Book bans are accelerating across the country amid right-wing pressure campaign

America’s right-wing forces would have you believe that they are for free speech, but many of those same forces are behind a wave of book bans sweeping the US.

Editor’s Note: A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here. America’s right-wing forces would have you believe that they are the courageous entities standing up for free speech. But, as they try to claim that mantle, many of those same forces in media and politics are behind a disturbing wave of book bans sweeping the nation. PEN America, a non-profit organization committed to protecting free expression, published an alarming report Tuesday indicating that the “book ban crisis” is only getting worse. The bans are “speeding up,” the organization warned in its report, a troublesome trend that is impacting public school systems from coast-to-coast. “There were over 4,000 instances of book bans in the first half of this school year—more than all of last school year as a whole. This is a marked increase in comparison to the last spring semester, in which PEN America recorded 1,841 book bans,” the group said in the report, aptly titled “Banned in the USA.” The bans started in haste in early 2021, birthed in the backlash to Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 Project at The New York Times. At the time, the concern among conservatives was that schools were using books to supposedly indoctrinate young students with critical race theory, an academic concept that became a culture war flashpoint and sparked hysteria in right-wing circles. Over time, the bans have grown to encompass other topics, notably gender ideology.