Die neue Zensur – Wie Trumps Regime die Bücher verbrennt, ohne Feuer zu machen

It begins as it always does in authoritarian systems: with lists. Lists of books, lists of suspects, lists of topics that must disappear. But in America in the year 2025, there’s no longer any need for fire to burn books. A pen stroke is enough. A memo. An order from the Oval Office. And the gap on the school library shelf explains itself. The new censorship in the United States is not a covert act, not a mistake. It is government policy. Open, proud, aggressive. Since Donald Trump began his second term, the number of books banned from schools has more than quadrupled. In 2022, there were still 1,145 titles; according to PEN America, there are now 4,231. Half are already banned, the rest are pending. The reasons given: “gender ideology propaganda,” “transsexual material,” “anti-police,” “obscene.” Everything that doesn’t fit Trump’s worldview gets filtered out.

The most absurd list comes from Escambia County in Florida. There, all five volumes of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy were proposed for banning, as well as The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, novels by Crichton, Dickens, Agatha Christie, biographies of Paul McCartney, Merriam-Webster dictionaries, and the Guinness Book of Records. Also on the list: Hesse’s Siddhartha and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Author Isaac Bailey reported that his book Why Didn’t We Riot? was banned from the U.S. Naval Academy library because it was deemed “DEI content” (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion). Bailey writes: “Trump calls it DEI because I’m a Black man who refuses to kneel before him.” This is the new principle: those who are not loyal get deleted. Philosopher Ryan Holiday was scheduled to speak at the Naval Academy about courage. When he refused to remove critical slides on book banning, his lecture was canceled. His quote from Seneca – “Read like a spy in the enemy’s camp” – became a threat to a military that once stood for critical thinking. Holiday said: “If you can’t handle Maya Angelou, you shouldn’t be carrying an assault rifle.”

The new directives stem from Trump’s Executive Orders No. 14151, 14168, 14173 to remove all DEI content from the education system. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared this also applies to military academies. Thousands of articles on the Holocaust, suicide prevention, 9/11, sexual violence, cancer awareness were removed or marked for deletion from Pentagon websites. Photos of Jewish women were removed from exhibitions. No one knew what still counted as “DEI,” so everything was removed. An internal Defense Department memo ordered the removal of all content promoting DEI – including material on critical race theory or the history of African American soldiers like the Tuskegee Airmen or the Navajo Code Talkers – from all official platforms. Thus, memory becomes a risk, education an obstacle. The systematic removal of these contents has been criticized by historians and human rights organizations as racist and revisionist.

Data journalist Arman Madani showed that 45 percent of the banned books deal with social justice, others with LGBTQ+, racism, prominent women. It is the targeted deletion of progressive ideas. “You don’t have to burn the books,” reads the sign at Ryan Holiday’s bookstore. “You just remove them.” Not the blazing fire, but the cold system. Not open violence, but silent removal. Not a prohibition, but a list. And in the end, there is an order that says it all: You may read what the President allows. Everything else is treason.