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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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First of all, "155 hours" is an obvious hyperbole; there are not literally a million holocaust movies, either.

Secondly, it's not just history class. The Diary of a Anne Frank and Night are staples of English courses. I was assigned both, as well as We Are Witnesses.

The same site also lists Animal Farm and Nineteen eighty-four as staples of English courses. I agree that Orwell intended Nineteen eighty-four to be a general warning against totalitarianism but both when it was published in 1948 and now it is seen as primarily anti-Communist. Animal Farm is straightforwardly anti-Communist.

FWIW, the anti-Nazi lit I was exposed to in school was mostly of the refugee memoir variety (The Silver Sword and I am David) which doesn't represent the USSR very positively either. We also read Animal Farm and we looked at excerpts from One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich when we were studying "Why translating serious literary fiction is hard."