By Josh Daniels
It is 213 BC. China has been unified and controlled under the Qin Dynasty, known for their adoption of legalism – the ideology that civilians should direct their interests towards increasing the power of the absolute ruler in power. The Qin were brutal. They subjected the softest of criminals to harsh penalties and suppressed any form of questioning or argument to their practices. The previous year, Qi Shi Huang, the absolute ruler of China, took censorship to a new form of horror. 460 scholars who had been teaching Confucianism, an ideology that rivaled legalism, were buried alive. This year, Qi Shi Huang ordered the burning of books teaching the same ideas the scholars were advocating.
Fast forward in time – it is Europe in 1933, and a fascist party who called themselves the Nazi Party had just gained control of Germany. The dictatorship was led by Adolf Hitler, whose agenda was to reorganize the state of Germany on the idea that the German race was superior to everyone else. We have all heard of the Nazis and the Holocaust and what led to it internationally, such as the rise of nationalism, militarism, appeasement, and the list goes on and on. Yet, we very rarely talk about the warning signs leading up to genocide inside Germany. Jews were forced into ghettos, forced to brand themselves, and forced to slowly give up more and more of their rights to the facist regime, until eventually they were forced into the horrific camps we all know of today.
Why were the people of Germany not taken aback by every new measure added for suppressing the Jewish people? They knew what was going on, and even took to the streets – not to support the Jews, but to encourage the government’s behavior. You cannot blame the people – no one was educated about Judaism, past ethnic cleansings, or discrimination based on things like race or religion. The Nazi’s had banned education on these topics. This year – 1933 – soon to be followed by all of the anti semetic measures taken by the Nazi’s, was the year Hitler ordered the burning of books that went against his agenda.
Fast forward one last time – we are in the present in Tennessee. Maus, a comic book that is part of the school curriculum that details the horrors of the Holocaust, has been taken off the shelves. The school board has banned the book from curriculums. They claimed their intentions were out of protecting the students from nudity and harsh language. The characters in the book are mice – the ‘nudity’ was of mice with no clothes on. When you hear harsh language, you think maybe slurs or the occasional ‘f word’, but in this case, a mouse in the book said “dammit”.
So what was this ban really about? It could be an uncomfortable feeling for teachers while teaching the subject, and some have argued that similarly health teachers should not have to teach about safe practices, global history teachers should not have to teach about genocides and slavery, and biology teachers should not have to bring up reproduction in class. This is more than that. Boards with similar practices have been putting their agendas in place across the nation. Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia, has banned teachings of critical race theory. Florida lawmakers just recently proposed a bill that would ban teachings of sexuality in classes. They have all claimed that the teachings create an uncomfortable learning environment for children.
Teachings of past mistakes committed by humans will always be important so we can correct those mistakes and prevent anything as horrific from ever happening again. A little over a year ago, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany issued a survey to adults from ages 18-39 across the nation. One half could not name a concentration camp or ghetto used during the Holocaust, one quarter thought the Holocaust had been exaggerated or was a myth, one eighth said they had never heard of the Holocaust, and one tenth believed that Jews had caused the Holocaust.
