In the mid-19th century with chattel slavery at its zenith, an African American man named David Walker wrote a pamphlet called the Appeal. A clarion call to his fellow Blacks, the Appeal sought “to awaken in the breasts of my afflicted, degraded and slumbering brethren, a spirit of inquiry and investigation respecting our miseries and wretchedness.” North Carolina’s white oligarchy exploded in rage. Shortly after Walker’s memo hit the streets, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a law prohibiting the creation or distribution of literature that called for the abolition of slavery. Not long after that, they passed a law prohibiting teaching slaves to read.

Two hundred years alter, the South is again on a tear against literature that undermines the pillars of Southern inequality. Across Dixie, right-wing politicians have sought to ban books that might discomfit the comfortable privileged perspectives that they consider to be the birthright of the straight, the white, the cisgendered, and the Christian. Attempts by privileged authorities to limit the scope of social discourse have been a constant feature of public life, not only in this country but wherever one class subjugates another. Philosophers call it “social silencing.” But the trashing of printed literature represents a new step toward authoritarian government in the land of cotton.

The most recent extrusion in this rush to prohibit took place in McMinn County, Tennessee, where I have family. The local school board was upset with a library for carrying Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel by Art Spiegelman that covers the experience of the destruction of European Jewry in Nazi-controlled Poland. Outraged parents pointed toward the use of the words “damn” and “bitch” as the proximate cause for removing Maus from school libraries. But this dainty bit of prudery was more likely window dressing for deeper insecurities. Anti-“Critical Race Theory” activists in Texas called for a two-sided discussion of the Holocaust. Just as they would prefer to believe that Andrew Jackson was just Old Hickory and ol’ Jeff Davis was an honorable man, right-wingers would prefer their children not to confront the sanguinary extremities of the history of the West.

Of course, parents will play a role in their children’s education. But it is the responsibility of the public sphere to ensure that young people engage with difficult truths that some parents would prefer to shelter them from. We are, after all, or perhaps only for now, a country that aspires to be a liberal democracy. The free flow of ideas and thoughtful inquiry into the whole of history are fundamental to the democratic project. When books start disappearing from libraries and entire schools of thought become verboten, the stone pillars of a modern republic begin to turn into sand.

States across the South are following suit in this effort to purge uncomfortable truths from the public square. It goes without saying that North Carolina is at the forefront of this authoritarian assault on literary humanity. But the Old North State is not alone in its effort to resurrect government controls on the flow of written dissent. The South has made it a habit of exporting its pathologies to other parts of the country. Regardless, banning books has an aroma of fascism about it. The book is the new tiki torch.