Post by NFA on Feb 28, 2021 22:58:57 GMT 8
The ‘World’s Largest Bookstore’ Gets Into the Censorship Business
Amazon’s decision to remove Ryan Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally isn't about a P.C. company removing one book—it is a challenge to the fundamental principles underlying American democracy.
By Roger Kimball February 27, 2021
amgreatness.com/2021/02/27/the-worlds-largest-bookstore-gets-into-the-censorship-business/
Amazon’s decision to remove Ryan Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally isn't about a P.C. company removing one book—it is a challenge to the fundamental principles underlying American democracy.
By Roger Kimball February 27, 2021
amgreatness.com/2021/02/27/the-worlds-largest-bookstore-gets-into-the-censorship-business/
...
So it was with When Harry Became Sally. Amazon had pushed it into the oubliette; the book was gone, “canceled” by the wardens of wokeness at Amazon. Further inquiries show that it was also gone from the Kindle store and from Audible, the audiobooks emporium that is owned by Amazon. As of this writing, the book is still available at Barnes and Noble and other emporia, including at the Encounter Books website.
We’ve heard a lot about “cancel culture” recently. Here was the latest example. The delisting, without any sort of warning, notice, or explanation of a serious, well-regarded book because . . . because, why? After multiple inquiries, we were informed that the book was removed because it violated Amazon’s new “content guidelines” against “offensive” material or “hate speech.”
Not for the first time, I was reminded that the wokerati of Big Tech and Big Media have become drunk with power and, emboldened by the Democratic sweep of the levers of power, have begun to regard Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as a how-to manual instead of what it is, a scarifying warning about the dangers of totalitarianism.
Amazon, which presides over more than 80 percent of the book sales in the United States, decides to erase a book, ostensibly because it violates a nebulous policy regarding offensive content but really because it violates today’s standard of political correctness. After all, Amazon has no problem selling Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or the lunatic, anti-Semitic ravings of Louis Farrakhan.
...
I will end with another observation from George Orwell. “If liberty means anything at all,” he wrote, “it means the right to tell people things they do not want to hear.”
So it was with When Harry Became Sally. Amazon had pushed it into the oubliette; the book was gone, “canceled” by the wardens of wokeness at Amazon. Further inquiries show that it was also gone from the Kindle store and from Audible, the audiobooks emporium that is owned by Amazon. As of this writing, the book is still available at Barnes and Noble and other emporia, including at the Encounter Books website.
We’ve heard a lot about “cancel culture” recently. Here was the latest example. The delisting, without any sort of warning, notice, or explanation of a serious, well-regarded book because . . . because, why? After multiple inquiries, we were informed that the book was removed because it violated Amazon’s new “content guidelines” against “offensive” material or “hate speech.”
Not for the first time, I was reminded that the wokerati of Big Tech and Big Media have become drunk with power and, emboldened by the Democratic sweep of the levers of power, have begun to regard Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as a how-to manual instead of what it is, a scarifying warning about the dangers of totalitarianism.
Amazon, which presides over more than 80 percent of the book sales in the United States, decides to erase a book, ostensibly because it violates a nebulous policy regarding offensive content but really because it violates today’s standard of political correctness. After all, Amazon has no problem selling Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or the lunatic, anti-Semitic ravings of Louis Farrakhan.
...
I will end with another observation from George Orwell. “If liberty means anything at all,” he wrote, “it means the right to tell people things they do not want to hear.”