Originally published at: Chicago-area libraries evacuated and closed after bomb threats | Boing Boing
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There have been a number of cases in the past few weeks of pricks coming into the libraries live-streaming and harassing librarians. They’ve been escalating for a number of weeks. Its a coordinated effort.
The latest has been coming from what seems to be a German IP address.
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Make no mistake, the fascists are once again coming after these palaces of open education and discourse. Some states are making it official.
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We haven’t had a threat to ours yet, but most of the threats have been coming over “reference chat” features on library websites and we don’t have that. Coupled with the fact that people often abuse the chat system anyway (inappropriate questions, sexual harassment, the usual) this has prompted many in the area to disable the system entirely.
Additional information:
- Some libraries have been targeted multiple times.
- Threats are now including references to “shooters” in the neighborhood.
- Threats have been made to libraries in Lake county (near the Wisconsin border) and as far South as Peoria.
- Some threats have made claims to have placed bombs (undetectable ones, naturally) in every library in Cook county and along all Illinois highways.
We know that last one in particular is absolute bullshit, but we’re still taking the threats very seriously, which means the stochastic terrorism is working even if there’s no bombs at all. It’s wearing on our nerves, for sure, and should make our “active shooter” training next week particularly interesting.
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I already have an answer for this, but how do they not realize that they are the bad guys ??
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I hope that when these cowardly terrorists are found (and they will be found) they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I want judges to throw all the books at them (metaphorically; literally throwing books at terrorists like this could damage the books.)
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You have to weed stock unfortunately so this could be a positive use for books you can no longer keep.
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Is your answer “they have stopped pretending they’re not, and are leaning into it”?
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Another related article on what’s upsetting the fascists about the books and the message they’re sending. Not surprising to anyone who’s studied history but useful none-the-less.
The Topic Concentration chart above lends the clearest picture into the implied rationale behind the bans. Namely, the bans are not and have not been about the physical removal of a book from a shelf. The bans instead are meant to:
Virtue signal by people in positions of institutional power to voting-age parents interested in school choice, parental rights, and wedge social issues to the detriment of non-voting age students
Reject and exclude topics that challenge a perceived status quo from the public discourse (e.g. non-heteronormativity, non-cis identity, non-traditional gender roles, and non-Judeo-Christian books are targeted)
Goal 1 has the additional effect of promoting exactly the stochastic terrorism described in the main article.
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I’m on my local library board. While we have not had a threat yet, we did shut down our reference chat feature.
I’m appalled that these fascists proclaim to be Christians, believers in freedom or that they are just looking to protect the children. None of these things are true. They just want power and the ability to destroy anyone they don’t like.
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Also Yolo County CA
Sadly even at my kid’s favorite library. She was excited to get back to campus just to go to this library to borrow fun books to take the edge off of her text books.
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Public libraries have been getting “First Amendment Audits” for a while now. Most of the low-lifes shoving cameras in people’s faces get bored and leave when they fail to get outraged reactions for their YouTube channels. So much free time, so little imagination.
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