In Sweden, children’s books featuring the beloved fictional character Pippi Longstocking are facing the same fate that befell Tintin some years ago in France. Those that have not yet been bowdlerized to bring them up to 21st-century PC standards are in the process of being removed from the shelf and recycled.
As this process becomes more and more advanced, all the published works available to children — those few who actually read books — will be filled with nothing but the cant of the Cultural Marxists who now dominate Western society.
No more Huckleberry Finn. No more “Amos ’n’ Andy” from Netflix. No more statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The Triumph of the Multicultural Will is nearing its utopian realization.
Many thanks to Tania Groth for translating this article from Fria Tider:
Sweden — Botkyrka municipality acknowledges: We have thrown out Astrid Lindgren’s “racist” books
Published July 11, 2017 at 14.42
The journalist Janne Josefsson accuses Botkyrka municipality’s library of burning Astrid Lindgren’s earlier books for leftist ideological reasons. Now the municipality acknowledges that the books are being recycled because they contain “racism”, as written in a press release.
In “Summer in P1”, the journalist Janne Josefsson claimed that the municipality of Botkyrka is burning older editions of Pippi in the South Seas.
“When you burn books for ideological reasons, there’s something in me that says, ‘Wait a bit, do we really want these to disappear. Shouldn’t a few remain so that I can tell my child that what the views were at the time?’” says Josefsson to Expressen.
Now the municipality’s library admits that they have thrown the books away for recycling. This is because the books contain “racist” expressions.
“The libraries in the municipality of Botkyrka have culled editions of Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi in the South Seas where there are obsolete expressions that can be perceived as racist, but Botkyrka Library have also bought the publisher’s new edition of the book from 2015 where the obsolete expressions have been replaced by more contemporary expressions,” the municipality writes in its press release.
“The culled specimens of Pippi in the South Seas have been discarded and handled according to the same routines as all other obsolete books,” they continue, and point out that discarded books are handled according to “regular recycling and waste management procedures”.
But Janne Josefsson does not buy that excuse. He tells Expressen that the difference is that Botkyrka discards the books for ideological reasons and because of an “intercultural policy”. According to Josefsson, the municipality is only trying to camouflage its behavior. He believes that the books should have remained and that the library could have discussed the books if they find the content so terrible.
There are three books which deserve burning, but ought to be discussed and exposed at every high school – the Koran, the Communist Manifesto and ‘Mein Kampf’!
Hear hear!
I’ve got communist manifesto and mein kampf in my library. Plan on getting Koran.
I’d rather have these a mandatory reading than to destroy them, to forget our past is a mistake…
“Kampf” is just German for Jihad.
When I was a child I enjoyed the book, and already understood that some of the concepts were kind of ‘racist’. As were some of the ideas in Famous Five books and even Narnia. And the beautiful opera ‘Magic Flute’, that is sometimes altered these days even for an adult audience to take out the racist elements. What next, why not ban most operas because they are also sexist, reflecting the times they were written in? Most books, in fact. Definitely all James Bond films. OMG, in fact: ban everything!!
Readers, audiences and even children are more intelligent and discerning than these people give them credit for. All that is needed is an understanding of the times things were written in, and that should give us an appreciation of how far we have come with equal rights.
Burning Pippi Longstocking? It won’t stop there of course. Historically, when books are burnt someone is trying to re-write history. Wonder who?
It doesn’t seem to occur to the Swedes to look very closely at the person/people who made this decision.
I think we may safely assume the koran will escape the conflagration–nothing ‘waycist’ there….
Twenty years ago when I wanted to complete my set of Tintin books I had to order “Tintin in Africa” from a used bookseller in Canada. It’s permanently out of print and evidently can’t even be sold in the US.
For years public libraries have been holding “banned books” festivals, in order to show the antediluvian attitudes of conservative Christians. How many of those festivals acknowledged all the books that are banned for being “racist”? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I can tell you that “Tintin in Africa” is pretty tame.
Goodbye Sweden. I will not miss you.
Me either. Reminder me of positive things Sweden has done for anyone lately?
For a small country with a small population, Swedes have accomplished much, you should know this.
Which, on the other hand, makes what is happening there now all the more incomprehensible.
Fahrenheit 451 anybody. Ray Bradbury was rather prescient. He was well-loved and will be missed. His books along with C. S. Lewis’ are probably next on the list. You vill support the narrative und you vill like it! Ja wol!
It just like 1984. Old books are being rewritten in politically correct newspeak, so that children would never know what was actually written in them.
I think such creative rewriting is worse than an outright ban. It does not make a book unavailable, instead it perverts the book, giving a false idea of the writer’s message.
Mark my words, soon, the politically correct re-writers will lay their hands on the Bible and will replace the Holy Scriptures with an obscene travesty of them. I am sure, the Chief Bishopess of the Swedish Lutheran “Church” will give an enthusiastic blessing to such a project. And that will be a sure sign of the end. If not of the world as a whole, at least of the Western world.
BBC historical programmes always include a conspicuous ‘minority’ no matter how absurd the placement.
Greg Dyke, BBC Director-General in 2000-4, described the organisation as “hideously white”. Even then, ethnic minorities were actually over-represented proportionate to their numbers in the general population
This report is frustratingly uninformative:
==QUOTE==
“The libraries in the municipality of Botkyrka have culled editions of Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi in the South Seas where there are obsolete expressions that can be perceived as racist, but Botkyrka Library have also bought the publisher’s new edition of the book from 2015 where the obsolete expressions have been replaced by more contemporary expressions,” the municipality writes in its press release.
==UNQUOTE==
Okay then. What were these “obsolete expression”, and what were they replaced with? Did no reporter ask?
Most prominently, the word “negro”. Pippi’s dad was made king by “some negro tribe in the south sea”. In the original, this was nothing but a childish description and it expressed that it made her proud of her dad. While not directly talking of it, it only eluded sympathy for those negroes along the way. Never were they talked badly of. There were one or two more terms deemed questionable today, but I don’t remember the details. Google “astrid lindgren pippi negro” and the story should pop up.
I understand the same thing happened to Huckleberry Finn not long ago? I have a new mission. I will collect specifically those books that got “pruned” of “impure words” for ideological reasons. Will make a nice corner of antiquities.
Especially — especially! — knowing that there is a book speaking of people worse than monkeys and pigs and who ought to be killed, which will never be pruned… and that’s decided by the very same authorities, mind you.
Excellent comment!
Correction: obsolete expression –> obsolete expressions
Thanks, K. from Germany. Your suggested search string did not lead to an immediate answer, but adding “politically correct” to the search string produced
https://www.amren.com/news/2011/11/pig-tailed_pipp/
(which refers to, but does not link to, “Graham Smith, Daily Mail (London), November 10, 2011”).
Every morning I switch on the computer, and every morning I am greeted with more insanity. This is thoroughly depressing.
Depressing also, that a week ago I got a phone call from some individual named “Ludo Peeters” who called me a racist, announced that he had found my company and me, and that surely I would like to keep having customers?
Europe, at least Western Europe, is lost. Thank God our children are half-Polish. I’m eyeing bying some real estate in Poland, so that there will be a ‘pied de terre’ for them when things collapse here, which they will.
This is why I only use this nom de plume here – to limit the risk of ‘doxxing’ – having someone establish your real-world identity based on your Internet commenting activity.
Well, uh, Outlaw Mike ain’t my real name either.
Either way, it’s always more of the same. Leftists are NOT interested in a debate. They DON’T want to ponder your arguments let alone listen to them. The ONLY thing a leftist is interested in if you don’t happen to share his or her enlightened opinions … is shutting you up.
Arguments, good arguments, slide off leftists like eels down a ski ramp.
I understand that, but if you are using the ‘Outlaw Mike’ moniker to comment on other sites then people it makes it easier for people to begin gathering information about you.
The same goes for the blog you have linked to, if you are one of the curators. Every little bit of information you leave out there matters. Heck, I’ve probably given away a little too much about my background at this site.
Whatever you do, don’t use Disqus, it links your commenting across all the sites it is attached to. Makes for interesting profiling options and unless you’re absolutely religious in anonymizing your connection, you’re found out. Unfortunately it is quite ubiquitous and not all on our side are on top of alternatives. I tried telling dear Pamela that, but didn’t get noticed yet.
As I understand it, a lot of sites use Facebook for comments, too.
One of the favourite expressions of the liberal left was”those who begin by burning books end by burning people” . We will see how things progress in the new multi cultural wonder land.
So much for freedom of expression.
Modern Western states keep lecturing the rest of the world on freedoms and rights, but are gradually getting read of them at home.
Replacing a diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals is exactly backwards.
I lived among the ‘diverse’ Mohammeds for 4 years and I can tell you they are like an army of inbred clones that barely deviate from the hivemind.
Can’t have been much fun, I suppose?
Yes and no.
I understood that I would never be one of the natives and would never be fully accepted by them. That’s fine, but the stressful part is realizing that they follow an ideology that guarantees them a spot in paradise for murdering an infidel.
I did make many friends among the expat crowd, and even a few among the local foreign diplomats, and many nice evenings were had.
I also had some lovely girlfriends who belonged to the more modern, upper-middle class portion of the population, and I had quite a bit of fun with them.
Cannot wait for the next edition of the series.
Pippi stoned to death for wearing “Lippi.”
Sadly, CS Lewis excluded the older children from his heaven when they became mature, and interested in such things as lipstick, which rather spoils “The Last Battle”.
First they burn books then they burn people. If we have learned anything from the last century it is this.