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When Amazon became denial

When Amazon became denial

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When Amazon became denial

Amazon is joining the list of big tech companies willing to silence and "cancel" any voices who will not fall in line with the most radically progressive sexual identity politics.

Joseph Grabowski by Joseph Grabowski
February 22, 2021
in Breaking News, Culture, Foreground, Foreground
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Reading Time: 5 mins read
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When Amazon became denial
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There’s an old quipping pun that runs, “Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.” That pun came to mind when thinking of that tech giant named for another famous river, Amazon.com, and its increasing embrace of “corporate wokeness” and other absurd excesses of modern political correctness.

Like many leaders in big tech, Amazon has become more and more an insular bubble of progressive groupthink, catering to the elitist and out-of-touch sensibilities of its internal culture and to the progressive ideological wing of American politics rather than to the diverse populations it is supposed to serve.

Witness the recent “cancelling” of the best-seller When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment by conservative scholar and Ethics & Public Policy Center President, Dr. Ryan T. Anderson. The book’s best-seller status was not only attested by its reaching number 3 on the Washington Post’s paperback nonfiction list, but also by its topping one of Amazon’s own categories! Evidently, the interests of its customers matter less than pleasing those within its own sycophantic sphere.

Anderson himself reported the news on Twitter Sunday afternoon, writing: “I hope you’ve already bought your copy, cause Amazon just removed my book […]from their cyber shelves…. my other four books are still available (for now).”

I hope you’ve already bought your copy, cause Amazon just removed my book “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment” from their cyber shelves…. my other four books are still available (for now). https://t.co/cnMGZV1L0A

— Ryan T. Anderson (@RyanTAnd) February 21, 2021

As noted by the Daily Caller, other prominent conservative voices quickly joined Anderson in voicing their dismay about this development, including eminent conservative scholar Professor Robert P. George of Princeton, who was a prior co-author of a book with Anderson:

We need to make clear to the oligarchs at places like Amazon that trying to make dissenting ideas inaccessible is intolerable and won't work. If Amazon blacklists a book, buy it from another seller or directly from the publisher. But buy it. And read it.https://t.co/VwstXyRF8j https://t.co/1OzYLHqTZy

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) February 21, 2021

While Anderson’s book was removed from Amazon, author Rod Dreher noted that a book written in response to Anderson was still listed for sale at the site:

By the way, @RyanTAnd, Amazon still sells "Let Harry Become Sally": https://t.co/VzBAeC3wU8

— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) February 21, 2021

This second book, Let Harry Become Sally by Kelly R. Novak, bills itself on Amazon as “the other Harry/Sally book”—a description which is quite odd now that the “OG” “Harry/Sally book” has disappeared from the website. Ironically, if one searches for the title of Anderson’s work, including the full subtitle, the first search result is the book written against his thesis.

As for the “other” book, Novak’s pretensions to serious scholarship challenging Anderson are undermined from the very first page of the preface. Within the first paragraph, for example, she writes:

“… anti-transgender thoughts, actions, laws, articles, and books have been on the rise. IMHO, a good example is Ryan T. Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally.”

How she purports to know that “thoughts” of any particular kind “have been on the rise” is beyond fathoming, nor how she could contrive to pose such a inapposite list as a single collective subject of a verb. Nor does one typically expect to find even the statement “in my honest opinion” in serious, academic work—let alone the SMS-speak acronym “IMHO.”

This is as to nothing next to the howlers that follow on the same page, as shown in the screenshot below from the Kindle edition:

Screenshot from the first page of the Preface to Let Harry Become Sally from the Kindle edition.

Ah, yes, that time-honored evidentiary demonstration known and loved by serious scholars everywhere: a meme of a facepalming statue.

The point is that Novak’s tome is transparently, from page one, everything ignorant critics of Anderson’s book claim it to be: a meanspirited, ideological manifesto, comprised of personal attacks and cherry-picked data. The tone, by contrast, of Anderson’s work, is measured, compassionate, scholarly, and circumspect. And yet only one of these books is seen as fit to sell by Amazon’s custodians of anti-culture.

Why did Amazon take this step? At this juncture, it seems they haven’t released any official statement or responded to media requests for comments. Anderson speculates, however, on one possible reason, which seems compelling. He tweeted this morning: “The timing of Amazon’s disappearing of my transgender book is, uh, timely… My op-ed in today’s @nypost is on the Equality Act vote this week. (Didn’t know my book would be removed when I wrote the op-ed.)”

The timing of Amazon’s disappearing of my transgender book is, uh, timely…
My op-ed in today’s @nypost is on the Equality Act vote this week. (Didn’t know my book would be removed when I wrote the op-ed.) https://t.co/SPt7nf9ERW https://t.co/jUKwdPm9mm

— Ryan T. Anderson (@RyanTAnd) February 22, 2021

It does seem unlikely that Amazon was retaliating for the op-ed itself, given the timing; but Anderson may nevertheless be on to something. With the introduction of the Equality Act last week, and its vote in the House scheduled for Wednesday of this week, it isn’t implausible that Amazon began feeling some political pressure to do more for “the cause” of late. How else to account for why Anderson’s book was suddenly deemed unsuitable for listing, when it has been on the website since 2018, and even ranked as a best-seller there for a time?

Whatever the explanation for the timing, the motivations of Amazon here are beyond doubt, and they should alarm us all. Amazon is joining the list of big tech companies willing to silence and “cancel” any voices who will not fall in line with the most radically progressive sexual identity politics. And even if this move by Amazon be only coincidental to the introduction of the Equality Act in Congress, it would be a coincidence resounding with an ominous ring of doom. Because if conservatives tremble at the actions of Amazon and other tech giants right now, in the present climate, how much more will they have to fear when if such actions become not only sanctioned but encouraged by force of federal law?

Joseph Grabowski

Joseph Grabowski

Joseph Grabowski was the Executive Director of the International Organization for the Family until August 2022. He also served as Director of Communications for the National Organization for Marriage. Joseph has a B.A. in Philosophy from Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary, Overbrook and M.A. in English from Marquette University.  Joe has appeared as an expert on traditional marriage and family in local and nationwide media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Breitbart, and elsewhere. Joe’s writings on traditional marriage and family, as well as on Catholic Social Teaching and the writings of G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, have appeared in The Stream, Gilbert Magazine, Ethika Politika, and The Distributist Review, and he has spoken at several national conferences on the place of G.K. Chesterton in 20th Century literature and thought.

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