Libraries are the great levelers of class, dusty disruptions to inequality of all kinds, and The Librarians is a passionate reminder not to take them for granted. Kim A. Snyder’s documentary film chronicles the latest ascendancy of book-banning fascists in America, a contagious sickness that spread throughout school boards and congressional maps in the wake of the 2020 pandemic.
The coronavirus era broke the brains of seemingly countless Americans, many of whom protested school lockdowns and mask mandates. This seemingly emboldened a very specific type of parent (usually libertarian-leaning, science-skeptical, and loud), leading to showdowns and shouting matches at town halls and school board meetings. Bad actors saw dark potential in this angry movement of “concerned” citizens, realizing that their often-effective rage could be harnessed for bigger, bolder things.
These bad actors – politicians, corporations, religious fundamentalists – use angry parents and community members to advance a right-wing agenda in America. In addition to targeting voting rights, abortion rights, transgender rights, and other hot-topic civil liberties issues, their ire focuses on an array of books that, for a variety of reasons, they want to ban.
The Librarians begins with a list of 850 of the banned books, the so-called “Krause List”, named after right-wing Texas Republican State Representative Matt Krause. He sent a spreadsheet of these books to the Texas Education Agency in October 2021, catalyzing a flurry of censorship that would spiral out of control.
The first act of The Librarians is largely set in Texas, which had the most book bans of any state until Florida surpassed them in 2024. Snyder uses archival footage and interviews to recount how Granbury became the first city to become a Vichy-like collaborator in the book bans. Librarians and students recall boxes upon boxes of books being sealed and taken away. Suddenly, the Granbury government was deciding what information could and couldn’t be distributed in libraries, and other towns in Texas were ready to bend the knee.
The Librarians‘ David and Goliath Tale
A cursory glance at some banned titles reveals the obvious intentions behind the censorship. As The Librarians notes, the ban affected books about slavery, racism, and Black history (The Confessions of Nat Turner, Michelle Alexander and Cornel West’s The New Jim Crow), sex education (Sonya Newland’s The Reproductive System), legal rights (Julius Fast’s The Legal Atlas of the United States), abortion (Melissa Higgins’ Roe v. Wade: Abortion and a Woman’s Right to Privacy, Should Abortion Be Legal?), teen pregnancy (Cleo Stanley and Carolyn Simpson’s I’m Pregnant, Now What?), gender differences (Juno Dawson’s Understanding Gender) and even fiction (Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: A Graphic Novel).
The Librarians spends more time featuring its titular subjects opining vaguely about the invaluable importance of literature and free, diverse information than it does exploring the banned books in question. Instead, it presents a David-and-Goliath story of typically unseen and unheard librarians organizing to speak out and fight against an indifferent political machine and the fundamentalist cogs that turn its wheels. These are real underdogs, doubly so considering the librarians are all women (and often Southern women in conservative districts).
It’s very easy, then, to root for The Librarians’ subjects, including Carolyn Foote, Julie Miller, Martha Hickson, Nancy Jo Lambert, Becky Calzada, and Amanda Jones, who was named 2021 School Librarian of the Year (alongside Diane Mokuau). Jones was visited by congratulatory state representatives, including Louisiana State Representative Beryl Amedee, the same representative who would later dox and attack Jones on social media after she spoke out against the book bans.
Jones is one of multiple genuine heroes in The Librarians, working-class people who faced harassment and death threats for defending books. The Spring Branch school district in Houston literally eliminated all librarian positions; half of the librarians in Keller, Texas, were fired, and 27 were fired in the San Antonio school district. If they weren’t fired from their jobs (“like snuffing out a candle”, as one subject recalls), then they were ostracized by their communities. The plight of these local heroes is infuriating in a pretty righteous way.
Despite their fearlessness, the film’s subjects are relatable and grounded. This makes it easier to stomach the occasional dewy-eyed mawkishness with which the first half of The Librarians frames things. The story is dramatic enough without Snyder needing to resort to scenes like filming one of the women alone in her church, where she is bathed in light from the stained glass windows as she kneels and looks up with wet eyes to the wall-mounted crucifix. This kind of direction risks reducing the honest courage of good citizens to basic cable kitsch.
Book Banning Is a Harbinger of Fascism
Fortunately, the second half of The Librarians is more aesthetically subtle and heavier on information than sentiment (which arises naturally from the story itself). The personal becomes political as Snyder and her subjects follow the money, detailing how the book bans are far from an organic, grassroots campaign of “concerned” parents.
In fact, wealthy preachers like fracking billionaire Farris Wilks and prosperity gospel CEO Lance Wallnau are funding book banning, as is the duplicitously named 501(c), Moms for Liberty. So is Patriot Mobile, a virtual network operator with ties to Donald Trump Jr., the NRA, CPAC, and others. Together, they use their money to hotwire democracy and the minds of children, since, as Steve Bannon has said, “The school boards are the key that picks the lock.”
As The Librarians expertly recounts, millions of dollars were being quietly funneled into small communities to support the political campaigns of people who would do their bidding. Laney Hawes, a free speech advocate, conducted some research into Patriot Mobile, as did others in the film. “They backed 11 candidates in North Texas,” Hawes says in the film. “All 11 candidates won, and now they hold a majority and the president, the vice president, and the secretary on all four school boards that they decided to fund.”
Courtney Gore was one of those candidates, a concerned mom and far-right podcaster who didn’t want her children to be indoctrinated by “obscene” books. Except, when Gore actually read the literature being banned, she couldn’t find anything she objected to. She is interviewed in The Librarians after becoming a member of the Gransbury school board and changing her tune. Why she didn’t bother to read these books before campaigning for the school board is a different question, but it’s both enlightening and encouraging to see sanity wash over someone.
Gore’s story would almost be hopeful if an onslaught of death threats hadn’t immediately targeted her after speaking out against the bans. Fortunately, soon after this wave of abuse began, she wasn’t in attendance at one school district meeting when a man with a gun walked up to the lectern and said of Gore, “We know what you do, and we know where you live.” Gore admits in The Librarians, “I feel like, by talking, that is the only way I’m going to be able to protect myself.”
Snyder complements the film’s interviews with astounding footage of various school board meetings, town halls, and open forums from across the country. We hear condescending nonsense from some, violent extremism from others, and powerful pleas for cogency, empathy, and freedom from students and librarians. It’s an effective way to include impassioned speeches without veering into melodrama. This is the heightened tension of realpolitik, after all, of average citizens using their voices and bodies as one of the final impasses to fascism.
Make no mistake, book banning is fascism, because there can be only one opponent to free and open knowledge, and that is the authoritarian. Ideological or religious camouflage is merely a subterfuge for fools and those who are fooled alike. There can be no compromise, because book banning is like chronic addiction: one is too much and a thousand is never enough.
While mildly flawed in its direction and more of a better message than a film, The Librarians is nonetheless a sobering reminder that fascism waits in the wings of freedom and is always ready to take the stage if we let it. It’s an inspiring, maddening, and eye-opening documentary, and if a book ever saved your life, Kim A. Snyder’s film is sure to bring you to tears. Bibliophile or not, everyone should check out The Librarians and familiarize themselves with the fight and how it affects civil liberties, because this fight is far from over in America.