Not unexpectedly, the Alberta government is pausing its book ban in large part because of the malicious compliance by the Edmonton Public School Board and others, where they weaponized the bans to show how ridiculous they are, particularly in targeting things like Ayn Rand, which Danielle Smith thinks should be “compulsory reading,” because of course she does. And yes, Margaret Atwood got involved, because one of the books that got picked for the ban was The Handmaid’s Tale, and Smith and company were roundly ridiculed by everyone. As they should be.
But as the government decides that they’re going to either come up with a more targeted criteria, or just take these school boards by the hand and essentially do it for them, nobody is actually talking about how this all started with a moral panic about queer or trans books, and that this is what the outcome is going to be once Smith and her ministers come up with the “targeted” list. And frankly, it’s disappointing to see that Naheed Nenshi is not calling this out either, instead giving credence to the moral panic by saying that this was about the UCP igniting a culture war that backfired on them, and “Instead of just saying, ‘Hey, we found a couple of troubling comic books with some troubling images, let’s take those off of shelves,’ they wrote a ministerial order.” Those “troubling images” are overreactions or taken out of context, but more to the point, they’re queer and trans materials. That cannot be toned down or ignored in the broader scheme because this is where fascism always starts. And no, this isn’t just Smith being a MAGA adherent because a lot of these particular tactics have a more tangible origin point in Orbán’s Hungary, where Americans like Ron DeSantis then adapted them for his own use, and far-right groups took their cues from the US shared their lists with members of the UCP to show their “concerns.” Nothing was an accident. Let’s not pussyfoot around this.
I don't think this has necessarily been intentional by anyone in media, but I am fascinated by the way the narrative around the Alberta book bans has shifted away from the censorship of LGBTQ2S+ stories into being much more "Look, they're even banning Game of Thrones!!"
In other Alberta news, their bans on students changing names or pronouns in schools, and ban on trans women in sport have also taken effect, so Egale Canada is part of a lawsuit that has been launched to challenge these laws, which will inevitably result in Smith invoking the Notwithstanding Clause, because of course she will, but she’s going to insist that she’s the reasonable one in the room while she’s doing it.
1/ Egale Canada and Skipping Stone have filed a constitutional challenge against the Government of Alberta’s Education Amendment Act, 2024 (formerly Bill 27), which places unconstitutional restrictions on the use of names and pronouns in schools across Alberta.
— Egale Canada (@egalecanada.bsky.social) 2025-09-02T21:21:32.679Z
Ukraine Dispatch
Russia has launched air attacks on Kyiv overnight. There were fresh attacks on Ukrainian power facilities over the weekend, and Ukraine has vowed retaliation. Ukraine is also seeing a new troop buildup along certain parts of the front lines. As the school year starts in Ukraine, many more schools have been moved underground as a result of the war. The former Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada was gunned down on Saturday in a political assassination.