What the city’s only four requests to ban sci-fi books reveal about the city

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Book bans have become so widespread and divisive that some are calling it a new pandemic.

Data compiled by the American Library Association shows that book ban requests in 2022 are higher than in 2021, which was a record year in its own right.

And a comprehensive report by PEN America, a literary organization dedicated to free speech, shows that bans have been formalized in 132 school districts in 32 states, with Texas and Florida coming in first and second.

While California has been freed from nationwide censorship, our state has not officially enacted any book bans. Requests for banned books can be just as instructive.

We studied only four requests to ban books officially processed by the San Francisco Public Library to understand how the Bay Area differs from the rest of the country.

The next four titles – none of which have actually been taken off the shelves at the SFPL – demonstrate that we’re living in a veritable book ban bubble.

Bible

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time, with five billion copies sold worldwide and countless other books donated to hotel nightstands.

However, in San Francisco it is one of the few books that the locals have asked the library to remove from its stock.

It’s not too surprising. San Francisco consistently remains below the national average for the number of religious adherents. The city has fallen to an all-time low fidelity of 35.1% in 2020, compared to the national average of 48.7%.

Such a small number of parishioners may cause skepticism about the Good Book, leading some to question its presence on the shelves of public libraries at all.

Comeback: Trump’s big comeback in 2024

The title of Dick Morris’s book is the content of many San Francisco’s nightmares that Trump will not only run in 2024, but win a major victory.

However, there are 11 copies Comeback: Trump’s big comeback in 2024seven of which are available for ordering.

It can scare those who live here. Support for Donald Trump was just 12.7% in San Francisco, compared to 46.9% nationally. And in 2016, it was even lower, when the former reality TV host and failed businessman won just 9.2% of the vote in the city.

The thought of a guaranteed return and a Trump victory in 2024, which Morris calls absolute certainty, is likely to be too queasy for some San Francisco residents.

This is likely what led to the request to ban the book, which is not contested anywhere else in the US, according to the PEN America banned books spreadsheet.

The Contagion Myth: Why Viruses Don’t Cause Disease

Thomas Cowan’s book, available only on the Hoopla digital platform, which SFPL members receive for free with a library card, makes the controversial claim that viruses, including the novel coronavirus, do not cause disease.

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Instead, Cowen argues, it’s the complex network of Wi-Fi signals, electromagnetic pollution, “frequencies” and the subject of so many QAnon night sweats – 5G – that have led to the disease we call Covid.

A book by Cowan, a local doctor who wants to turn Louis Pasteur’s successes into our losses, questions our science-loving imagination, especially given the fervor with which many residents are embracing healthy lifestyles in the wake of Covid.

California is the state with the highest proportion of residents who still wear masks outside their homes as of October 2022. The state is also ahead of the national average in terms of handwashing, avoiding crowded places and contact with other people.

So, the idea that we are not getting sick with the coronavirus, but with miasmatic infections? It’s an idea that some San Francisco residents think deserves a ban.

Death of a nation

Dinesh D’Souza’s historical revisionism argues provocatively that it is not the white supremacist Republican Party that is killing the US, but the Democrats. A reluctant Trump claims liberals have created a “nanny state” that is “run like a southern plantation.”

D’Souza’s alternate history has ruffled many, especially in San Francisco.

The proportion of registered Democrats in San Francisco has only increased over time, with a total of 63.1% party members in our city, compared to 46.9% in California and 38.8% nationally.

There are only two copies of D’Souza’s book in the San Francisco Public Library. Death of a Nation: Plantation Politics and the Creation of the Democratic Party. None of them are currently verified.

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texasstandard.news contributed to this report.

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