FACT CHECK: Tennessee School District McMinn Did NOT Ban Holocaust Book “Maus”

As usual, the left likes to take the truth and spin it into fake news.

You might have seen the outrage from the left that a Tennessee school district has banned a book about the Holocaust.

McMinn Schools has been accused of banning Maus, a graphic novel about how the author’s parents survived the Holocaust.

It is a highly respected and Pulitzer Prize winning book.

So… why did the school district ban it?

They didn’t.

Rather, they removed it from the 8th grade curriculum.

The book is still available in the library.

It is also not because it’s about the Holocaust.

It’s because they didn’t want the 8th graders reading content with curse words in it.

Do you see the difference?

The left is claiming the school district BANNED the book.

But the reality is that the book is still in the school libraries and students are free to read the book — it’s just no longer part of the required curriculum.

Take a look at how the media and the radical left is spinning the truth:

https://twitter.com/Lollardfish/status/1486822768926765056

More people will read MAUS which is a brilliant graphic novel. The best way to make sure kids really want to read and see art is for terrified adults to ban it.

— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) January 27, 2022

As I've offered before with other banned comics, I'll donate up to 100 copies of The Complete Maus to any family in the Mcminn County area in Tennessee. Just DM me your address! pic.twitter.com/ptmdjmwYE5

— Ryan Higgins – @ryanhiggins.bsky.social (@RyanHigginsRyan) January 26, 2022

1/ Maus has played a vital role in educating about the Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal experiences of victims and survivors. On the eve of International #HolocaustRemembranceDay, it is more important than ever for students to learn this history.

— US Holocaust Museum (@HolocaustMuseum) January 27, 2022

Haha hey remember when the conservatives got mad that a Dr. Seuss book was just quietly allowed to go out of print. Anyway they're banning Maus

— Freyja Belmont (@FreyjaErlings) January 27, 2022

As of this writing, it appears only one outlet is brave enough to cover the truth.

According to Red State:

McMinn County, Tennessee, made the news late last night and it will, I suspect, make news today. If one is a devotee of the left, McMinn’s school board is composed of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals and anti-Semite book-burners. Reality is different.

McMinn County has a total population that wouldn’t fill a baseball stadium but it became a lighting-rod on Wednesday, when its school board voted to remove one book from the 8th grade language arts curriculum.

The book, titled, “Maus,” is a serialized graphic novel. “Graphic novel” is another way of not calling a 296-page comic book a comic book. Its subject is the Holocaust, and it’s illustrated with animal metaphors. Jews are mice (thus the title), Germans are cats, and the French are frogs. The author of “Maus” is Art Spiegelman. “Maus” is told as an interview with Spiegelman’s father (a Polish Jew) who survived the Holocaust. Published in the 1980s, the novel uses heavy-line cartoon imagery to tell a story of the Holocaust. In 1992, it won a Pulitzer Prize by special award.

When the school board in McMinn County removed “Maus” from the 8th grade reading list, that decision should have remained as a local choice of a small rural county school board changing its middle school curriculum. Frankly I am surprised that “Maus” was part of reading material for any 8th grade language arts course. It seems more appropriate for high school or college.

Someone must have alerted the crazies on the left because a local non-story was turned into a national story literally overnight. CNBC called it a book “banning.” The headline blared:

“Tennessee school board bans Holocaust graphic novel ‘Maus’ – author Art Spiegelman condemns the move as ‘Orwellian’ “

Spiegelman is quoted as saying:

“I’m kind of baffled by this,” Art Spiegelman, the author of “Maus,” told CNBC in an interview about the unanimous vote by the McMinn board to bar the book, which is about his parents, from continuing to be used in the curriculum. “It’s leaving me with my jaw open, like, ‘What?’”

Except, that isn’t what happened. The book isn’t banned. Maus was removed from a reading list because the board fielded complaints about curse words and a depiction of nudity that the board deemed inappropriate for 8th graders. “Maus” wasn’t even banned from the school library. Copies weren’t torched, and it wasn’t banned because it’s about the Holocaust.

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Also the school board’s vote was taken on January 10th. Over two weeks ago. The vote didn’t come to light until the night of January 26th. January 27th is Holocaust Remembrance Day. The timing was intentional. It was orchestrated that way. Someone wanted to time this to embarrass McMinn County and to frame this as something like: “Local Tennessee knuckle-draggers ban Jewish book on Holocaust Remembrance Day.”. It’s pathetic, obvious, and a lie.

By example, the place where all sense of reality goes to die (Twitter) was ablaze with the “ban” lie.

So folks, if you see your leftist friends spreading this lie, share this article with them.

If the truth matters to them, then they will appreciate it.

Nuance and clarity matters.

But the left is trying to silence it.