A group of faith leaders inOhiodenounced a recent alleged hate crime in the state, in which a man burned books belonging to a public library. The destroyed books were on Jewish, African American and LGBTQ+ history.
“Unfortunately, this is one of those things that’s, like, I’m shocked, but not surprised, every time it happens,” Rev Ryan Wallace of Fairmount Presbyterian told the Guardian in an interview. “We need to not get complacent. Every time it happens, we have to be there to say, ‘this is unacceptable.’”
The group of faith leaders gathered on Monday to speak out against the book burning. The informal,inter-faith coalitionin Ohio, called the Interfaith Group Against Hate, has been organizing and engaging in political action in recent years, to combat far-right and white supremacist attacks.
Wallace said the coalition, which began in 2023, has also been engaging in pro-immigrant advocacy, in response to theTrump administration’s heightened offensive on immigrant communities.
“I’ve seen a lot of this kind of hate. And there’s more and more and more of it,” said Wallace. “And that was part of it, with this interfaith group, to say: let’s not pretend like this is just somebody else’s problem and that this is happening someplace else. It’s happening here.”
In early April, far-right social media accounts began circulating videos of a person who entered a public library in Beachwood,Ohio, checked out 100 books and proceeded to burn them. The videos were first identified by Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative, a research group tracking political violence throughout the US, who contacted local officials and activists in Beachwood.
The officials then contacted the local police department, which launched an investigation.
“I condemn this act, not only because it is a crime against our institutions and community, but also because it is fundamentally un-American,” said Kent Smith, an Ohio Democratic state senator, in astatement. “There is no place for such hate, censorship, or intimidation in Beachwood, nor this country.”
One of the videos, related to the alleged book burning, was shared on a white supremacist Telegram group, which was accessed and viewed by the Guardian.
The video shows a number of books in the trunk of a car, related to Jewish, Black and LGBTQ+ history. Among the books displayed in the video are Black Radical by Kerri K Greenidge, Fighting Auschwitz by Polish historian Józef Garliński, Pride and Persistence: Stories of Queer Activism by Mary Fairhurst Breen and The ABCs of Queer History by Seema Yasmin, among others.
“We are cleansing our libraries of degenerate filth,” the Telegram post reads.
A second video, shared on social media, shows someone throwing those books into a fire. Researchers identified the books as belonging to the Cuyahoga county public library due to the stickers on the books, according to a police report, asfirst reportedbyCleveland.com. The county’s public library system did not provide a comment.
The Beachwood police department launched an ongoing investigation, the department said in a statement to the Guardian. Once the investigation is complete, the city prosecutor will review and determine whether they can charge someone with a crime.
“Our department stands against antisemitism and all acts of bias-motivated crimes,” the Beachwood police chief Dan Grispino said in a statement. “We are committed to vigorously investigating and prosecuting any hate-motivated incidents within the City of Beachwood. Our priority is to maintain a community that can thrive without the fear of threats of intimidation or violence.”
The state of Ohio has a number of far-right, racist hate groups, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) initiative, an independent organization monitoring political violence. Patriot Front and White Lives Matter are the most prominent groups, ACLED reports.
“Since the start of 2023, Ohio has seen some of the highest levels of activity from white supremacist groups of any state,” the organization said in arecent video.
The white supremacist Telegram group, where the Guardian found the early April video of the books, belongs to the White Lives Matter in Ohio chapter. White Lives Matter has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
According to videos and posts shared in the Telegram chat, the group places stickers, drops flyers and hangs banners around the state of Ohio, promoting white supremacy. “Everything beautiful is white,” one sticker will read. “White people first,” another one reads.
The White Lives Matter organization does not just engage in propaganda efforts in the state – it has promoted outright violence.
In March 2023, White Lives Matter members arrived at a drag queen event, carrying flags with swastikas on them, shouting racist and homophobic slurs and “Heil Hitler”, according toCleveland.com.
Later that month, one of the White Lives Matter members firebombed a local church, in response to the church agreeing to host a drag show. The man responsible, who was discovered to have a Nazi flag and memorabilia by theFBI, was later sentenced to 18 years in prison for trying to destroy the church with molotov cocktails. The churchsuedthe White Lives Matter organization and some of its top members last year for damages.
There have been other far-right attacks and alarming instances in recent years, according to Wallace. Just more than a year ago, someone desecrated tombstones in a Jewish cemetery in Cleveland with swastikas. And a local football coachresignedin 2023, after he was caught using the word “Nazi” as a play call.
“Then there was a mosque that I’m very close with – there was a petition going around the community to shut the mosque down because they said they were ‘pro-Hamas.’ That was all lies,” said Wallace.
One of the defining moments for Wallace and the Interfaith Group Against Hate was during last fall’s presidential race, when the Donald Trump campaignfalsely claimedHaitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs. That’s when they realized that the group had to step up their organizing efforts to help immigrant communities in the region.
“ As a person of faith, I am called to stand in solidarity with the whole community, and to call for change in our community that reflects our shared values,” he said.
The group hopes to donate 1,000 books to the library system, related to Jewish, African American and LGBTQ+ history.