3 ms·
[1] - Those books shouldn't have been destroyed and this was widely decried. Quote at the bottom of your article from one of the authors of a destroyed book was
by WoahNoun 5y ago
[1] - Those books shouldn't have been destroyed and this was widely decried. Quote at the bottom of your article from one of the authors of a destroyed book was interesting though.
>André Noël, a Quebec journalist, noted on Twitter that his book, Trafic chez les Hurons, published in 2000, was among those removed from shelves. In a Twitter thread, Noël wrote in French that the removal of his book “surprises me and seems excessive.”
“But I fear that this controversy will distract us from the real scandal, which we have not yet fully measured: the destruction of Indigenous lands and the oppression of Indigenous peoples by Europeans and their descendants, including in Canada and in Quebec,” he wrote.
[2] - Private company can sell what they want.
[3] - Private company can create whatever products they want.
[4] - The argument in the article is that there are marginalized students who want to read these books.
- finite_jest 5y agoOn (1), that quote is quite irrelevant to the current discussion, and I don't want to get into that. I'm glad that we all agree that burning books should be condemned. On (2) and (3), neither of these are true in reality, and most don't think they should be true either. Even if you are an extremely principled libertarian, I am sure that you don't think that every single thing a "private" entity does is inherently good. We, the "private" citizens, certainly can (and should) criticize their actions. On (4), as I said in my comment, I very much disagree with the prudish/ideological banning of the book from school libraries, so I guess we agree on that?
- WoahNoun 5y agoAre you advocating that private companies have to sell and produce items they don't want to? Amazon doesn't want to sell those items and the copyright holder of Dr. Seuss doesn't want to create them. Are you saying the government should force them to sell and produce those products?
- finite_jest 5y agoI simply think Amazon should not censor books, and people who are against censorship should try pressuring them into not doing that. As for government intervention, at least for the case of Amazon banning books, it seems practically infeasible to me. Large and vociferous factions of the ruling class do want censorship, and Amazon et al are doing it in part to appease them. For social media censorship, there might be a better chance of effective regulation, as probably more people care about it than banned books.