The Faulty Premise of Dua Lipa’s ‘Banned’ Books Library

P op singer Dua Lipa recently launched the “Manifesto Library” with 100 books at the Livraria Lello bookstore in Porto, Portugal. “The Manifesto Library is a space dedicated to books that challenge power, resist censorship, and amplify the voices that others seek to silence,” said the official account of Lipa’s book club. A full list of works in Lipa’s library is available in Cosmopolitan, which states, “All of the titles were once banned or censored.”

Funnily enough, those “banned or censored” books are easily purchased today — and not only at the Porto shop. Here are some of the Manifesto Library’s supposed contraband that I currently have on my shelves in my apartment: 1) Animal Farm by George Orwell, 2) Beloved by Toni Morrison, 3) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, 4) Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, 5) The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, 6) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, 7) The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, 8) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, 9) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, 10) The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, 11) The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, and 12) The Vegetarian by Han Kang. I have read some of the other titles, like Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Miller’s The Crucible, but I don’t own them. I vaguely remember slogging through Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God in school; had it not been assigned, I would have dropped it. There are other books in Lipa’s collection that I refuse to buy, either because they are ideological propaganda or just simply bad quality: 1) Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, 2) Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur, 3) This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson, and 4) Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Dr. Ibram X. Kendi.

In the spirit of charity, I’ll first say some nice things. It is refreshing that a celebrity is encouraging an admirable activity — namely reading — to her (intimidatingly large) fan base. I’ve grown accustomed to watching pop-culture figures mindlessly spout ideological mantras, celebrate harmful vices, and hypocritically endorse harmful policies that disrupt the lives of average people. (I really can’t stand it when elites in lavish gated communities insist we must warmly welcome illegal aliens, abolish the police, and tolerate riots.) Granted, Lipa has been a vocal activist for left-wing causes that I think are detrimental to society and grounded in falsehoods, but that doesn’t mean this current initiative of hers is unworthy of praise. At a time when people are addicted to technological weapons of mass distraction, I am pleased to see an intellectual activity promoted.

Here comes the not-so-nice part: While many of the books in the Manifesto Library are worth reading, the organizing premise of the collection — that all these works somehow “challenge power,” “resist censorship,” and “amplify” silenced voices — is just absurd. It is technically true that a few of the books, like those by Orwell, have actually been censored at least somewhere in the world for some stretch of time. But a huge chunk of the titles are best-sellers, recipients of prestigious awards, or the basis of major Hollywood productions. (In fact, The Handmaid’s Tale checks off all three of those boxes.) It is also bizarre to characterize some of these works as suppressed when they are required in public K–12 schools. If a “ban” on something means that the government prohibits it, then a book taught in public school classrooms and housed in public libraries cannot be considered “banned.” (And, in case it needs to be said, failing to include a particular work in a curriculum or in a library does not constitute a “ban.”) Somewhat ironically, many of Lipa’s selected works actually reinforce existing power structures (to phrase it in progressive lingo) because they defend the values and beliefs embraced by cultural elites today, be it feminism or “antiracism.”

Aside from largely containing books that are easily accessible and celebrated today, the library is lacking some notable publications that have actually been suppressed by major commerce platforms like Amazon in recent memory, such as Ryan T. Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, and Jean Raspail’s The Camp of Saints. It is revealing that just a handful of her selections could be broadly characterized as right-leaning or sympathetic to conservative views. A truly principled commitment to resisting censorship and platforming suppressed views would naturally engender interacting with a broad range of ideologies, while supporting free expression requires extending the same protections to both the speech you favor and despise; anything to the contrary suggests you are opposed to censorship only insofar as the targeted views comport with your own, and therefore you deem speech restrictions acceptable so long as you are not the victim.

Ultimately, a philosophy dissertation is not required to explain that, if “banned books” are available in a bookstore or library, then they are not “banned” in any meaningful sense. More broadly, the moral panic over “book banning” and “censorship” is yet another example of leftists deliberately lying to portray themselves as victims of an injustice perpetrated by right-wing individuals, but in practice, those progressives enthusiastically encourage (and sometimes unapologetically commit) that precise offense against conservatives. Although very few books can be accurately described as “banned” in the West, it is true that ideas and speech are regularly censored — and the attacks today are largely committed by progressives against their critics, especially those who lean conservative.