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Posts tagged ‘BOOK BANS’

Biden Cried ‘Book Ban,’ Then Pressured Amazon to Ban His Opponents from World’s Biggest Bookstore


BY: KYLEE GRISWOLD | FEBRUARY 09, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/09/biden-cried-book-ban-then-pressured-amazon-to-ban-his-opponents-from-worlds-biggest-bookstore/

Joe Biden talks to woman in a library

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Democrats and their accomplices in the media have expended an awful lot of ink, breath, and energy trying to convince voters that people on the right want to “ban books.” The leftist firestorm attacks concerned parents working to eradicate pornography and other age-inappropriate books from taxpayer-funded schools and libraries. These works include titles such as All Boys Aren’t Blue, which contains descriptions of rape, incest, and pedophilia, and Gender Queer, which shows graphic depictions of oral sex, masturbation, and homosexual acts.

Democrat activists have come out in full-throated defense of explicit sexual content for children and likened conservatives who oppose it to Nazis who want to burn books. Last month, MSNBC host Joy Reid grilled the co-founder of Moms for Liberty about why parents should have any say in how their tax dollars are used and argued that kids who identify as LGBT “feel seen” by stories about child rape.

One Democrat governor ironically argued that Republican efforts to shield children from age-inappropriate content are “castrating them.” President Joe Biden has also smeared Republicans for “banning books,” and even announced during “pride month” that he would appoint a “book ban coordinator” to make sure schools weren’t removing filth from their shelves.

That’s why it was so ridiculous to learn this week that all while Democrats were shrieking about pornography “book bans,” the Biden White House was actively “pressuring” Amazon, the world’s largest bookseller, to nuke books that raised concerns about experimental Covid-19 shots. It’s a pretty good bet that’s not the only topic the White House pressured Amazon to ban, either. According to internal documents and emails subpoenaed by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, senior Biden official Andy Slavitt, who pressured Facebook to censor speech, was pushing Amazon to ban books disagreeing with Democrat policies.

Because Slavitt didn’t like the “concerning” results that turned up when he searched Amazon books for “vaccines,” he emailed the corporation on March 2, 2021, to ask to whom Biden officials could speak about “the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon.” The vaccine debate was, and is still, ongoing. But the White House was mad that Amazon didn’t slap a warning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention onto books that stepped out of line from the government’s Covid claims.

At first, Amazon opted not to manually censor books. But as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan wrote on X, it wasn’t “out of any commitment to free speech, but because doing so would be ‘too visible’ to the American public and likely to spur criticism from conservative media.” Amazon noted it was already taking heat for censoring Ryan T. Anderson’s book on the transgender debate, When Harry Became Sally, the month prior. The White House fired back, irritated that Amazon didn’t editorialize its book product pages with context tags, the way X and Facebook propagandist “fact-checkers” do. As Jordan pointed out, the administration couldn’t have Americans thinking for themselves.

Biden’s team was so demanding that by the time Amazon met with White House officials the next week, the company’s No. 1 question was, “Is the Admin asking us to remove books?” And the demands apparently worked. March 9, the same day as Amazon’s meeting with administration officials, it opted not to “promote” books the Democrat administration didn’t like. Just a few days later, it said it was looking into other steps “to reduce the visibility” of books that ticked off the Biden regime.

So just to be clear, at the same time the propaganda press and Democrats were crying “book ban” because rightly concerned parents were trying to eradicate taxpayer-funded gay porn from school libraries, the Biden administration was colluding with the world’s biggest bookstore to bury non-leftist viewpoints from sight.

Since we’re talking about Amazon, here’s another thing. Democrats, who claim to be mad that you don’t want your kid waltzing into the library and willy-nilly snagging a picture book about one little boy giving another little boy a blow job, can effortlessly nab a copy of any of these books with the click of a button and have them Amazon “Primed” to their doorsteps overnight. These graphic books aren’t “banned” in any sense of the word.

Meanwhile, Democrats are willing to exert undo pressure from the highest office in the land to ensure mainstream viewpoints it doesn’t like are as difficult as possible to find — or nuked from Amazon’s mega bookstore altogether. Maybe there is such a thing as a “book ban.” But it’s not on gay porn for kiddos.


Kylee Griswold is the editorial director of The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religion, and the media. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.

No, Age-Appropriate Library Restrictions Are Not ‘Book Bans’


BY: RAHEEM WILLIAMS | MARCH 15, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/15/no-age-appropriate-library-restrictions-are-not-book-bans/

kids section of a library where media claim book bans are taking effect
A public, taxpayer-funded entity refusing to purchase and disseminate a book does not constitute a ‘ban,’ contrary to media reports.

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Reports of book banning have proliferated throughout the media. Understandably, such claims should raise concern among free speech advocates. The ability to freely disseminate knowledge and challenge the status quo is a fundamental pillar of a free society. An illiberal act such as a book ban should be met with scorn by those who truly care about advancing society. However, behind claims of rampantly spreading censorship, a key question has been left unanswered. What’s a book ban?

The word ban is generally understood to mean a prohibition of a certain behavior, substance, or object. However, due to First Amendment constitutional protections and corresponding case law, it’s illegal for any government entity to outlaw the possession of a book. With very rare exceptions, there are no penalties for owning, buying, and selling books in America.

Yet media reports claim book bans are spreading like wildfires in states such as Florida and Texas. So how can that be?

Which Books Are Banned?

The issue is primarily a cultural tug-of-war taking place in public school libraries. The discovery of sexually explicit books on school bookshelves nationwide has sparked controversy.

Pen America is easily the most cited organization when it comes to book bans. The self-proclaimed “free speech” advocacy group is mentioned in almost every media report on the subject. Yet few Americans understand the very expansive definition of a “book ban” utilized by the organization. Pen America considers books “challenged for review,” but still available for student use, as “banned” even if the books haven’t been removed from the library. Pen America considers any book that’s available but age-restricted as “banned.” Moreover, several school districts have refuted the popular book ban list produced by Pen America, claiming the list contained books that were never removed from circulation in their respective libraries.

An expansive view of “book bans” creates a few problems. There’s an assumption that the government has a responsibility to produce and distribute every book in existence to school children free of charge. This may sound great until you consider that books often contain inaccurate, poorly sourced, or controversial information. I doubt anyone of reason would consider the exclusion of books such as Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” (a Nazi manifesto), “The Anarchist Cookbook” (a bomb-building guide), and “The Turner Diaries” (a white supremacy recruitment novel) from our public K-12 libraries to be an illiberal attempt to suppress free speech.

Does Ideology Influence Book Selection?

Nonetheless, there’s reason to believe some librarians have injected their own bias into the procurement process. Writer Kirk Cameron has had his Christian children’s books rejected by publicly funded libraries that openly embrace drag queen story hours featuring pro-transgender book titles. At the time of writing, Pen America’s website produced nothing on the aforementioned controversies surrounding the rejection of conservative-themed books.

Additionally, the American Association of School Librarians grants an annual “Social Justice” award of $2,000 to librarians and $5,000 for new books to school librarians for devising a “program, unit, or event in support of social justice using resources of the school library.” Although one may agree with the decisions of a publicly funded library to promote or demote a certain viewpoint, it requires a substantial degree of denialism to pretend viewpoint discrimination isn’t happening.

Who Should Pick the Books?

A 5-4 Supreme Court Decision in Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico (1982) restricts school boards from removing books on the basis of subject matter, recognizing school libraries as special free speech zones. However, the dissenting justices argued that, because books can be obtained outside the school library and school board officials are democratically elected to handle affairs related to the management of the school, there are no First Amendment implications concerning the exclusion of certain materials. Furthermore, the view of school libraries as being crucial free speech zones seems antiquated in the age of social media and smartphones.

Maybe it’s time to question the idea that a government agency refusing to disseminate a book constitutes a ban of any sort. Public school libraries are taxpayer-funded entities. In our democratic society, we vote for policies that reflect our values and preferences. These voter preferences should manifest as we set priorities in public school education.

Just as many jurisdictions may refuse to provide bomb-building instruction, gunsmithing guides, and white supremacy manifestos to their students, school boards everywhere should be allowed to make reasonable value judgments concerning objectionable content.

Educators and librarians are humans with biases and policy preferences just like the rest of us. Deferring to them with no community oversight doesn’t prevent viewpoint discrimination; it just ensures it goes unchallenged.


Raheem Williams is a policy analyst at the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE). He has worked for several liberty-based academic research centers and think tanks. He received his B.A. in economics from Florida International University and his M.A. in financial economics from the University of Detroit Mercy.

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