London "It is easy to see why. When the far right starts attacking books, alarm bells ring for anyone who wants to live in a democratic society. In May 1933 the German student union, a Nazi organisation, initiated the mass public burning of books in an attempt to “purify” society and rid it of “un-German” influences. Tens of thousands of volumes were hauled from libraries and archives and burned in public squares. Among the first to be burned were books by socialists and communists such as Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Friedrich Engels and Bertolt Brecht, and novelists including John Dos Passos , Jack London, Maxim Gorky, Franz Kafka and Upton Sinclair. Books by all of these authors can be found on the shelves of Bookmarks today." When the far-right targets books
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51