In a message posted on Twitter February 6, 2024, Valetina Gomez, a candidate working for Missouri’s Secretary of State, stands poised with a flamethrower in her palms. The textual content introducing the video explains exactly what viewers will witness have been she to be elected: “I will BURN all books that are grooming, indoctrinating, and sexualizing our children. MAGA. America First.”
It is an especially troublesome video to watch.
The video exhibits Gomez burning two books on a bar stool: Naked: Not Your Average Sex Encyclopedia by writer Myriam Daguzan Bernier and Queer, 2nd Edition: The Ultimate LGBTQ Guide for Teens by Kathy Belge and Marke Bieschke. Both books are written for teenagers with the intent to assist educate younger folks about their our bodies, about puberty, and about sexuality in age-appropriate methods. The books are amongst these that includes LGBTQ+ content material which were beneath assault nationwide and extra particularly, in Missouri.
Missouri has been a frontrunner in laws banning not solely books however in proscribing entry to gender-affirming healthcare for younger folks. Per PEN America, Missouri ranked third in banning books in colleges throughout the 2022-2023 faculty yr.
Gomez is an immigrant to the U.S., an attention-grabbing undeniable fact that positions herself in opposition to many of the beliefs held and pushed by her personal MAGA get together. Among her different marketing campaign guarantees are returning to paper-only ballots and hand counting elections, eliminating accessibility for voters in rural elements of the state, and emphasizing the significance of capitalism.
The e book burning video, of course, harkens again to the period of Nazi e book burning. Many of the books focused in that period have been exactly the kinds of books Gomez has positioned because the enemy: books celebrating, educating, and uplifting queer folks and tradition.
It’s price emphasizing, although, it’s not solely a harkening again to the Nazis. It’s a harkening again to different politicians in Missouri, too. In September 2023, a video went viral that includes Republican state senators Bill Eigel and Nick Schroer burning what appeared like a pile of books. The books, it seems, have been really not books however a pile of cardboard; nonetheless, when the video began to acquire traction on-line as a e book burning video, Eigel didn’t deny that he would past such actions.
“From a dramatic sense, if the only thing in between the children in the state of Missouri and vulgar pornographic material like that getting in their hands is me burning, bulldozing or launching (books) into outer space, I’m going to do that,” Eigel mentioned in an interview with The Associated Press.
Gomez’s video does present her utilizing a flamethrower on actual books.
There are at present seven payments in Missouri laws this yr that explicitly goal libraries, educators, and books. Among them are a invoice to modify the offense of offering specific sexual materials to a scholar (HB 1543); a invoice that will halt the state librarian from disbursing funds to libraries that provide obscene supplies to youngsters (HB 1574); a invoice that establishes a trigger of motion towards libraries for furnishing or permitting entry of pornographic supplies to minors (SB 1330); and extra which you can study and take motion on.
The rise of e book banning took maintain in 2021, and states throughout the nation have used them as a method to create not solely an ethical panic however a possibility to sow worry. While Gomez claims that she is going to rid youngsters of entry to books she deems inappropriate, the fact is that this isn’t in regards to the books.
It’s about how Gomez and politicians like her–together with Eigel, Schroer, and others in Missouri and past–need to eradicate queer folks. Book burning is about instilling worry and stoking its flames.
It’s 2024. When politicians burn books, it tells you every little thing you want to know not solely about their agenda, however about how damaged the system is nationwide.
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