A Collection of Thoughts about Censorship

We have all seen the footage of the book burnings in early Nazi Germany and have heard the words from the German poet, Heinrich Heine: “Where books burn, people burn.” And we have heard about the communities that remove Harry Potter books because of their “magic” content and of how works by the devout Christian, J.R.R. Tolkein are likewise removed from libraries for having content about “magic,” as well. Yet, both the Old and New Testaments are filled with magical events performed by men of God. As the chronology of censorship indicates, at the end of this paper, the desire to manipulate the freedom of information and expression goes back a very long time, before the arrival of the Religious Right. Sigmund Freud observed, in 1933: “What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages, they would have burned me. Now they are content with just burning my books.”

There are many forms of censorship. The most insidious and common sort is the “secretive” sort. A person might steal a book from a library or bookstore and then destroy it, rather than challenge the bookseller or librarian about the book’s content. Even more common is when librarians are afraid that a book might anger the community and likewise see to it that a book simply disappears from their shelves. Booksellers and librarians may also censor a book secretly by simply not ordering it and refusing to order it if a customer asks for it. As we see from reading the essays by Robert Darnton, the government has not historically needed to use extreme force to manipulate the flow of ideas and expression. I suspect that we can see similar manipulations today, but not in the form of an officer inspecting the writings and lifestyles of a group of authors.

One has to wonder if today’s literary agents are in many respects similar to Darnton’s police inspector as they are, like him, the first to suggest that their authors take out this, add that, or write about a less controversial subject. But in all fairness to the agents, they are only relaying the message that the publishers are telling them to pass on to authors.

In the case of television, if the sorts of television scripts for a show appeals to the FCC, that agency may elect not enforce the television network’s requirement to have so many minutes of public announcement time. This is time that can be sold to advertisers by the network. Ask yourself how many times you have seen public service advertisements during prime time shows such as Jag, NCIS, CSI, and Dancing with the Stars, while other shows at the same time seem to have more advertisements about quitting smoking and getting out to vote.

While our country has never had a federal regulating agency to control the press, during our country’s greatest insurrection called the Civil War, any press with Southern sympathies, especially in Oregon, while not smashed and the editors free to come and go as they please, came to understand that their publications were not making their way to the readers and that the Postmasters were secretly destroying the publications, claiming “Indian trouble.”

Identifying secretive censorship is difficult because it is done in, well, secret and those who are doing the censoring might actually not be aware that they are manipulating the freedom of information and expression. Overt censorship is easier to identify and combat, either by legal means, such as litigation or legislation, or by civil disobedience, insurrection, revolution, and so forth.

The apparent motivations to manipulate information and expression seem diverse. Those manipulating the information or expression may believe that they are protecting someone, such as the men of Athens condemning Socrates to death because he told the youth of Athens that he did not believe in the gods, but rather one god. Many books today are challenged and taken away from libraries, and bookstores that carry those same books boycotted, because the books threaten our children. Some books have been banned because they are pornographic. Other books are banned because they are perceived as either slanderous or libelous. Yet other books are banned because they go against the state, the religion, or both. We have heard about the books that have been banned or burned by the Christian community. Yet religious censorship is not the sole property of those professing a belief in Christ and His teachings.

Consider the following dialogue between the Emir Amrou lbn el-Ass with the Caliph Omar concerning the fate of the Library of Alexandria (640 A.D.)

Ibn el-Ass had just taken the city of Alexandria and filed the following report:
"I have conquered the great city of the West, and I find it difficult to list its riches and its beauties. Let me say only that it contains four thousand mansions, four thousand public baths, four hundred theatres and other places of amusement, and twelve thousand fruit shops; and that forty thousand Jews pay tribute there. The city was conquered by force of arms and without parley. The Moslems look forward impatiently to enjoying the fruits of their victory. There remains the matter of the Library, which is said to contain forty thousand books. Of what use are books without number, and complete collections, if their owner barely finds time in the course of his life even to read their titles?"

Caliph Omar’s reply was this: "As for the books you mention, here is my reply: If their contents be in accordance with the Book of Allah, we may do without them, for in that case the Book of Allah more than suffices. If, on the other hand, they contain matter not in accordance with the Book of Allah, there can be no need to preserve them. Proceed, then, and destroy them."

In all fairness, it is important to note that the poor library of Alexandria had been destroyed several times prior to this occasion, once by the army of Julius Caesar, and again by a fanatic Christian Bishop in the early years of the Byzantine Empire.

Our motives for censorship may be less religious or political and seemingly laudable. It is estimated that over two million women in the United States are beaten each year. Two noted feminists, Andrea Dworkin and Katherine MacKinnon, helped draft a law to prohibit the sale of pornography because they believed that such materials depict women as subordinate to men, and because of such a portrayal, pornography may be responsbile for violence against women. Some anti-pornography ordinances were put into effect in different cities and counties across the country on the basis that pornography was hurtful to women. It was the American Booksellers Association that took the ordinance passed in Indianapolis to the Supreme Court by suing William H. Hudnut, the mayor of Indianapolis. The Supreme Court ruled against the ordnance, but was careful in doing so by clearly stating that speech can be dangerous and that the court would never prohibit any legal redress of injuries caused by free speech. The Constitution does not place any conditions on the truthfulness, hurtfulness, or consequences of free speech. The Constitution only guarantees free speech and places no limitations on it. Ultimately, the Court held that the ordnances enacted confused obscenity and pornography issues with equality issues and equality issues with the freedom of expression.

A reason I sometimes hear people use as an excuse to ban a book is that the book offends people. Of course, getting rid of all the books that have something that offends people would lead to all books being banned. I, for one, could easily get ban all books that offend me because they are poorly written, or offend me because I dislike the design on the cover.

Some books offend people because the contents are racist, and this backfires in such cases where Huckleberry Finn, is censored because it contains the word "nigger" – despite the fact that the book champions the equality of African Americans.

Sometimes books offend people because they “encourage damaging lifestyles.”
Books like Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite, which tries to help children understand the homosexual relationship of their fathers and how to accept such relationships, are banned for “encouraging damaging lifestyles.” One of the sympathetic characters in Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens, is Nancy, who is carefully crafted to resemble in all ways a prostitute, though Dickens was careful never to precisely call her by that title. Some people have banned Dickens’ book because Nancy is present, and is portrayed as one of the good guys.

While we are talking about sex, many books are censored because they contain regular old brand x heterosexual sex, or use the “F-word,” such as the novel Ulysses. And books are sometimes banned because somebody swears or takes “the Lord’s name” in vain.

Another reason for banning books is because they contain excessive violence. And in regards to excessive violence, we should perhaps pause and consider the events at Columbine High School. Did exposure to violence, in books and other media, contribute to the tragedy there?

This naturally brings us to the best reason for the banning of a book, if one can offer a good reason for censorship, and that is to protect our children. No one can argue with the fact that it is only natural for us to want to protect our young from the things we think will harm them. It is also hard to argue against the rights of parents to instruct the child as they see fit. Do we want our children to read books that portray drug abuse as a “cool thing?” We can argue, too, that since our children aren’t mature, they don’t know what’s good for them and that is up to us, their parents, to help them. We take poisonous or dangerous objects away from them, so why not books with ideas we feel are dangerous? Do the books contain ideas or images that might influence them to go out and kill other children or even their parents?

The best response to this reasonable concern I have found comes from the popular author for young adult and children’s literature, Judy Blume. In this quote taken from Blume’s official website, I believe we get to the actual kernel of why people censor one another. “I believe that censorship grows out of fear, and because is contagious, some parents are easily swayed. Book banning satisfies their need to feel in control of their children’s lives. This fear is often disguised as moral outrage. They want to believe that if their children don’t read about it, their children won’t know about it. And if they don’t know about it, it won’t happen.”

So if Judy Blume is right, it is completely understandable and perhaps even justifiable that we have censorship. Unfortunately, as Blume suggests, the banning of a book will not prevent our children from learning about things we are afraid of and the making of something forbidden may make it only more desirable.

I agree with Blume that fear is at the root of all censorship. We are afraid that different ideas will somehow change things and take away something we want, or already have. It is important that we all examine those things that make us uncomfortable and to re-examine our preferences and not just once in a blue moon, but continually. When are our preferences and reasons based on our fears rather than upon reason or higher intuition? Don’t we all censor one another just a little – in the name of preference or any number of reasons that sound “reasonable?” Fear is a natural part of each and every one of us. I, for one, have found it to be at the root of every stupid and un-ethical thing I have ever done. It is not so easy for me to cast judgment; for who am I to look into the heart of my fellow human being and judge them? But as they say, two wrongs do not make a right.

But supposing we accept the proposition that there are cases where censorship is not only right, but mandatory, just how effective will our efforts to censor books be?

People in Europe of the mid-18th century certainly found ways of getting the books they wanted, and it was from their favorite bookseller. As I have required you to read Robert Darnton, it’s only proper that I discuss, albeit briefly, how the booksellers of mid-18th century France, and somewhat earlier, had to contend with censorship. Essentially, there were three offenses that would result in a book being censored. 1) It undermined the authority of the King 2) It undermined the authority of the Church 3) It went against the conventional morality.


A bookseller publishing or distributing books that were guilty of any or all of these offenses might find himself thrown into the Bastille, or at the very least thrown out of the Booksellers Guild. Just before the French Revolution, the officials of the Booksellers Guild had to file reports on books that were prohibited, and had to be destroyed, books that were not permitted, and to be returned to sender/seller, and pirated editions, to be sold but the profits given to the bookseller who actually had the King’s license to sell the book. Perhaps the bestselling pornographic book of this era was L’Academie des dames, which first appeared in 1680, and was always listed among the top of the works of philosophy.


Booksellers, either from the want of profit, or out of a desire to provide the reading public what he felt should be available, or both, managed to provide their customers with banned books. A bookseller named Hubert Cazin had been caught selling all manner of forbidden books in his shop in Reims. The inspectors went through his papers, and especially his orders and he was interrogated as to why all of his orders to printers and other booksellers kept asking for books on philosophy, when his store had little or none of it. The inspectors did not break Cazin, but came very close to decoding one of the secret messages within the book trade. Some booksellers, afraid that the local inspector was close to discovering what “philosophy” really meant, would sometimes use codes, or group the books together at the end of a very long catalogue, to throw the inspectors off. Shipping the forbidden books was easy. Since books were published without bindings at this time, the person buying the book knew that he had to order two or three permitted books in order to get the one forbidden book. The bookseller would then take the loose sheets of the forbidden book and interweave them with the permitted books. This process was known as “larding.” It was not uncommon for a household to receive a copy of the Gospel with the pages of Fanny Hill married into it. Sometimes, if the order of books was large enough, it was easier to just send the books by wagon and to pay the teamster enough for him to hire a subordinate to smuggle a lone box around the inspector as he inspected the wagon. If a bookseller didn’t want to run the risk or pay the extra price for paying off a teamster, or even inspector, he could hire a professional smuggler, called an “insurer.” Insurers often knew the secret trails, unknown banks of a river or little known coastal cove for tidy smuggling and often operated in areas other than bookselling. They would, in turn, set up something of an express of porters to run the forbidden items. Any porter caught in this activity was sure to go to prison, or at the very least, be impressed into the service of the navy.

Many printers moved their operations just outside the French border, but would actually put fictitious Parisian addresses on their title pages, and would offer books on philosophy – which is to say, books that were for whatever reason forbidden. Needless to say, banned books brought in more money because of the risk involved and the books had to pass through many hands, including smugglers, shipping agents, teamsters, and of course, the booksellers. The French Revolution and its aftermath broke down all the existing systems of smuggling. French conquests of European countries pushed the booksellers who had moved just over the border into other borders and then out of business altogether when there was no where left to run. Books against the Church and King were in many instances allowed to be sold freely. But books critical of Bonaparte and the Empire would soon find themselves banned. Even though the Revolution had brought about a declaration guaranteeing the freedom of speech and of the press, such freedoms would only be realized in the decades to follow.

I want to close with a hopeful note on the issue of censorship in the form of a short history of samizdat. But this hopeful note comes with a warning.
Samizdat means, in Russian, to self-publish. The Stalinist era in the Soviet Union was one of the most repressive governments in world history. Censorship was ruthless to the point of imprisoning or murdering authors and would be printers or publishers. Bookstores were state run and controlled with an iron fist. Many authors wrote “v jashchik”, or for their desk drawer. They might somehow bind these pages together and read them quietly to their friends or distribute them however they could. When Stalin died, his successor (and in my view the original Yippie) Nikita Khrushchev took power and renounced Stalinism. There was a lightening up the iron fist of censorship.

At this time there were typewriters, mimeograph and copy machines scattered around the Soviet Union. Those who used these devices to print and then somehow distribute this body of publication became known as samizdat publishers, samizdat printers, samizdat works, etc. Authors of these works were, of course, samizdat writers. Such publishing and distribution was not driven by commercial considerations, although there might be some bartering. Distribution was done by hand or by mail, or by copying a copy, which made the book unreadable after a point. Because of the difficulties posed in this process, and the consequences if caught would result in imprisonment, the process would in itself would lead to a self-imposed editorial board by those actually engaged in the process. A book had to be important, or beautiful, or in a very real sense worth the trouble and personal risk. Moreover, there had to be a presumption that there was a demand for this book. And there was always demand for some writers. Especially in demand were the writings of certain American writers and especially those in the field of science fiction because science fiction has always contained copious amounts of social criticism. Any science fiction stories that were humorous were deemed especially dangerous, for as Mark Twain observed: “against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”.

Often times, these books that were hand typed, and their carbon copies, would generate letters and essays that analyzed the book’s content. So, this very basic form of publishing/bookselling began to become an independent literary, or shall I say, cultural phenomenon within the Soviet Union. In a curious way, it became a social sphere that tried to correct the mistaken ideology and practices of the body Soviet. Out of samizdat came “Radizat,” or typed transcripts of forbidden television or radio broadcasts, as well as “Magnitizat,” or taped recordings of forbidden lectures or books, and ultimately “kolizdat,” or bound copies of various smaller samizdat publications, or samizdat anthologies.

In the Soviet Union, anyone professing the craft of being an author had to join a writers union and the official publishers censored writings regularly. Everyone from Pasternak to Solzhenitsyn had works rejected by the official publishing houses and had to have works published outside of the Soviet Union. These writings would reappear in the Soviet Union as samizdat.

The governments under Brezhnev and Andropov could have, like Stalin, been far more repressive and seized all the copying machines and typewriters they came upon, as Stalin had done some time before them But the progress of the Soviet business machine would have been non-existent and it was ultimately the power of a free market place that made modern computers available. As the free market could replace an older software or hardware within months, if not weeks, during the 1980’s, the Soviet Union could not, by using a state run business machine, construct a modern military machine. As computers made their way around the Soviet landscape, along with fax machines and a form of internet, the ability to control all forms of media was impossible. When Gorbachev was removed from power, the samizdat machine and the fax machine enabled there to be massive demonstrations against the Politburo. To shut down the fax lines and computer system would have hamstrung the government, as well. The Soviet Union could no longer control the freedom of expression and things changed quickly. The booksellers who wrote, reproduced, distributed samizdat played the most important role in recent Russian history. They changed the hearts and minds of a people, and as such, influenced the history of all nations.

So, you see, by the example of samizdat, that if the urge to control and manipulate information (that is censorship) is only natural, so too is the urge to spread information and express oneself. Each bookseller must choose their own course. A bookseller may play along with the conventional morality, the king or state, or even religious organizations of their community. This choice guarantees such booksellers a living in a wonderful business. But some booksellers risk all they have, their livelihood, their liberty, and perhaps their lives, to defy authority and offer their communities forbidden books.

If I could make one dream of my own come true, it would be to find a pot of gold and spend it by going to Russia and researching this most important social phenomenon in bookselling, or information exchange, if you will: samizdat. I have had the opportunity to handle genuine Samizdat publications, those being the collected stories of one of the greatest American science-fiction storytellers, Robert Sheckley. Holding a bound carbon copy of his stories, knowing that this had passed from one Russian household to another and to know that this was done at great risk to life, liberty and the pursuit of good literature was a moving experience for me.

But you might say, well, all this samizdat stuff is in Russia and has nothing to do with we who bask in the liberties of the United States. But it was not our courts, nor our legislative branch, nor even the Press, who made the first stand when our civil liberties were at risk. It was our booksellers.

Not so long ago,many of our Civil Liberties were being redefined by the highest courts in our land because of the Al Quaida attack on the World Trade Center. The public accepted this because we had become driven by our fears. At this time, Homeland Security requested that all booksellers turn over the want lists and purchases of any customer that Homeland Security, or any of its branches, might wish to examine. Nearly every independent bookseller issued a statement that they would no longer keep records of their customers’ purchases or wants. Homeland Security dropped the request, not wanting to get embroiled into a court battle they could not win

From this heroic gesture on the part of American booksellers and from the heroes of samizdat, we comprehend the dangerous truth for those who would sell books: it is not enough for a bookseller to be guided by the dictates of his society, sometimes the bookseller has to be the Guide.

Here are some moments I find interesting in the history of Censorhip



585 B.C. – Aesop was thrown from off a cliff for writing sacrilege.

443 B.C. – The ancient Romans create the office of Censor, whose duty it was to collect social statistics and make sure they were accurate.

Plato, in Greece, at about this time, is writing The Republic, in which he says: “The poet shall compose nothing contrary to the ideas of the lawful, just, or beautiful or good, which are allowed in the state; nor shall he be permitted to show his compositions to any private individual, until he shall have shown them to the appointed censors and guardians of the law, and they are satisfied with them.” Ironically, Plato was a student of Socrates, who was put to death for “polluting the mind of the youth” with his ideas.

340 B.C. Aristotle calls for the censorship of a new music that apparently excites people emotionally by its rhythm.

250 B.C. The Emperor of the Ts’In Dynasty, China, destroys all the writings of Confucius, in order to bring down the Feudal system. 30 years later, the Emperor Huang Ti did it again because copies of The Analects, by Confucius, kept appearing.

312 A.D. A fanatic Bishop in Alexandria named Theophilus allegedly helps a mob destroy the remains of the Alexandrian library because it had a Dionysian church. Non-Christian writings prohibited. Julius Caesar accidentally torched that poor library about three hundred years earlier.

1235 A.D. the Inquisition is set up by Pope Gregory IX. For the next few hundred years, the Inquisition is responsible for the burning of books, and their authors, as late as 1600 (Bruno) and 1619. (Vanini).

1571 – Pope Paul IV lists the first list of prohibited books: Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

1632 – Galileo’s Platonic-like Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, which discusses Copernicus’ astronomical findings alongside of traditionally held beliefs, is banned by the Roman Catholic Church and Galileo is made to public ally adjure his writing.

1641 – In Japan – the Tokugawa dynasty bans all foreigners from entering Japan, including literature from the outside world.

1644 - John Milton writes Areopagiticathe first poetic plea for the freedom of the Press.

1667 – General Lieutenant of Police created in France – the job being to supervise customs of books coming into France, and of books being published in France. Louis XIV limits publishing to aristocracy and upper classes by a system of the issuing of permits. Moral of the story: in the words of Malasherbes: “Because the law prohibits books the public cannot do without, the book trade has had to exist outside the law.”


1789 – The Revolutionary congress in France issues the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.” Article 11 assures the Freedom of the Press. However, roving mobs destroy printing presses and newspapers sympathetic to the Crown. Moral of the story: the law of the land is only as good as the citizens’ love of the law.
December 15, 1791 – A date that makes censors and would-be censors cringe. The Bill of Rights was ratified by the U.S. Congress.

“Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

1852 – The Scarlet Letter, (published 1850) removed from U.S. libraries on the grounds that it perpetuated bad morals.

1917 – The Little Review begins to publish Ulysses in serial form and the censors end the publication. In 1922, Sylvia Beach publishes thee first full edition, which is not allowed into either England or the United States until the 1930’s.

1989 – The Ayatollah Khomeini places a death sentence on Salmon Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. Book is deemed as insulting to Islam and is banned in Islamic countries.

“But the truth is that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me.”
- Samuel Clemens, “Mark Twain,” Letter to Mrs. F. G. Whitmore, 2/7/1907