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Our Woke Book Burners

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Morning Shots

Our Woke Book Burners

Books are not violence

Charlie Sykes
Jul 16, 2021
51
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Our Woke Book Burners

morningshots.thebulwark.com

Today’s Morning Shots comes with a trigger warning. You may encounter ideas you disagree with. But we never promised you a safe space.

**

Apparently, we have to remind people about this again:

If all Printers were determin’d not to print anything till they were sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed.
― Benjamin Franklin

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.
― Ray Bradbury

We’ve devoted a great deal of time lately to discussing illiberalism and authoritarianism, and justifiably so. But we have to recognize that liberalism and free expression face a two-front assault — from the intolerant Left as well as the troglodyte Right.

ICYMI: The other day, the American Booksellers Association donned the sackcloth of wokeness and issued this statement of performative groveling:

Twitter avatar for @ABAbook
American Booksellers Association @ABAbook
Image
7:54 PM ∙ Jul 14, 2021
743Likes128Retweets

The “serious, violent incident” here was sending out copies of this book:

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by [Abigail Shrier]

**

Some background.

The author of the offending book, Abigail Shrier, writes for the Wall Street Journal and is a graduate of Columbia College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. Her book is obviously controversial, but it was named one of the best books of the year by The Economist and one of the best of 2021 by The Times of London.

Reviewing the book in Commentary, Naomi Schaefer Riley wrote:

If you want to understand why suddenly it seems that (mostly) young girls from (mostly) white middle- or upper-class backgrounds (many of whom are in the same friend groups) have decided to start dressing like boys, cutting their hair short, changing their name to a masculine one, and even taking hormones, using chest compressors, and getting themselves surgically altered, you must read Abigail K. Shrier’s urgent new book, Irreversible Damage.

But not surprisingly, this sort of thing triggered opponents, who demanded that it be suppressed.

After receiving two Twitter complaints, Target stopped selling the book (a decision they later reversed . . . and then reversed again). Hundreds of Amazon employees signed a petition demanding the company stop selling the book.

Even the ACLU seemed to break bad on the idea that the book should be available in the marketplace of ideas. Chase Strangio, the American Civil Liberties Union’s deputy director for transgender justice, tweeted: “Abigail Shrier’s book is a dangerous polemic with a goal of making people not trans. . . . We have to fight these ideas which are leading to the criminalization of trans life again.”

He declared: “Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.”

Shrier commented: “You read that right: Some in today’s ACLU favor book banning. Grace Lavery, a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, went further, tweeting: ‘I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre.’

“This,” Shrier wrote, ”is where leftist extremism, encouraged by cowardly corporations, leads.”

**

Under normal circumstances, the American Booksellers Association is very much into free expression and opposed to censorship. They are the sort of people who wear buttons declaring “WE READ BANNED BOOKS.”

Its website still includes this declaration:

But it turns out there are limits to free expression, not just for the ABA, but for many of the nation’s booksellers. This month the ABA sent a mailing to 750 bookstores, which included a copy of the heretical book. Blowback was fierce.

Publishers Weekly reported that the American Booksellers Association was “facing withering criticism from booksellers after walking back its promotion of an anti-trans title to member bookstores.”

Among booksellers . . . there was little disagreement about the content of the book. “As longtime @ABAbook members with beloved staff across the gender spectrum, we're extremely disappointed and angered to see the ABA promoting dangerous, widely discredited anti-trans propaganda, and we're calling for accountability,” the Harvard Book Store wrote on Twitter.

Within hours, it issued the fulsome apology. Shrier’s reaction:

Twitter avatar for @AbigailShrier
Abigail Shrier @AbigailShrier
If there were a Hall of Fame for capitulations to Woke bullies, the American Booksellers Association is hereby inducted. The "serious, violent incident" they perpetrated? Including my book in a large box of new book samples sent out to independent booksellers.
Twitter avatar for @ABAbook
American Booksellers Association @ABAbook
https://t.co/RmPSkmyrmX
4:12 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
1,963Likes409Retweets

Despite the tone of the apology, the wokest of the booksellers were not satisfied. The outraged booksellers “said the statement fell short, calling out the organization’s use of the passive voice in the opening sentence.” Reported Publishers Weekly:

They also demanded greater transparency about how the decision to include the book was initially made, and called for demonstrable steps to restore trust with trans book workers and authors. Some called on the ABA to offer promotions for trans authors' books at no cost.

**

But elsewhere, the reaction to the ABA’s statement was blistering, with much of it focusing on the irony of an organization devoted to selling books apologizing for selling a book.

Twitter avatar for @PurePopPub
Rich Horton @PurePopPub
@ABAbook Old School ABA = American Booksellers Association New School ABA = American Book-burners Association
4:11 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
73Likes7Retweets
Twitter avatar for @a_centrism
A New Radical Centrism @a_centrism
@ABAbook "violent incidents" My Lai, 9/11, Oklahoma City bombings, reasonable book about transgender people included in mailing list. All unspeakable horrors.
4:51 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
124Likes7Retweets
Twitter avatar for @JoanneMason11
Joanne Mason @JoanneMason11
If mailing a book to members of your professional booksellers group is a "serious, violent incident" then words have no meaning, and we can no longer call ourselves a serious people. I'm not saying this is how you get a president Trump, but this is how you get a president Trump.
7:30 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
70Likes15Retweets
Twitter avatar for @SchubertBrian
Brian Schubert @SchubertBrian
@ABAbook The thing about totalitarianism isn’t the gulag but society’s acquiescence in living the lie. Like, including a book title in a mailing to book sellers is “violent.”
4:04 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
141Likes6Retweets
Twitter avatar for @HJWallEcon
Howard Wall 💰📈📝 @HJWallEcon
@ABAbook Books are violence, so says the American Violencesellers Association
3:08 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
362Likes15Retweets
Twitter avatar for @lennysperson
Annie Kenney @lennysperson
@ABAbook I understand burning books can be very cathartic for those frightened of words.
5:29 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
Twitter avatar for @hughgmeechan
Jaggybunnet @hughgmeechan
@ABAbook
Duro Dora GIF
6:37 AM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
Twitter avatar for @jonhider
Jon Hider @jonhider
@ABAbook Interesting statement…”mailing to members…serious, violent incident”. Is FedEx, UPS, or the USPS an accessory to this violent act? Are they liable for any injuries? Beyond dumb world we live in these days
6:19 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
22Likes4Retweets
Twitter avatar for @__hodl__
__hodl__running #btc☂️🟩 @__hodl__
@ABAbook Information is not violent JFC this is ridiculous and dangerous, go read this again
Image
6:26 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
8Likes1Retweet
Twitter avatar for @FrancisWheen
Francis Wheen @FrancisWheen
@ABAbook A "violent incident"? Oh do grow up -- and move out of bookselling into a job for which you have an aptitude. Is there a vacancy anywhere for a professional crow-eater?
4:43 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
543Likes20Retweets
Twitter avatar for @primalpoly
Geoffrey Miller @primalpoly
@ABAbook Thanks for making it clear that American booksellers have become witless, gutless cowards who will censor any book that offends woke online mobs. If you can't distinguish between words and 'violence' you have no business doing business in a country founded on free speech.
4:29 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
1,291Likes76Retweets
Twitter avatar for @Marianne_Mandoe
Marianne Adult Human FEMALE 💚🤍💜 @Marianne_Mandoe
@ABAbook Did you run around smacking people over the head with said book? Did you tape people's eyes open and force them to read? Did you tie people down and read quotations aloud to them? If No, then it's not violence. It's a BOOK!! And people can choose to read it or not.
12:52 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
144Likes4Retweets
Twitter avatar for @craig_slizt
Craig Slizt @craig_slizt
@ABAbook Thank you. I accidentally bought this violent book. UPS left it on my doorstep, and when I got home, it beat the crap out of me. 😠
6:36 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021

**

This is not a debate over transgenderism but rather a question of whether we can even have a debate at all. It is an objectively ominous moment when the folks who sell books think there are some ideas too dangerous to print . . . or read.

Take note: if you are offended by a book, (1) don’t buy it, (2) don’t read it, or (3) make an effort to correct or refute it.

Don’t burn it.

Quick Hits

How the Party of Reagan Became the Party of Trump

Excellent piece in today’s Bulwark by Brian Stewart: “Conservative and Republican elites mocked the populist revolt in their midst right up until the moment they embraced and enabled it.”

Picture this: In a clash and clang of antagonism toward the Republican establishment, a sizable portion of the base of the party congeals around a vociferous, divisive figure. He has little use for the American conservative creed, with its prudent devotion to preserving liberty by keeping government limited and by giving order and virtue their due. This rambunctious tribune repudiates both the substance and style of the Republican party—for decades the vessel for the conservative program—including its vigorous support for free trade and a decent international order. He professes indifference to the national debt, refusing even to contemplate any cuts in the generosity of big middle-class spending programs like Medicare and Social Security. The party’s inclusive attitude toward ethnic and religious minorities and its palpable respect for immigrants has no claim on him. His speeches infuriate both the Democrats and the GOP establishment, which only cements his bond with the base.

Not Donald Trump in 2016 but Pat Buchanan in 1992.

Cheap Shots

Twitter avatar for @KT_So_It_Goes
kilgore trout, terminal hiccups patient @KT_So_It_Goes
lol these magnificent dipshits
Image
Image
9:55 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
859Likes149Retweets
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Our Woke Book Burners

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