The phrase “book burning” conjures dictators demanding certain books, and the thoughts found within them, be expunged from society.
Literal book burnings date back centuries, but the invention of the printing press made the practice more commonplace in the modern era. The following groups embraced the concept:
- al-Qaida Islamists
- Adolf Hitler and the Nazis
- Mao Zedong
Ray Bradbury even wrote a book about it. HBO remade his 1953 shocker, “Fahrenheit 451,” two years ago starring Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon.
Only two years ago Time Magazine stated the obvious about book burning, connecting it to the cultural mindset of the mid-20th century:
Book-burning by then had become a sort of shorthand: if you are on the side of book-burners, you’ve already lost the argument.
How things change.
Now, major retail giants have little issue yanking books from their cyber shelves deemed “problematic” to the Far Left.
In the past few days Target.com removed, and then quietly restored, two books under assault by progressives. Author Abigail Shrier’s “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” a book critical of extreme arguments tied to sexuality, vanished from the store’s cyber shelves.
Why?
A single social media user demanded Target stop selling the book.
Here’s part of “Irreversible Damage’s” official Amazon description:
Abigail Shrier, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, has dug deep into the trans epidemic, talking to the girls, their agonized parents, and the counselors and doctors who enable gender transitions, as well as to “detransitioners”—young women who bitterly regret what they have done to themselves.
Target eventually returned the book to its digital shelves after a conservative-backed outcry. Shrier described similar pressure to remove her book, a movement led by Silicon Valley.
Target wasn’t done dampening free speech, though. The retail chain quickly struck again, removing author Debra Soh’s book, “The End of Gender,” from its online stores.
Hey @Target @AskTarget Where did my book go? pic.twitter.com/Y0B41NCW3t
— Dr. Debra Soh — THE END OF GENDER is anti-woke (@DrDebraSoh) November 14, 2020
Consider Amazon’s official description of Soh’s tome:
The End of Gender is a conversation-starting work that will challenge what you thought you knew about gender, identity, and everything in between. Timely, informative, and provocative, it will arm you with the facts you need to come to your own conclusions about gender identity and its place in the world today.
Soh’s book also got restored by Target in speedy fashion.
It gets worse.
When Shrier’s book got removed by Target this reporter reached out to multiple groups dedicated to free expression for comment.
The latter organization famously went to bat for director Michael Moore after YouTube removed his film, “Planet of the Humans,” under dubious circumstances. Neither PEN America nor NCAC have responded to requests for comment.
Freedom House almost immediately did, though. Here’s the spokesperson’s response.
While we are generally free speech advocates, we don’t know enough about this specific situation to comment.
Full disclosure: This reporter didn’t bother contacting the ACLU. The group that once defended the right for Nazis to speak previously ignored recent queries on similar free speech issues. Plus, an ACLU lawyer recently cheered on cyber book burning. So does a California professor who’d rather incinerate Shrier’s book than engage its arguments.
The itch to burn books isn’t relegated to just Shrier and Soh. In September, former J.K. Rowling fans shared videos of themselves burning “Harry Potter” books. The author’s refusal to embrace every aspect of the far-left’s platform on trans issues made her a target.
Photo by Kyle Cleveland on Unsplash
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