Mississippi libraries ordered to delete research in response to state laws

Free speech, authoritarianism, and hypocrisy

• Several commenters see the move as a clear authoritarian step: banning words and blocking access to research is likened to classic censorship and “book burning.”
• There is frustration that many self-described “free speech” advocates appear silent, or only defend speech that aligns with their own politics.
• Others note that principled free-speech absolutists are not surprised; they see this as a predictable outcome of earlier culture-war censorship from multiple sides.

Comparisons to Iran, Afghanistan, and human-rights trajectories

• Some compare Mississippi (and parts of the US) to theocracies like Iran or Taliban Afghanistan, arguing the differences are shrinking.
• Pushback emphasizes current differences in severity (e.g., criminalizing vs executing LGBTQ people) but others warn that if due process and rule of law erode, the “trajectory” can converge.
• Data on maternal and infant mortality rates are used to argue that Mississippi outcomes are comparable to, or worse than, Iran’s.
• A long subthread debates Islam and Christianity, with conflicting claims about whether Islam “started” as an imperialist death cult versus being similar to other expansionist systems of its era, and about historical due process under Sharia vs European law.

Status and value of gender/race studies and sociology

• Some defend the research fields, arguing that censorship is driven by political dislike of their findings, not scientific quality.
• Others call much gender/race studies “pseudo-science” or grievance-based, comparing it to historically harmful “race science,” but still question whether suppressing it via libraries is justified.
• There’s a broader argument over whether sociology is meaningfully “scientific,” touching on the reproducibility crisis and difficulty of controlled experiments in human systems.

Cancel culture vs state censorship

• One thread sees a swing from left-leaning “cancel culture” to right-wing state suppression of research as part of the same intolerance dynamic.
• Others argue the phrase “cancel culture” was itself a right-wing branding effort to delegitimize criticism, though critics respond that some people did in fact lose livelihoods over speech.
• Both sides note that whether by social mobbing or state action, the effect can be to chill disfavored speech.

European worries about propaganda and US politics

• A European commenter describes young Europeans repeating pro-Trump social-media slogans and sees this as evidence of large-scale propaganda and psy-ops.
• Suggestions for countering it include: better personal education, cultivating judgment, earning trust in one’s social circle, cutting ties with openly racist acquaintances, and volunteering/acting generously as a long-term cultural counterweight.

What is actually happening with Mississippi libraries

• Multiple commenters say the headline is misleading: the state library agency is not “deleting” research from existence.
• The state runs a tool (MAGNOLIA) that gives public libraries and schools access to commercial scholarly databases (like EBSCOhost). They are now using vendor settings to exclude certain collections (e.g., gender/race studies) from that interface.
• Larger universities retain independent access; the underlying research remains available via other subscriptions or channels.
• Critics still consider this a digital analogue of book banning: removing indexed access for ordinary users and students is seen as effective censorship, even if the originals persist elsewhere.
• Others downplay it as “just” turning off access in one tool, arguing that calling it “deleting research” is inflammatory and obscures the specific policy mechanism.

Role of libraries and curation

• One commenter wrestles with whether a library removing content is always a free-speech violation, noting that libraries must curate for quality and cannot hold everything.
• The counterargument is that libraries should largely rely on external scholarly quality controls (peer review, journal reputation) and that this case appears driven by ideology and state law rather than neutral quality assessment.