Analysis: Woke PA sets sights on sex, sexuality and ... Mein Kampf?

Many area parents who've been demanding certain books be removed from school libraries are getting their ammunition from the ironically named Woke PA, which operates a website devoted to reclaiming schools "from activists promoting harmful agendas."

The site — wokepa.com — maintains a list of objectionable titles, identifies the local school districts that keep them in stock, and provides sometimes-lengthy excerpts from the books to help parents cite specific passages at board meetings without having to read the books.

More:Is Woke PA behind the controversial Central Bucks library policy?

Though the hit list skews heavily toward sexual content, sexual violence and LGBTQ topics, it also includes one odd outlier — Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler's 1925 anti-Semitic manifesto of hate that lays out his political ideology, white supremacist worldview and plans for a racially pure Germany.

Why Mein Kampf?

An email — sent to press@wokepa.com — seeking an explanation for why Woke PA included Mein Kampf on the list went unanswered.

"We haven't had any complaints about Mein Kampf, certainly not in our region," said Robin Burstein, regional deputy director of the Anti-Defamation League. "And to the best of our knowledge, we're unaware of any complaints (in other regions)."

Mein Kampf appears to have neither the support of those "activists promoting harmful agendas" nor a base of passionate opposition into which it can tap, like it has with, say, the graphic novel Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe.

That leaves a few plausible explanations for why Woke PA included it.

It's possible that someone at Woke PA simply has a strong objection to history's most vile figures. It's also possible that someone at Woke PA incorrectly gauged the public's appetite for a battle against Mein Kampf and thought it was a title that'd gain significant traction but hasn't.

Or it's possible that its inclusion on the list is merely for appearances, that it's a savvy piece of misdirection designed to give cover to a group that's pushing a puritanical crusade against sexual and race-related content in schools.

The new influencers:Unknowns before 2020, leaders in the reopen movement have the Bucks County GOP's attention

Dig deeper:Opponents of Neshaminy, Native American mascots playing the long game

Campaign money:Ehasz fundraising suggests 1st District is likely to stay red with Fitzpatrick

When Woke PA calls out a book, it either reproduces one or more inflammatory excerpts, provides a brief synopsis, or publishes a fragment of one of its reviews. With all that has been written about Mein Kampf by historians, critics and literary figures over nearly a century, Woke PA pulled from an obscure book blog — https://bookwritten.com/ — a statement that ends on this note:

"In the book, the most barbarian dictator in the history of mankind justified his actions with such molded words that would make you believe in each of them and compel you on thinking if his crimes were really justified."

The sentence reads more like it came from a high school book report than a piece of high-minded literary criticism. It seems meant to suggest that the book can plant and water the seeds of antisemitism and violence in impressionable readers. That fits, given that Woke PA is nothing if not clear about its opposition to the indoctrination of young people.

That said, Mein Kampf has also never landed on the American Library Association's annual top 10 list of banned and challenged books, dating at least as far back as 2001.

What is the ADL on Mein Kampf

That's not to say that Mein Kampf is being unfairly picked on.

"If it is in public school libraries, that would not be O.K. with the Anti-Defamation League," said Burstein.

Follett School Solutions LLC is the leading library management system for educational institutions serving students in Kindergarten through 12th grade. Its titles databases show that Mein Kampf is on the shelves at Bensalem, Central Bucks East, Central Bucks West, Council Rock South, New Hope-Solebury, Hatboro-Horsham and North Penn high schools.

Pennridge High School also has three copies of the book, though the database reports that they're kept behind the Circulation Desk where they'd need to be specifically requested by a prospective borrower.

North Penn High School, according to Follett's database, has an early translation by James Murphy that was originally published in 1939 before Germany invaded Poland, which historians generally consider to be the official start of World War II.

But the database shows that the other high schools mostly offer a 1999 version published by a division of Houghton Mifflin, a leading provider of textbooks and other educational materials. It includes an introduction by Holocaust survivor Abraham H. Foxman, who served as National Director of the Anti-Defamation League from 1987 to 2015.

"(R)emembering the Holocaust — its causes, its progression, its aftermath — allows us to understand the phenomenon of genocide better and attunes us to the dangers of racial and ethnic conflict," he writes, and later adds of Hitler, "We dismissed him as a madman and we ignored his wretched book; the result was a tragedy of unprecedented proportions."

That added context and perspective encourages a careful exploration of the manifesto's contents; one that the ADL's Burstein says students should only undertake alongside a trained educator.

"If a teacher brings it into a classroom during a session on the Holocaust and shares excerpts in a professional manner, that's fine," she said. "But it shouldn't be on a public school library's shelves for kids to take out. That's something the ADL would be very concerned about."

Woke PA: An advocate for peace?

It's tempting to suggest that Woke PA's desire to remove Mein Kampf is rooted in a benign — even laudable — desire to keep from awakening in readers the sort of genocidal hatred of those who are different that's resulted in mass shootings in our nation's schools, places of worship and other public locations.

In recent years, there have been several mass shooters who've listed Mein Kampf among their favorite books or had copies in their homes. And Woke PA does also object to books that "in great detail, describe School Shootings" out of a concern that "it gives potential school shooters notes on how to do these horrible acts."

But that rationale doesn't pass the smell test.

Woke PA, for instance, doesn't target Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, in which the main character creates a violent, anti-establishment sect called "Project Mayhem" to sow destruction. The book includes specific instructions for making napalm and nitroglycerin, and converting the latter into a plastic explosive, although the recipes are generally off by at least one ingredient. The book is reportedly on the shelves of the Central Bucks West High School library.

Meanwhile, author Bryan Bliss was shocked to find his book Thoughts & Prayers, on Woke PA's list.

"To call Thoughts & Prayers a 'school shooting book' is to tell on yourself," said Bliss in a March 8 open letter to the Central Bucks School Board.

Bliss has master's degrees in theology and fiction and has worked in Christian churches and organizations steadily since 2004, serving in a variety of roles, many of them centered around youth ministry and discipleship. He currently lives in Minnesota but posted the letter on his blog upon hearing Thoughts & Prayers was on Woke PA's list.

"What could an organization or school system possibly find offensive about a book focused on healing in the midst of tragedy?" Bliss writes.

Other titles that have drawn the ire of Woke PA include fictional works And We Stay, Cheltenham Township resident Jenny Hubbard's story of a 17-year-old girl coping with loss of her ex-boyfriend, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound; and This is Where It Ends: Everyone has a reason to fear the boy with the gun written by Marieke Nijkamp, a Dutch novelist who primarily writes for young adults and who happens to identify as "queer."

"It's the guns," Bliss writes. "This fundamentally is the problem with groups like 'Woke Pennsylvania'...they refuse to see the real culprit of fear and anxiety that our gun cultures creates in all students. They cry out about political education while pushing a right wing agenda."

Of organizations like Woke PA, whose leaders "choose not to state who we are out of fear of attacks on our children," Bliss says simply. "They are cowards."

Since Woke PA isn't talking about its strange struggle against Mein Kampf — or, for that matter, its targeting of a handful of books that deal with school shootings — the public can only take an educated guess as to what is really motivating the group's campaign against the titles it has selected.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Analysis: Woke PA sets sights on sex, sexuality and...Mein Kampf?