- yesterday
Censorship often wears the mask of protection, but behind it lies confusion, fear, and control. One of the most absurd examples? In 2010, the Texas State Board of Education banned Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? not for its content, but because they mixed up the author, Bill Martin Jr., with a completely different Bill Martin, a Marxist philosopher. Joseph Maximillian Dunnigan, founder of the Banned Books Museum in Estonia, shared this absurd anecdote during a conversation with Outlook Video Journalist Divya Tiwari. He said, “When they banned this Bill Martin, they also accidentally banned the children’s author Bill Martin. That was very embarrassing, of course, and they had to apologise. But it shows, I think, something very important, which is that censorship is not a very useful, effective tool. And usually it is used by people who are not very, let’s say, skilful and thoughtful.”
This moment, where a yellow duck and a blue horse were briefly seen as communist threats, captures the deeper truth about censorship: it’s often less about content and more about power. Through his museum in Estonia, Dunnigan works to show how censorship operates not just in dictatorships, but everywhere, including democracies, where fear clouds judgment and stories are silenced.
Reporter: Divya Tiwari
Editor: Sudhanshu
#BookBans #Censorship #BannedBooksMuseum #BrownBear #Books #JosephMaximillianDunnigan #Freedom #Dictatorship
This moment, where a yellow duck and a blue horse were briefly seen as communist threats, captures the deeper truth about censorship: it’s often less about content and more about power. Through his museum in Estonia, Dunnigan works to show how censorship operates not just in dictatorships, but everywhere, including democracies, where fear clouds judgment and stories are silenced.
Reporter: Divya Tiwari
Editor: Sudhanshu
#BookBans #Censorship #BannedBooksMuseum #BrownBear #Books #JosephMaximillianDunnigan #Freedom #Dictatorship
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NewsTranscript
00:00censorship is not something it's not a phenomenon from sovietism it's not a phenomenon
00:07from some far away country or from authoritarianism it's something which is kind of everywhere and
00:15has been for thousands of years it's still part of literature today even in that free and democratic
00:22society you know and everywhere we look we find it and so that's what i hope people take away
00:28is how widespread this problem is and how the only real way to deal with it is through education
00:42hi we are here with uh joseph maximilian dunnigan who has founded the bank books museum in estonia
00:49hi joseph how are you i'm fantastic how are you i'm good too so i just wanted to ask you a few
00:58questions let's start with your uh museum the bank books museum can you tell me what inspired you to
01:04open this before i lived in estonia i lived in china for a very long time studying chinese language and
01:12in taiwan also and when i lived in china i saw a lot of the censorship and propaganda you know things like
01:18this and i was very interested in it worried about it uh started collecting books which had been banned
01:28in china and everything i'm kind of obsessed with this topic and i love collecting books so the collection
01:35grew and grew i moved to estonia and estonia is a very of course has a very dark history of censorship also
01:43because it has been occupied so much so it's a very important topic here also and yeah
01:50the museum we started because i just wanted to share this uh collection and these lessons and help
01:57people to understand this topic from what i've read and heard like your museum showcases around 400
02:04bank books from across like 100 countries i wanted to know like have you come across any stories which are
02:10like absolutely absurd as to why censorship even happened to that book constantly
02:15and that's some of our favorites uh to collect are the strange cases i mean we have books from around
02:23the world yeah we have hundreds of books we're not trying to collect every man book in the world
02:29what we're really trying to do is collect every form of book censorship so that's why every book is a
02:36slightly different case and a slightly different situation and from a different country at a
02:41different time and how censorship manifests in a different way and so everyone is different and
02:47there are a lot of them yeah are ridiculous and quite funny we have books which are banned for example
02:53by accident because the author had the same name as another author who they were trying to ban
02:58which is a obviously ridiculous situation and very embarrassing for the censor like that example
03:06there's a book uh called um brown bear brown bear what did you see which as an author and his name
03:14was bill martin but unfortunately there was another bill martin who wrote another book called ethical
03:21marxism which the state of texas in america wanted to ban so when they banned this bill martin they
03:28also accidentally banned the children's author bill martin who wrote the brown bearer brown bearer book
03:34and so that was very embarrassing of course and they had to apologize but it shows i think something
03:40very important which is censorship is not a very useful effective tool and usually it is used
03:49by people who are not very let's say not very skillful and thoughtful
03:53i also wanted to ask you you know like estonia's history like you've studied in china and you have
04:02now moved to estonia and it has like had a history of soviet era censorship as we were talking initially
04:08also so like how does the context influence the way that you present these banned books now in estonia
04:14like well when people come and to visit your museum like what is it that one thing that they can take away
04:21that's a good question actually about the context i don't get that one often it's really really
04:25important because when people come into this museum ask what they expect to see they expect it to be
04:32a museum of soviet censorship and they expect to see hundreds of books banned here but that's not
04:39what we have in fact that's only a small part of what we have so we like to surprise people the first
04:46thing they see when they come in the museum is the uk section the british section oh i was not
04:51expecting this maybe they're expecting soviet union maybe they're expecting china or nazi germany but we
04:59don't emphasize those things actually the opposite we emphasize all the other countries around the world
05:04and what people take away is how diverse and widespread this problem is censorship is not something
05:12it's not a phenomenon from sovietism it's not a phenomenon from some far away country or from
05:20authoritarianism it's something which is kind of everywhere and has been for thousands of years
05:27it's still part of literature today even in that free and democratic society you know and everywhere
05:35we look we find it and so that's what i hope people take away is how widespread this problem is
05:43and how the only real way to deal with this is through education and better understanding of how
05:50it works we're in india right now there was a book by salman rushdie it was called satanic verses
05:56and they were banned for a very long time so very recently the book was uncensored by the way like
06:02now we can buy get it purchase it which is great but i want to understand like your personal
06:07relationship with the idea of censorship like where does this come from how far back do you want to go
06:12i mean you take me i think i was always interested in literature because my mother encouraged me to
06:19be interested in literature and so on but i became very interested because my stepfather when my mother
06:26met my stepfather gave me a copy of george orwell's 1984 when i was very young maybe uh too young you
06:34know to read something like this but he thought it was important so he gave it to me and when i read
06:40that book i really started to understand a lot more about communication especially political communication
06:48how that can be manipulated how somebody can change the message and how can how you can say something
06:57without saying it or say say through things to contradictory things at the same time there are so many
07:04techniques which are described in that book it really opened my eyes and i mean i was maybe 11 or 12 years old
07:12so it was a good time to learn about this because you start to see these things around you in the world
07:18and my classmates didn't see it but i could see it and we're talking about you know it was you know
07:25around the time of uh september the 11th and um the war in afghanistan and iraq and so there was so much
07:32political double speaking and you can spend and these and uh you know careful careful wording and
07:41euphemisms all these little tricks were being used everywhere all the time it was in this it was in
07:46the air in the uk where i'm from i could see that and i felt like i could see through it which was an
07:54amazing power to me an amazing skill so i hope that in some way we using this museum we also develop that
08:00skill in our business i hope so and that's my that's what made me so personally interested in
08:07yeah that makes sense that that resonates with me quite a bit i well if you're a journalist and of
08:12course it does yeah you're you're you're on the front line you know this is your area too this is your
08:18battle indeed so censorship now is no longer just books right it's not just the hard material that one
08:26can hold it's no longer pamphlets that are being exchanged right like censorship is beyond all of
08:31that there i wanted to know like what do you think is your understanding of digital censorship second i
08:37wanted to know like given the fact that a lot most of our world is currently digital right like we want
08:42to encourage people to read books however we are still in that place where people would still be
08:46digitally inclined to get their materials with censorship also turning that do you think you have a plan in
08:52place perhaps not that you're supposed to carry that burden but would you be able to i'm not carrying
08:59that burden i can't handle all of these things at the same time you know but i i know what you mean
09:03and i understand of course even the uh owner of that particular platform and his um what he says he
09:11believes in with regard to free speech and what he practices it seems to be very far apart that's quite
09:18funny but yeah the digital stuff is fascinating i think you're absolutely right of course there's a
09:24whole world of censorship not on the books and we focus on books i mean we don't even have journalism
09:30or comic books or anything close or even magazines and the reason is because if i tried to do all of
09:37those things my head would explode but it's not necessary also really because the lessons that we
09:43learn from studying the censorship of the books generally also apply to other mediums so if you
09:48understand how censorship works in literature you have a better understanding you have a better
09:54skill to understand censorship of films censorship of music censorship of theater all kinds of things
10:04digital is different digital is more is very very complicated and it moves very very fast compared
10:11with the other mediums traditional mediums i don't what is my perspective on it my perspective is that
10:19it's extremely complicated and we don't have the underlying educational structure to give people the
10:28skills to respond diligently and carefully in a nuanced way what does that mean that means that for
10:36example on we see things like x or twitter randomly making decisions about censorship with no foundational
10:48theoretical framework it's completely random as far as i can tell you can get banned for using this
10:53word in this context but not in that context or if you're in this country you can get banned for the
10:58smallest thing but if you're in this country you can be openly talking about hate or whatever it is
11:04there's no consistency because there's no underlying theory there's no foundation of knowledge and
11:11skill and intention that's what's missing and the reason it's missing is because nobody thinks about
11:17censorship in the place people think about it as like a smaller thing they don't understand that it's an
11:22important part of communication and that extends to digital also so i think we're kind of um how would you
11:32say we're kind of in a ship without a rudder is that we're in a storm you know without a or we're in a
11:38storm without sails let's say with regard to online content it is chaotic and we're making as a society
11:47we're making quite random decisions which is not not a great solution again i'm a museum right we're an
11:56educational institution so for me it always seems to be the answer education think of it like um fire
12:05fire is is really dangerous and it will always be dangerous but it's never going to go away
12:12we're never going to defeat fire one day with some great piece of legislation we can write whatever we
12:19want it doesn't matter fire is always going to be here it's always going to be a problem so how do we
12:24it's not a problem really fire because we have systems to deal with it we think about it we get
12:33the kids in the school to talk about it we show examples of it and we say what do you think about
12:39this how could we could we use this in a safe way or is it maybe we just never you know use it and we
12:46have that conversation with kids from an early age and we have a fire department there's no censorship
12:52anti censorship department and we don't talk with the kids about this topic so what happens they
12:58grow up they take over twitter and they don't know what the hell they're doing pushing buttons because
13:04i don't like this guy we plan him and then oh no we can't we should bring this guy back because someone
13:08else tried to ban him we should not there's no underlying structure i just see the scale of the
13:15problems scaling up and i see very little um response there are organizations which are trying
13:24to respond to this challenge of censorship i'm talking specifically about the west now like you
13:31know i don't know india i know how complicated it is and i know enough to know that i know very little
13:40but over here there are organizations that we are small and we are desperate we don't get funding for
13:46the most part or if we do it's nothing compared with the scale of the funding for the calendar for
13:51the census my god you know china has a department of the government thousands tens of thousands of
14:01people employed to implement censorship in other countries in these unbelievably clever and sophisticated
14:11ways and they are practicing every day scientifically incrementally getting better and better and
14:17learning from the mistakes and oh we try this here and did it work in that country we can try oh it
14:22didn't work let's tweak it a little bit and this is every day this is right now but there's nothing on
14:28our side yeah this is a worrying trend it's so scary but the scale of the attack to the defense is
14:36terrifying since you're a censorship expert uh quote unquote i wanted to know like if you were to
14:43tell our audience or the people who see this video like how to look at something and know that it's
14:50being censored you know how to point to censorship because i feel like a lot of times things like
14:55this are wrapped up in legal speak or like something something perhaps religious speak and like it just
15:01justified that way but like if if a younger person were to watch you and you as a person who runs this
15:08museum if you were to tell someone like this is what censorship would look like like a blatant example
15:14if you could give me the way to do this is do not look at one example look at a wide range of
15:20examples of how censorship happens all around the world then you will start to see the patterns
15:26there's no magic series of words which if they're in the book you should know that there has been
15:33since there has been censorship that doesn't happen what you have to do is understand what topics are
15:40usually censored in your context by looking at a range of examples so if you are in um
15:46and to the country uh we keep saying china let's not use china let's use another country actually
15:54let's say india india some of the topics which are often censored or controversial islam
16:00convictions of uh gandhi mahadma gandhi jinnah and the and you know there's all of these topics which
16:08are very specific to india um local sensitivity caste system yeah i mean you know minority ethnic and
16:16linguistic minority groups and their allergies let's say there's so many things which are very
16:22specifically indian so if you're reading a book and you see these topics you should have this in your
16:28mind that this is a i know that this is a sensitive topic do i trust this thought maybe but maybe not
16:38it's for you to find out if this is a credible source but you can only do that if you know what those
16:44topics are that are sensitive so i would encourage a person who is interested in this or trying to get
16:50the skill don't try to look super close at one book to figure out in a sense that it's better to look wide
17:00many examples of sensitive including from other countries because they will feel those techniques
17:06to and use them in your country so look at the history of censorship what kind of techniques are
17:11used again and again and again and again and again what topics are banned or censored again and again
17:16and again and again and again and again and what are this local sensitivity where you live then you
17:21will start to see through the book you will not only see that you will not not only read the book
17:28you will see the author while you're reading it and you can understand them and sometimes you will
17:36think this does not sound right something about this is weird but this part of the i'm reading now chapter
17:41two but chapter two doesn't read exactly like chapter one and you'll start to see the difference and
17:47you'll start to smell it it becomes it becomes an instinct now that's a neat trick i'll use that next time
17:57so if you could choose one book from your band collection from across the countries you've gathered
18:03what is the one book you would tell people to read in order to understand the world for what it is right now
18:10i'm trying to think of a book which is not 1984 by door doorbell because it's so obvious look the
18:19reason it is that book is because that book is almost like a um a list of techniques it presents to you
18:28how censorship works step by step it presents it to you not only as but not as a list it presents it to
18:35you in narrative which is much better because then you understand and it shows you an example
18:41winston smith he's a nice guy seems like a nice guy he's trying to live he's just doing his job
18:47doesn't want any trouble he's also a censor and suddenly you you think okay this is his role this
18:54is his job in society and it starts to give you this understanding of how censorship works because you
19:00see him doing it and you also have some degree of empathy with the writers and even the censors
19:10because it's a broad societal problem and we all have this sensor inside of us too and that's what
19:18winston smith is about the character in 1924 we are also the censors and in a different circumstance
19:26under some different pressure you could be the censor i could be the censor and you don't know
19:34until you're in that situation sometimes you don't know even when you're doing it like smith smith
19:39and there's a word for this in 1924 double think when you do something and you know but you're also
19:46telling yourself that you're not doing it winston smith considers himself that he knows that he is a
19:51censor but he doesn't see himself as part of that he doesn't see himself as a bad guy because he can
19:56think two things at the same time which are contradictory no problem and we can all do this
20:02easy but when you know that you can do it you start to see yourself doing it and you start to say
20:09no no no i can't i i know i have to i'm on a diet and i have and i want the cake this is kind of double
20:16thing you know yeah i get it which is just lying to yourself every day i guess we all do this here
20:24in the museum we have visitors from all over the world and we have visitors from all different
20:28political backgrounds and some of them a lot of them i totally disagree with my personal politics
20:36i you know i talk with the person they start saying things and i think to myself
20:41no this guy is or this woman is like totally not for me that's not the end of the conversation
20:49that's the beginning of the conversation because that's time to have compassion and to listen
20:56freedom of speech is not about speaking it's about listening and it's about having an open heart
21:02and honestly trying to understand the other person and to be compassionate and try to honestly listen
21:09because it's very easy for me to pretend to listen to some far-right guy or something and to not
21:16really i'm not really listening i'm actually just waiting to punch back that's not what we did here
21:22in the museum and that's not how you solve this problem what you do is you actually listen to them
21:28you let them talk and you just listen and you just listen and you don't actually need to say
21:36anything because eventually what happens is he will start questioning himself i see this all the time
21:43they start it's a really weird psychological thing if you just sit and just listen to them
21:48oh really oh no i don't know about that you really you know i'm like that yeah you know and they start
21:55to say things and they start to water it down in front of you i say you know well that's what i believe
22:00you know they start with it and that's the way it is and then they say that's what i that's what i
22:06believe and that's what i think that's what lots of people think people think some people think like
22:12this there's a group of there's a group of people who think like this you know they're getting smaller
22:16and smaller all the time and then you know i know i'm in the minority but i just think this is
22:20eventually they say something which is really important which is you know it's just my personal
22:26opinion then you leave home and you say oh well i just different from my personal opinion and they
22:33say yeah then what happens they go away they go to bed at night they're lying in bed they can't quite
22:42sleep something's not right and they're thinking about their day and they're thinking about that guy in
22:48the museum that guy seems nice i don't know something's not i'll think about this tomorrow
22:57and then we wake up the next day more compassionate person because people don't change in front of you
23:02they change quietly alone in the bed in privacy so this is the way to deal with them don't get up in
23:11their face don't shout it back at their face try to understand with open hearts and empathy compassion
23:21so since these books have been banned for a very long time and some of them have been recently banned
23:25maybe the publishing has stopped or something how do you source these books with most of the books
23:32today come to us through volunteers and donors which is the best way to grow the museum i think because
23:40then i am not directing the museum it's the visitors who are directing the museum for the future
23:45visitors and that is really cool because it's not for example if it's uh let's say it's india
23:51india is not my culture in fact india is many many cultures and that's why it's so difficult but
24:00that's why it's important that we get for example people who send us books and we have now an indian
24:07section because people will send us things that they say is important in their culture and that
24:12we need to know about this and if they send us a book let's say uh um like a bangladeshi book you
24:19know from west bangal then of course what happens is later on another person will come in from that
24:27place and they will see that book and it will resonate with them because it's in their language
24:32and it's an example from their home and it's something that their family knows about and they
24:37know about the situation and now they're emotionally involved and they're ready to learn so that's why
24:42it's really important that we collect as many books as possible from around the world and that people
24:48participate with us this is a team effort i don't do this by myself it's all of us together and slowly
24:54one by one by one by one we grow the museum sometimes i have to just pay as well but that's
25:01fine i can do that sometimes sometimes we have a little bit of money but uh usually not and the best
25:08way is to be in partnership with our with our with people who believe in what we are doing and
25:15understand the importance of preserving your books and giving skills to people to understand
25:20um thank you so much joseph i don't want to take any much more of your time uh it was lovely talking
25:26to you good talking with you take care
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