book burnings
Destroying texts publicly
Book burnings are the deliberate destruction of books by fire, typically as an act of censorship, political repression, or ideological purging.
The practice carries strong associations with authoritarianism—most notoriously the Nazi bonfires of 1933 that targeted works by Jewish, leftist, and other "degenerate" authors.
Book burnings may be state-sponsored or carried out by mobs, religious groups, or individuals.
The phrase often appears figuratively to condemn any suppression of ideas: Banning these titles from school libraries is just book burning by another name.
- banningOfficially prohibiting something
- book bansProhibiting specific texts
- censorshipOfficial content restriction
- freedom of expressionRight to communicate ideas
- oppressionUnjust exercise of power
totalitarianism · Nazi Germany · protest · Holocaust · destruction · authoritarian · anti-intellectualism · manuscripts · intolerance · persecution · propaganda · indoctrination · memory hole · cultural heritage · cultural · heresy · libraries · forbidden knowledge
- HolocaustHolocaust, Auschwitz, concentration camps, Holocaust survivors, gas chambers
- Nazi GermanyAdolf Hitler, Hitler, Nazi, Nazis, Nazi Party
- antisemitismHolocaust, pogroms, blood libel, Kristallnacht, Nuremberg Laws
book burningspreservation
Maintaining something's condition
archiving · library building · conservation · cataloguing · digitization
book burningsfreedom of the press
Constitutional journalism protection
intellectual freedom · free speech · publishing · open access · dissemination
book burningsliterary festivals
Events honoring authors and writing
burning, books, burnt, burned, bookish, booklet, burns, burnable, unburned