Book burning is the deliberate destruction by fire of books or other written materials, usually carried out in a public context. The burning of books represents an element ofcensorship and usually proceeds from a cultural, religious, or political opposition to the materials in question.[1] Book burning can be an act of contempt for the book's contents or author, intended to draw wider public attention to this opposition, or conceal the information contained in the text from being made public, such as diaries or ledgers. Burning and other methods of destruction are together known asbiblioclasm orlibricide.
In some cases, the destroyed works are irreplaceable and their burning constitutes a severe loss tocultural heritage. Examples include theburning of books and burying of scholars under China'sQin dynasty (213–210BCE), the destruction of theHouse of Wisdom during theMongolsiege of Baghdad (1258), the destruction ofAztec codices byItzcoatl (1430s), the burning ofMaya codices on the order of bishopDiego de Landa (1562),[2] and theburning of Jaffna Public Library inSri Lanka (1981).[3]
In other cases, such as theNazi book burnings, copies of the destroyed books survive, but the instance of book burning becomes emblematic of a harsh and oppressive regime which is seeking to censor or silence some aspect of prevailing culture.
In modern times, other forms of media, such asphonograph records,video tapes, andCDs have also been burned, shredded, or crushed.Art destruction is related to book burning, both because it might have similar cultural, religious, or political connotations, and because in various historical cases, books and artworks were destroyed at the same time.
When the burning is widespread and systematic, destruction of books and media can become a significant component ofcultural genocide.
The burning of books has a long history of being a tool utilized by authorities bothsecular andreligious, in their efforts to suppressdissenting orheretical views that are believed to pose athreat to the prevailing order.
Books infested withbookworms were sometimes burned in the Medieval era as a rudimentary form ofpest control, rather than targeted censorship.[4]
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According to theHebrew Bible, in the7th century BCE, KingJehoiakim ofJudah burned part of a scroll thatBaruch ben Neriah had written at prophetJeremiah's dictation (seeJeremiah 36).
The burning of books as a means of government control goes back to Shang Yang, who had exhorted Duke Xiao of Qin in the fourth century BCE to burn books.[5] In 213 BCEQin Shi Huang, the first emperor of theQin dynasty, ordered theburning of books and burying of scholars and in 210 BCE he supposedly ordered thepremature burial of 460 Confucian scholars in order to stay on his throne.[3][6][7] Though the burning of books is well established, thelive burial of scholars has been disputed by modern historians who doubt the details of the story, which first appeared more than a century later in the Han dynasty officialSima Qian'sRecords of the Grand Historian. The event caused the loss of many philosophical treatises of theHundred Schools of Thought, with only treatises on agriculture and medicine as well as a collection of divinations allowed to survive.[8] Treatises which advocated the official philosophy of the government ("legalism") survived.[citation needed]
In theNew Testament'sActs of the Apostles, it is claimed thatPaul performed anexorcism in Ephesus. After men in Ephesus failed to perform the same feat many gave up their "curious arts" and burned the books because apparently, they did not work.
And many that believed, came and confessed and shewed their deeds. Many of them also which used curious arts, brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.[9]
After theFirst Council of Nicea (325 CE), Roman emperorConstantine the Great issued anedict againstnontrinitarianArians which included a prescription for systematic book-burning:
"In addition, if any writing composed byArius should be found, it should be handed over to the flames, so that not only will the wickedness of his teaching be obliterated, but nothing will be left even to remind anyone of him. And I hereby make a public order, that if someone should be discovered to have hidden a writing composed by Arius, and not to have immediately brought it forward and destroyed it by fire, his penalty shall be death. As soon as he is discovered in this offense, he shall be submitted for capital punishment....."[10]
Nevertheless, Constantine's edict on Arian works was not rigorously observed, as Arian writings or the theology based on them survived to be burned much later in Spain. According to theChronicle of Fredegar,Recared,King of the Visigoths (reigned 586–601) and first Catholic king ofSpain, following his conversion toCatholicism in 587, ordered that allArian books should be collected and burned; and all the books of Arian theology were reduced to ashes, along with the house in which they had been purposely collected.[11][12]
According toElaine Pagels, "In AD 367,Athanasius, the zealous bishop ofAlexandria... issued an Easter letter in which he demanded thatEgyptian monks destroy all such unacceptable writings, except for those he specifically listed as 'acceptable' even 'canonical'—a list that constitutes the present 'New Testament'".[13] (Pagels cites Athanasius's Paschal letter (letter 39) for 367 CE, which prescribes a canon, but her citation "cleanse the church from every defilement" (page 177) does not explicitly appear in the Festal letter.[14]) Heretical texts do not turn up aspalimpsests, scraped clean and overwritten, as do manytexts of Classical antiquity. According to author Rebecca Knuth, multitudes of earlyChristian texts have been as thoroughly "destroyed" as if they had been publicly burnt.[15][citation needed]
In 1759Pope Clement XIII banned all publications written by Swedish biologistCarl Linnaeus from the Vatican, and ordered that all copies of his work be burned.[16][17][18]
Activity byCyril of Alexandria (c. 376–444) brought fire to almost all the writings ofNestorius (386–450) shortly after 435.[19] 'The writings of Nestorius were originally very numerous',[20] however, they were not part of the Nestorian or Oriental theological curriculum until the mid-sixth century, unlike those of his teacherTheodore of Mopsuestia, and those ofDiodorus of Tarsus, even then they were not key texts, so relatively few survive intact.[21][citation needed]
Uthman ibn 'Affan, the thirdCaliph of Islam afterMuhammad, who is credited with overseeing the collection of the verses of theQur'an, ordered after that inc. 650 the destruction of any other remaining text containing verses of the Qur'an in order to ensure that his version become the only source for others to follow.[22][23] During the Muslim conquests of the Middle East, many libraries, such as that ofCaesarea Maritima, were burned, and during the conquest ofKhwarazm books were destroyed in order to weaken the identity and resistance of the local population.[24] Books of other religions were also explicitly burned. In 923,Manichean books were burned at the public gate of Baghdad together with a portrait of Mani.[25] Similarly,Sikandar Shah Miri, sultan of Kashmir, forced Hindu conversions and burned books in the fifteenth century.[26]
Often books were burned for belonging to another Muslim denominations. During the Abbasid invasion of Oman in 892, the army ofMuhammad ibn Nur burnt books of theIbadis, which probably also contributed to the paucity of sources on early south-east Arabia's history.[27] The Sunni Ghaznavid rulerMahmud burned after his sack ofRayy a great part of the city's library books as he considered the books, many of them Shiite, heretical.[28][29] A similar thing happened during theSeljuks takeover ofBuyid Baghdad in 1059 when the famousdar al-'ilm was burned.[30][31]
Books were also burned in Muslim Spain between the tenth and twelfth century under the Ummayyad, Amirid, Abbadid, Almoravid and Almohad dynasties, often of writers that were deemed heretical or a challenge to the rulers.[32] During the rule of caliph Abu Yusuf Yaqub the possession of books on logic or philosophy (hikma) was forbidden and many books, including those by the famousIbn Rushd, burned.[33]
In 1244, as an outcome of theDisputation of Paris, twenty-four carriage loads ofTalmuds and other Jewish religious manuscripts were set on fire byFrench law officers in the streets of Paris.[34][35]
During theSpanish colonization of the Americas, numerous books written byindigenous peoples were burned by the Spaniards. Several books[quantify] written by theAztecs were burnt by Spanishconquistadors and priests during theSpanish conquest of Yucatán. Despite opposition from Catholic friarBartolomé de las Casas, numerous books found by the Spanish inYucatán were burnt on the order of BishopDiego de Landa in 1562.[2][36] De Landa wrote on the incident that "We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they (theMaya) regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction".[2][37]
The founding of theChurch of England afterKing Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church led to the targeting ofEnglish Catholics byProtestants. The dissolution of the monasteries led to the destruction of many libraries and Edward VI, Henry's son, encouraged his subjects to destroy all books that were associated with "old learning".[38] Throughout theTudor andStuart periods, Protestant citizens loyal tothe Crown attacked Catholic religious sites across England, frequently burning any religious texts they found. These acts were encouraged by the Crown, who pressured the general public to take part in such "spectacles". According to American historian David Cressy, over "the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries book burning developed from a rare to an occasional occurrence, relocated from an outdoor to an indoor procedure, and changed from a bureaucratic to a quasi-theatrical performance".[39]
With theBishops' Ban of 1599 theArchbishop of Canterbury and theBishop of London ordered an end to the production of verse satire and the confiscation and the burning of specific extant works, including works byJohn Marston andThomas Middleton. Nine books were specifically singled out for destruction. Scholars disagree about what properties these nine books have in common to cause official offence.
During the 18th century, the works of French philosopher and writerVoltaire were repeatedly burned by government officials in the kingdoms ofFrance andPrussia. In 1734, the publication of hisLettres philosophiques in the city ofRouen led to a public outcry, as it was seen as an attack against theancien régime of France. In response, the French authorities ordered copies of book to be publicly confiscated and burnt, and Voltaire was forced to fleeParis. In 1751, King of PrussiaFrederick the Great ordered a pamphlet written by Voltaire titledDoctor Akakia to be publicly burnt as it insultedPierre Louis Maupertuis, the president of thePrussian Academy of Sciences inBerlin, of whom Frederick was a significant patron.[40]
FollowingJohn Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, slaveholders and their supporters spread panic aboutabolitionism, believing that anti-slavery conspiracies would lead to widespread slave revolts. Pro-slavery southerners burned books inMississippi,South Carolina, andTexas, including textbooks from public schools. Books that were critical of slavery, or insufficiently supportive of it, were seen as "anti-Southern" by the book-burners.[41]
Anthony Comstock'sNew York Society for the Suppression of Vice, founded in 1873, inscribed book burning on its seal, as a worthy goal to be achieved.[2] Comstock's total accomplishment in a long and influential career is estimated to have been the destruction of some 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing such "objectionable" books, and nearly 4,000,000 pictures. All of this material was defined as "lewd" by Comstock's very broad definition of the term – which he and his associates successfully lobbied theUnited States Congress to incorporate in theComstock Law.[42]
TheNazi government decreed broad grounds for burning material "which acts subversively onNazi Germany's future or strikes at the root of German thought, the German home and the driving forces of German people".[1][43][44][45]
During the Alliedoccupation of Japan,GHQ officials banned any kind of criticism of the Allies or "reactionary" political ideas and many books were confiscated and burned. Over 7,000 books were destroyed.[46]
In 1588, the exiled English CatholicWilliam Cardinal Allen wrote "An Admonition to the Nobility and People of England", a work sharply attacking QueenElizabeth I. It was to be published in Spanish-occupied England in the event of theSpanish Armada succeeding in its invasion. Upon the defeat of the Armada, Allen carefully consigned his publication to the fire, and it is only known of through one of Elizabeth's spies, who had stolen a copy.[47]
Carlo Goldoni is known to have burned his first play, atragedy calledAmalasunta in the 1730s, when encountering unfavorable criticism.
TheHassidic RabbiNachman of Breslov is reported to have written a book which he himself burned in 1808. To this day, his followers mourn "The Burned Book" and seek in their Rabbi's surviving writings for clues as to what the lost volume contained and why it was destroyed.[48]
Nikolai Gogol burned the second half of his 1842 magnum opusDead Souls, having come under the influence of a priest who persuaded him that his work was sinful; Gogol later described this as a mistake.
As noted in Claire Tomalin's intensively researched "The Invisible Woman",Charles Dickens is known to have made a big bonfire of his letters and private papers, as well as asking friends and acquaintances to either return letters which he wrote to them or themselves destroy the letters – and most complied with his request in the 1850s and the 1860s. Dickens' purpose was to destroy evidence of his affair with the actress Nelly Ternan. To judge from surviving Dickens letters, the destroyed material – even if not intended for publication – might have had considerable literary merit.
Martin Gardner, a well-known expert on the work ofLewis Carroll, believes that Carroll had written an earlier version in the 1860s ofAlice in Wonderland which he later destroyed after writing a more elaborate version which he presented to the child Alice who inspired the book.[49]
In the 1870sTchaikovsky destroyed the full manuscript of his first opera,The Voyevoda. Decades later, during the Soviet period,The Voyevoda was posthumously reconstructed from surviving orchestral and vocal parts and the composer's sketches.
Alberto Santos-Dumont, after being considered a spy by the French government in 1914 and then having this deception excused by the police, he destroyed all his aeronautical documents.[50] The following year, according to the afterword to the historical novel "De gevleugelde,"Arthur Japin says that when Dumont returned to Brazil, he "burned all his diaries, letters and drawings."[51]
AfterHector Hugh Munro (better known by thepen nameSaki) was killed inWorld War I in November 1916, his sister Ethel destroyed most of his papers.
There is substantial evidence that Finnish composerJean Sibelius worked on an Eighth Symphony. He promised the premiere of this symphony toSerge Koussevitzky in 1931 and 1932, and a London performance in 1933 underBasil Cameron was even advertised to the public. However, no such symphony was ever performed, and the only concrete evidence of the symphony's existence on paper is a 1933 bill for a fair copy of the first movement and short draft fragments first published and played in 2011.[52][53][54][55] Sibelius had always been quite self-critical; he remarked to his close friends, "If I cannot write a better symphony than my Seventh, then it shall be my last." Since no manuscript survives, sources consider it likely that Sibelius destroyed most traces of the score, probably in 1945, during which year he certainly consigned a great many papers to the flames.[56]
Aino, Sibelius' wife, recalled that "In the 1940s there was a greatauto da fé atAinola [where the Sibelius couple lived]. My husband collected a number of the manuscripts in a laundry basket and burned them on the open fire in the dining room. Parts of theKarelia Suite were destroyed – I later saw remains of the pages which had been torn out – and many other things. I did not have the strength to be present and left the room. I therefore do not know what he threw on to the fire. But after this my husband became calmer and gradually lighter in mood." It is assumed that a draft of Sibelius' Eighth Symphony - which he worked on in the early 1930s but with which he was not satisfied - was among the papers destroyed.[57]
Joe Shuster, who together withJerry Siegel created the fictionalsuperheroSuperman, in 1938 burned the first Superman story when under the impression that it would not find a publisher.
Axel Jensen made his debut as a novelist inOslo in 1955 with the novelDyretemmerens kors, but he later burned the remaining unsold copies of the book.
In August 1963, whenC.S. Lewis resigned fromMagdalene College, Cambridge and his rooms there were being cleaned out, Lewis gave instructions toDouglas Gresham to destroy all his unfinished or incomplete fragments of manuscript - which scholars researching Lewis' work regard as a grievous loss.[58]
In 1976 detractors of Venezuelanliberal writerCarlos Rangel publicly burned copies of his bookFrom the Noble Savage to the Noble Revolutionary in the year of its publication at theCentral University of Venezuela.[59][60]
In Catholichagiography, SaintVincent of Saragossa is mentioned as having been offered his life on condition that he consign Scripture to the fire; he refused and was martyred. He is often depicted holding the book which he protected with his life.
Another book-saving Catholic saint is the 10th-century SaintWiborada. She is credited with having predicted in 925 aninvasion by the then-pagan Hungarians of her region in Switzerland. Her warning allowed the priests and religious of St. Gall and St. Magnus to hide their books and wine and escape into caves in nearby hills.[61] Wiborada herself refused to escape and was killed by the marauders, being later canonized. In art, she is commonly represented holding a book to signify the library she saved, and is considered a patron saint oflibraries and librarians.
During a tour of Thuringia in 1525,Martin Luther became enraged at the widespread burning of libraries along with other buildings during theGerman Peasants' War, writingAgainst the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants in response.[62]
During theRevolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire theImperial Court Library (nowAustrian National Library) was in extreme danger, when the bombardment of Vienna caused the burning of theHofburg, in which the Imperial Library was located. The fire was halted in a timely manner - saving countless irreplaceable books, diligently collected by many generations of Habsburg emperors and the scholars in their employ.
At the beginning of theBattle of Monte Cassino inWorld War II, two German officers – Viennese-born Lt. Col. Julius Schlegel (a Roman Catholic) and Captain Maximilian Becker (a Protestant) – had the foresight to transfer theMonte Cassino archives to the Vatican. Otherwise the archives – containing a vast number of documents relating to the 1500-years' history of the Abbey as well as some 1,400 irreplaceable manuscriptcodices, chieflypatristic and historical – would have been destroyed in the Allied air bombing which almost completely destroyed the Abbey shortly afterwards. Also saved by the two officers' prompt action were the collections of theKeats-Shelley Memorial House in Rome, which had been sent to the Abbey for safety in December 1942.
TheSarajevo Haggadah – one of the oldest and most valuable Jewishillustrated manuscripts, with immense historical and cultural value – was hidden from theNazis and theirUstaše collaborators byDerviš Korkut, chief librarian of the National Museum inSarajevo.[63] At risk to his own life, Korkut smuggled the Haggadah out of Sarajevo and gave it for safekeeping to a Muslim cleric inZenica, where it was hidden until the end of the war under the floorboards of either a mosque or a Muslim home. The Haggadah again survived destruction during the wars which followed thebreakup of Yugoslavia.[64]
In 1940s France, a group of anti-fascist exiles created a Library of Burned Books which housed all the books thatAdolf Hitler had destroyed. This library contained copies of titles that were burned by the Nazis in their campaign to cleanse German culture of Jewish and foreign influences such as pacifist and decadent literature. The Nazis themselves planned to make a "museum" of Judaism once theFinal Solution was complete to house certain books that they had saved.[65]
WhenVirgil died, he left instructions thathis manuscript of theAeneid was to be burnt, as it was a draft version with uncorrected faults and not a final version for release. However, this instruction was ignored. It is mainly to theAeneid, published in this "imperfect" form, that Virgil owes his lasting fame – and it is considered one of the great masterpieces of classical literature as a whole.[66][67]
Before his death,Franz Kafka wrote to his friend andliterary executorMax Brod: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread."[68][69] Brod overrode Kafka's wishes, believing that Kafka had given these directions to him, specifically, because Kafka knew he would not honour them – Brod had told him as much. Had Brod carried out Kafka's instructions, virtually the whole of Kafka's work – except for a few short stories published in his lifetime – would have been lost forever. Most critics, at the time and up to the present, justify Brod's decision.[66] In his foreword to Kafka'sThe Castle Brod noted that when entering Kafka's apartment after his death, he found several big empty folders and traces of burnt paper - the manuscripts which were in these folders having evidently been destroyed by Kafka himself before his death. Brod expressed pain at the irreversible loss of this material and happiness at having saved so much of Kafka's work from its creator's ruthlessness.
A similar case concerns the noted American poetEmily Dickinson, who died in 1886 and left to her sister Lavinia the instruction of burning all her papers. Lavinia Dickinson did burn almost all of her sister's correspondences, but interpreted the will as not including the forty notebooks and loose sheets, all filled with almost 1800 poems; these Lavinia saved and began to publish the poems that year. Had Lavinia Dickinson been more strict in carrying out her sister's will, all but a small handful of Emily Dickinson's poetic work would have been lost.[70][71]
In early 1964, several months after the death ofC.S. Lewis, Lewis' literary executorWalter Hooper, rescued a 64-page manuscript from a bonfire of the author's writings – the burning carried out according to Lewis' will.[72] In 1977, Hooper published it under the nameThe Dark Tower. It was apparently intended as part of Lewis'Space Trilogy. Though incomplete and evidently an early draft which Lewis abandoned, its publication aroused great interest and a continued discussion among Lewis fans and scholars researching his work.
Although the act of destroying books is condemned by the majority of the world's societies, book burning still occurs on a small or large scale.
InAzerbaijan, when a modified Latin alphabet was adopted, books which were published in the Arabic script were burned, especially those published in the late 1920s and 1930s.[73] The texts were not limited to the Quran; medical and historical manuscripts were also destroyed.[74]
Book burnings were regularly organised inNazi Germany in the 1930s bystormtroopers so that "degenerate" works could be destroyed, especially works written by Jewish authors such asThomas Mann,Marcel Proust, andKarl Marx. One of the most infamous book burnings in the 20th century occurred in Frankfurt, Germany, on May 10, 1933.[1] Organized byJoseph Goebbels, books were burned in a celebratory fashion, complete with bands, marchers, and songs. Seeking to "cleanse" German culture of the "un-German" spirit, Goebbels compelled students (who were egged on by their professors) to perform the book burning. To some this could be easily dismissed as the childish actions of the youth, but to many in Europe and America, it was a horrific display of power and disrespect.[75] During thedenazification which followed the war, literature which had been confiscated by the Allies was reduced to pulp rather than burned.
In 1937, duringGetúlio Vargas' dictatorship inBrazil, several books by authors such asJorge Amado andJosé Lins do Rego were burned in an anti-communist act.[76]
In thePeople's Republic of China from the 1940s to present day, library officials publicize the burning of "illegal publications, religious publications".[77]
In 1942, local Catholic priests forced Irish storyteller Timothy Buckley to burn a bookThe Tailor and Ansty byEric Cross about Buckley and his wife, because of its sexual frankness.[78]
In the 1950s, over six tons of books byWilhelm Reich were burned in the U.S. in compliance with judicial orders.[79] In 1954, the works ofMordecai Kaplan were burned byOrthodox Jewishrabbis in America, after Kaplan wasexcommunicated.[80]
Dozens of public comic book burnings were held across theUnited States between 1945 and 1955.[81] InDenmark, acomic book burning took place on 23 June 1955. It was abonfire which consisted of comic books topped by a life-size cardboard cutout ofThe Phantom.[82]
During themilitary dictatorship in Brazil from (1964-1985), several methods of censure were used, among them, torture and the burning of books by firemen.[83]
Some supporters have celebrated book-burning cases in art and other media. Such is the case in Italy in 1973 withThe Burning of Heretical Books over a side door on the façade ofSanta Maria Maggiore, Rome, the bas-relief byGiovanni Battista Maini, which depicts the burning of "heretical" books as a triumph of righteousness.[84]
During the years of the Chilean military dictatorship underAugusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990,hundreds of books were burned as a way of repression and censorship of left-wing literature.[85][86] In some instances, even books onCubism were burned because soldiers thought it had to do with theCuban Revolution.[87][88]
In 1981, theJaffna Public Library in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, wasburned down by Sinhalese police and paramilitaries during a pogrom against the minority Tamil population. At the time of its burning, it contained almost 100,000 Tamil books and rare documents.[3][89][90]
Kjell Ludvik Kvavik, a senior Norwegian official, had a penchant for removing maps and other pages from rare books and he was noticed in January 1983 by a young college student. The student, Barbro Andenaes, reported the actions of the senior official to the superintendent of the reading room and then reported them to the head librarian of the university library in Oslo. Hesitant to make the accusation against Kvavik public because it would greatly harm his career, even if it was proven to be false, the media did not divulge his name until his house was searched by police. The authorities seized 470 maps and prints as well as 112 books that Kvavik had illegally obtained. While this may not have been the large-scale, violent demonstration which usually occurs duringwars, Kvavik's disregard for libraries and books shows that the destruction of books on any scale can affect an entire country. Here, a senior official in the Norwegian government was disgraced and the University Library was only refunded for a small portion of the costs which it had incurred from the loss and destruction of rare materials and the security changes that had to be made as a result of it. In this case, the lure of personal profit and the desire to enhance one's own collection were the causes of the defacement of rare books and maps. While the main goal was not destruction for destruction's sake, the resulting damage to the ephemera still carries weight within the library community.[91]
In 1984, during India’s attack at Sikh Golden Temple, Indian forces ransacked theSikh Reference Library which held invaluable manuscripts and records in relation to Sikh and wider history. Much of the material was confiscated and remaining newspaper archives etc. were burned by the Army later claiming falsely that the fire broke out due to crossfire between Sikh militants and government forces. The whereabouts of large volume of works which vanished during the attack are unknown.[92]
In 1984, Amsterdam's South African Institute was infiltrated by an organized group which was bent on drawing attention to the inequality ofapartheid. Well-organized and assuring patrons of the library that no harm would come to them, group members systematically smashed microfiche machines and threw books into the nearby waterway. Indiscriminate with regard to the content which was being destroyed, shelf after shelf was cleared of its contents until the group left. Staff members fished books from the water in hopes of salvaging the rare editions oftravel books, documents about the Boer Wars, and contemporary materials which were both for and against apartheid. Many of these materials were destroyed by oil, ink, and paint that the anti-apartheid demonstrators had flung around the library. The world was outraged by the loss of knowledge that these demonstrators had caused, and instead of supporting their cause and drawing people's attention to the issue of apartheid, the international community denounced their actions at Amsterdam's South African Institute. Some of the demonstrators came forward and sought to justify their actions by accusing the institute of being pro-apartheid and claiming that nothing was being done to change thestatus quo inSouth Africa.[93]
The advent of the digital age has resulted in the cataloguing of an immense collection of written works, exclusively or primarily in digital form. The intentional deletion or removal of these works has often been referred to as a new form of book burning.[94] For example,Amazon, the world's largest online marketplace, has increasingly banned the sale of controversial books. An article inThe New York Times reported that "Booksellers that sell on Amazon say the retailer has no coherent philosophy about what it decides to prohibit, and seems largely guided by public complaints."[95]
A biblioclastic incident occurred inMullumbimby,New South Wales,Australia in 2009. Reported as "just like the ritual burning of books in Nazi Germany", a book-burning ceremony was held by students of the "socially harmful cult"Universal Medicine, anesoteric healing business which was owned by Serge Benhayon.[96] Students were invited to throw their books onto thepyre. Most of the volumes were onChinese medicine,kinesiology,acupuncture,homeopathy and otheralternative healing modalities, all of which Benhayon has decreed evil or "prana".[97]
Russian nationalists burned Ukrainian history books inCrimea in 2010.[98] Pro-Russian demonstrators burned books in Eastern Ukraine, 2014.[99]
Since the beginning of the Yemeni civil war in 2014, manyZaydi libraries have been destroyed, often deliberatly by Salafi militants. These libraries are a unique part of Yemen's cultural life due to the intellectual heritage included and its preservation of the teachings of the Mu’tazilites.[100]
In 2015,ISIS burned some 8,000 books it had taken from the Central Library ofMosul, including some books and manuscripts dating back 800 years, as they allegedly "promoted infidelity and called for disobeying Allah". Some local bookshop owners claimed that the group was only burning 'normal books' and were intending to sell the rare books on the black market in order to finance their operations.[101][102]
After thefailed 2016 Turkish coup d'état, the Turkish government burned 301,878 books deemed related to the coup or its alleged leader,Fethullah Gülen, including 18 textbooks with the word "Pennsylvania" in them. Photos of books being burned became a viral sensation on the internet once they were taken by a website named Kronos27.[103][104][105]
In April 2019 Poland, priests inGdańsk burnedHarry Potter books.[106]
In 2019, theFrench-languageProvidence Catholic School Board insouthwestern Ontario held a 'flame purification' ceremony and burned around thirty recently banned children's books. The ashes were used as fertilizer to plant trees and according to the participants the action was 'to turn a negative to a positive'. The books includedTintin andAsterix and were deemed harmful to Indigenous people.[107]
Since the introduction of the controversialnational security law in 2020, multiple counts of biblioclasm have been reported. Shortly after the introduction of the new law, books written by prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy figures, includingJoshua Wong andTanya Chan, have been removed frompublic libraries.[108] In 2021, 29 previously available titles about theTiananmen Massacre are completely removed from the public libraries, whilst 94 of the remaining 120 titles are only available on request.[109] In 2022, reported by local media, three secondary schools removed more than 400 books since June 2021.[110] Unlike the two book burning happened in the public libraries, the schools were not given any concrete criteria but the schools had to perform theself-censorship themselves.[110] Titles that were removed included those related to the2019-2020 Hong Kong protests, Tiananmen Massacre and jailed activists.[110] In the same year, the Hong Kong government also refused to provide a list of books that have been removed from the public libraries.[111]
In February 2021 some religious communities in the United States have started holding book burning ceremonies to garner attention and publicly denounce heretical beliefs. In Tennessee pastorGreg Locke has held sermons over the incineration of books like Harry Potter and Twilight.[112] This trend of calling for the burning of books one's ideology conflicts with has continued into the political sphere. Two members of a Virginia school board Rabih Abuismail, and Kirk Twigg, have condoned the burning of recently banned books to keep their ideas out of the minds of the public.[113][114] In September 2023, Missouri State Senator and gubernatorial candidateBill Eigel showed off a flamethrower at a campaign event and vowed to burn "woke pornographic books [...] on the front lawn of the governor's mansion" if elected.[115]
During theRussian invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of Ukrainian books, especially on the history of Ukraine and the history of the Russian-Ukrainian war, are known. In Mariupol, Russians burned all the books from the library of the church of Petro Mohyla.[116] In the temporarily occupied Mariupol, Russian invaders threw away books from the library collections of the Pryazovskyi State Technical University.[117] Russian “military police” seized and destroyed books on Ukrainian history and culture in the occupied territories in the Northeast of Ukraine. There are also cases of destruction and damage to the Ukrainian archives with documents about Soviet repression and attempts to introduce Russian re-educational programs in Melitopol.[118]
In theSikh religion, any copies of their sacred book,Guru Granth Sahib, which are too badly damaged to be used, and any printer's waste which bears any of its text, are cremated. This ritual is called anAgan Bhet, and it is similar to the ritual which is performed when a deceased Sikh is cremated.[119][120][121][122]
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