by pfannkuchen
13 subcomments
- Whenever the topic of “banned books” comes up, a bunch of people argue about whether they should be called “banned”.
What I haven’t seen mentioned in these discussions is where the mental association of “banned books” comes from.
In America, at least, the school curriculum spends a lot of time talking about dictators. It mentions, numerous times over many years of a child’s life, that something dictators often do is to ban books that could make people question them or that could make people support people the dictator doesn’t like, etc. In all such cases covered in the school curriculum, dictators’ “banned books” are not allowed to be sold in the country at all, and are often destroyed, sometimes even in mass burnings.
So, this is the psychological association people typically have with the phrase “banned books”.
The news articles over the past X years declaring something like “Government Y bans books!” seem to be leveraging this mental association to give people the emotional impression that Government Y is doing dictatorships things. I think this is why people get annoyed, since not allowing whatever books in the school library is not a dictator thing (okay dictators do it but it’s like drinking milk or being against animal cruelty, it’s not something that is primarily done by dictators).
So, when people say that not allowing a book in a school library is a type of ban, they are correct, but they ignore this association which most people have from school.
by weinzierl
4 subcomments
- Livraria does not mean library, but bookstore. The Livraria Lello where this is located, is definitely a bookshop.
It is not clear to me from the reporting if Manifesto Library is a translation error or if it really is a library within a bookshop.
I suspect it's neither and more like an art installation.
- I find this video that looks at Dua Lipa and her love of books great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN1rULxGHCA
by ahmedfromtunis
2 subcomments
- Dua Lipa opens, in Portugal, a library for books that are banned and censored (elsewhere).
- Here's a video to highlight why Dua Lipa is not a typical "celebrity book club" type person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN1rULxGHCA
I've actually really been a fan of her, and her music before I heard about her Service95 endeavour. So seeing that video led me to looking into her Service95 work, and yeah, I have to say, she's the real deal.
by ActivePattern
1 subcomments
- A lot of people in this thread think they're being clever by pointing out that a bookstore can't sell "banned" books. But it's common for bookstores and libraries to feature titles that have been banned in some jurisdictions. It's a small way to push back against censorship and promote freedom of information and critical thinking.
by quaddoggy
1 subcomments
- Looking forward to picking up copies of The Bell Curve and The Camp of the Saints since free speech is now so widely supported in Europe.
- I hope that her star power encourages young people to read literally anything. The ability for her fans to sit with a singular text, without ad breaks, sponcon, brand deals, and everything else on social media seems like a societal win.
- Only two books are explicitly listed by the article, neither of which have been banned anywhere.
Unsubsidized is the more accurate word here. Some governments have chosen not to pay public money to stock these books in libraries, but no government has created criminal penalties for ownership.
It may be the case that her library includes some books that genuinely carry criminal penalties, but the article does not provide enough info to assess that.
by puelocesar
0 subcomment
- This was interesting until I read it's inside Livraria Lello. You have to pay to get inside and wait 1 hour in a line alongside tourists. So this looks more like a stunt than anything truly meaningful.
- Dua Lipa opens a library, in Portugal, for banned and censored books.
Two of my favorite examples of grammatical importance:
https://youtu.be/QMF5-0wfs1I
https://youtu.be/5yuL6PcgSgM
Seriously though, good on her.
- They are not banned in portugal. Appreciate the gesture but it s very inconsequential.
- Terrible article. As a European who grew up in a country that has banned¹ thousands of books, periodicals and other media for most of its existence, I was expecting this article to be about some campaign to unban books that were still being censored as a relic of the Salazar era. The headline is deceptive and the article itself is uninformative. It wasn’t until I came across a reference to “school districts” that I realised that this is just more American culture war bullshit being imported into Europe.
¹ literally banned, i.e. it was illegal to buy, sell or distribute such publications in the state: https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1929/act/21/enacted/en/h...
- It's 100 books. Does your house have bookshelves? You have more books than this. It's like a display at a bookstore.
- I don't know anything about her music, but she seems pretty cool on the literary front.
by nickdothutton
0 subcomment
- The "real banned books" are (in my opinion) generally those which have not been translated.
by nancyminusone
4 subcomments
- For those of you pretending to have trouble understanding 'banned' in this context, it means essentially the same thing as when someone gets 'canceled'.
People who are canceled are not literally thrown in prison and executed.
by happyPersonR
0 subcomment
- Good on her using her platform for something.
- A venture that gathers objects of subversion likely to draw the ire of authoritarian powers into a single building doesn’t strike me as something likely to peacefully exist for long.
by caseysoftware
3 subcomments
- Are those just banned and censored in Portugal specifically or the EU as a whole?
A quick check here in the States showed all of them available on Amazon for under $25 each.
by like_any_other
0 subcomment
- Dear reader, "banned" in this case means government institutions (school libraries) did not promote the book to schoolchildren. It does not mean possession of the book got anyone arrested, or that the books are not extremely easily available in major corporate retailers (or even in non-school government-funded libraries). So for example, one is unlikely to find in this library the kind of stickers that got Sam Melia arrested [1], or anything the UK would consider "likely to stir up racial hate" [2], such as the music album “Phoenix Rising” by Embers of an Empire [3,4].
Whether books by e.g. Jared Taylor are also "banned" in this manner in the UK is left wonderfully vague - the only way to find out is to be found possessing one, and then see if the government prosecutes you. You get chilling effects for free, and avoid the bad PR of a "banned books" list!
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867
[2] https://www.thelawpages.com/criminal-offence/Possessing-raci...
[3] https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/R-v-Robe...
[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3yl0dgq3no
- > In some cases, the author has paid for their words with their life.”
Are there examples of these?
The few examples mentioned in the article are easy to buy, at least in the US. Is there a full manifest somewhere?
- One of those marketing events in a cool instagramable spot in Oporto that already has huge queues of people just to photograph it and I'm sure it will only sell books in English catered to tourists and nomad tech bros that are already ruining the city's housing supply. Awesome.
- There are no books banned in EU... Some countries have laws that criminalise glorification of nazism or communism, but I never heard any book was "banned" as a result.
Here in Poland we had "Mein Kampf" by certain Austrian painter in my primary school library for example.
by suddenlybananas
3 subcomments
- Wow, Margaret Atwood how dangerous and subversive.
by illliillll
0 subcomment
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by redsocksfan45
0 subcomment
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by fleroviumna
0 subcomment
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by moralestapia
0 subcomment
- Cool.
by josefritzishere
2 subcomments
- I am normally with the cynics but I have trouble believing that none of the commenters are unaware that some books are banned in schools, prisons and military bases, in America. This is not just a problem limited to foreign theocracies.
by everdrive
5 subcomments
- Lists of banned books are often quite disappointing, and I think they fall into a few categories:
- Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being bad take an aggressive, political bent. (eg: the handmaid's tale)
- Books that seem relatively anodyne, and it's not clear why they were banned. (eg: the perks of being a wallflower)
- Books that governments might have feared in the old days, but are now much less threatening than other more readily-available material. (eg: 1984)
I still think, even in these crazy, censorious times, that people who love banned books list are (intentionally or not) hearkening back to an older time when a centralized body could actually prevent access to information. Instead, modern book-banning feels much more symbolic. ie, "we do not approve of this book!" rather than effective. Anyone can buy the book on Amazon, or pirate it for free, or find countless video reviews which contain its ideas. And importantly, find many, many more extreme, subvesrive, rebellious, etc. ideas for free online.
Of course I do not support the banning of the books, but I think sometimes once a book is banned this act gives the book power -- in more senses than one. Less discussed is that the fans of the book often believe it to be better than it actually is, merely for being banned.
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