eBay Pulling Listings of Canceled Dr. Seuss Books Because They Violate the ‘Offensive Material Policy’
You can still list and buy Mein Kampf, other Hitler items, books written by Che, Mao’s Little Red Book, etc.
People have taken to social media to vent over eBay, the auction site, removing their listings of the now-canceled Dr. Seuss books.
Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced it would cease publication of six books due to “racist and insensitive imagery.”
- And to Think I saw It on Mulberry Street
- If I Ran the Zoo
- McElligot’s Pool
- On Beyond Zebra!
- Scrambled Eggs Super!
- The Cat’s Quizzer
People bought the books on Amazon to then sell on eBay. Listings went through the roof but then disappeared. The company claimed the listings violated its Offensive Materials Policy.
Oh, you can still sell and buy Mein Kampf.
LET’S GOOOOOOO! pic.twitter.com/KF3n67yCkZ
— Cʜɪᴢᴀᴅ ⚜️? (@AUChizad) March 2, 2021
WOWWWW pic.twitter.com/BaRQSqsABJ
— Cʜɪᴢᴀᴅ ⚜️? (@AUChizad) March 4, 2021
I could sell Mein Kampf but not And to Think that I Saw it On Mulberry Street because it’s “hateful”. pic.twitter.com/nUqK8wuOLf
— Cʜɪᴢᴀᴅ ⚜️? (@AUChizad) March 4, 2021
You can’t make this stuff up. @eBay is blocking my listing of @DrSeuss’s “The Cat’s Quizzer” & citing it as offensive material. Yet anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan’s books are okay? #cancelcancelculture pic.twitter.com/9Au62lagcW
— Clare Ath (@clare_ath) March 4, 2021
Let’s see what else you can sell and buy on eBay!
I found 25,813 results for Hitler.
Anti-Semitic literature!
Ah yes. Angela Davis books.
Mao!
Louis Farrakhan
Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers
Che
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Comments
People have seriously lost their minds.
I’m pretty sure you also buy disgraced former senator Al Franken’s compassionately titled “Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot” as well
Gaslighting, low IQ whatever you call it, it’s all the same too stupid to know better.
Sounds like people need to start reporting on the various other books that contain hateful, anti-semetic, misogynist and otherwise gave-yard filling doctrines of the past.
I wonder if they could be sued for promoting racism and racial discrimination, since they’re only removing books from specific race and gender combinations?
Of course, the courts don’t want to be caught in that mess, so, of course, if you aren’t the right race/gender combination yourself, they’ll simply deny standing.
Fun times.
Since when can anybody be sued for “promoting racism and racial discrimination”? On the contrary, even if they were openly and explicitly doing that, it’s protected by the first amendment so no court could accept any suit against it.
Based on Biden’s choices for who he is surrounding himself with…they absolutely will pass a federal hate speech law…AND the current SC will do NOTHING about it
No, they won’t. And if by some chance they do it will never get to the supreme court, because the first district court to get a crack at it will strike it down, and the appeals courts will reject it summarily.
Have you been asleep for the last 4 months?
Oh and btw the HR1 bill they just passed in the House says…
The bill declares that the only courts with jurisdiction to hear challenges to its constitutionality, or to the validity of regulations promulgated under the law, are courts within Washington, D.C.
….my point being the Democrats will do whatever they damn well please and the courts have proven to us they are completely onboard or ready to ignore…no standing/moot/just not rule and say nothing.
No, I have not been asleep. Nothing that has happened in the last 4 months makes it even slightly more likely that any court in the land would uphold such a purported law.
They have seriously jumped the shark.
What a bumch of power-mad people, doing this.
What a bunch of lemmings, going along.
Twilight Zone.
So Leftists are finally up to virtual book burning.
The matches will be out soon.
Who needs to burn books when you can just ban them from Amazon and Ebay?
You can LITERALLY buy a copy of freaking Mein Kampf on eBay but not Dr Seuss.
And I’d like to personally thank all the surrender monkey apologists that were totally fine with their initial trial balloon of banning Alex Jones.
In two fucking years they went from Alex Jones to freaking Dr Seuss, EXACTLY AS PREDICTED.
This is just so bizarre that there has to be some other explanation for it. I can’t think what it might be, but surely nobody could seriously be this insane without being consigned to a padded room. Surely?
A CEO of a large engineering company sent out a company wide email to the effect of no-one doubts the validity of the 2020 election.
Not that it was above reproach, or conducted appropriately, or the courts have rules therefore it is over. Rather, that there are no one with doubts, a statement that is false on the face of it.
But the CEO has now spoken, so if you want to be an engineer there, you’d best day exactly what you are expected to, because that has never gone wrong or ever but anyone on the backside before. Nope, not once.
It is not about crazy; it is about power, and compelling you to speak a lie, that you know is lie, just shows their power over you. And theore blatently insane the statement they can compel from you, the more power they have over you.
That is not analogous. The incident you cite isn’t about power, it’s about people who actually believe this, and believe that you also believe it, and therefore when you say the opposite you are deliberately lying. It’s partly like vaccines, or the roundness of the earth, or evolution; expressing any doubt about these things marks you as either a lunatic or a liar. And it’s partly like the Holocaust, where 99.9% of people who deny it are vicious vile pieces of filth who not only know full well that it happened, but are happy that it happened, and deny it only for political purposes. To them, the election result is the same; nobody really denies it, and those who pretend to do so only to manipulate people or to justify violence.
What eBay is doing here is completely different. Not in the same category of lunacy at all. Which to me means there must be some kind of explanation, but I can’t think of one.
The explanation is that they hate you, and people who think like you.
No more complicated explanation is needed.
It’s explainable through group psychology, aka Groupthink. Seuss has been pronounced anathema, and that’s sufficient for those who count themselves among the Righteous.
Thinking requires brains. A crowd and a mob are not the same, for a crowd often consists of largely independent individuals, and such a crowd has many brains, each thinking its own thoughts. But a mob has none (or at most just one).
A mob doesn’t think, it emotes. What you’re seeing here is explainable in the psychology of mobs.
With all due respect, you did not read my post.
The CEO stated that no-one doubted the results, not that the results were beyond doubt.
You and I can disagree on whether a bridge may stand or fall, however it we cannot legitimately disagree on whether someone has started doubts as to whether a bridge will stand or fall. If someone stands up and says “I think this bridge will fall” regardless of whether they are right, wrong, or a complete idiot, an engineer *cannot* ethically assert that no-one has raised doubts.
That is a bed rock of engineering ethics. Apparently, you don’t seem to know or understand that.
Milhouse…
” nothing that has happened in the last 4 months makes it even slightly more likely that any court in the land would uphold such a purported law.”….
Just WOW!…You are either willfully obtuse or so naive that it must be hard to function. The SC sat on tbeir hands…along with many other courts and allowed a presidential election to be stolen for a mid stage dementia patient and you think they will White Knight for the constitution over Hate Speech laws. Seriously that”s delusional on your part. They will allow it however or whatever Roberts has to pretzel twist or call it…just like they will allow HR1 after they ram that thru. They have made it clear what side they are on and how little they care about America, its citizens and Constitution. You might want to read the dissents the few non corrupt SC judges wrote…they Know.
Blues, every word you wrote is complete bullcrap. None of that happened, or even came close to happening. And yes, not just the supreme court but all the courts will protect freedom of speech. They have consistently done so in the past, and nothing has changed.
Some will post here arguing that a private company has the right to sell or not sell. Aside from the fact that the ban on Dr Seuss makes no sense, it does not alter the fact that if you refuse to design a cake for a gay or lesbian wedding, then in some states the “human rights commission” can ruin you. Why is one action allowed, and the other prosecuted? If the argument is that refusing to design the cake is discrimination, what does that say about Hollywood studios that refuse to make movies where Christian or conservative values are celebrated? Try approaching (say) Universal Studios with a proposal and the funding to make a hagiography of Donald Trump, and watch what happens to you!
Yes, a private company does have the right to do this, no matter how little sense it makes.
If you refuse to design a cake for a gay or lesbian wedding, then in some states the “human rights commission” can ruin you,
Only if it alleges that your refusal constitutes discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, which is against the law in those states or cities.
Because there’s a law against one and not against the other. You must understand that nowhere in the USA is there a law against “discrimination” per se. There are only laws against specific kinds of discrimination, by specific kinds of people. Public accommodations, anywhere in the USA, are not allowed to discriminate on the grounds of sex, race, religion, disability, or age over 40. They are allowed to discriminate on any other grounds they like, unless their state or locality has a law against it.
Also bear in mind that eBay is not discriminating against sellers but against material, and there is no law against that, anywhere. It could ban the sale on its site of all books by black authors, and that would probably not be illegal discrimination so long as it treated all sellers of such material equally.
That obviously does not answer the question.
Question: Why should these actions be treated differently?
Milhouse’s answer: They are treated differently because someone decided to treat them differently.
They should be treated differently because the only reason certain kinds of discrimination are illegal is because certain legislatures have made a law against it.
The default has always been that discrimination is perfectly legal. Exceptions must be explicitly specified by law. If there’s no law creating a certain exception then it doesn’t exist.
It’s like drugs. By default all drugs are legal; if the legislature has banned one kind of drug then that kind is illegal but all other kinds remain legal. You can’t then complain when one person is prosecuted for cocaine and another person is not prosecuted for caffeine, or when a person in one jurisdiction is prosecuted for marijuana and one in another jurisdiction is not. That’s how it works.
This is all very different from crimes that are malum per se, and are therefore crimes whether the legislature thinks so or not. If a legislature decides to legalize burglary, that wouldn’t make it no longer a crime; it would just make it a crime that people can unfortunately get away with. That’s because burglary is inherently wrong, and it’s a legislature’s duty to make laws against it, and an executive’s duty to enforce them.
That is rank positivism. With this kind of thinking you must deny that there is any reason not to do away with free speech, because it is only granted to anyone by government. Never mind that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself spell out that these rights are prior to government. And, I suppose, slavery was fine until it wasn’t? As the end of your comment shows you are not consistently positivist after all. So why don’t you just admit that there is no rational reason to treat these things differently or provide a rational reason—from the perspective of the legislator, as that was clearly what was asked for. We’re not primarily talking law but justice.
Also untrue. Especially in common law tradition it is obviously untrue, if by by law you mean by statute which you obviously do, because you claim it needs to be specified. Of course, in your positivism there is a streak of belief in whatever the courts say goes. So maybe once a court decides that discrimination because of sexual orientation is really discrimination because of sex you start telling people that is explicitly specified by law. Who knows?
In any case we’re dealing with the question of what is just not what is legal. We’re talking de lege ferenda if you will, not de lege lata. Civil law traditions have much more experience with this.
Wrong once again. First of all, suddenly you are talking about criminal law. Nobody disputes that retroactive criminal laws are a no-go. Although you cannot really give a reason and would tell us that, actually, when the legislature makes such a law, if necessary after amending the constitution, that would be a-ok.
Secondly, the fact that different lawgivers make different decisions is not fundamentally a problem of justice, assuming the lawgivers are not legislating laws that violate fundamental justice.
This is not applicable to the question of why in the same jurisdiction two sets of behavior that on the surface are comparable are not treated comparably.
And now you’re destroying your own argument and reject positivism? I agree that positivism is a horrible ideology that rejects the very idea of justice in favor of an absolutism of a majority or dictator or whoever has the power to force others to follow the text he declares is the law.
Where do you find that duty of the legislature? Didn’t you just tell us that the reason to treat certain discriminations differently is the pure will of the human legislator and that will alone? And to not ask for reasons because it is the will of the human legislator to do it this way?
Just to clarify your position, if burglary is something the legislature must prohibit, if the legislature fails to do so, can the courts declare that duty, and if the legislature does not comply with the decision simply rule that law into place?
Felix, you’re incoherent. What I wrote is literally the exact opposite of positivism. Are you seriously unaware of the difference between malum per se and malum prohibitum?!
Burglary is malum per se. Governments are established among men to prohibit it. If a legislature chooses not to, it loses its legitimacy.
Discrimination is not malum per se. Where prohibited, it is malum prohibitum; where not, it is not any kind of malum. There’s nothing wrong with it, except where the legislature has decided otherwise. It’s just like drugs, some of which legislatures decide to prohibit; there’s nothing wrong with using the ones it decides not to. Or like turning right on red, which is prohibited only where the legislature has said so and permitted everywhere else.
Milhouse, I don’t think I’m incoherent. Maybe I misunderstood what you wanted to say and am wrong on that count. But incoherent means something quite different.
As I pointed out I think your last paragraph which is not positivist seems to contradict what you say earlier. And frankly, with what you usually have to say when you pronounce your interpretation of the law as the law™.
I’ll grant you that by liberally adding qualifiers you leave room to argue, but then the question at hand was about the justification of different treatment of discrimination because of political ideology versus say race.
As to discrimination, if you use the word in its original meaning it is not malum at all. But the prevalent meaning today is that of unjust discrimination. That clearly is not in all cases merely malum prohibitum, just in some where the unjust hinges on positive law instead of natural law.
The question remains why treat some discrimination differently than other.
If you can force someone to bake the cake—which you cannot really justify as the interest to not violate your conscience is in any case a higher good than the interest to not have to ask a second bakery to bake your cake—you have some ‘splaining to do why you would not prohibit discrimination against dead authors on account of now immutable characteristics of their writing.
I am facetious because I do not believe that anybody can be forced to produce and sell someone else’s book, and if Amazon does not want to sell certain books and is not contractually obligated to sell them, that is one thing. But that is not exactly what is happening here. Amazon and eBay have suddenly decided to disallow others to use their open trading platform for trading children’s books, for crying out loud. While at the same time gleefully profiting from sales of vile stuff like Mein Kampf or the ravings of some murderous communist or other.
I happen to think that there is a good chance that they are allowed to do that even if it exposes their moral character as quite base, however, there are questions. For example, eBay allowed this particular trade and then decided otherwise. Do they need to compensate for interfering with the possible trade the trader could have made? Can they retroactively disallow certain trades? By changing their definitions of objectionable ad hoc to accommodate some insane woke fad?
These are serious questions. If you want to brush them off by saying “it is thus” (without even going into detail of the law, that not in all jurisdictions in the United States let alone the world allow one side of a contract to do as it pleases). And when the question is should we legislate and prohibit this sort of discrimination an answer like well it isn’t prohibited now, therefore it shouldn’t be prohibited is no answer at all.
“Only if it alleges that your refusal constitutes discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, which is against the law in those states or cities.”
Which is precisely the problem. The “protected” populations are nothing more than a list of big dollar donors to leftist causes. They are Jim Crow laws in reverse – granting special legal favors to politically connected groups instead of repressing them – but they are just as vile and repugnant.
I don’t think it is a good idea for the Left have it both ways: demanding the Christian baker bake the cake (and thereby discriminate against the Christian’s beliefs) while also pompously declaring that businesses like Amazon, Twitter and eBay have the right to refuse service, even if the reasons are openly bigoted towards politically weaker groups. The arbitrary, unjust and self-contradictory nature of current “anti-discrimination” laws need to be exposed and resisted.
There are no “protected populations”. Certain kinds of discrimination are illegal regardless of whom they target. For instance discrimination on grounds of race is illegal, regardless of whether it is against white, black, or purple people. Discrimination on the grounds of sex is illegal regardless of whether it is against men or women. All the law cares about is the grounds for the discrimination, not the direction.
But grounds that have not been banned remain legal.
“Also bear in mind that eBay is not discriminating against sellers but against material, and there is no law against that, anywhere. It could ban the sale on its site of all books by black authors, and that would probably not be illegal discrimination so long as it treated all sellers of such material equally.”
Posting this is a sign you need to post less, a lot less.
This is all happening because liberal Progressives think that they have won.
They have been creating a dependent under-class for decades and it now makes up about half the population. They have gotten Americans to kill their own economy and their futures, without question, over an aggressive flu virus. They got the people to accept being terrorized by barbarians all summer long, without any push back. They finally stole a Presidential election, and there was virtually no response. Then they occupied the Capital of the United States with military troops, and no one said anything. Schools are closed, businesses are closed. Illegal aliens are streaming across the Southern border and being released into the interior. The politicians are defunding police and destroying the criminal justice system, wile trying to take personal firearms away from the populous. Private communications companies are being allowed to control and censor content based upon their personal desires. Travel documents are on the horizon. And, people are allowing themselves to be distracted by shiny objects such as banning the most highly regarded children’s author in the world.
So, when you are in total control, and are insane, you will do insane things, because you can. And, the liberal Progressives are both insane and think that they are in charge. Wait until you have to sell you internal combustion engine vehicle and drive strictly electric or take public transportation.
I have a Thing 2 figure and I’m not selling. Go get your own Thing 1 or Thing 2 and you can be racist like me according to the latest information.
If only Geisel wrote about invading Poland and creating extermination camps instead committing Critical Race Theory thought crimes 50 years before they became thought crimes.
The “GayBC’s” for kids is okay where “T” stands for “Transgender.”
As of this morning Friday, March 5 9:07 AM, there are multiple copies of Mulberry Street listed on EBay. Please do some followup checking and update this article if EBay has relented on these book sales.
Although it’s a violation of copyright, I’d not be all that surprised if scanned copies of these books begin to circulate.
Samizdat. Who’d have thought it would come to America?
Samizdat? Hmmm:
https://bannedseuss.com/
I stand by my comment…you are delusional or obtuse…everything courts have done in the last 6 months support what I’m saying and you literally can’t point to a single thing to support your 1950’s view of these “brave” Constitution defending judges/courts exist that those of here on planet earth know are as extinct as the Dodo bird.