Well, backfired with respect to the general public. But eighth graders in that school district will probably still not be studying Maus in class with a teacher who can help them appreciate it.

What really bothers me about the board’s deliberation is something I’ve only seen so far in one article. One member of the board, Mike Cochran, said Maus might amount to indoctrination: “If I was trying to indoctrinate somebody’s kids, this is how I would do it. You put this stuff just enough on the edges, so the parents don’t catch it but the kids, they soak it in. I think we need to relook at the entire curriculum.”

That’s really frightening, because it tells me at least one board member questions the Holocaust or at least believes more than one “side” ought to be presented. It tells me the board as a whole might have been using profanity and nudity as fig leaves for something darker.

It’s worth at least noting that the far right in the United States, the Trump-supporting right that led the 6 January insurrection and that forms armed militias in my own state of Michigan and elsewhere, are as anti-Semitic as they are racist and white nationalist.

Whether this school board is knowingly anti-Semitic isn’t something this banning controversy can probably illuminate, but the idea that anti-Semitism has begun to infiltrate that community is not all far fetched. It’s rather more likely than not.