US saw record high of 5,668 books banned in libraries in 2025, says agency

vvinni2 about 3 hours ago 15 commentsRead Article on theguardian.com

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smithoc•about 2 hours ago

Important to note that "banned" here means "a school chose not to have this book in their library".

It's an annoying abuse of language. "Banned Books" has historically meant people are getting arrested for possessing the books or stores are being prevented from selling it or publishers are being prevented from producing it.

This is essentially a clickbait title for "People disagree about what is age-appropriate content for a public school to provide to children".

torben-friis•about 2 hours ago

Depends on your definition of people:

>The report also found that challenges are becoming more coordinated and politically driven: 92% came from pressure groups, decision-makers or government officials, compared with 72% in 2024. By contrast, 2.7% were attributed to parents and 1.4% to individual library users.

So this isn't librarians, parents or even neighbours deciding something isn't appropriate.

The article also seems to refer to libraries in general, as opposed to school libraries alone, except on a specific paragraph.

ImPostingOnHN•about 2 hours ago

This is incorrect. The article is talking about book bans at public libraries and school libraries alike.

The linked censorship search portal [0] lets you filter by "# Count of Challenges at Public Libraries" > 0.

0 – https://www.ala.org/bbooks/censorship-search-portal

barbazoo•about 1 hour ago

I'd call that "not making publicly available" via the library system rather than banning. As parent said, you can still buy these books and share with or sell them to each other.

like_any_other•about 1 hour ago

Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail, or White Identity by Jared Taylor, never make these banned book lists. They don't have to be "banned" - libraries simply make them unavailable, so they get to control information, without being the kind of horrible people that would censor or ban a book. How virtuous!

yeah879846•about 1 hour ago

List?

cyanydeez•about 2 hours ago

We wont need books in the future. You'll just open up your Red OpenAI or Blue Claude app and ask it for a new story !

jazz9k•about 3 hours ago

You can still legally purchase these books in the US. I don't consider it a 'banning'.

The Liberals are kings of banning books and censorship. A few years back, previously purchased e-books were censored with a new version because it was 'offensive' and big tech companies regularly blacklist conservative authors and people on social media.

Until we can admit these truths, I'm not sure I care about these book 'bannings'.

jaapz•about 2 hours ago

As someone not from the US, this fingerpointing and the " i don't care 'their' books are being banned as long as 'my' books are being banned" is so weird to me.

You guys should care books from either side of your political spectrum are being banned!

marpstar•about 2 hours ago

Not everyone has the money to buy whatever book they want to read and it's wrong no matter who does it.

ImPostingOnHN•about 2 hours ago

This is an example of "DARVO" [0] – Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. Readers will notice that the post itself literally follows each of the instructions in order.

IMHO it doesn't make for particularly interesting or pleasant discussion. But you're free to not care about what you don't care about, and free to provide (or not) any explanation or pretext for it.

0 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO

joe_mamba•about 2 hours ago

Current German gov also has amassed more banned books than the Nazi one, so numbers alone are meaningless. What people should look at before being up in arms, is which books were banned and why they were banned.

GuestFAUniverse•about 1 hour ago

Which ones? Source?

Sounds more like an alt-right conspiracy.

During the Third Reich the list "des schädlichen und unerwünschten Schrifttums" that startet in 1935 had 12400 banned books and 149 authors in it.

Today there is an "Index jugendgefährdender Medien", that covers not only books. That's for selling or borrowing to minors. There is ban of raw depiction of violence / war crimes if certain boundaries are left (e.g. using it solely for entertainment).

Everything else sounds false.

Even the documentary / art project "Kassler Liste" (documenta / Universität Kassel, Germany) doesn't list more books for Germany than there were banned books in Nazi Germany. https://www.kasselerliste.com/

So, sod off with your alt-right conspiracy.

ImPostingOnHN•about 2 hours ago

> What people should look at before being up in arms, is which books were banned and why they were banned.

Okay, I'll bite: why were they banned?

Banning books from a public library is prima facie bad, so each one would need to have a pretty compelling argument articulated for why it wasn't.

What if "why they were banned" isn't a good reason for banning information from a public library?