this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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[–] HikingVet@lemmy.ca 114 points 10 months ago (1 children)

While I didn't think that they would go after a dictionary, it's not surprising that fascists would go after a book full of definitions.

[–] Dreadnaught@sh.itjust.works 64 points 10 months ago (1 children)

After reading a little bit, it's not that they banned dictionaries, but it seems the district got ahead of the curve. The law itself is the problem

[–] HikingVet@lemmy.ca 51 points 10 months ago (2 children)

That's why they have an overly broad definition of what is prohibited. So they can pick and choose what they will allow.

[–] orclev@lemmy.world 65 points 10 months ago (5 children)

In this case I think the district is doing this in protest. The legislators intended to pick and choose, but the district is applying it as written, so Dictionaries are out. They're highlighting how absurd the law is.

[–] CobblerScholar@lemmy.world 37 points 10 months ago

That was my impression, similar move to schools banning the Bible citing all the beastiality, rape and mass murder in there

[–] HikingVet@lemmy.ca 6 points 10 months ago

Eh, I think this is going to play into the legislator's designs.

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 5 points 10 months ago

Perhaps, but...

Penguin Random House, five authors, two parents of Escambia County students, and the non-profit group PEN America sued the Escambia County School Board last May, alleging that the board's actions violate the First Amendment. The lawsuit relates to decisions by the school board, prior to the passage of HB 1069, to permanently ban several books from Escambia schools.

The Escambia County School Board banned most of these books at the request of Vicki Baggett, a high school English teacher in the county. Baggett is responsible for hundreds of challenges in Escambia County and neighboring counties. She also appeared at the June 2023 board meeting and spoke in favor of the emergency rule.

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[–] tacosanonymous@lemm.ee 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They have already stated they want "their people" to be the deciders. It’s just textbook fascism.

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 74 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm not surprised. I haven't read the dictionary but people tell me it talks all about what homosexuals are and what transgender means and it actually defines the word 'lesbian!'

[–] A_cook_not_a_chef@lemmy.world 22 points 10 months ago

I hear it even defines "woke"!

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It has all the banned things!

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[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 56 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Parents NEED to lodge formal complaints with the police and school boards in EVERY district that still has dictionaries and encyclopedias in the libraries.

Whittle down every district until they're only allowed to work on coloring books for every grade K-12, or as close as they can get.

Don't forget to target private schools with massive social media campaigns to inform all parents that dictionaries = grooming. If the private schools refuse to respond, convince the dumber wealthy parents to pull their kids and put them into a safe school, without books.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Conservative = Stupid

Coloring books in place of books is exactly how you grow the Republican voter base.

Mindless exploitable industrial scale human production is the end game of the Republican army of the Oligarchy. It's industrial cattle, but humans; eat garbage, consume everything you're told, ask no questions, and barely survive. If anything bad happens, use your gun to take yourself out and/or whatever other farm stock you feel oppressed and frustrated with inside your little pin.

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Even if what you're saying is true, and I'm not going to take a position either way, it doesn't have any bearing on my suggestion.

DeSantis is a reply guy with power. This bill wasn't passed because a majority of FL voters want it, not even a majority of his voters. This bill, like many others, was simply him trying to ride the culture war to the White House, but it failed. The only thing keeping it in place in inertia and the desire to save face. That only changes if the political calculus changes.

I guarantee you that if these book bans were exploited to force the closure of ALL public school libraries, remove dictionaries and encyclopedias from all classrooms, and basically made to significantly impact ALL FL parents, or even just the wealthier areas, the public outcry from parents would be enough to reverse it.

[–] jzzvid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Exactly, parents will care when their children who received a Florida education are not competitive enough to compete in a capitalist environment. They'll realize this soon enough when their children haven't learned anything in school aside from propaganda.

Let them sacrifice their own children to Mammon. It is what they said they wanted, after all. Maybe this will be the wake up call they finally need. They wanted to "stop woke" and didn't realize it meant "stay asleep, plebs."

As someone who train-hooped out of Florida years ago, I fucking warned y'all and now it's happening. I knew this was the trajectory when Jeb Bush got elected in the 1990s and I was in middle school at the time!

I think when parents realize DeSantis just sentenced their kids to fighting to be menial wage slaves for the local corrupt petty bourgeois of every little shithole county while they have to attempt to convince professionals to move to their state they will regret all this and unfortunately the only way they will ever learn is by once again screwing themselves.

[–] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think when parents realize DeSantis just sentenced their kids to fighting to be menial wage slaves

But that's not what happened, it's very clear that brown people came and unfairly took those better paying jobs from our perfectly fine and upstanding American good-ol-boys!

[–] jzzvid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 10 months ago

That is the other end of this. No matter how absurd their beliefs are, they will believe them over the facts. No amount of numbers or data will convince them because they have already decided what is true and believe through faith. Republican voters are abusers, pure and simple. They will vote in the manner that maximizes their power and for them that means "parental rights" so they can abuse their own wives and children. It means removing abortion and forcing women to marry their rapists. It means discriminating against and throwing out queer folk in jail to make an example of them and scare others into "integrating" into their "culture" which is nothing more than a breeding program for extra workers.

The challenge is getting normal folks to see that the Republic ideal is a police state enforcing a theocratic breeding and political education program upon the masses and implementing it through the extreme violence against those who dissent.

This isn't conjecture: their biggest mouthpieces like Bannon, Steve Miller, Chris Rufo, Nick Fuentes, and others who form the ideological core of the "new" Republican parties not only admit it, but vocally advocate it. When they speak, may we should listen and believe it when they tell us who they really are.

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[–] 000@fuck.markets 18 points 10 months ago

But that's their goal, they want kids to be stupid so they'll vote republican when they grow up.

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[–] medicsofanarchy@lemmy.world 54 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I hope they've alerted their groundskeepers that all trees, shrubs, bushes, and flowers must be mowed over, because pollen and flowers are Nature's pole-dancers and sluts. Not sure if they can have grass.

[–] Kethal@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Grass will flower if you don't mow it.

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[–] LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 50 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

because it exposes students to "alternate sexual ideologies." Baggett said she was concerned "a second grader would read this book, and that idea would pop into the second grader's mind… that these are two people of the same sex that love each other."

This is the kind of people we are dealing with. They are literally trying to prevent children from developing accepting attitudes towards minorities. That is their stated goal. It's not often I read such blatant disgusting hatred coming from a teacher. The book she was referencing was And Tango makes three. Which is unbelievable in the context of her statement. Were the penguins, who were real actual penguins, somehow a part of an "alternate sexual ideology"? How badly rotten does your brain have to be to think "sexual ideology" when you see 2 penguins raising a baby together?

[–] slurpeesoforion@startrek.website 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You see, tolerance is a slippery slope. First you tolerate the Irish. Next thing you know Italians are semi-ok. Then Polish?! Eventually Catholics and Jews are acceptable. So long as none of these marry across lines.

/s

[–] wolfeh@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

"Whatever you say, Arch." 😆

[–] ziixe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 10 months ago

Ah, don't you just love when (a part of) the land of freedom advertises propaganda (or censors unwanted ideas more appropriately) against a minority from the early age

Doesn't even remotely resemble anything else /s

[–] Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 42 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

That book defines "racism" and "slavery" and may contain examples. Conservatives definitely don't want white kids finding out their ancestors may have been conservatives.

[–] Witchfire@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago

Ancestors? I don't think you have to go that far back

[–] BlitzFitz@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is no one else looking at this line the school district is at this point just pulling every possible book that could match the description of the law in purpose to make a point?

One teacher made a complaint about a couple of books so they said fine, well just remove everything else that this bill could possibly touch. Just to prove how ambiguous and far stretching this law can go?

Of course they shouldn't pull a dictionary but it matches the description. This is to test the law.

[–] piecat@lemmy.world 30 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Pulling the dictionary accomplishes what they want: a dumber future generation.

Pull the Bible, that's what riles them up

[–] MrEff@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

In Florida you misspelled 'dummer'. You can only sound out the words now.

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[–] Got_Bent@lemmy.world 24 points 10 months ago

HB 1069 gives residents the right to demand the removal of any library book that "depicts or describes sexual conduct," as defined under Florida law, whether or not the book is pornographic.

I was going to ask how their bible gets around this, but then I found several instances of its removal in Florida.

These librarians. I like them. Assuming they're doing this as a statement.

[–] LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world 22 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Fantastic. Now those pesky kids won’t know what fascism means.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 16 points 10 months ago

Pesky Kid: I looked up the word "fascist" on my parent's phone, and it showed a picture of Ron DeSantis. Weirdly, it does the same when you lookup "dumbass..."

[–] Rolder@reddthat.com 6 points 10 months ago

More like they’ll be provided with shitty “Christian Approved” dictionaries with all the naughty words taken out.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 19 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Not sure I trust a librarian that writes "indefinately"

[–] ook_the_librarian@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

Cut the librarian some slack, they just had their dictionary banned. (I wish I were joking.)

[–] Evia@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

I read that as a pun/clue to their true motives

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 17 points 10 months ago

Soon: "All books are now banned because they contain the letters L, G, B, T and Q. Any books containing these five letters will now be banned from public libraries."

[–] charonn0@startrek.website 16 points 10 months ago

The reality in Escambia County serves as a rejoinder to DeSantis, who has described concerns about book removals as a "leftist activist hoax" and a "false political narrative."

If Floridians had a dictionary to look up "rejoinder" with, they'd be very upset.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago

I thought this was an Onion article when I saw the title.

I wish I was right.

[–] febra@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago
[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

Guess they got tired tired of hearing "words have meanings" in response to their mindless rambling.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

We should also ban math books, and history books. Full of sexual descriptions and imagery. Ban economy books too, full baabout advice on how to rape the poor, and the bible too with its incest and rape stories, and you know, let's ban all the books and then just go to school to hold hands and sing hallelujah and praise Jesus.

I see a number of Republican politicians getting very wet at this idea...

[–] Toribor@corndog.social 2 points 10 months ago

Math books are full of Arabic numbers. Clearly it's indoctrinating our children.

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[–] MeanEYE@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

They did keep guns though. Those are more important.

[–] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

DeSantis has a stranglehold on people here in FL because he kept stuff open during Covid. So people mindlessly co-sign everything he does and Dems pretty much have given up here. They are going after all forms of education and history they don't agree with.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 7 points 10 months ago

With rights to request removal of books when they have descriptions of sexual activity, I'd say the bible is definitely a prime target. It has incest, rape, and even those are kind of fan favorites for republican politicians, they too must recognize that Bible's are evil and must be banned.

[–] batmaniam@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

lol to the bit about Atlas Shrugged. Although yeah there are a few passages in there that are basically erotica, forgot about that. It's been a long time but I remember them being "NC-17" not "R" rated.

(usual thing I have to say here about this book here: I'm aware it's badly written and terrible as philosophy excersize, I just liked my steam-punk sci-fi with trains)

[–] Emi621@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 10 months ago

Are they trying to make new speak a reality?

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

I wish we could do multiple things at once, but it appears we struggle with one. Once Trump goes to prison for trying to steal the election, maybe we can finally send Abbott and DeSatin for human trafficking

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