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Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

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Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#831

Post by NeverFade »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #648
lgleason wrote: post #562

As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…

There's two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. These are some children's books that contain illustrations that some people find offensive and the publisher (and sellers) are deciding they no longer want to be associated with and sell to children. There are internet forums where the images are available and people can view them without the police knocking your door down, and I'm sure these are available in…

These are market-dominating book distributors like Amazon and eBay effectively deciding what people can and cannot read.

The fact that a few people might still be able to view images of these books (illegally, as they are copyrighted) on some tiny closed forum on the internet isn't a real comfort.

In the Soviet Union, there were also tiny isolated pockets where "forbidden books" were surreptitiously copied and read. However, the project to ban them was still very successful overall. The average subject of the Soviet regime would not have access to these books.

This is very much what is happening in the US right now. These books are being banned, and the next generations of US readers will have no access to them. The fact that one person in ten thousand might be able to find a used copy at a rare used bookstore (and pay pay thousands of dollars for it) doesn't really change anything, and it's dishonest to pretend otherwise.

This is book-banning, pure and simple.

> The actions of the publisher and ebay enhance the first (freedom from)

I would also like to thank our cultural commissars at Amazon and eBay for "freeing" us from dangerous ideas by forcibly preventing us from buying and selling the books which contain them.

eBay just took away the freedom of private individuals to sell books they legally own to each other.

You are calling this "freedom", using the word to refer to its exact opposite. This is Newspeak.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#834

Post by isolli »

sossles wrote: post #173
major505 wrote: post #96

I don't know any culture that banned books independent of their content that people didn't regret in the future. A few months ago I was reading about schools banning the book "To Kill a Mockingbird" because it contains basically the "n" word. I'm not american, and and havent read that book. I watched the movie, through, and it seemed to me to be a very anti racism message. I think instead of banning, schools should w…

I've read a few older books with my kids that contained mildly questionable things, like a boy saying that girls can't do certain things, but I much prefer having that awkward conversation about how things used to be, over tossing it all out and pretending things were never any different.

As someone once said about the controversy surrounding Mark Twain's books: "so there weren't any n** back then?"

Meaning that reprinting his books and replacing the n word with the more neutral "slave" risks whitewashing the terrible suffering that black slaves endured.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#835

Post by h0l0cube »

moduspol wrote: post #776
h0l0cube wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair these books ought to live on Archive.org, because they are basically 'classics' at this point. Plenty of problematic and dated books live there. While it has some Dr. Seuss books, it doesn't have the problematic ones, but for at least historical reasons, it should. https://archive.org/details/texts?and%5B%5D=dr+seuss&sin=

Certainly. After all, it's only a matter of time until the other ones become "problematic" as well.

There's likely plenty of things today that I'm sure that centuries or even decades from now will be considered morally repugnant. Animal cruelty, particularly in the context of factory farming, might be frowned upon today, but may one day be seen as unspeakably horrific.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#836

Post by fareesh »

undefined1 wrote: post #538
kleer001 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Entire fucking history of USSR is littered with different power-hungry people using noble goals to chop their competitors' heads off. Which is where I'm pretty sure the memetic tools came from to capture and wield this power over people. Where exactly? Marxism. Not it in and of its self, but along with the French Post structuralists a universal solvent of philosophy has been weaponized and let loose (and encouraged…

that sounds like what KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov describes here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA

His lecture video should be required viewing material and part of the educational curriculum, in my view.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#837

Post by ziofill »

ironmagma wrote: post #822
illirik wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line is rather stark. eBay choosing not to facilitate the sale of books containing racist caricatures is not in the same ballpark as a government suppressing ideas. It’s not even the same sport.

The government is a permeable membrane. There is nothing that stops these people from moving into government positions.

I'm sorry, you worry about these people might move into government positions when people like MTG are already in there causing harm?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#838

Post by kstenerud »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #817
kstenerud wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted you to counter the downvotes since this actually does add to the discussion. It's important to remember that the power of Mein Kampf lies in its status as a symbol, not its actual contents. Nobody actually reads Mein Kampf, nor have they ever (just like nobody actually reads the Bible unless they're actual preachers). It was (and still is) about the personality cult of a strong man and his message of power vi…

> just like nobody actually reads the Bible unless they're actual preachers The Bible is the single most influential work of literature in the history of human civilization. Comparing it to a "personality cult of a strong man" and Mein Kampf is perhaps the most uninformed comment I have ever read on this website.

What makes it uninformed?

I find the comparison apt: Both are iconic texts, both have international historical and present influence, and both are rarely actually read, despite people feeling confident about their contents.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#839

Post by macspoofing »

wirrbel wrote: post #573
major505 wrote: post #96

I don't know any culture that banned books independent of their content that people didn't regret in the future. A few months ago I was reading about schools banning the book "To Kill a Mockingbird" because it contains basically the "n" word. I'm not american, and and havent read that book. I watched the movie, through, and it seemed to me to be a very anti racism message. I think instead of banning, schools should w…

Germany here, we banned Mein Kampf from being sold (used copyright law to do that). I once stood in a book shop (teenager, time to look at books but not enough money to buy them) and some skindheads wanted to buy it, it wasn't available. They went away. Providing context is good, but frankly also really difficult and why not just provide newer childrens books that are more inclusive.

Who are you delegating the responsibility to for deciding what you should and should not be allowed to read?

Are you comfortable with an unpaid 20-something intern doing the deciding for you? Because, for example, that's who staffs a lot of 'fact checking' sites that Facebook then uses to keep content from you.

How about a fundamentalist Christian making those decisions for you?

>and some skindheads wanted to buy it, it wasn't available. They went away.

They went away eh? I take it Neo-nazism has been solved in Germany? And how, prey tell, did they become skinheads without reading the book?

>why not just provide newer childrens books that are more inclusive.

Who says these books weren't inclusive? They were read by hundreds of millions of children over the decades and translated into many languages. Show me the harm.

It's also distasteful that people who have read and enjoyed these books are now willing to deprive future generations of children from the same enjoyment ... even when it clearly did not hurt them.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#840

Post by UncleMeat »

NeverFade wrote: post #831
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. These are some children's books that contain illustrations that some people find offensive and the publisher (and sellers) are deciding they no longer want to be associated with and sell to children. There are internet forums where the images are available and people can view them without the police knocking your door down, and I'm sure these are available in…

These are market-dominating book distributors like Amazon and eBay effectively deciding what people can and cannot read. The fact that a few people might still be able to view images of these books (illegally, as they are copyrighted) on some tiny closed forum on the internet isn't a real comfort. In the Soviet Union, there were also tiny isolated pockets where "forbidden books" were surreptitiously copied and read.…

> These are huge book distributors like Amazon and eBay effectively deciding what people can and cannot read.

The books are available on Amazon.

> This is book-banning, pure and simple.

I'd wager that sales of these six books will be higher in the next week than they were in the last two years combined.

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