One of the civil rights issues of our time, we are told, is fighting back against the fascist impulse to keep porn out of the public schools.
Porn, you see, is vital to children's social development. Without it 5th graders might not learn the importance of sexually deviant practices such as scat play, how to use gay hookup apps, or which of the 142 genders they might be.
Keeping sexually explicit books out of elementary and middle schools is "banning books," and banning books is wrong.
At least, that is what we have been told. Right?
Never-before-released internal emails subpoenaed by @JudiciaryGOP reveal that the Biden White House pressured Amazon to censor books that expressed views the White House did not approve of.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 5, 2024
“Is the [Biden] Admin asking us to remove books”? pic.twitter.com/ZsAN9BZAcX
Well it turns out that the Biden administration was very active in its efforts to suppress books that it didn't like, and unlike the issue of what books are appropriate for the government to provide children in small libraries, they tried to censor books at scale by getting Amazon to either not carry the books or make them very difficult to find or purchase.
On March 2, 2021, Slavitt fired off an email demanding to know who he and his White House colleagues could talk to at the company about “the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?” pic.twitter.com/aWSMp3aSOc
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 5, 2024
One of the chief censors at the White House--the famously aggressive Andrew Slavitt (about whom I wrote yesterday)--is resisting a subpoena to testify to Congress. He was one of the key architects of the pressure campaign against social media companies, which succeeded in getting them to censor non-approved speech and to ban users the regime disliked.
Slavitt, it turns out, was so enamored of his success in bullying Facebook and Twitter that he turned his sights on Amazon, the largest and most powerful bookseller in the world. He was determined to suppress "misinformation" at scale.
Initially, Amazon decided to hold off on “doing a manual intervention” to censor books.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 5, 2024
Why? Not out of any commitment to free speech, but because doing so would be “too visible” to the American public and likely to spur criticism from conservative media. pic.twitter.com/166wXiPsha
As with Twitter, the tech giant initially balked at fulfilling the government's requests. One of the striking and oft-forgotten facts revealed in the Twitter Files was that Twitter was initially resistant to the censorship push, not so much because they were opposed to suppressing speech, but because they were wary of the government's role in doing it.
The resistance crumbled quickly. Governments have enormous leverage in dealing with private companies, and especially so when the industry crosses so many various boundaries that regulators can tie you up for years in adjudicating minor issues, should they so choose.
"Nice company you've got there. Shame if something were to happen to it."
Soon enough, Twitter and Facebook became enthusiastic censors.
A week later, on March 9, 2021, Amazon met with the White House.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 5, 2024
Internal Amazon documents reveal Amazon’s “top talking points” going into the meeting.
One of the key questions was whether the Biden White House wanted books banned or just buried deep in the search results: pic.twitter.com/wnWj9eCyJf
Amazon's resistance may have been genuine--although I doubt it, given that they have crumbled to outside pressure to suppress books before this--or it may have been an opening gambit in what amounted to a negotiation between the bookseller and the White House.
On March 2, 2021, Amazon determined internally that it would “not be doing a manual intervention today.”
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 5, 2024
The online bookstore set a meeting with senior Biden White House officials for March 9, 2021.
Unsurprisingly, Amazon caved in. The White House pressure campaign worked.
My sense is that what Amazon was doing here was not protecting its customers, free speech, or even its own business practices. They were negotiating the rules of the road with the White House.
As with anyone they wanted to maximize their freedom while maintaining good relations with the powers that be: you give a little, I give a little, and we are all friends, right?
After the White House spent a week berating Amazon, what did the online bookstore do?
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 5, 2024
Starting March 9—the same day as its meeting with the White House—Amazon enabled “Do Not Promote” for books that expressed the view that vaccines were not effective. pic.twitter.com/8YEXjAL8BD
It would be naive to expect any major corporation to go to war for abstract principles like "free speech," although one would have hoped that a company that began as a bookseller would defend selling books.
But it's not so absurd to expect that somebody in the White House should give a damn about the First Amendment. And yes, any reasonable reading of the First Amendment would tell you that an administration pressuring a company to censor content is, in fact, the government censoring content.
When the White House pressures somebody, there is clearly an implied "Or else."
That’s right.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 5, 2024
Amazon caved to the pressure from the Biden White House to censor speech. @JudiciaryGOP and @Weaponization are investigating.https://t.co/P1hlB3c5WO
Representative Jim Jordan is teasing that there is more to come, and no doubt it will be dispiriting to read just how corrupted our government has become.
Unfortunately, I am pretty sure we can expect that nobody in the MSM will be interested in covering the story.
Why? For the obvious reason that the mainstream media is just as much in favor of silencing dissenting voices as the increasingly fascist federal government. People in power are always likely to abuse their power--if they can get away with it.
The MSM is supposed to hold them in check. How's that working out for us these days?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member