WATCH | Joseph Maximilliam Dunnigan On How Censorship Of Books Exists Across The World, From The US To China

Censorship often wears the mask of protection, but behind it lies confusion, fear, and control. One of the most absurd examples? In 2010, the Texas State Board of Education banned Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? not for its content, but because they mixed up the author, Bill Martin Jr., with a completely different Bill Martin, a Marxist philosopher. Joseph Maximillian Dunnigan, founder of the Banned Books Museum in Estonia, shared this absurd anecdote during a conversation with Outlook Video Journalist Divya Tiwari. He said, “When they banned this Bill Martin, they also accidentally banned the children’s author Bill Martin. That was very embarrassing, of course, and they had to apologise. But it shows, I think, something very important, which is that censorship is not a very useful, effective tool. And usually it is used by people who are not very, let’s say, skilful and thoughtful.”

This moment, where a yellow duck and a blue horse were briefly seen as communist threats, captures the deeper truth about censorship: it’s often less about content and more about power. Through his museum in Estonia, Dunnigan works to show how censorship operates not just in dictatorships, but everywhere, including democracies, where fear clouds judgment and stories are silenced.