By now Americans should be accustomed to the sanctimony and hypocrisy of leftists, but sometimes leftists do something so outrageous or engage in a stunt at just the right moment that their sanctimony and hypocrisy slap Americans upside their complacent noggins.
Just days before the laughably named Banned Books Week (October 4-10, 2026) began, members of yet another gang of uncivil, unruly purportedly anti-tyranny, anti-censorship, liberty-loving, pro-“representation,” taboo-trashing inclusivists took to the streets of Livingston, Montana to shut down a Daily Wire movie set.
This was no peaceful protest against unjust government actions. This was a benighted effort by tyrannical leftists to sabotage a project because they didn’t like the ideas espoused by the movie.
According to Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, the movie’s plot revolves around “an ICE agent who comes under fire while arresting a criminal illegal immigrant.” For the sin of making a movie that advances a perspective shared by half the country, leftists employed unsavory tactics to censor the film.
The production company had secured all required permits and was abiding by all policies and laws when on the first day of filming, leftists who detest ideological diversity began their censorious work.
Leftist ne’er-do-wells played loud music and shouted through bullhorns to disrupt filming. They shouted obscenities at crew members, drove vehicles onto the set and toward crew members, flew a drone over the set, breached the set perimeter, threatened to slash crew members’ tires, called the Daily Wire security manager a Nazi and called for him to be shot, and released airborne irritants that resulted in crew members needing medical attention.
A large contingent of leftists showed up at a hastily called town hall meeting of the city commission to demand the city revoke the permit issued to Daily Wire. Since leftists have no moral or ethical boundaries, the town crazies socially constructed untruthful reasons for their censorship demands.
They griped about disruptions to the community, disruptions which are par for the course anytime movies are shot on location. Does anyone believe that if Greta Gerwig, George Clooney, Aaron Sorkin, Spike Lee, or Democratic Socialist Adam McKay were filming a movie in Livingston that cacophonous lefties would be caterwauling about brief business disruptions?
At the town hall meeting, about which Daily Wire was not notified, the city commission voted unanimously to suspend Daily Wire’s permit.
The community “disruption” red herring raises the more important “disruption” issue: the disruption of the filming caused by leftist antics.
One community member complained, “I have been witnessing armed security recording and scoping my home for over a week now from right outside my window. … What I am witnessing is not routine traffic control. It is armed, private security in paramilitary-style tactical gear with firearms.”
Daily Wire had had no plans to hire security for a short shoot in a small, peaceful town of 8,000. The cause of the presence of armed security was not Daily Wire. The cause was the hooligans who disrupted filming and put at risk the safety of the film crew. Leftists used the “heckler’s veto” to try to censor the film production because it espoused ideas they hate.
Leftists routinely employ the heckler’s veto to do their dirty censorious work, particularly at those bastions of ideological diversity: American college campuses. A conservative speaker is invited to speak at an institution of baser indoctrination. Leftists have a conniption. The administration uses that hecklers’ conniption as a rationalization to censor speech. “But,” squeal administrations, “that’s not censorship! No way, no how. That’s safety, don’t you know?”
Fortunately, Daily Wire can’t be so easily snookered by tyrants with big mouths. Daily Wire knows what’s at stake and knows the law. They threatened a lawsuit and after a seven-hour marathon meeting with the spineless city commissioners, their permit to film was restored.
The irony in this unfortunate censorship kerfuffle is that it took place just as the censorious, leftist American Library Association’s (ALA) annual Banned Books Week was getting underway. This is the week during which the ALA pretends that conservative Americans all across the country are trying to ban To Kill a Mockingbird.
In reality, conservative Americans are trying to prevent public money from being used to purchase obscene, sexually graphic picture books, graphic comic books, and Young Adult (YA) novels that will be made available to minors.
Conservatives are not trying to prevent the publication or sale of any books. Nor are they trying to prevent parents with poor judgment from buying obscene material to give to their children or read to their children.
If a blue-haired, septum-pierced mom wants to read graphic novels to her ten-year-old son about anal homosex, fellatio, and dildoes, have at it. Conservatives just don’t want their taxes used to purchase such slime. They don’t want their children’s teachers exposing their children to it. And they want to be able to let their little ones roam freely in the children’s section of a public library without fear that their kids will pick up a picture book about princes falling in love and kissing men.
The really fascinating and too little known “book-banning” story is the one in which leftists are the central characters. It’s breathtaking in both its scope and secrecy.
For decades, leftists have banned books with wild abandon. Publishing companies choose not to publish books that espouse ideas leftists hate. Leftist librarians socially construct Collection Development Policies (CDP) that determine which books libraries will purchase with their limited public funds. CDPs recommend buying only books that have been positively reviewed by professional review journals—journals which are controlled, coincidentally, by leftists.
Surprise, surprise, these policies result in libraries choosing not to purchase books that espouse ideas leftists hate.
Leftists can’t be accused of book-banning because their book-banning takes place behind the scenes. They can’t be accused of book-banning since books that they would demand be banned are never published and never purchased.
But you better believe if there were a picture book about a little girl penguin being raised by lesbians who cries herself to sleep every night longing for a mother, leftists would demand it be removed. There would be no more calls for “representation.”
If there were a YA novel about a teenage boy who hated the emotional instability of his two “mothers” or a teenage girl who hated the sexual promiscuity of her two “fathers,” I’m spit-balling here, but I suspect some leftists’ panties may get all bunched up.
Imagine what would happen if a public high school teacher placed on a recommended book list a YA novel about siblings who were sickened and humiliated by their father pretending to be a woman, or a YA novel about a nineteen-year-old detransitioner who felt betrayed by adults who facilitated the amputation of her healthy breasts when she was 15. Something tells me leftists might host a book-burning.
When I worked at Deerfield High School, I searched the school library on a host of topics including sexuality, gender, feminism, abortion, and race. The book collection was shockingly and embarrassingly imbalanced on every topic. Yep, leftists were amazingly effective book-banners.
Ask your school and public libraries to see their CDPs. Ask them specifically who developed their CDPs. Ask them if there is any criterion regarding obscenity or graphic sexuality in their CDPs. If they say no, ask why not.
The censors who walk sanctimoniously among us are not conservatives—not by a long shot. The censors are the ones who lie through their teeth as the claim to “honor all voices,” delight in diversity, treasure inclusion, and cherish “representation.”