There is a plaza in Berlin now called the Bebelplatz.  When it was constructed in the mid-1700s, it was known as the Opernplatz, because the State Opera house is on the plaza’s east side, but that is not why it’s famous.  I visited here a few years ago, not to see the opera, but for another important reason.  In May of  1933 this was the location where ritual book burnings began in Germany, led by the German Students Association, which, along with the Hitler Youth, the SS, and the SA (Brownshirts) were groups that grew out of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party.  The ritual burning on May 10th followed an inflammatory speech by Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s head of propaganda.

On the first night, 20,000 books from the library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Sex Research) were burned.  On other nights, thousands of other “unGerman” books, written primarily by Jewish authors, were burned on the plaza.  One of those authors was Albert Einstein.

On the site of those book burnings is a memorial that sits in the plaza.  Called The Empty Library, it’s a 16′ by 16′ below ground room surrounded by empty bookshelves that would hold the 20,000 books burned on that first night.  The ceiling is a glass panel so you can see it from the plaza above.  It is impressive.

If I could, I would charter an airliner from Texas to Berlin and put all the book banners on it, including Greg Abbott all the way down to that Little Shit Matt Krause (who briefly ran for Texas AG against a rogue’s gallery of weirdos trying to unseat Indicted for Fraud and Insurrectionist Ken Paxton).  It’s Krause who compiled a list of 850 books he wants banned from Texas schools which includes books by Pulitzer Prize winners.  These clowns need to see where their politics is going.

Texas has been under the control of Republicans since 1997 and the results are exactly what one would expect of a system rotten to the core like ours.  Wedge issues designed to keep the base stirred up are now fed in a continuous stream including the normal guns, God, gays, school vouchers, abortion, non-existent voter fraud, immigration, and all people not white.  The latest is now CRT, mandates, science, and books.  If you listen closely, you can hear the voice of Josef Goebbels and Adolf Hitler in the words of book banners.  The language of these wedge issues eerily echoes their language as they took over the German government and started killing what would end up being millions of innocents they deemed to be “unGerman” and unacceptable.

There is a plaque at The Empty Library that is inscribed, “Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings”.   Inspiringly, Texas students are not taking this latest move by finger wagging book banners.  Last week at a meeting of the Granbury ISD outside of Fort Worth, a high school junior told the panel,

“No government — and public school is an extension of government — has ever banned books and banned information from its public and been remembered in history as the good guys.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.