Though book bans have been a familiar tactic in culture wars, today we’re witnessing an attack on libraries themselves as social institutions. There’s a reason for this escalation: For those trying to move the United States toward a less democratic, more authoritarian model of governance, there is power to be gained by sowing information chaos. Libraries, on the other hand, are free, publicly funded places that exist to clear away the fog of uncertainty by providing patrons with access to primary sources, a diversity of recorded experiences and a calm place to consider them.
In my new book, “Stories Are Weapons,” I investigate the origins of culture war. This form of conflict has its roots in military psyops, or weaponized messages that aim to intimidate, confuse and demoralize an adversary. During the Cold War, however, military tactics spilled over into our cultural debates. Sen. Joseph McCarthy held hearings in which he accused Americans of slipping communist messages into everything from popular movies to high school textbooks. English professor and conservative pundit E. Merrill Root took the fight to schools, pushing for book bans as a member of the group Operation Textbook and describing how educators could stop “collectivism” by purging libraries of subversive materials.
If psychological warfare planted the seeds for the culture war, the key to ending it might lie in that history, too. In 1948, when an Army psychological operations expert produced a guide to psychological war, it included instructions on how to achieve postwar psychological disarmament. “The free circulation of books” was key.
In the culture war, libraries with free access to a full range of books can light the way toward psychological peace. They provide us with a mental model for a public sphere in which Americans debate each other as equals to reach a resolution or compromise.
In a library, people with questions can ask a librarian for help finding answers. Instead of telling a curious patron what to think, the librarian will point out titles that might help them learn enough to figure it out for themselves. Library materials are organized systematically, so it’s easy to locate what the person seeks; there’s no need to fight through a curtain of chaotic advertisements or AI-generated misinformation. Once our patron has found their materials, they can absorb them quietly, with no distractions. There are no signs popping up every few minutes to redirect their attention, encouraging them to look at things they never asked for. The patron’s journey through the library is guided by their own quest for knowledge.
How can we defend libraries without ourselves becoming combatants in the culture war? According to the organization Authors Against Book Bans, one of the most effective strategies is for authors to show up at local meetings of school and library boards. When people can actually talk to authors, the experience is reassuring; they realize that writers are just ordinary human beings with stories to tell.
Another strategy is to encourage concerned citizens to actually read the books that are being challenged. That sounds pretty basic, but Moms for Liberty and other groups often ask followers to contest books based on a few inflammatory excerpts.
When times get truly tough, however, it might be time for librarians to go rogue. The Internet Archive, an independent digital lending library, makes banned books available for online checkout — it even has a special collections page with the latest challenged titles, for easy access. Nonprofits and bookstores are also sending free books to people in states where they are banned. Nobody is forcing these books on anyone. Pro-library activists are simply circulating the titles so that people can read them and decide for themselves what to think.
In his book “Palaces for the People,” sociologist Eric Klinenberg calls libraries “social infrastructure.” He’s referring to the way these places offer physical shelter and calm, as well as an intangible sense of social stability and community. They are material and psychological spaces that hold us together when we feel lost or curious, lonely or adventurous. Yes, the library might contain propaganda. But it contains the voices of many people, from many historical eras and far-flung places, and those voices wait quietly on the shelves to be heard. That’s because the library is a place of information without coercion.
We need to preserve our libraries and the books they hold, partly to figure out who we are and where we came from. But perhaps more pressingly, we need to preserve them as both a refuge from the culture wars and a template to rebuild a cultural life together when this war is over. Without them, we may have no way to teach our children to share ideas, instead of battling each other forever.
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