Did a Florida School Really Ban the Diary of Anne Frank?

In my youth, I used to buy into the entire “banned books” narrative the left put out there. 

You know the drill: prudish conservatives censor books, and upstanding liberals defend everybody’s right to speak and read what they want. You could walk into any random library or bookstore, and there would be a display of “banned” books that the proprietor put out there, defying those awful conservatives. 

Then, one day, I asked myself: If the book is really banned, why is it right there for me to read?

It’s virtue signaling, of course, and nothing more. And, over the years, it became clear that the people who complained so much about censorship were, in fact, very much in favor of it. They label certain books as banned in order to create a “Streisand effect,” where the attention is directed to something because, in this case, nobody is supposed to see it. 

California State Senator Scott Weiner–a man I have labeled “the most dangerous” elected official in the country–is making the same tired claims about conservatives banning a beloved book: The Diary of Anne Frank. 

A perfect representation of this dishonest “book banning” conversation.

Florida didn’t ban the diary of Anne Frank.

One Florida school removed a graphic novel based on the diary of Anne Frank that focused heavily on her being a lesbian and lusting after statues of naked women. https://t.co/7eFASlpnJK

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) August 25, 2025

The claim is, of course, completely false, but it creates a narrative that liberals love. An evil group–in this case, Moms for Liberty–is Nazi-adjacent and trying to hide the brutal reality of the Holocaust. 

The opposite is true. 

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A high school along Florida’s Atlantic Coast has removed a graphic novel based on the diary of Anne Frank after a leader of a conservative advocacy group challenged it, claiming it minimized the Holocaust.

“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” was removed from a library at Vero Beach High School after a leader of Moms for Liberty in Indian River County raised an objection. The school’s principal agreed with the objection, and the book was removed last month.

The book at one point shows the protagonist walking in a park, enchanted by female nude statues, and later proposing to a friend that they show each other their breasts.

Now, it’s no surprise that Scott Weiner would want that book to remain in the library. It is, after all, promoting the idea that the hero is a lesbian. Weiner, who advocated for decriminalizing gay sex with minor boys, is passionate about such things. 

Scott Wiener wanting the pornographic Anne Frank version (“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation”) available for CHILDREN instead of the original (which was NEVER banned) tells you EVERYTHING you already KNEW about HIM.

— tree hugging s*ster 🎃 (@WelbornBeege) August 25, 2025

But it’s hard to see how a “graphic novel” adaptation of Ann Frank’s life, depicting her as a horny lesbian, is on the same plane as the original “Diary of Anne Frank.” In fact, injecting this sexual element into the story–particularly a graphic novel–changes the focus. It is titillating. 

Anne Frank was 15 when she died. 

Other books about Anne Frank and copies of the published diary she wrote chronicling her time hiding from the Nazis with her family and other Jews in German-occupied Amsterdam remain in the school systems’ libraries. The Jewish teenager’s diary was published in 1947, several years after she died in a concentration camp, and it has become a classic read by tens of millions of people around the world.

By law, Florida schools are required to teach about the Holocaust, and nothing has changed in that respect, Maddux said.

“The feedback that the Holocaust is being removed from the curriculum and students aren’t knowledgeable about what happened, that is not the case at all,” Maddux said. “It’s just a challenged book and the principal removed it.”

If some parent wants to hand their kid a book discussing the sexual proclivities of a 15-year-old Holocaust victim, then they can. Even this book, in as bad taste as it is, is freely available. It just isn’t in a high school library. 99.9999% of all books written are not in that library either. 

According to AI estimates based on a Google Books study, approximately 170 million books have been written. The average size of a typical high school library is 12,800 books. 

You do the math. 

This is not the first time a leftist has accused Florida of “banning” a book that is on the state’s recommended reading list.

Another lie debunked. https://t.co/cLKme9zgty

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) August 25, 2025

But reality doesn’t fit the preferred leftist narrative, so people like Scott Weiner just make stuff up, and others, who want to believe this narrative, swallow it without thinking. 

It’s all the same Democrat playbook. Invent a lie and then beat up the Republicans for being terrible people. 

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