The Left’s Narrative About ‘Book Banning’ is Bogus

The Left is obsessed with the idea that conservatives are the real book banners. California Democrat state Sen. Scott Weiner took to X recently to bash “MAGA” and assumedly Florida, accusing them of banning one of the most famous memoirs about the Holocaust.

“Florida banning the Diary of Anne Frank tells you everything you need to know about the MAGA movement,” Weiner wrote on X.

What? Florida banned the Diary of Anne Frank!? Say it ain’t so. As you probably already guessed, it ain’t so.

Now, let’s take a step back for a moment. Does this narrative really pass the smell test? Does it make sense that Florida just quietly banned one of the most famous books of the 20th century?

Also, if Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl”—the book’s official title—is going to be banned by anyone these days it’s more likely to be by the “globalize the Intifada” crowd, right? You’ll find far more of those types in Zohran Mamdani’s New York than in a Florida full of former New Yorkers trending toward MAGA.

As you likely guessed, there is no evidence that Florida banned the Diary of Anne Frank. In fact, the book is on the Florida Department of Education’s recommended reading list for 6th to 8th grade students. The list also contains the excellent memoir of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch woman whose family hid Jews during the Holocaust. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis chimed in on the “book banning” accusation against his state.

“This is not the first time a leftist has accused Florida of ‘banning’ a book that is on the state’s recommended reading list,” DeSantis wrote on X. “Another lie debunked.”

Florida has made it a priority to contrast the differences between American self-government and totalitarian systems. It mandates teaching about communism and the Holocaust. You are, if anything, more likely to encounter the Diary of Anne Frank in a Florida school than in other states.

Even the reliably left-leaning Snopes rated Weiner’s comment about the Diary of Anne Frank “mostly false,” acknowledging that the book is on the state’s recommended reading list.

So, what was the California congressman blathering about?

Here’s what Weiner’s office said in a released statement to Fox News Digital.

“Sen. Wiener’s tweet refers to the well-documented incident of the Hillsborough School District removing the Diary of Anne Frank, along with over 600 other titles, from library shelves in response to an aggressive crackdown from the state Department of Education. At least 9 school districts in Florida have removed books like the Diary of Anne Frank from bookshelves because the state is empowering far-right activists like Moms for Liberty to go after any schools that don’t go along with their extremist MAGA agenda,” Wiener’s office said to Fox News.

It appears that Weiner got this idea about Florida book banning from a Guardian article about “state-driven censorship,” in Florida that claims “hundreds of titles are being pulled from library and classroom shelves.” Weiner posted this article on X right after his initial claim about Florida.

But the Guardian piece hints at what’s really going on.

“This is an ideological campaign to erase LGBTQ+ lives and any honest discussion of sex, stripping libraries of resources and stories,” William Johnson, the director of PEN America’s Florida office, said in an interview with the Guardian.

What the Weiner and the left-wing Guardian seem to be upset about is that sexualized material isn’t getting into the hands of children. If the Left thinks that’s ideological censorship, then I’d say that’s their problem.

Yes, “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” has been removed from the shelves of some schools over the past few years. However, the fact that it was based on the life of Anne Frank was only incidental to why it was pulled.

The Associated Press reported in 2023 that this book was removed from a library at Vero Beach High School because it depicts Anne Frank “walking in a park, enchanted by female nude statues, and later proposing to a friend that they show each other their breasts.”

Moms for Liberty asked that the book be removed because it “minimized” the Holocaust, AP reported.

Again, Snopes noted that there is no evidence that Florida schools are targeting the actual, original “Diary of a Young Girl.” In single instance, Snopes reported, Escambia County School District briefly removed the original book for review, but it was afterward “returned to shelves and could be made available for any student who requested the title.”

That’s hardly a book ban.

The bottom line is that the Left has attempted to portray as a widescale conservative attempt in Florida or elsewhere to ban books is a complete crock. In virtually every instance that they point to, the “book banning” is just the removal of pornographic or inappropriate material for young children from the shelves of schools libraries, or a book is deemed age inappropriate and moved to another section.

The actual, recent attempts at book banning have been mostly perpetrated by the Left. For years, Amazon wouldn’t sell the book “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment,” scholar Ryan T. Anderson’s fact-based account of the dangers of gender dysphoria. Given the fact that Amazon entirely dominates the global book market, that is a serious amount of censorship.

Only recently did Amazon drop this policy, following the election of President Donald Trump.

Even worse, to a certain extent, publishers have changed the original words of long-dead authors to make their books more “inclusive.”

The Left seems to have little problem with book banning and censorship when they have complete institutional power. They frequently use that power to squash conservative points of view. Now that the Left’s power is waning, they are trying to play the victim and pretend that it’s conservatives that were banning the Diary of Anne Frank and other classic works. It’s a bogus narrative, nothing more.

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