One of my favorite writers, Helen Pluckrose, is one of the founders of a promising new organization called Counterweight. The mission is to help individuals resist the imposition of Critical Social Justice (CSJ) in their day to day lives. Here's one of the organization's first Tweets: What is wrong with anti-racism training that's based on Critical Race Theory?
Amazon sells most of the books sold in the U.S. This includes 72% of all adult new book sales online and 80% of ebook sales. With great power comes great responsibility, though. Amazon has now taken the brazen step of stopping all sales of Ryan Anderson's book on gender dysphoria, When Harry Became Sally, falsely characterizing it in the process. You cannot find Anderson's book mentioned anywhere on Amazon's website. Here's a few things that have recently come to light.
First, a March 16, 2021 article in the Wall Street Journal titled, "Amazon Won’t Let You Read My BookAn enterprising state attorney general might want to look into why it was withdrawn from sale now." Here's an excerpt:
In a letter last week to four U.S. Senators, Amazon justified its decision to delist “When Harry Became Sally” by claiming it frames “LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.” This recycled charge is as false now as when Mr. Bezos’ newspaper first made it.
. . .
Why would Amazon exercise its unrivaled market power to banish my book? Because the book is changing minds in a continuing debate about how best to help patients who experience gender dysphoria. “When Harry Became Sally” has been praised by medical and legal experts—and that’s what makes it unacceptable to the woke.
And, indeed, the false "mental illness" allegation was made by the Washington Post, then retracted (and the headline of the hit piece was rewritten) after the Post was unable to produce any evidence for that claim.
Here is an excerpt from the the website of the books publisher, Encounter Books:
Everyone agrees that gender dysphoria is a serious condition that causes great suffering. There is a debate, however, which Amazon is seeking to shut down, about how best to treat patients who experience gender dysphoria. When Harry Became Sally is an important contribution, praised by medical experts, to that conversation.
No good comes from shutting down a debate about important matters on which reasonable people of good will disagree. Amazon is using its massive power to distort the marketplace of ideas and is deceiving its own customers in the process.
—Ryan T. Anderson, author When Harry Became Sally and Roger Kimball, Publisher, Encounter Books
Encounter then indicates why Amazon's conduct should matter to all of us, linking to Amazon's own statement for why it refuses to sell Anderson's book:
Encounter Books is committed to publishing authors with differing views on a wide range of issues of public concern. We do this because a free society requires robust debate and spaces where dissenting opinions can be expressed unimpeded.
If Amazon, which controls most of the book sales in America, has decided to delist a book with which some of its functionaries disagree, that is an unconscionable assault on free speech. It will have a chilling effect on the publishing industry and the free circulation of ideas. It must not be left to stand unchallenged.
Note: Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., is the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Founding Editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, New Jersey. I would like to read Anderson's book for myself, so I have ordered it from Encounter Books. I would assume that a lot of people would like to decide for themselves, rather than allow Amazon to dictate what they should be reading.
There is also a bit of personal context for my grave concerns about Amazon decision to censor us. None of us should be subjected to any form of a Nanny-State. After the Suess uproar, Amazon dictated that I could not have a book that I had previously purchased from Amazon: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. I wanted to see that book for myself to determine whether it was inappropriate. It is not for any other person or entity to tell me what ideas are appropriate for me. Here is Amazon's cancellation email for the Suess book.
Critical Race Theory claims to be the new improved way to deal with racial issues. How does the Woke doctrine, spreading through American schools and workplaces, compare to the principles of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's?
The creator of the above image is Woke Temple at Twitter. The "original document" above doesn't exist (I confirmed this through personal communication with "Woke Temple"), but it accurately serves as a summary of some of Martin Luther King's core teachings. The "corrections" in the graphic accurately reflect commonly espoused principles of Critical Race Theory (For more on CRT, consider the lectures and writings of prominent CRT advocates Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi). See also this glossary entry for CRT at New Discourses.
It should be apparent that one cannot honor the memory and teachings of Martin Luther King and, at the same time, support Critical Race Theory. They are mutually exclusive, so each of us needs to decide where we stand on this clash of ideas.
In the early 1960s, I was a young boy. I barely watched the news back then and I didn't appreciate the importance of the civil rights movement. That said, I always knew it was a bad idea to judge each other based on the way we looked. It made deep visceral sense, as did the platitude: "Don't judge a book by its cover." Now that I'm much older, I sometimes imagine going back in time to march with Martin Luther King to make a strong show of support for the real Civil Rights Movement.
For those of us who were too young to march with MLK, 2021 is our second chance to stand up for true Civil Rights Movement. Are you willing to be called names like "racist" by a loud group of zealots in order to take this strong moral stand? That would be such a small price to pay compared to what MLK had to endure. Are you willing to allow people to call you names to help keep this country from decaying back to days where we judge each other by immutable physical characteristics like color of skin? Where millions of people obsess about what "race" someone is? To a system of categorizing each other that makes no more sense than astrology or phrenology? Again, this is your chance - - your voice is needed, and all you need to do is to say out loud those thoughts you are already thinking. Judging each other by the way we look is an outrageously dysfunctional approach to interact with each other.
The longer we don't take a strong stand against Critical Race Theory, the more entrenched CRT will become in numerous schools (grade schools and colleges and see here), media outlets and governmental offices. Here's how bad it recently got at a major national museum. See also John McWhorter's analysis: CRT is a new fundamentalist religion.
You know what is at stake. We've already set aside a national holiday in his honor. Are you ready to speak up in support of Martin Luther King?
--
Quotes of Martin Luther King that bear on the principles set forth in the "document" above:
[Don't Judge Others by the Color of their Skin]
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love... Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding.
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children
[More . . . ]
I follow Matt Taibbi writings at his site, TK. His recent article is titled: "The Sovietization of the American Press: The transformation from phony "objectivity" to open one-party orthodoxy hasn't been an improvement."
It is a thoughtful analysis with many examples. What I'd like to do in this post is simply post one excerpt showing how the exact same issue is treated extraordinarily differently by the same Newspaper (NYT) under Trump versus under Biden:
[C]overage of Biden increasingly resembles official press releases, often featuring embarrassing, Soviet-style contortions. When Biden decided not to punish Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi on the grounds that the “cost” of “breaching the relationship with one of America’s key Arab allies” was too high, the New York Times headline read: “Biden Won’t Penalize Saudi Crown Prince Over Khashoggi’s Killing, Fearing Relations Breach.” When Donald Trump made the same calculation, saying he couldn’t cut ties because “the world is a very dangerous place” and “our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the paper joined most of the rest of the press corps in howling in outrage.
“In Extraordinary Statement, Trump Stands With Saudis Despite Khashoggi Killing.” was the Times headline, in a piece that said Trump’s decision was “a stark distillation of the Trump worldview: remorselessly transactional, heedless of the facts, determined to put America’s interests first, and founded on a theory of moral equivalence.” The paper noted, “Even Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill expressed revulsion.”
This week, in its “Crusader for the Poor” piece, the Times described Biden’s identical bin Salman decision as mere evidence that he remains “in the cautious middle” in his foreign policy. The paper previously had David Sanger dig up a quote from former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, who “applauded Mr. Biden for ‘trying to thread the needle here… This is the classic example of where you have to balance your values and your interests.’” It’s two opposite takes on exactly the same thing.
Matt Taibbi offers a peek into the workings of the brain of a prominent member of the media elite. These people are threatened by the fact that there are some real-life independent journalists who vigorously investigate stories (including stories about the corruption of the media elite) and who zealously follow the facts where they lead. I suspect they are also jealous that these real journalists are doing what these elites only pretend to do and they cannot hide this fraud from their own friends and family. They are jealous to the point of a self-loathing that has bloomed into Nietzschean ressentiment. That's my analysis. Even though I am not a professional psychiatrist, I don't think I'm far off.
See also, Glenn Greenwald's take on who is trying to cancel who, using the most twisted of logic.
