Canadian schools eliminated 5,000 children’s books in a ‘purifying’ ceremony against racism. But why?
Canadian schools eliminated 5,000 children's books in a ‘purifying’ ceremony against racism. But why?
I f you don’t think the comic-book characters Asterix and Obelix amount to a clear display of “sexual savagery,” I’m not sure you’re going to understand this story.
You wouldn’t be alone in your befuddlement.
The classic characters, and the books that carry them, were among the victims of a newly revealed “book-burning” carried out by a Canadian school board in Ontario in 2019. Roughly 30 books, including Asterix and the Indians, were burned, while some 5,000 others have since been targeted for destruction by other means, according to reports. It’s led to some hand-wringing by Canadian politicians, including Justin Trudeau, though that doesn’t mean it won’t happen again.
What led to this purge, all in the name of “reconciliation”? Let’s see, there was the alleged “sexual savagery” depicted by the Asterix title above. In it, the Indians are portrayed as beautiful, have braided hair, and wear miniskirts, while the obese Obelix is essentially covered up. The horror. This particular controversy, however, is not about the amount of bare skin but about the collective madness in certain academic circles in Europe, the United States, and now Canada. Suzy Kies, a self-defined “guardian of indigenous knowledge” (whatever that means), considers Uderzo’s comic an intolerable crime against the sexual dignity of indigenous women. Unfortunately, the famous French cartoonist died last year and will not be able to take part in the ever-so-constructive debate about his Indophobia with the guardian of indigenous knowledge. We are not as fortunate.
Maybe Kies has inside information on the part of the story that is not shown in the comic. If so, she should share. And to give partial credit to the book-burning mob, they did choose not to burn any more books and settled on simply abducting and destroying thousands of others, in order to recycle them, and thus give an ecological touch to the purifying ritual.
Here’s how this all came together. The initiative, and this doesn’t make things any better, came from the Providence Catholic School Board. Under Kies’s coordination, they examined tens of thousands of books from the libraries of their schools and decided to condemn thousands of copies of children’s books to death for being racist and discriminatory toward indigenous people. And if you think that the sexual perversion in Asterix can’t be topped, you would be wrong: For children at these schools, Tintin is more off-limits than the complete works of E. L. James.
According to the school board, the acclaimed comic Tintin in America has “unacceptable language,” “inaccurate information,” “negative portrayal of indigenous peoples,” and “offensive aboriginal representation in the drawings.” I hope Kies never stops to read Houellebecq, because she may decide to burn the whole author and not just his books.
For a historical perspective on this issue, during the Middle Ages, it was the monks who engaged in the cultural task without which we would have lost much of the universal literary heritage we treasure today. Their work as scribes of manuscripts, both sacred and profane, saved much of our culture and civilization. With their selfless work, in what we could call adverse technical circumstances (the Internet of Things needed cranking), they managed to save hundreds of volumes of the world’s best literature from oblivion.
It was not an easy task. I will always be moved by the comment inserted by a copyist who transcribed St. Jerome’s catechesis on the Book of Daniel: “Please, any reader that would use this book, do not forget, I beg you, the man who copied it; for he was a poor brother named Luis who, while transcribing this volume which came from a foreign country, suffered through the cold, finishing at night what he was not able to write during daylight. But You, Lord, will be the reward for his efforts.”
Along with the work done by medieval monks, the schools associated with the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages also played a decisive role in the conservation, cultivation, and dissemination of thousands and thousands of works, in what turned out to be the beginning of the same universities and schools that are now banning books and erasing all cultural traces of past generations.
Nevertheless, I like the comparison of these two eras because it appropriately illustrates what we were and what we now are: According to our modern woke historians, the Middle Ages were the Dark Ages, and the contemporary age is one of great enlightenment.
If the monks saved the culture of Western civilization in the Middle Ages quietly within the walls of their cells, for the good of society as a whole, the new contemporary leaders (here I include speakers, journalists, educators, as many Suzy Kies as there are in the world, and a large part of the political class) are working tirelessly to destroy that cultural heritage, and, whatever they say, they do not do it for the good of society as a whole. They do it for the happy solace of a few lunatics who believe that Obelix was nothing but a sexual predator.
I suppose that if you want proof of just how bad the world has become in terms of respect for freedoms, you just have to consider these two scenes: the monk copying page by page the misadventures of ancient authors for the enrichment and formation of humanity, and the Catholic schools of Providence in the 21st century celebrating a festival of “purifying fire” which is, according to Kies, “a gesture of reconciliation with the First Nations and a gesture of openness towards the other communities present in school and society.” If thousands more books have not been burned by now, it is only because someone at the school found the crematistic ritual to be polluting and didn’t want to make Greta Thunberg frown.
Kies, who stepped down as co-chair of the Indigenous Peoples Commission of the Liberal Party of Canada after her ancestry was questioned in a recent interview, has not yet closed the sack into which she throws books she doesn’t like. On the contrary, after the book-burning event, she assured everyone that there are still “millions of books” full of prejudice and stereotypes that are harmful to indigenous people. So this party has only just started; my advice is to take all your good books down to the bunker today.
You might think that Kies is somewhat of a maverick, and that those at the helm of the Providence Catholic School Board are in no better mental condition than, I don’t know, Joe Biden at the helm of the United States government. However, the truth is that this is not an isolated event, but a growing wave of destruction of our identity affecting the entire West, a civilization free-falling into decadence, which for a long time now has been putting much more effort into destroying itself than into building itself up.
We find dozens of recent examples. Not long ago I told you how the producer of DuckTales made serious accusations against Donald Duck for his penchant for female ducks like Daisy.
Last year, in a new episode of the crazy contemporary history of cancellation culture, following protests from four parents, public schools in Burbank, Calif., banned books such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men for racism. In 2016 and 2017, respectively, Harper Lee’s classic was also banned in Accomack County, Va., and Biloxi, Miss.
On the other side of the ocean, in Catalonia, the part of Spain where cultural decline is most pronounced, a couple of years ago, 30 percent of the children’s literature in one school was withdrawn because it was considered sexist. On this occasion, the initiative came from a group of mothers who, while not asking other families, saw the school comply fearfully. The European press devoted rivers of ink to this absurd measure with headlines such as “Little Red Riding Hood banned as sexist,” but the progressive columnists who dealt with the matter did not laugh; they debated it in all seriousness, which is a far worse symptom than the anecdote itself.
A couple of nights ago, I was discussing the whole thing with a writer friend of mine, a man who is quite skeptical of literature, culture, society, and the world in general. I was telling him about Kies’s crazy adventures, and my friend’s only sincere concern was for her state of health, and I was moved: “But has that woman really read all 5,000 books?” God preserve our innocence. Or, at least, our sense of humor.