Throughout the history of the written word there have been many instances of book burnings: the “out” ideas that found their way into print were eliminated by either those in authority or a mob, usually on a bonfire, and always with the purpose of suppressing the free exchange of ideas. The modern age is no different. Book burnings may no longer take place in city squares, but they happen nonetheless, only now with the simple click of a mouse.
A recent FoxNews report gives us the latest instance of modern day book burning. The headline reads: “Amazon accused of ‘absurd and unacceptable’ censorship after book questioning transgender movement vanishes.” What book vanished, you might ask? Something obscene or something too graphic for general consumption? It was Ryan T. Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. The book has been a bestseller and deals with the current transgender “moment” that has taken our society by storm. According to the FoxNews report, the book is “aimed to provide ‘thoughtful answer to questions arising from our transgender moment’ and offered “a balanced approach to public policy on gender identity, and a sober assessment of the human costs of getting human nature wrong.'”
I must confess that I own a copy of When Harry Became Sally. I must also confess that I have not finished reading the book, but that what I have read is both balanced and informative. It is also dangerous to the transgender movement and moment exactly because it is a balanced and informative look at a strange moment in the history of human social interaction. For what seems to be the first time in human history, we are being “asked” to ignore basic human anatomy and biology and deny the most fundamental aspects of reality. The transgender “moment” is about us being “asked” to know that an individual is biologically one gender but to pretend–and by pretend, I really mean believe and act according to that belief, regardless of the facts–that person is the opposite gender or has no gender at all. And when I say we have been “asked” I mean we are being “told” and now also coerced. And moreover, books that challenge the call to “pretend” are being removed from the marketplace of ideas, with one click of a mouse.
Amazon is a big company; that’s also an understatement. Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world and has an outsize control on the flow of information in our world. Amazon sells books, of course, but Amazon does much more than that. Amazon Web Services, for example, hosts an untold number of websites and controls the flow of much of the world’s internet traffic. When Amazon decided it did not agree with the policies of the social media platform Parler, for example, it removed Parler from its servers, practically destroying the ability of individuals to communicate via that platform and exchange ideas with other users (good or bad). Now, Amazon seems to have removed a bestselling book from its site and for what purpose, we can only guess because Amazon has yet to comment. Based upon what we know about how Amazon and other information and technology conglomerates have behaved recently, we can assume When Harry Became Sally was removed because it does not toe the line of political correctness regarding transgenderism.
Someone at Amazon, with the click of a mouse, removed a book from the marketplace of ideas. The book, to the best of my knowledge (again, I have not read every page just yet) is not obscene or even vitriolic. It simply challenges the politically and socially correct narrative about transgenderism and that, by itself, is enough of a transgression to get the book tossed on the bonfire of Amazon’s choosing. All Amazon had to do to “burn” When Harry Became Sally was to click some box and simply remove it. The flames were extremely fast moving and left no indication of what had happened: no smoke, no embers, no ashes. When Harry Became Sally simply ceased to exist. (This reminds me, eerily, of Orwell’s 1984, where the “Ministry of Truth” simply erased the past. Perhaps Orwell was prophetic. But I digress.)
Book burnings of the past were often–if not exclusively–public events. Not that being a public event made it right, but at least there was some kind of public “judgement” upon the ideas that were being destroyed by fire. Amazon’s book burning equivalent has been done in private and there is no opportunity for the public to even react or have an opinion about what has transpired. Such as the world we now inhabit: we live in a digital sphere where ideas and even people can be “disappeared” at the click of a mouse. A modern day book burning requires nothing more than an offended Amazon employee and strong mouse-clicking finger. There is no longer the “due process” of gathering up the offending books and burning them in the public square. There is no opportunity for the public to rush those who would burn books in public and stop the carnage. Modern day book burnings are now held in secret and with no opportunity for redress. Amazon–and likely others of similar stature–simply decide that a book is not “orthodox” enough and with the click of a mouse condemn the book to destruction.
If you’re a fair-minded person, you should not support book burnings, period. That does not mean that obscene material, such a pornography, should have a place on the same shelf as reasonable arguments for or against a certain worldview. I am not saying that some books should not be rejected; I would say that a book advocating for the sexual abuse of children should be rejected by a society and have no place in our discourse, but that is because the sexual abuse of a child is objectively and inherently evil. There is a difference between Amazon selling obscene materials and Amazon selling simple divergent views on topics and issues. If When Harry Became Sally advocated for the torture and execution of those who claim to be transgender, for example, I would support Amazon refusing to sell such a book. But that’s not what’s happening here. Indeed, Amazon does sell obscene material (no link will be provided, of course) but it censors well-reasoned arguments against ideas Amazon supports. That is a clear difference. A true book burning is one that destroys and removes reasonable arguments from the public discourse for the simple sake of promoting a favored view over another one.
The Nazis were the book burning types. In May of 1933, the Nazis burned books claimed to be “un-German.” According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, “the book burnings took place in 34 university towns and cities. Works of prominent Jewish, liberal, and leftist writers need up in the bonfires. The book burnings stood as powerful symbol of Mazi intolerance and censorship.” The book burning on May 10, 1933, is one of most well known book burnings of this era. It happened in Berlin. It was attended by thousands. I have stood at the site of this atrocity and looked down into the memorial established to remind the world of the dangers of burning books. The kinds of books burned by the Nazis were books that simply did not fit the current political narrative or were authored by those the Nazis found disagreeable. It was long after the book burnings that the Nazis took up gassing and burning the bodies of those they disagreed with. That’s the danger of book burning: it never stops with books. It always turns into the persecution (and sometimes execution) of people.
How should we feel when we hear that Amazon has chosen that a book should no longer be available in the marketplace of ideas? If the book is simply a dissenting voice or an argument in favor of a position we oppose, we should be indignant at the idea of a book being banned or burned or removed or disappeared. We should not advocate for the removal of books that have positions we simply disagree with. For example, it would be wrong for us to expect and encourage Amazon to ban books that promoted transgenderism. We would not want someone to read a book on the topic that led them into a worldview that includes transgenderism, but we also recognize the danger is disallowing such arguments from having a place in the public discourse. We believe, as a general rule, that arguments for all positions on an issue should be allowed and let the best argument win. We do not support the burning of ideas just because we think the idea is wrong or even harmful if consumed. Yes, we draw lines when it comes to objectively evil materials, but we do not draw the line at simple disagreement over reasonable arguments and disparate ideas.
Let me be clear: I am one hundred percent against the “transgender moment.” It is absurd, dangerous, and against human flourishing. It is training a generation to ignore reality and to perpetuate an illusion. We are in a moment in history that celebrates the willful ignoring of facts and even biology. We are in a moment that promotes the “felt needs” of a minority of individuals over the global experience of virtually all inhabitants of the world, both past and present. We live in a moment in time where the elites and power brokers (such as Amazon) can control the public discourse with the click of a mouse. Where will this lead?
The ultimate destination for us seems to be one that we don’t want to imagine. At what point does an offended employee of Amazon, with enough power to “decide”, make the decision to remove others book–I don’t know, like the Bible–that he or she considers to be objectionable and wrong? How long until books like my own The Time Is Now, which is sold on Amazon, are discovered to be unfit and removed as well? It is easy to “tsk-tsk” at this now because it only affects Ryan T. Anderson and anyone who wants to read his book. But if we don’t stand up for what’s right for him, why would we stand up for anyone else? Will we really have the fortitude to stand up when the Bible is censored?
Which leads to my final thought on this topic, for now: How should we respond? Do we boycott Amazon? Perhaps. Do we write letters to Amazon urging them to understand the dangers of their course of conduct? Probably a good idea. Do we go buy Ryan T. Anderson’s book from another retailer to show support? I would, if I had not already purchased it. More than all of these things, however, I think the best thing we can do is seek to understand the issues and convince others in our circle of influence to not buy into the current transgender moment or to buy into a culture that see book burning as acceptable. The “cancel culture” is coming for anyone and everyone who dares to disagree and the world the “cancel culture” will produce is a world that will look an awful lot like the Oceania of Orwell’s imagination (see 1984 if you want to catch a glimpse).
We live in strange times, but history has seen this before. Book burnings never promote human flourishing. That’s why, now more than ever, we must be advocates for human flourishing, before it’s too late.