The image is at once terrifying and appealing. A pile of books, the text on their covers and spines mere suggestions, smolders. Blue smoke and yellow flames rise up, barely obscuring the outline of a white swastika that hovers in the air, unsupported by any structure. At the top of the smoke cloud, the text “It Can’t Happen Here.” At the bottom of the pile, “WE READ BOOKS instead of BURNING THEM.”
The image is a silkscreen poster from 1936, an advertisement for a stage adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s novel “It Can’t Happen Here.” The novel, published in 1935, follows an American politician who rises to power on a populist platform and swiftly becomes an authoritarian dictator. The similarities to Trump’s second campaign and administration are simply too many, and too depressing, to enumerate here. In Lewis’s day, the novel and play were a warning — their title an arch and ironic statement on American exceptionalism. In our day, Lewis takes on the role of Cassandra, the priestess of Greek mythology whose prophecies, while true, were never believed. Of course it can happen here. It is happening.
I think of this image often, for a few reasons. First of all, both the poster and the play it advertised were created under the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the large-scale federal effort that brought the United States out of the Great Depression by investing in public works and hiring the unemployed masses to carry them out. In a move almost unimaginable by today’s standards, the WPA invested not only in public goods like infrastructure and parks, but also in the arts. Theatre companies received funding to mount productions of exciting new works, like “It Can’t Happen Here,” and graphic artists were hired to create striking posters to advertise them. And so we end up with this image; the bold typeface and evocative design place it unmistakably in the 1930s, but the message unbelievably speaks to our present day.
Burning books is a potent symbol of authoritarianism, mob mentality, and censorship. We think of the Nazis destroying books by Jewish authors, some of whom were among the most influential thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries: Freud, Marx, Einstein. We think of “Fahrenheit 451.” The symbolism encapsulated by burning books is a powerful one, but the true horror, we must remind ourselves, is not the act itself but what it signifies: the destruction of knowledge, the erasure of culture and history, the silencing of voices.
In March of this year, Trump signed an executive order calling for the Institute of Museum and Library Services to be dismantled. The staff of the organization, which awards grant funding to museums and libraries nationwide, was put on leave. In May, Carla Hayden, a librarian with over 50 years of experience, was summarily fired from her role as Librarian of Congress. She had been the first woman and the first Black person to hold that position.
In August, the administration sent a letter to the Smithsonian Institution calling for a “comprehensive internal review” of eight of our national museums, including the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the National Museum of the American Indian. The letter calls for the museums to “begin implementing content corrections where necessary, replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions across placards, wall didactics, digital displays, and other public-facing materials.” The National Park Service, too, is facing pressure to change signage and narrative in its locations, removing references to, for example, climate change and sites of former Japanese internment camps. So bonfires aren’t the only way to destroy knowledge.
Of course, the Nazis did not succeed in destroying the works of Freud. Nor Marx, nor Einstein. Nor did those texts simply survive — they were saved. People — and their work — can be protected, safeguarded through acts of bravery and a conviction that the future can, or rather must, be better than the present. And anyway, as another writer living under censorship and government oppression put it, “manuscripts don’t burn.”
I am a librarian by vocation. That means I am dedicated to preserving cultural heritage and to providing access to art and information. The Trump administration’s attacks on our libraries, museums, parks, and educational system at large are, in a word, incendiary. One powerful act of resistance, then, is a simple one: go to the library. Read works of history; find out, for example, where those infamous Nazi book burnings began, and who started them. Read fiction; a good novel imparts greater truth and sanity than does any executive order. For goodness’s sake, think for yourself; do not outsource your most precious asset — your intelligence — to something that announces itself as artificial. The rise of misleading, hallucinatory, yet seductively convenient technology under a fascist regime is surely no coincidence. Fight fire with fire.
Libraries are not a naturally occurring phenomenon — they are the product of tremendous and intentional effort. Libraries need to be built, cultivated, maintained, staffed, and, most of all, used. Every time you visit a library, you assert its value for the wellbeing of the community. Every time you check out a book, you cast a vote for that book to be saved. After all, a library is a potent symbol too — of democracy, community, curiosity. All these books, these treasures, for everyone, for free. It’s all here for you to use, and it’s up to all of us to protect.
