplier of books to the German Army. (The company is currently headed by his grandson, Christoph.) Printers churning out its books used Jewish slave labor from the ghetto. Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels had even intervened to aid Bertelsmann employees.

Following in the footsteps of its Nazi past, Bertelsmann continues to churn out the vilest racism. Its famously hateful offerings include Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist”, Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility”, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me”.

Bertelsmann’s Penguin Random House, which has taken the lead in censoring classic literature, created a “banned books resources” site The site promotes a webinar with Ibram X. Kendi and the 1619 Project’s Nikola Nannah-Jones on “threats of censorship”. The actual censorship isn’t being faced by these bestselling bigots, but by the classic authors unfortunate enough to be trapped in the Bertelsmann book dungeon.

The former Nazi publisher has switched from one kind of racism to another, just as it switched from one kind of censorship to another. Bertelsmann is playing both censor and anti-censor, but what it censors is classical literature and what it calls censorship is just basic right and wrong.

Bertelsmann depicts the classics in its library as obscene and “unacceptable”, while pushing the worst kinds of racism and pornographic materials not just on the public, but on children.

“Banned books” is a Big Lie and it’s appropriately being peddled by an ex-Nazi firm whose employees were shielded by Goebbels. Books, including the racism and filth that Bertelsmann pushes, are not “banned” when they are not included in a school library or curriculum.

However when Dr. Seuss books were pulled from publication and even used copies were prevented from being sold, that is an actual book ban. When P.G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming’s James Bond books, not to mention Roald Dahl and many others, are rewritten because their prose is considered “insensitive”, that is actual censorship.

Book bans and book censorship are conducted by the wokes who cry the loudest that literature is being banned and censored by the right. If you want to find the most ruthless book banners and censors, just look to those organizing “banned book weeks” and championing “banned books” that no one has banned and that are actually being pushed in every school.

And if you want to find actual banned books, look to the classics which are being bowdlerized and expurgated by “sensitivity readers” who think children should be taught about every sexual act, but believe that the words “fat” or “ugly” in a book amount to a hate crime.

The Nazis, like the Communists, were masters at inverting what was true and false. Bertelsmann went from pushing Nazi propaganda to reinventing itself as anti-Nazi. It pushes racism in the guise of anti-racism and censors books while campaigning against book censorship.

Now the ex-Nazi corporation, once associated with Hitler and Goebbels, has declared war on Florida parents, and on organizations like Moms for Liberty, claiming that it stands for freedom and they are the ones who are banning books. Leftists, who claim to be anti-corporate, now cheer corporations like Disney and Bertelsmann goosestepping over schools and families.

The media agrees that an ex-Nazi corporation that used to publish Hitler Youth propaganda should decide what books are in schools, not parents. And those schools who resist having its hate and filth in schools should be sued until they surrender. Who are the real Nazis now?






Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

Thank you for reading.

Comments

  1. Dohle has a son and daughter. I wonder if he took showers with them like Biden did??

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

You May Also Like