Knowledge in Peril: Censorship and Bibliocide

Abstract

Censorship can be a positive device used to guard national security secrets to block access of young people to pornography, prevent a person from inciting others to commit a hate crime, or undermine the legitimacy of a free and fair election. However, most of the time, censorship is counterproductive and violates tenets of constitutional democracies which protect freedom of the press and guards us against “the retrogradation of reason and information” (Thomas Jefferson). In this treatise, we explore the banning and confiscation of books as two forms of counterproductive censorship–the suppression of the free exchange of ideas found in the written word. The discussion then moves to the outright burning of books as an extreme, dramatic form of that prohibition. Censorship is usually exerted by those whose ambitions are thwarted by books and the ideas contained in them, including concepts that might challenge the legitimacy of a dominant religious group and the social and political dominance that it must preserve and defend.