In the depths of the McCarthy era, the American Library Association (ALA) released an eloquent statement in defense of intellectual freedom and free expression called “The Freedom to Read.” Subsequently updated and endorsed by a host of other organizations, the current version begins:

The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to label “controversial” views, to distribute lists of “objectionable” books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to counter threats to safety or national security, as well as to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as individuals devoted to reading and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating ideas, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.

Then and now, the ALA’s statement gets at a deep and important truth. Coordinated efforts to target particular books or limit their reach have long been a canary in the coal mine for creeping censorship and authoritarianism — a reality as concerning in 2023 as it was during the McCarthy era. Amid the torrential discourse of today’s culture war, however, it’s easy to get a mistaken impression about where such efforts are really coming from.