Thread by @MsMelChen

Ben is right about this one.

There were a lot of "ACKSHUALLY no one banned or canceled Dr. Seuss books" in my replies.

Here's the thing: if the last few months have shown you anything, it is that the slippery slope is indeed slippery AND that "cultural changes" can be just as

https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1367109850703024133

if not more powerful than government censorship itself.

One thing I know a fair bit about is book publishing in the Middle East. There are countries with long lists of officially banned books (e.g. Kuwait), but for many others, books are de facto banned via social opprobrium.

This has an effect on the entire book publishing industry there. Publishers don't sell because the market isn't there; readers can't purchase because it's not economically sound for publishers to sell.

This does not make for a vibrant reading culture if books people want to

read cannot be bought. For reference, an Arab bestseller is a book that sells more than 5,000 copies in a given YEAR.

Contrast this with what it takes to achieve NYT bestseller status here: 5K-10K copies have to be sold in one WEEK.

For decades now, Arab regimes and Islamist

movements have stifled ideas that don't conform to their own. Culture ministers put more effort into suppressing literary works than encouraging it, and Islamists harass authors they disapprove of (happens in Egypt, Pakistan, etc.).

Whenever a work attracts religious fatwas, it

inevitably becomes a bestseller. In the case of the Dr. Seuss books, the estate ceased production (while holding the copyright), which has the same effect as limiting
supply & driving prices up. The results are effectively similar to a govt / religious cleric banning the book,

just without the part where the author or publisher gets kidnapped or jailed or killed.

Ultimately this is about whether we think a climate of freedom and cultural pluralism is key to creativity and human flourishing. Just because something is happening via free markets

doesn't mean it's a good thing in and of itself. The people likely to "ACKSHUALLY" this case know this to be true because they apply this logic to other pet causes such as environmental issues.

So no, those of us sounding off on this aren't alarmists. For years I have railed

against conservatives banning books - Harry Potter, And Tango Makes Three, etc.

Many books we recognize as part of the repertoire of a classical education were at some point, banned: On the Origin of Species, Brave New World, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Catcher In the Rye.

Censorship is always justified by the harm caused on society (this is not to say that there aren't good reasons to make it difficult for children of a certain age to access certain works).

Book publishing and book reading is a barometer of our culture of freedom. Fight for it.