Farage Says ‘The Book Burning Has Started’ After Library Vows to ‘Decolonise’ Collection

May 1933: German soldiers and civilians give the Nazi salute as thousands of books smoulde
Keystone/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

Nigel Farage has warned that the “book-burning has started” following an announcement from a university library that they intend to “decolonize and diversify” their collection of books to appease the Black Lives Matter movement.

On Friday, the Royal Holloway University of London Library said that, in an effort combat “structural racism” in British society, it will be removing certain titles from their collection, apologising for not taking such actions earlier.

“We’ve taken time to reflect on our role in this and recognize that we must do more to combat systemic racism and support our BME [Black and Minority Ethnic] community. With this in mind, we’ve created a reading list of resources to help you understand the struggle against racism,” the Royal Holloway said.

“But we know there is much more we can do. Going forward we will be sharing details on the steps we are taking to decolonize and diversify our collections, make our services more inclusive and tackle racism and discrimination. Now is the time for real and lasting change,” the library added.

In response to the Library’s censorious actions, Nigel Farage said: “The book burning has started. This fanaticism is very dangerous.”

The move by the Royal Holloway Library comes amidst similar calls to purge statues, books, movies, and television programmes that are deemed offensive to modern left-wing sensibilities.

In America, the publicly-funded media organisation National Public Radio (NPR) called on the United States citizenry to start “decolonizing your bookshelf“.

The broadcaster said that “white voices have dominated what has been considered canon for eons,” adding that so-called decolonisation of bookshelves is “about actively resisting and casting aside the colonialist ideas of narrative, storytelling, and literature that have pervaded the American psyche for so long.”

Despite the stated intention of leftist radicals to fight “racism” and “fascism”, the act of book-burning is most commonly associated with Germany under Hitler’s National Socialists.

In 2011, the German newspaper Deutsche Welles noted that the book-burning craze in the Third Reich was again led by student activists, but added that “The students didn’t have to fear resistance: Library employees and many professors went along with the emptying of their collections, even if they didn’t all agree with it.”

Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.