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\u2019s 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: \u201cgender ideology propaganda,\u201d \u201ctranssexual material,\u201d \u201canti-police,\u201d \u201cobscene.\u201d Everything that doesn\u2019t fit Trump\u2019s worldview gets filtered out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s 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: \u201cgender ideology propaganda,\u201d \u201ctranssexual material,\u201d \u201canti-police,\u201d \u201cobscene.\u201d Everything that doesn\u2019t fit Trump\u2019s worldview gets filtered out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most absurd list comes from Escambia County in Florida. There, all five volumes of Douglas Adams\u2019 The Hitchhiker\u2019s 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\u2019s Siddhartha and Ovid\u2019s Metamorphoses.\n\nAuthor Isaac Bailey reported that his book Why Didn\u2019t We Riot? was banned from the U.S. Naval Academy library because it was deemed \u201cDEI content\u201d (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion). Bailey writes: \u201cTrump calls it DEI because I\u2019m a Black man who refuses to kneel before him.\u201d 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 \u2013 \u201cRead like a spy in the enemy\u2019s camp\u201d \u2013 became a threat to a military that once stood for critical thinking. Holiday said: \u201cIf you can\u2019t handle Maya Angelou, you shouldn\u2019t be carrying an assault rifle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new directives stem from Trump\u2019s 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 \u201cDEI,\u201d so everything was removed.\nAn internal Defense Department memo ordered the removal of all content promoting DEI \u2013 including material on critical race theory or the history of African American soldiers like the Tuskegee Airmen or the Navajo Code Talkers \u2013 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to burn the books,\u201d reads the sign at Ryan Holiday\u2019s bookstore. \u201cYou just remove them.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Es beginnt wie immer in autorit\u00e4ren Systemen: mit Listen. Listen von B\u00fcchern, Listen von Verd\u00e4chtigen, Listen von Themen, die verschwinden sollen. Nur braucht es in Amerika des Jahres 2025 kein Feuer mehr, um B\u00fccher zu verbrennen. Es reicht ein Federstrich. Ein Memo. Ein Befehl aus dem Oval Office. Und die L\u00fccke in der Schulbibliothek erkl\u00e4rt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,41,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-topstory","category-trump-s-world","category-trump-usa"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kaizen-blog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/trump-books.webp?fit=988%2C500&ssl=1","author_info":{"display_name":"Rainer Hofmann","author_link":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/author\/admin\/"},"yoast_head":"\n