The Folly Of 'Banning' Books
The urge to ban books is nothing new.
Throughout history, those in power have sought to control knowledge, censor ideas, and silence voices they deemed dangerous, inappropriate, or simply inconvenient. But while past attempts often stemmed from religious orthodoxy or political regimes determined to stifle dissent, today’s trend of book banning is something more insidious—a creeping wave of moral panic disguised as protection.
In schools and libraries across the world, but particularly in the United States, books are being challenged and removed at an alarming rate.
The reasons vary.
Some are deemed too explicit, others too political (in that they dare to question the prevailing orthodoxy) and many, it seems, are simply too truthful.
Welcome to 2025. Where the truth is considered harmful to your health.
Works that explore race, gender, sexuality, history, or oppression are frequent targets, as if pretending these subjects don’t exist will somehow erase the realities they describe.
The irony is that banning a book does not make its ideas disappear.
If anything, it makes them more powerful.
Because there is no better way of making a book irresistible than to try to suppress it.
The mere act of banning a title sparks curiosity, sending readers in search of the very thing they are being told they cannot have. It is a lesson history has taught time and again.
When Lady Chatterley’s Lover was censored in the UK, the public clamoured for it. When 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 were challenged for their themes of state control and censorship, they only became more relevant.
The books people seek to ban are often the ones society most needs.
Book banning is an admission of fear-fear of ideas, fear of debate, fear of change. Those who push for it would have us believe they are protecting children, shielding them from harm, keeping society on the right path.
In truth, they are doing the opposite.
Books are not threats; they are lifelines. They introduce perspectives beyond our own, encourage empathy and challenge us to think.
A society that fears books is a society that fears knowledge, and when knowledge is feared, ignorance thrives.
History does not look kindly on those who ban books. The bonfires of the past, where volumes were thrown onto flames by those who believed they alone knew best, now stand as warnings. Every act of censorship, every attempt to erase uncomfortable truths, is eventually seen for what it is; an act of folly, of cowardice, of misplaced righteousness.
The books remain.
The ideas endure.
The would-be censors, in the end, are always forgotten.
To ban a book is to admit defeat. It is an acknowledgment that its ideas are too powerful to be countered, too unsettling to be debated, too true to be ignored. But truth has a way of finding its readers, no matter the obstacles placed in its path.
And so it always will.