Dua Lipa opens library for banned and censored books in Portugal

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2026/06/29/dua-lipa-opens-library-for-banned-and-censored-books-in-portugal

by pax • 16 days ago

307 235 16 days ago

Wow, Margaret Atwood how dangerous and subversive.

Guthwine5• 16 days ago

Not sure if your sarcasm is directed at Dua Lipa for including Atwood, or at the states that actually removed it from their public schools (Texas, Florida, Missouri, among others), but it was actually banned in Portugal during the Salazar regime.

Either way, I agree with your comment that there is nothing dangerous about Atwood unless you are a fan of authoritarian religious governments.

suddenlybananas4• 16 days ago

That's strange that a book that was published in 1985 was banned by a regime which fell in 1974.

gadders• 16 days ago

Yeah, she's really underground. Not many people have heard of her.

caseysoftware6• 16 days ago

Are those just banned and censored in Portugal specifically or the EU as a whole?

A quick check here in the States showed all of them available on Amazon for under $25 each.

tokai2• 16 days ago

No non of them are censored in the EU. They are all censored in the US, maybe with the exception of Salman Rushdie.

US book banning is mainly schools and parent groups strong arming libraries and educators to forgo specific books.

illliillll• 16 days ago

Are you serious about this? There’s not a single school in the EU where an employee takes books off the shelves because they find them offensive?

Because that’s the standard you’re using for ”censored in the US”.

caseysoftware6• 16 days ago

"libraries and educators to forgo specific books" is neither "banning" nor "censoring"

In the name of literacy, we need to use words properly.

Aurornis6• 16 days ago

A quick check here in the States showed all of them available on Amazon for under $25 each.

The term “banned books” has become a pop culture meme. In this context it doesn’t literally mean banned, it means the book wasn’t allowed somewhere. In extreme cases a government in a controlling country may have forbidden the book.

However in a lot of cases the “banned books” were just not allowed in some school’s library for kids somewhere.

That’s why all of the books aren’t actually banned in the US and are readily available, unless maybe you’re a 3rd grader looking for them at some school library that probably wasn’t going to order the book for kids anyway before it became “banned”

john_strinlai7• 16 days ago

In this context it doesn’t literally mean banned, it means the book wasn’t allowed somewhere.

and what is a good word to use when something isn't allowed somewhere? perhaps... "banned"?

i dont understand why people think something needs be unavailable globally to be considered "banned".

there's a million examples of the word "banned" being used when X isn't allowed in Y context. people only get touchy about it when it comes to books for some reason.

dang bans people from HN, no one gets upset about the use of the word "ban" there, despite it being a context-specific ban.

guilhas2• 15 days ago

At a certain point it's called lying

Something actually inaccessible? imgur.com in UK, and soon many others

llm_nerd• 16 days ago

The "in Portugal" is, I presume, a statement on where the library is.

Further, when people talk about banned books, they usually mean at some sub-country level, even down to a school board. Like if you look at -

https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/

- these books weren't banned from the United States, but they're controversial enough that individual school boards or library systems removed them.

dudul4• 16 days ago

In some cases, the author has paid for their words with their life.”

Are there examples of these?

The few examples mentioned in the article are easy to buy, at least in the US. Is there a full manifest somewhere?

suddenlybananas4• 16 days ago

I guess Salman Rushdie nearly did.

https://www.service95.com/manifesto-library-launch looking here, it seems the best case would be Navalny, although he wasn't really killed for his book per se, but rather his political opposition.

josefritzishere2• 16 days ago

Hundreds in Gaza alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_journalists_in_the_...

josefritzishere2• 16 days ago

I am normally with the cynics but I have trouble believing that none of the commenters are unaware that some books are banned in schools, prisons and military bases, in America. This is not just a problem limited to foreign theocracies.

wonderwonder5• 16 days ago

They are banned in the US in the same way playboy magazine is, they are not allowed in certain places. Would you say that Playboy Magazine is a banned book becuase its not allowed in schools and prisons?

criddell3• 15 days ago

I would guess the person you are responding to is thinking about more mundane books that are or have been banned in public and private schools in recent history. Harry Potter, for example.

dudul4• 15 days ago

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I would get call for a quick chat with HR if I walked around the office with Mein Kampf under my arm as well.

Schools, prisons, etc are institutions that can decide what is appropriate for their audience and how they want to spend their shelf space. A real banned book is a book that gets you in legal trouble if you're caught with it.

everdrive3• 16 days ago

Lists of banned books are often quite disappointing, and I think they fall into a few categories:

- Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being bad take an aggressive, political bent. (eg: the handmaid's tale)

- Books that seem relatively anodyne, and it's not clear why they were banned. (eg: the perks of being a wallflower)

- Books that governments might have feared in the old days, but are now much less threatening than other more readily-available material. (eg: 1984)

I still think, even in these crazy, censorious times, that people who love banned books list are (intentionally or not) hearkening back to an older time when a centralized body could actually prevent access to information. Instead, modern book-banning feels much more symbolic. ie, "we do not approve of this book!" rather than effective. Anyone can buy the book on Amazon, or pirate it for free, or find countless video reviews which contain its ideas. And importantly, find many, many more extreme, subvesrive, rebellious, etc. ideas for free online.

Of course I do not support the banning of the books, but I think sometimes once a book is banned this act gives the book power -- in more senses than one. Less discussed is that the fans of the book often believe it to be better than it actually is, merely for being banned.

nottorp2• 16 days ago

Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being bad take an aggressive, political bent. (eg: the handmaid's tale)

Handmaid's Tale is actually a pretty decently written book for a dystopia. You just need to like dystopias.

the_af• 16 days ago

Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being bad take an aggressive, political bent. (eg: the handmaid's tale)

Weird example. The Handmaid's Tale is quite good.

Edit: wow, downvotes for stating a book is quite good. HN at its worst.

Edit 2: in fact it's so bizarre, also seeing other commenters here downvoted for saying Handmaid is a good book, that I struggled to see the reason for the ire. I'm not from the US, mind you, so it took me a while to add 2 and 2 and remember Atwood and Handmaid are in the current political climate of the US an anti-Trump stance. So that has to be the reason. Saying Handmaid is a good book implies you're anti-Trump and therefore invites downvotes (but also upvotes from the other camp, I'd guess). Wow.

john_strinlai7• 15 days ago

i find that whenever walking into an HN post about books (or, oddly enough, anything regarding dark matter or dark energy), you are in for an absolutely wild ride of voting.

jnovek2• 16 days ago

“The Handmaid’s Tale is a bad book” is a wild take to start with.

“I still think, even in these crazy, censorious times, that people who love banned books list are (intentionally or not) hearkening back to an older time when a centralized body could actually prevent access to information.”

You don’t think a school library can prevent access to information? Poor people exist.

everdrive3• 16 days ago

I figured my chosen examples would be the least popular part of the post. :)

I just don't think you can prevent access to information the same way, though. There will be at least one smart phone in the house. There will be friends and relatives with smartphones, with computers, etc.

A poor person who lacks the resources to query on youtube for videos or wikipedia for research will also not be able to sit through a full-length novel.

[edit]

In the 1960s it may yet have been true (despite radio and shortwave) that if your local libraries and shops did not contain a book -- if your friends had never heard of its ideas -- that you would truly remain ignorant of some of the subversive ideas out there. Things just do not work that way these days. Ideas spread faster and farther than ever. You really cannot prevent the spread of information the same way.

At best, you can create a culture of censorship around certain information, which is what I believe modern book-banning does. My quibble here is that people seem to treat book-banning as if it's 1890, and the ideas are being killed due to lack of spread. In the modern world, book banning is symbolic and helps to identify ideas as subversive and unwanted -- but they are NOT out of reach.

Again, I do not support book banning whatsoever.

runako• 15 days ago

... prevent access to information. ... or find countless video reviews which contain its ideas

Popping in to point out that novels are not "information" in the sense of being lists of facts or ideas. The medium is part of the message. That's why novels can be banned but a list of the facts/ideas are often not.

Reading an AI summary of a novel is not even roughly equivalent to reading the book. (Before AI, there were handwritten summaries like Cliff's Notes that served the same purpose of allowing a person to gain a superficial understanding of a book.)

For example: one could list the key facts of _Roots_ (banned in school libraries in the author's home state of Tennessee in 2026) and not convey the points of the book, which is embodied in the totality of the work. Incidentally, _Roots_ was banned for integral parts of the message of the book.

everdrive3• 15 days ago

I think that's a really fair point. A full novel will give you an emotional impact that a list of facts will not provide. A beautifully-told story can convince (at least some people) better than any argument.

I'd still hold that you can just get ahold of books these days if you want to, but your point stands that the mere spread of ideas is not equivalent to really reading the whole book.

guilhas2• 15 days ago

The banned book of the TV hit series The Handmaid's Tale. Watch it tonight on Prime Video!

seydor• 16 days ago

They are not banned in portugal. Appreciate the gesture but it s very inconsequential.

nottorp2• 16 days ago

Actually the article title is shit clickbait because it IMPLIES those books are banned in Portugal.

The museum is in Portugal. It is not specified where those books are banned.

smith7018• 16 days ago

I think it's just a poorly written title. I doubt millions of people will click on the link specifically to learn which books Portugal banned vs to learn about that Dua Lipa is doing. A better title would be "Dua Lipa opens library in Portugal for banned and censored books."

mcphage3• 16 days ago

article title is shit clickbait because it IMPLIES those books are banned in Portugal

People on this site have some really bizarre ideas about what constitutes "clickbait".

Rooster61• 16 days ago

I did not get that implication. I simply thought it was a library that contains books that have been banned from some context that happens to be in Portugal.

embedding-shape3• 16 days ago

At least one of those were literally banned back when Portugal was a dictatorship though, which wasn't all that long time ago.

I think though the library is supposed to be a general, worldwide collection of books that were censored/banned anywhere in the world, the physical location of the library just happens to be in Portugal. That's how I understood the article at least.

dijit2• 16 days ago

They are banned somewhere and the library is open in Portugal.

If they were banned in Portugal it would run afoul of the legal system, and probably be closed down, obviously.

But if the criteria of being in the library - that the book be banned somewhere in the world; that's a reason to visit the library in of itself.

Though I think there's going to be a lot of garbage, one need only remember that Life of Brian (the Monty Python movie) is banned in the Vatican. (along with a bunch more).

Sometimes just seeing what is banned and where is a sort of art in of itself.

ricardobayes• 16 days ago

Life of Brian is banned from public screening in parts of Germany on Good Friday. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-23227452

graemep3• 16 days ago

one need only remember that Life of Brian (the Monty Python movie) is banned in the Vatican.

I can find no confirmation of this, or of any ban since 1966 (and that is assuming that the index of forbidden books had legal force in the Vatican).

But if the criteria of being in the library - that the book be banned somewhere in the world; that's a reason to visit the library in of itself.

Is it worth a visit to a physical location? A lot of those books are ones I could see on a list and order online. Its not really that interesting if a book as been banned somewhere very authoritarian, nor am I that interested if schools in one area somewhere were not allowed to have a book in their libraries. On the other hand reading down this list is very illuminating, and often astonishing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_govern... I am still scrolling down it, but Austria, Australia and China are all fascinating.

thinkingtoilet• 15 days ago

Isn't it good marketing though? If I'm a young person looking to read something on the edge, maybe it's not banned where I am but if it was banned somewhere else, that's intriguing. If the consequence is more people reading, I would argue it's far from inconsequential.

Roark66• 16 days ago

There are no books banned in EU... Some countries have laws that criminalise glorification of nazism or communism, but I never heard any book was "banned" as a result.

Here in Poland we had "Mein Kampf" by certain Austrian painter in my primary school library for example.

Tade0• 16 days ago

Seeing it in the flesh is the reason why I don't believe too many people actually read the original (and not the abridged version).

It's a brick! And poorly written at that. The man had no talent for the arts.

graemep3• 16 days ago

No Eu wide bans, but quite a few in some EU countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_govern...

According to that list, in Germany unannotated editions of Mein Kampf are still banned.

criddell3• 15 days ago

Wouldn't something like a book of child pornography be banned in the EU?

fvdessen• 15 days ago

That's not true at all, for example in Belgium, any book that discredits genocide, incites to racial hatred, or shows sex with minors is banned from sale and/or possession. Then there's also moral rights infringement, such as obscene parodies of Tintin, books explaining suicide methods, etc, etc.

world2vec• 16 days ago

One of those marketing events in a cool instagramable spot in Oporto that already has huge queues of people just to photograph it and I'm sure it will only sell books in English catered to tourists and nomad tech bros that are already ruining the city's housing supply. Awesome.

nancyminusone• 16 days ago

For those of you pretending to have trouble understanding 'banned' in this context, it means essentially the same thing as when someone gets 'canceled'.

People who are canceled are not literally thrown in prison and executed.

an0malous2• 16 days ago

I miss the days when words still had meaning

buellerbueller11• 16 days ago

human language != computer languages and that's why the latter exists. if human language had the precision you are (futilely, ahistorically) pining for, then we could program with them.

throwaway274483• 16 days ago

Words have more meanings than ever.... but last century produced wittgenstein; perfectly clear communication was always a polite fiction.

xienze• 16 days ago

Well, it does kind of matter. "Banned" has a specific meaning. If a book is "banned" and you're allowed to possess it or sell it, it's not really banned, now is it? The usage of the word, despite the reality of the situation, strongly implies "this is a book the government WON'T LET YOU READ!" Except, they do.

A more accurate term might be "politically unfavorable", but that doesn't get people riled up. And, I'm just going to take a wild guess here, but this library is probably zeroing in on books that are politically unfavorable to conservative governments. I doubt we'll find the likes of Mein Kampf in there.

Guthwine5• 16 days ago

I agree that words do have a specific meaning, but the history of words changing their meaning is truly awful+! I was talking to this young girl++ in my neighborhood about words and slang - he said he had never considered that words could change their meaning, and that the dictionary was some kind of rule book. At first I thought maybe he was nice+++, but after considering it, he's young! Everyone learns this in time.

Language is mutable and alive and ever-changing. That's just how it goes.

+Used to mean 'inspiring awe'

++Used to mean 'young child (gender neutral)'

+++Used to mean 'foolish' or 'ignorant'

criddell3• 15 days ago

When somebody says a book is banned, there's usually some context that provides details on the scope of the ban.

For example, North Korea has banned most western books so my local Barnes and Nobles is pretty much a banned book store.

dudul4• 15 days ago

The irony of discussing the "new meaning" of a word on a thread about books/bookstore. Then say "canceled".

weinzierl• 16 days ago

Livraria does not mean library, but bookstore. The Livraria Lello where this is located, is definitely a bookshop.

It is not clear to me from the reporting if Manifesto Library is a translation error or if it really is a library within a bookshop.

I suspect it's neither and more like an art installation.

SwiftyBug• 15 days ago

It's a book store.

serial_dev• 15 days ago

They wrote: > inside the famed Livraria Lello bookshop

So I think they are aware of the “false friends” words.

With that said, I don’t think it’s an actual library, more like, as you said, an art installation, an exhibition, a space for highlighting books.

wk_end• 15 days ago

I wish there were some photos of it in the article so we could get a better understanding of what it is.

I've been to lots of bookstores with sections or displays for famously banned books. I'm pretty sure my local Indigo (basically a Canadian Barnes & Noble) has one. If that's all this is then it doesn't sound especially newsworthy outside of the celebrity involvement and maybe the renown of this particular shop.

OTOH the article describes it as a "permanent" installation, which does sound a little different from what I'm picturing.

ch4s3• 15 days ago

more like an art installation

Considering the length of the line to get into that place, I'd wager you're correct.

wasabi991011• 15 days ago

The Livraria Lello where this is located, is definitely a bookshop.

And barely a bookshop at that, more of a tourist attraction. You need tickets to enter, and the main selection of books are classics, mainly public domain iirc. They have more recent/interesting books but only as decoration (I asked to buy a Naomi Klein book, they refused to sell it). Most people are just there to take pictures because the stairs inspired Harry Potter.

tecleandor• 15 days ago

Yeah, nowadays I think it's like 15€ to enter, there's like a huge line to enter, and I think it's usually crowded inside. They'll discount the 15€ if you buy anything, but if you don't find anything interesting... it's a very expensive visit.

ahmedfromtunis2• 16 days ago

Dua Lipa opens, in Portugal, a library for books that are banned and censored (elsewhere).

adolph• 16 days ago

That makes more sense. How could a library or a bookshop in a location legally offer books that are banned in that location?

caseysoftware6• 16 days ago

THAT would be awesome bravery and freedom: "Come and take it" has been powerful before.

rsynnott4• 15 days ago

Historically (and maybe still today, in some very authoritarian countries!) university libraries were often this.

carodgers2• 15 days ago

This is wrong, given only the text of the article. The two books explicitly listed are not banned in Portugal or anywhere else. They are simply not subsidized with public money in some libraries.

teh64• 16 days ago

I find this video that looks at Dua Lipa and her love of books great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN1rULxGHCA

Orochikaku• 15 days ago

For anyone with doubts, I insist that you give watching the video a chance.

daakni• 15 days ago

Came straight to my mind as well. Thanks for sharing. Her music is not my cup a tea but her interest in books seems absolutely genuine.

Zer0Kelvin• 15 days ago

you know the questions are good when the authors take a step back and think!

werber• 16 days ago

I hope that her star power encourages young people to read literally anything. The ability for her fans to sit with a singular text, without ad breaks, sponcon, brand deals, and everything else on social media seems like a societal win.

BLKNSLVR• 16 days ago

Dua Lipa opens a library, in Portugal, for banned and censored books.

Two of my favorite examples of grammatical importance:

https://youtu.be/QMF5-0wfs1I

https://youtu.be/5yuL6PcgSgM

Seriously though, good on her.

NoSalt• 16 days ago

I don't know anything about her music, but she seems pretty cool on the literary front.

tim333• 15 days ago

I come across her most frequently on Google Maps where the yellow pin man icon for Google Street View is replaced by a Dua Lipa icon. (Not sure if it's global - I'm in London).

happyPersonR• 16 days ago

Good on her using her platform for something.

beaker522• 16 days ago

A venture that gathers objects of subversion likely to draw the ire of authoritarian powers into a single building doesn’t strike me as something likely to peacefully exist for long.

rsynnott4• 15 days ago

... I mean, it's in Portugal. Are you expecting Russia or a Florida school board or whatever to bomb it?

beaker522• 15 days ago

I mean… yeah? Since when would being in Portugal stop a motivated power?

Just ask Vadym Yermolaiev, Andriy Portnov, Emilian Gebrev or the staff at the warehouse in Vrbetice. Being in Portugal is an implementation detail.

It’s a soft target, but it’s a _very easy_ soft target when people have a host of possible enemies who might be motivated to disrupt your operations to point fingers at. None of the powers you’re criticising are going to be rushing to promote any investigation when your library accidentally sets on fire for the 4th time in 2 months.

pfannkuchen5• 15 days ago

Whenever the topic of “banned books” comes up, a bunch of people argue about whether they should be called “banned”.

What I haven’t seen mentioned in these discussions is where the mental association of “banned books” comes from.

In America, at least, the school curriculum spends a lot of time talking about dictators. It mentions, numerous times over many years of a child’s life, that something dictators often do is to ban books that could make people question them or that could make people support people the dictator doesn’t like, etc. In all such cases covered in the school curriculum, dictators’ “banned books” are not allowed to be sold in the country at all, and are often destroyed, sometimes even in mass burnings.

So, this is the psychological association people typically have with the phrase “banned books”.

The news articles over the past X years declaring something like “Government Y bans books!” seem to be leveraging this mental association to give people the emotional impression that Government Y is doing dictatorships things. I think this is why people get annoyed, since not allowing whatever books in the school library is not a dictator thing (okay dictators do it but it’s like drinking milk or being against animal cruelty, it’s not something that is primarily done by dictators).

So, when people say that not allowing a book in a school library is a type of ban, they are correct, but they ignore this association which most people have from school.

Levitz• 15 days ago

I think it's a little bit naive to think they ignore the association. They know it perfectly well, which is why they are using it. Same thing with concentration camps, same thing with mentions of Gestapo.

glimshe2• 15 days ago

I've banned a number of books from my household as I don't want my child exposed to them. And I support banning them from the school. Children aren't adults. It's reasonable to expect that education caters to a common denominator within society. I would only have a problem if adults couldn't acquire these books.

vasco• 15 days ago

To a common denominator yes but if you aim for too much breath then you miss out on a lot of good things if you ban until almost everyone is satisfied. And some fads that get popular to ban things I disagree with like when people said violent games were the reason for violence or that rock and metal music made teenagers angry or that grunge makes them kill themselves. Many times some groups latch on to some popular culture topic as the reason for X pre-existing problem of the world.

mossTechnician6• 15 days ago

Can you list some of these books you want removed from school libraries, along with why?

Aurornis6• 15 days ago

A family we know got swept up in the "banned books" movement. They repost banned book content on their Instagram and even got T-shirts with witty sayings about supporting banned books.

They bought some books for their kids from a banned books list thinking they were "banned" for thought-control reasons, but opened one up to find an illustrated guide to using mobile phone apps to find partners for anonymous hook-ups and a guide to following through with it.

The book clearly wasn't appropriate for their young children, so they hid it away. Now we joke that they've also banned the book.

grahamburger8• 15 days ago

Note that children do become adults while in (high) school. It's common for book-banners to imply that they are removing books from elementary school kids when they are actually removing them from adults and almost-adults in high schools.

Aurornis6• 15 days ago

The “banned books” theme has become intentionally vague because it has become a marketing tool.

That’s how we got to Dua Lipa doing a promotional photo op holding up books that can be purchased on Amazon and delivered to your Kindle to read immediately. Attaching the “banned” word to a book turns the purchase into an act of rebellion and a reason to talk about it, and the marketers are not going to waste that opportunity.

That’s why the “banned books” category has been expanded so much to include not only books that governments or corporations have tried to suppress, but also books that some school board in Kansas decided shouldn’t be included in the elementary school library.

Unfortunately once a term becomes this overloaded it loses meaning. The original topics of government censorship and oppression get less attention because it’s drowned out by pop stars holding up Margaret Atwood books for photo ops and people buying books on Amazon as a form of slacktivism.

mossTechnician6• 15 days ago

Banning a book in a school district still signifies a form of authoritarianism. If someone is prevented from reading Maus[0] (or finding out they are in a cult, or a victim of domestic abuse), what is the effective difference to them between an authoritarian censoring it at the national level or the local one?

[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/holocaust-novel-maus-banne...

frumplestlatz3• 15 days ago

Declining to buy and stock a book in a school library is not a ban at all.

The book can still be printed, bought, and read. It can be brought into that same school, and read there. It’s not banned.

amanaplanacanal4• 15 days ago

If the school declines to put a book in the library, that's not a ban. If people outside the school with power over the school demand that books be removed, that's a ban.

The groups demanding books be removed are often not even parents of children in the school. It external parties driving this stuff.

ozgung• 15 days ago

Banning and burning books is from an era when there was no digital publishing. Only way of distributing text/thoughts was by printing press. Today we don't burn books but we constantly ban/shadow ban digital content. This is independent of which country you are from. Corporations do the censorship mostly, in place of the governments. Try writing a Reddit comment opposing mainstream politics. You are only allowed to play in a sandbox. AI shadow-burns your comments automatically and blacklists you if you go out of your human guiderails. No human dictators to blame. So yes, if this is a dictator thing (I think it is), we all live in a kind of modern dictatorship.

citadel_melon• 15 days ago

Is there a valid reason to ban a book? On one hand, I agree there are books which are dangerous. But usually the most dangerous ones are one’s that are more innocuous. I think Catcher in the Rye is dangerous as I have seen grown men misread Holden as a hero to look up to rather than as a flawed mis-socialized man child. On the other hand, I have seen people go too far the other way and say that this book proves that everyone who rejects authority is just a bitter, poorly-socialized man baby. How painfully common these two misreadings provide me reason to ban my children from reading this book outside of my supervision.

However, Catcher in the Rye is banned not primarily for these nuanced misreadings, but instead primarily for its profanity. Meaning if we stripped the profanity out, this dangerous book would likely never have been banned in the first place. When you allow these bureaucratic institutions to ban books, they are not going to Socraticly reason through what should and should not be banned in a rigorous manner. They are going to ban books that vibe against their “sensibilities”.

Given that we do not have philosopher kings making these ban decisions, the least bad option is to not have any ban. Encourage kids to read broadly and get many different perspectives. More importantly, teach them to act as a scouts who should be proud/excited when they find a new opinion other than their own — and even more excited to find an opinion better than their own to adopt — rather than a warrior who is proud that their previous opinion was “right the whole time”. Sometimes your old opinion was proven right by new information, but that should not make you excited/proud. I’m confident that if all children are taught this scout-mindset that solving the intractable problem of banning books “correctly” would be completely unnecessary. Matter of fact, having children build immunity to bad ideas through learning how to be a “good scout” would be strictly better than making little bubble-boys who are safe from bad ideas only because the thin bubble the “philosopher kings” set up for them. The latter bubble makes children’s immune system unprepared for the real world while the scout mindset helps build hyper-capable, curious, and civically engaged adults.

pohl• 15 days ago

Is it useful to limit these thoughts to a dictator doing dictator stuff, though? What would be the material difference be between that and operatives of his political party astroturfing local school boards to remove books that teach about the racial history of the country or the existance of trans folk, to make it appear as though the local community decided to do it?

grahamburger8• 15 days ago

On the other hand, there is a persistent idea that schools are just making curation decisions for the children in their district, and people are calling that book banning. That's what you seem to be suggesting here. In all cases I'm aware of, that's not what's happening either; it's generally a parent, or a small group of parents, generally all from the same religious group and political party, bullying the library or school district into reversing curation decisions they had already made. A small, vocal group ultimately makes decisions about what all the kids in the district can read at school, based on their own religious and political affiliation. That comes much closer to your "banned book mental association" than I think you give it credit for.

JuniperMesos2• 15 days ago

You're more likely to be aware of a library book curation decision where parents are publicly fighting to remove a book the school library management wants to keep; compared to a curation decision where the school library management simply never decides to make a book available to begin with.

iamtheworstdev• 15 days ago

book burnings like this? https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/09/gop-lawmakers-hold-symbo...

tough• 15 days ago

One can only wonder how American Schools will talk about the current US Gov and presidents in a few decades...

suburban_strike• 15 days ago

Given the track we're on, in 80 years Americans will be extinct and whoever's occupying my current space will be living in the Managed Democracy of Monocolored Benetton.

Their kids will be taught that's all it ever was since the first colony was established in this otherwise-uninhabited land on Stardate 2302.5.

jt2190• 15 days ago

In America, at least, the school curriculum spends a lot of time talking about dictators.

I don’t think this is actually true. What’s your source for this? States set K-12 curriculum.

like_any_other• 15 days ago

Dear reader, "banned" in this case means government institutions (school libraries) did not promote the book to schoolchildren. It does not mean possession of the book got anyone arrested, or that the books are not extremely easily available in major corporate retailers (or even in non-school government-funded libraries). So for example, one is unlikely to find in this library the kind of stickers that got Sam Melia arrested [1], or anything the UK would consider "likely to stir up racial hate" [2], such as the music album “Phoenix Rising” by Embers of an Empire [3,4].

Whether books by e.g. Jared Taylor are also "banned" in this manner in the UK is left wonderfully vague - the only way to find out is to be found possessing one, and then see if the government prosecutes you. You get chilling effects for free, and avoid the bad PR of a "banned books" list!

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867

[2] https://www.thelawpages.com/criminal-offence/Possessing-raci...

[3] https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/R-v-Robe...

[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3yl0dgq3no

HorizonXP• 15 days ago

Here's a video to highlight why Dua Lipa is not a typical "celebrity book club" type person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN1rULxGHCA

I've actually really been a fan of her, and her music before I heard about her Service95 endeavour. So seeing that video led me to looking into her Service95 work, and yeah, I have to say, she's the real deal.

moralestapia• 15 days ago

Cool.

ActivePattern• 15 days ago

A lot of people in this thread think they're being clever by pointing out that a bookstore can't sell "banned" books. But it's common for bookstores and libraries to feature titles that have been banned in some jurisdictions. It's a small way to push back against censorship and promote freedom of information and critical thinking.

dudul4• 15 days ago

And there are always people who think they are clever by saying that a library deciding to not have a book on their shelves means the book is BANNED. OK, it's banned in that library, so what? This is not the government sending you to prison if they find you with this book in your pocket, it's a library deciding to use the shelf space for something else and thinking the book is not appropriate for their target audience.

quaddoggy2• 15 days ago

Looking forward to picking up copies of The Bell Curve and The Camp of the Saints since free speech is now so widely supported in Europe.

anthk3• 15 days ago

Except the Bell Curve it's bullshit. I'm from Europe (Spain), and even the Francoists said otherwise. Right wing people further than Pether Thiel itself. Go figure.

A nun, some woman (women are far more aware than men on emotions as their hormones basically grant an A+ on social skills) stated that Black People weren't dumb, but African people had no tradition at all on stimulating or paying good attention babies/toddlers as the Western mom do with little plays and the like. That lead to mild development issues. She followed some children with more Western-like educations and caring and they got far better marks than the ones locked to their cultures.

Add a far better nutrition on top and now you know the reasons on why the Black African countries are underdeveloped. Westernize them and their IQ will boost like crazy.

tptacek• 15 days ago

It's 100 books. Does your house have bookshelves? You have more books than this. It's like a display at a bookstore.

carodgers2• 15 days ago

Only two books are explicitly listed by the article, neither of which have been banned anywhere.

Unsubsidized is the more accurate word here. Some governments have chosen not to pay public money to stock these books in libraries, but no government has created criminal penalties for ownership.

It may be the case that her library includes some books that genuinely carry criminal penalties, but the article does not provide enough info to assess that.

Anthony-G• 15 days ago

Terrible article. As a European who grew up in a country that has banned¹ thousands of books, periodicals and other media for most of its existence, I was expecting this article to be about some campaign to unban books that were still being censored as a relic of the Salazar era. The headline is deceptive and the article itself is uninformative. It wasn’t until I came across a reference to “school districts” that I realised that this is just more American culture war bullshit being imported into Europe.

¹ literally banned, i.e. it was illegal to buy, sell or distribute such publications in the state: https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1929/act/21/enacted/en/h...

nickdothutton• 15 days ago

The "real banned books" are (in my opinion) generally those which have not been translated.

puelocesar• 15 days ago

This was interesting until I read it's inside Livraria Lello. You have to pay to get inside and wait 1 hour in a line alongside tourists. So this looks more like a stunt than anything truly meaningful.

throwawaypath• 14 days ago

Spat my coffee out laughing. Believing "The Handmaiden's Tale" is "banned/censored" is something only people as shallow as Dua Lipa believe. Everyone knows which "banned and censored books" won't be allowed at this library.

Dua Lipa opens library for banned and censored books in Portugal

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