Paint splattered on floors. Spray-painted messages covering walls. Furniture moved and overturned. Security cameras disabled. Fire extinguishers missing and entrances blocked by stacks of chairs.
White-walled stairwells were covered with red paint showing an arrow up to a makeshift medic station on the second floor amid anarchist symbols of an “A” written inside a circle and messages including “BURN YER HOMEWORK” and “CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE DOESN’T MAKE US CRIMINALS.”1
The library sits in the center of the campus, and people this week have scrawled graffiti on its outer curved, glass walls and interior corridors.
There has been destruction to the library and reported theft of prized collections. The library will be closed for quite some time. 2
Portland police identify those arrested during Portland State University crackdown
Charges run the gamut from criminal trespass to assault on a public safety officer. Of the 32 in custody, "at least six" were PSU students, police said.3
The preservation and annihilation of books, ideas, and free expression is the topic of this Substack.
The Portland State University Library will be forced to shut down for several months after sustaining heavy damage.
Some readings:
Knuth, Rebecca. Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction. Praeger, 2006.
Ovenden, Richard [VNV]. Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack. 2020.
Pettegree, Andrew, and Arthur der Weduwen. 2021. The library: a fragile history. London: Profile Books Ltd.
“Portland police identify those arrested during Portland State University crackdown. |url=https://www.kgw.com/article/news/crime/portland-state-unversity-psu-police-protest-arrest-suspects-library-damage/283-05971989-2030-4546-b83e-e3e08366028c |website=KGW 8 |access-date=May 4, 2024 |date=May 3, 2024}}
The erasure of art and history, and its replacement with only those things which are acceptable to the Party, is a founding principle of Communism. It must be resisted, and the perpetrators brought to justice at all costs.
“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The erasure of art and history, and its replacement with only those things which are acceptable to the Party, is a founding principle of Communism. It must be resisted, and the perpetrators brought to justice at all costs.
“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Awful. But this is what happens when you coddle those who hate Western civilization.