Argh!
Personally, I have always been against book-banning, book-burning, album-burning, bra-burning, pot-burning, oil-field burnings, pogroms, holocausts, etc., cough cough cough. We have enough problems without these waves of petty, narcissistic witch-hunts, which have sometimes been as bad as those in Salem, or as Hawthorn's scarlet-letter ostracisms, or as the paranoid 1950's Red Scare, or as - wut? - Russia-gate and associated blame-placing.
Every so often, civilisations - or even all of humanity - goes through waves where much of its technology and/or knowledge is lost. Think of: The library of Alexandria. It's almost like we grow to such a state of sophistication that we feel we can no longer function on a more easy, animal level.
Well, book-banning is like this - but it is ongoing, persistent, fueled by the ignorance of self-appointed, know-it-all saviours. It is death by a thousand cuts. And it can be especially bad, behind the scenes, when publishing and media companies number in the handful, and so they exercise their own censorship, selections and editorship even before the mad mob has a chance to ban their products.
Such is determined by enlightened rogue CEO's who think that, since they made money or specialised in one field, then they know the solutions for every problem, and all of humanity, which necessitates the banning of things that bother them. Think of them as religious nuts in white collars and cuff-links. (In a more fair, diversified economic system, this happens less).
This is exactly why I am opposed to the shadow banning and banning of free speech on the internet, by a handful of globalised monopolies: FB, twitter, Youtube, Google, Amazon, Microsoft - and then there is Time-Warner, Comcast, Fox, NBC, CNN, and the phone/internet corporations. There is a direct link between the centralisation of this informational power and the censorship of alternate ideas, sometimes only via the production of mass-market, money-making pablum.
It is hard for many to get their heads around it, but this is exactly why I support conservatives like Alex Jones being allowed to speak, to their sometimes vast audiences. I don't care what party or bent, I support Republicans, Democrats, third parties, being given a fair airing. But, the fact is that there has been a bias against conservatives in media which have been owned and/or predominated by liberals. Not only that, but partly from that has grown a culture of cancellation - of shouting down or even physically harming - against views which the media-fed mass may find unacceptable.
Cancel Culture can be just as bad as book-banning and, in fact, Cancel Culture IS the new book-banning. Think twice before you contribute to it. I recall when it was liberals who supported made-in America, and opposing China's unfair trade practices. People like the great Ed Schultz, RIP. Now, since Trump took up that issue via our restive tide of populism, now every Democrat shouts against it, as being some kind of racism, because Orange Man Bad.
There was a time when most liberal labour unions in the USA were opposed to illegal immigration, because they saw it as taking jobs away from American workers - just like China. Today, the Democratic party supports it, because it creates more Democrats and fulfill's the plan of George Soros to destabilise nation states. So they shout down Trump, because racist Orange Man Bad.
As a devout environmentalist, I abhor what has done so far regarding the environment. But that does not mean that I cannot support moves he has made - like setting up peace in the Middle East, only weeks ago. Suddenly I am a crazy lunatic zombie supporting Orange Man Bad? What happened - is everyone suddenly four years old?!
Likewise, there was a time when democrats favoured freedom of speech for all, after having gone through being blacklisted during the McCarthy witch-hunt, and closed out because their views against war, and so on. Today, there is a holy host of trolls in the party, trying to shout down the free speech of libertarians, Republicans and others. It is disgusting to me. It will have dire consequences, no matter how things develop. They are egging us into another ideational collapse.
Other people, including children hoping for a future, don't like this. They don't like seeing the arrogance, the flippant dismissals, the denial or the violence. What I especially do not like is the ignorance of important facts and the manipulation of others. Even agencies like Snopes or Media Matters are involved in the game of banning inconvenient truths.
This is a new age - a new wave of a new kind of book banning. We must stand against all forms of censorship, old and new. I have a community which supports this maxim, whistlblowers and anti-mongolism on the internet - but it also now covers what many dismiss as "conspiracy theories." So, that is the gist of it, if you wish to join: wiki_truth.