Burning Bibles and Russia's 2020 disinformation campaign

 

The New York Times reported today that "A story about protesters burning Bibles drew condemnation from conservatives. It now appears to have been wildly exaggerated — and the first viral hit in Russia’s 2020 disinformation campaign." It turns out that a small fire at the Portland protests used a Bible as kindling. The story was exaggerated by the Russian video website, Rutly, associated with RT and Russian government intelligence, and then circulated by American conservative media.

Accusations of desecrating scriptures are, in fact, rather traditional means of stirring outrage and persecuting opponents, especially in countries with strict blasphemy laws. Western news media also capitalized on such stories in the first decade of the 20th century, before realizing that they were part of the problem. Now they usually treat such stories with more restraint (see "Desecrated Scriptures and the News Media"). Today's conservative media does not, nor does it seem to care that it lets itself be used for propaganda.

Religious Book Destruction in Central Asia

Bradford Anderson calls my attention to legal actions to suppress religious literature in several countries of Central Asia. Russian authorities have ordered the destruction of modern books tauting the views of Muslims, Hare Krishnas, and Seventh Day Adventist. Protestants and their libraries have been targeted in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Christianity Today interprets this news in the context of Christian revivals in Central Asia in the last several years.

Much of our attention to book desecration and destruction on this blog has focused on highly symbolic actions at attacks on religious legitimacy. But book destruction has in past ages been an effective means used by states to suppress entire religious movements and their memory (e.g. the Manicheans). Governments and courts are still trying this tactic, despite the increasing difficulties posed by two information revolutions--print and digital.

Bibliocide

On the iconicity of the Encyclopedia Britannica 

and the deconsecration thereof

Ashes to Ashes. Arctic to Biosphere. Birds to Chess. 

There's an earlier post on this site on the digitization of the EB. Here writer Julian Baggini gives his own end to the bound bundle. His essay and the narrative accompanying the video point to the socio-economic dimensions involved in knowledge acquisition, and how books (here explicitly the EB sold by door-to-door salesman) become part of that. The way up in life is through reading and learning. Or so it was.

One of the best lines in here regards the "ossification of knowledge" in the encyclopedic medium. Knowledge is already dead in this form. He's just giving a proper burial.

What is particularly interesting are the comments at the end. So many wrote in to suggest how wrong was the action, that these books could still be used. That they should have been donated, or recycled. The irony here being most of the ones arguing that books should not be burned were the ones that clearly didn't actually read the essay to understand his finer points.

Thousands of rare books go up in flames in Cairo

Huffington Post has reported today that the "Institute d'Egypte, a research center set up by Napoleon Bonaparte during France's invasion in the late 18th century, caught fire during clashes between protesters and Egypt's military over the weekend. It was home to a treasure trove of writings, most notably the handwritten 24-volume Description de l'Egypte, which began during the 1798-1801 French occupation."

Thousands of volumes have been damaged, and many are burned beyond recovery. "This is equal to the burning of Galileo's books," Zein Abdel-Hady, who runs the country's main library, said.

The full Huffington Post article can be accessed here.