Banning Anne Frank's Diary, in the Name of Freedom
Currents
Florida, we are told, is the land of freedom, where the scourge of wokeness and the tyranny of radical leftism have been stamped out by the benevolent jackboot of Governor Ronald Dion DeSantis. That may be how Republican Floridians see themselves, but the view from the outside is one of political horseshoes and slipping masks. Ever since the passage of the “Parental Rights in Education” law in 2022, Florida school districts have gone on the warpath against any and all books that don’t fit their freedom-loving sensibilities, banning nearly 565 documented titles in 2021–22 alone. The latest title on the chopping block is the notorious work of critical queer theory known as… Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation (2017)?
According to the Vero Beach school district, the book was deemed “not age appropriate.” The reason? It covers Frank’s self-described attractions, not only to boys but also to another girl. Perhaps those who opposed characterizing the Parental Rights in Education bill as “Don’t Say Gay” were right after all — in this case, “Don’t Say Bi” is rather more fitting. The cultural right can profess that they are simply pushing back against the excesses of radical left-wing ideologies, but words are cheap. What their actions demonstrate, time and time again, is that they are using today’s tools to endlessly reanimate yesterday’s bigotries.
This abridged retelling of Anne Frank’s diary — adapted by Oscar-nominated Israeli film director Ari Folman and wonderfully illustrated by Israeli artist David Polonsky — is not a mere dumbing-down and reformatting of the material for a younger audience. Rather, it captures the humanity, quirkiness, and emotional complexity of this young girl far better in some ways than prose alone ever could. As Folman writes in commentary at the end of the book, “We made no attempt to guess in what manner Anne might have drawn her diary if she had been an artist instead of a writer. We did, however, try to visually interpret and preserve her powerful sense of humor, her sarcasm [...], and her obsessive preoccupation with food (the graphic adaptation repeatedly dwells on coping with the endless hunger in hiding).”
They achieved all that and more. The reader is transported into Frank’s vivid imagination, insecurities, anxieties, frustrations, romantic yearnings, and most of all — her fathomless Jewish capacity for finding humor even in the darkest situations. Certain portions of the original text, especially toward the end of the diary when Frank was blossoming into a talented writer, were reproduced in full.
The adaptation’s many virtues as a work of graphic literature were, it appears, lost on its regressive critics, who could not look past two unforgivable pages of the 150-page book that depict Anne’s unrequited bisexual attractions to a girl she knew. A Florida chapter of the right-populist activist group “Moms For Liberty”, knowing tyranny when they see it, rectified this unfreedom by successfully lobbying to ban the book. They never quite explained how it’s inappropriately sexual to even contemplate same-sex romance, but just “good old-fashioned coming of age” when it’s heterosexual romance, which features much more prominently in both the diary and adaptation. Another complaint was that the second of these egregiously lesbiscious pages portrayed a whimsical Anne skipping through a garden of her imagination lined with (get the kids out of the room) nude statues. If only the statue were holding a Confederate flag, but alas. This isn’t the first quarrel our Floridian Comstocks have taken with the human body in statuary form — last month, a Tallahassee principal was forced into resignation for allowing a teacher to show students hardcore images of… Michelangelo’s David.
The most galling criticism was that the book “minimized” the Holocaust. This is straightforwardly false. In no way did the graphic adaptation downplay the Holocaust — a rich charge coming from the culture warriors who have had no qualms banning Holocaust-related books across the nation. It’s difficult to take the religious right seriously when they claim to act in defense of the Jewish people. These are the same folks who chant “America First”, a phrase used by anti-Semitic isolationists who wanted to keep the US out of WWII. The purported affinity the Christian right has for Jews is the affinity a chess player has for a piece they intend to strategically sacrifice at a pivotal moment. The theology believed by many Evangelicals holds that for Christ to return, Jews must control Israel, at which point all who do not convert to Christianity will be eradicated in an act of divine genocide more complete than the sloppiest of Hitler’s wet dreams. These are no friends of Jews.
The simple fact is that Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation is perfectly suitable for young readers and is not a “woke” retelling of the diary. It does not project our current political moment onto the past. It does not co-opt Anne Frank as a vehicle to denigrate liberalism, Enlightenment values, or the “white cisheteropatriarchy,” nor does it seek to awaken in the reader any kind of revolutionary fervor or identity-based “consciousness.” If it did these things, it would indeed be inappropriate as K-12 educational material. Not only doesn’t the adaptation advance any kind of radical agenda, but it isn’t political in any sense. It’s the beautiful, tragic, sometimes funny, always bittersweet first-person tale of a doomed heroine trying to build a normal childhood out of the ashes of man’s inhumanity to man. So faithful in spirit is this adaptation to its source that there are no grounds on which to take issue with it that would not also apply to the original unedited diary.
The religious right, however, is not the only one with Anne Frank-derangement syndrome. Some on the left have objected with bizarrely passionate vehemence to any attempt to represent Frank as bisexual, despite her stated attractions, citing that she was a minor who never specifically identified as bi. While technically true, Anne Frank described feelings that place her squarely on the spectrum of bisexuality, unlike the rather different spectrum such hair-splitting pedants seem to be on. Others of a self-described “progressive” bent have embarrassingly wondered aloud whether Ms. Frank had “white privilege.” The asymmetry is that no one on the left is trying to yank Anne Frank’s diary off bookshelves over a passing mention of same-sex attractions.
Behind the irony of an ostensibly pro-“liberty” group banning books lies the fundamental truth underlying all activism on the Christian right. To the right’s most ardent culture warriors, “freedom” and “liberty” are not actual principles but naked expressions of self-interest. Freedom and liberty mean the freedom and liberty for them to say and do whatever they please. Everyone else, well, tough luck. These are not the students of Voltaire, Locke, and Madison, but of Gingrich, Limbaugh, and Falwell. The license the religious right has taken in their total war against anything they deem to be “woke” (which, to them, encompasses everything outside of Trumpistan) is waged under the auspices of opposing radical excesses, but their pattern of behavior tells a different story. Every real overreach presents an opportunity to launch a broader offensive aimed at returning society to a fictional 1950s. Critical queer theory and other radical ideologies have seeped into the educational system. The right’s response has not been measured and judicious; it’s been to ban books by the hundreds with reckless abandon and then attack the entire LGBT community while ginning up a moral panic over “groomers.”
In doing so, of course, the activists of the cultural right come to embody everything they claim to disdain in the cultural left. They decry the censoriousness of their opponents while emptying libraries themselves. They denounce the authoritarianism of cancel culture while running their own version like a well-oiled assembly line. They shriek about the leftist sanctimony while doing their damnedest to resurrect the Society for the Suppression of Vice. They condemn the activist left with the language of classical liberalism while behaving in a manner that could raise John Stuart Mill from the dead only to kill him again out of sheer disgust. This is bad faith and insincerity elevated to an art form. These are the Rembrandts of hypocrisy, purveyors of bullshit so powerful that, as George Carlin once remarked, you have to stand in awe of it. Remember, the Anne Frank adaptation was inappropriate for kids because it described a bisexual crush and illustrated nude statues, and also because it didn’t contain enough genocide. Masters of bullshit, indeed.
There is a crucial tightrope that must be walked. Anyone committed to liberalism and LGBT rights is correct to oppose the illiberal and self-sabotaging ideology of critical social justice. The antics it inspires do not advance human rights; they only cause backlashes that endanger past progress. But the enemy of our enemy is not our friend. Many classical liberals, understandably turned off by what they see on the cultural left, make a fatal mistake when they throw their lot in with right-wing regressives. These are not our allies. They have fought LGBT rights kicking and screaming every step of the way and salivate at the chance to roll them all back, as they eagerly show whenever given the chance. As frustrating as this entire episode is, the deeper issues it highlights offer this important warning. It’s been nearly 80 years since Anne Frank was murdered in Nazi death camps, but she’s still teaching us new and unexpected lessons. Heed them.
Published Apr 23, 2023
