Conservative activists, led by a local pastor and outspoken Israel advocate, pushed the district, Mission CISD, to excise books mostly about gender, sexuality and race. Their demands represented an extreme version of a nationwide culture war over books that has played out in recent years — and ensnared a number of books with Jewish themes.

In Mission, the long list of books on the chopping block includes a recent illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary; both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust graphic memoir “Maus”; “The Fixer,” Bernard Malamud’s novel about a historical instance of antisemitic blood libel; and “Kasher in the Rye,” a ribald memoir by Jewish comedian Moshe Kasher.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    4 months ago

    Armenians have suffered their own genocide as well, one the Turks still refuse to acknowledge. At least the Germans acknowledge the Holocaust.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      4 months ago

      one the Turks still refuse to acknowledge

      That’s actually imprecise.

      They acknowledge that “something” happened, but deny various separate traits, like intent or numbers or relevance for today or even just say that genocide wasn’t illegal then. There’s also that “it didn’t happen, but they deserved it, and we’ll do it again” thing. Which gives a very special feeling, considering they are well in position to do it again.

      And it’s illegal to publicly recognize it in Turkey, so not only malevolent, but also benevolent voices seem to be kinda in denial, while in fact not.

      Still had Germany not lost WWII so conclusively, I suspect we’d be amazed at how self-conscious a lot of Turks are as compared to Germans.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        True, I was not totally right in that. It just is so sad beyond the genocide and the genocide denial that Ataturk was such a force for good when it came to his own people and such an evil fuck when it came to Armenians. Until Erdoğan, Turkey was a generally secular state, a rarity for a predominantly Muslim country and that is down to Ataturk, who was an atheist. I wish I could praise him, but I can’t. He was part of the Young Turk movement and he was instrumental in trying to erase what happened from history.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          4 months ago

          He wasn’t as good to them either, look up Dersim rebellion and such. Erdo started as a democratic change with a small flavor of Islam. Because that secularism was about creating a fascist state and a social layer of Kemalist privileged elite (military mostly). But that’s something a Turk may explain better.