Especially during my freshman year of college it was pretty common for me to have a book like The Communist Manifesto lying out on my desk for everybody who entered the room to see. The next week might be Mein Kampf. The week after that would be The Wealth of Nations and that would sit on my desk for a while because it's long, dry, and analytical.
I wasn't alone. All through college a lot of people left controversial books lying around and thought nothing of it.
We didn't think anything of it because our culture hadn't gone completely insane yet. Nobody accused me of being a communist because they saw me reading Marx. Nobody accused me of being a Nazi because they saw me reading Hitler. Yes, people accused me of being a capitalist; but, that wasn't because I was reading Adam Smith - it's because I am a capitalist.
I simply never encountered that culture that told us that you are what you read. It didn't occur to me that curiosity displayed toward manics like Marx and Hitler and the desire to read what they wrote with their own hands would immediately be taken as celebration of their ideas.
We're living in that world now. It wasn't particularly popular among a lot of people that I decided to read Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier. Apparently I immediately believe everything that she does despite my having read How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi and spening most of my time chastising it.
My first copy of Defending My Enemy prominently featured neo-Nazis and Nazi symbolism on the cover. It is in no way insane for me to think that I would be attacked and brought before disciplinary committees for triggering students if I read that book on campus today.
