Azar Nafisi, The Washington Post; Opinion: I witnessed brutal censorship in Iran. We should all take U.S. book bans as a warning.
"Azar Nafisi is the author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran.” Her new book, “Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times,” comes out in March.
First they burn books, then they kill people!”
That line often came to mind when I was living in the Islamic Republic of Iran, every time the regime closed a bookstore or a publishing house, every time it censored, banned, jailed or even killed authors. It never occurred to me that one day I would repeat the same sentiment in a democracy, in my new home, the United States of America...
It is alarming to think that American communities in 2022 are actively seeking to deprive people of the reading experiences for which my students in Iran paid such a heavy price. For I can tell you: Book bans are canaries in coal mines — indicators of the direction in which a society is moving.
In recent years, we have seen how truth is replaced by lies, and how dangerous a cultivated ignorance can be, especially when it is embraced by our political leaders and our loudest media commentators, those with the largest bullhorns. Book-banning is a form of silencing, and it is the next step along a continuum — one that I worry even in the United States presages a further slide toward totalitarianism."
