Is it really a surprise to anyone that the same people who are trying to censor LGBT and Black history through the banning of books are the same ones PROMOTING white supremacy and Nazism? Because there seems to be a theme going here!
As Perezcious readers will recall, Amanda Gorman‘s acclaimed poem The Hill We Climb, which was written for and performed at President Joe Biden‘s inauguration, was partially banned in a Florida public school due to its “hate messages”. If you’ve ever read or heard the poem yourself, you know that’s a bunch of BS. So what happened?
Well, under Governor Ron DeSantis‘, who just officially announced his run for president btw, FL schools have gotten really ban-happy. Under their new rules, just one parent complaining can put a piece of literature under review, and everything has to pass the review board to stay within reach of children. And it was just ONE mom who demanded the poem be removed from the school’s library for its hateful nature and the fact it’s “not educational.”
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If it wasn’t obvious enough why someone might object to a poem by a young Black woman, the mother even accredited the poem to Oprah Winfrey and not Amanda. Plus this same mom ended up getting ANOTHER title banned, a book about famous Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. She didn’t claim Love To Langston was “not educational” this time — no, her entire reasoning was that it was too educational. She wrote simply “CRT” — or Critical Race Theory. Yes, because even talking about Black history or the accomplishments of a Black person is the dreaded “CRT.” Gross. Author Tony Medina tweeted about the issue on Tuesday, including a copy of the parent’s signed ban request sheet (below):
This is what white supremacist erasure of Black culture looks like in Fascist Florida. My book LOVE TO LANGSTON banned on the grounds of “Critical Race Theory” and “Indoctrination” by dumbest elements of our society. We have to be diligent in fighting for our children’s minds! pic.twitter.com/Lzza4Q8RB3
— Tony Medina (@PoetTonyMedina) May 24, 2023
And yep, they banned this book just with this one complaint! The same mom also managed to get some books about Cuba banned.
Yeah, it’s a pretty transparent attack on minority speech, right? Well, it turns out that shouldn’t be a surprise considering the source. After the mom’s name was made public, the tiniest bit of digging uncovered this mom also has some ties to some other disturbing stuff…
The awful details about this mom, who was identified by the Miami Herald as Daily Salinas, has ties to The Proud Boys. In a series of photos posted by Miami Against Fascism on Twitter, Salinas can be seen at several rallies for the fascist group. She can even be seen standing next to Enrique Tarrio, the group’s neo-fascist leader who was found guilty of seditious conspiracy last month:
Yesterday the @MiamiHerald published an article on Miami Lakes parent Daily Salinas who challenged several books such as The ABCs of Black History.
But what they didn’t report & we will reveal is Salinas’ ties to far-right groups like M4L & open support of the Proud Boys. ???? 1/ pic.twitter.com/2F2e2Eo5CR
— Miami Against Fascism ????☕️ (@MIAagainstFash) May 23, 2023
And if that’s not enough to convince you of how MESSED UP this all is, on Salinas’ own Facebook account where she praised The Proud Boys, using the phrase “the best” in Spanish in reply to them, she also posted… drumroll… Nazi propaganda. We are not exaggerating.
In a post made just a few months before she began getting books banned, she shared her support for The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. In case you’ve never heard about it, it’s an infamous piece of antisemitic propaganda that inspired Adolf Hitler. He even referred to in his infamous manifesto Mien Kampf. It was used during the rise of the Nazi party as propaganda to build hatred of the Jews. In The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1933-1945, author Nora Levin explains:
“Hitler used the Protocols as a manual in his war to exterminate the Jews.”
Yes, this is the book Salinas was promoting on her Facebook page! The post even included a list describing a conspiracy theory where “Jewish Zionists” would take over the world. Some of the stages of the list even said horrific things like:
“Place our agents and helpers everywhere.”
“Replace royal rule with socialist rule, then communism, then despotism.”
“Sacrifice people (including Jews sometimes) when necessary.”
Yeah. We told you we weren’t exaggerating. This is straight up Nazi propaganda being shared in the USA in 2023. When the JTA revealed what Salinas had posted, she confirmed it — replying to the outlet with excuses and a half-assed apology! She said:
“I want to apologize to the Jewish community. I’m not what the post says. I love the Jewish community.”
She went on to say she didn’t read past the word “communism” in the post — and therefore didn’t know what it was she was promoting. She said her chest became “tight” with pain when she realized people were seeing her as antisemitic — you know, for making a blatantly antisemitic post:
“I see the word ‘communism,’ and I think it’s something about communism. I didn’t read the words … We [Christians] are super protective of the Jewish people.”
Salinas was also sure to add on that she has Jewish friends and she loves the Israeli Netflix series Fauda. As for the books on Cuba she got banned, she said they “don’t tell the whole story about Cuba, communism, the dictators, their people that are dying and trying to come to America.” And although her Facebook page is filled with right-wing BS that none of us are shocked to see — she claimed she doesn’t post everything that you see there. Riiight…
Videos of the mother at a meeting for the Moms for Liberty group, who are huge supporters of DeSantis, have also been circulating. But she claims she’s not a member of this group or The Proud Boys. A rep for Moms for Liberty even released a statement distancing themselves from her after the reveal, saying she’s not a member and they “denounce antisemitism in all its forms.”
And just when you thought this couldn’t get any more ridiculous — when asked again why she wanted to ban all these books, Salinas said it was just her “opinion” and they didn’t “support the curriculum” — but refused to elaborate. She also blatantly admitted she hasn’t read them, meaning she was lying on the forms she filled out:
“They have to read for me because I’m not an expert. I’m not a reader. I’m not a book person. I’m a mom involved in my children’s education.”
Shocker…
A rep for the school district maintains once again that Gorman’s poem wasn’t banned entirely, but instead moved to the middle school rather than the elementary school. But this is just a tiptoe before the big step. It’s a partial ban. As Gorman herself hit back:
“A school book ban is any action taken against a book that leaves access to a book restricted or diminished. This decision of moving my book from its original place, taken after one parent complained, diminishes the access elementary schoolers would have previously had to my poem.”
With people like DeSantis in charge, allowing people like Salinas to make huge decisions with such little effort or expertise, it’s only going to get worse from here on out in the Sunshine State!
[Image via PBS/YouTube.]
