Picture a group of people who believe that they know right from wrong taking books from a library and throwing them onto a bonfire to burn them. There will still be plenty of volumes remaining when they’re done, as the books can be found in libraries and private hands elsewhere, but the ones within their reach are burned. They have not, and cannot, eradicate the offending book from the face of the earth, but they have burned books.
Is this not book burning? Obviously it is, and the fact that this performative act of condemnation didn’t result in the books’ total destruction doesn’t make the act of burning books any less a book burning. Perhaps they’re right, that the books are bad, evil even, and conveys ideas that are horrible and, at least in their minds, should not exist. Perhaps it’s not so much the ideas in the books, but the author who is so despised that his books should never see daylight. Does this make book burning any better?
Not too long ago, the employees of Netflix took to the street because they hated a comedian, Dave Chappelle, who made observations about people that they found reprehensible. How dare their company show his work? He was a heretic, a danger to their sensibilities, and it was their duty to take action to silence him and his work.
The book publisher Penguin Random House agreed to publish a book by Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Its employees, and others in the “literay” field, disapproved because of Barrett’s decision in Dobbs and decided to proffer an open letter to express their views.
As members of the writing, publishing, and broader literary community of the United States, we care deeply about freedom of speech. We also believe it is imperative that publishers uphold their dedication to freedom of speech with a duty of care.
Is there such a thing as free speech “with a duty of care”?
This is not just a book that we disagree with, and we are not calling for censorship. Many of us work daily with books we find disagreeable to our personal politics. Rather, this is a case where a corporation has privately funded the destruction of human rights with obscene profits. Coney Barrett is free to say as she wishes, but Penguin Random House must decide whether to fund her position at the expense of human rights in order to inflate its bottom line, or to truly stand behind the values it proudly espouses to hold.
Is this censorship? The argument is that someone will publish Justice Barrett’s book, so whatever the outcome of this open letter demanding that the publisher not be the prestigious Random House, it’s not as if her book will never be published, never see the light of day, never be available to be read should someone care to do so. How could this be censorship if the book will eventually come to be? But why does it have to be Random House that publishes it when Random House is a publisher that espouses values of human rights and this author was part of a wing of the Supreme Court that took them away?
We the undersigned have made the decision to stand by our duty of care while upholding freedom of speech. We cannot stand idly by while our industry misuses free speech to destroy our rights.
Every censor, every book burner, believes they are doing so for the greater good. At least their flavor of it. They do not condemn the ideas in the book, as they have no clue what the book will say as yet. But they do condemn the author for having performed her function as a justice in a way that produced an outcome with which they disagreed. Would “their” industry destroy “their” rights by publishing a book?
Perhaps there are lines that can be universally agreed should never be crossed. But this appears to be nothing more than punishing an author for doing something with which a group of employees and others in the “industry” disapprove. They could instead choose not to buy the book. The could tell other people not to buy the book. Just as they could have not watched Dave Chappelle and told others not to watch him either.
Calling it a “duty of care” is much like journalists who eschew facts that conflict with their narrative and omit the offending details or massage them in such a way as to create a false impression that leaves their readers with no choice but to reach what they deem to be the correct conclusion. They call this “moral clarity,” assigning to themselves the lofty position of moral arbiter for the rest of us.
The signatories of the letter, like the Netflix employees, similarly take the position of being the arbiters of “care,” calling it their duty to make sure that others, whether it’s us groundlings or the evil Justice Barrett, aren’t allowed to make the grievous mistake of seeing or hearing from the unworthy or hated.
It’s unlikely that I would be interested in reading love poems by Pol Pot, and I likely wouldn’t lose much sleep if no publisher wanted to make a book of them. But as warm and fuzzy as “duty of care” may sound, like preventing kittens from being inadvertently run over by speeding cars, there can be no free speech if it becomes subject to the populists’ notion of “duty of care.” Not for books in libraries about gay families. Not for a politically incorrect comedian. Not for a Supreme Court justice who sided against abortion in a decision.
No, it’s unlikely that the call for Random House to not publish Barrett’s book will mean that her book will not get published. But it’s no less censorship once the decision to publish has been made than burning books knowing that there will still be copies elsewhere is any less book burning. More importantly, each of us can be our own moral arbiter, and we don’t need the genius of the woke mob to exercise their “duty of care” to save us from whomever they decide is too evil for us to read.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Perhaps the arguably worst book ever created came from a Nazi concentration camp. It is an illustrated manual of human anatomy derived from dissection carried out on living prisoners. Obviously it was torture and one hopes the inmates had a speedy death rather than prolonged agony. Even this book survives, although not in general distribution. At least one copy survives, under lock and key, in a major US medical school library and is available, in theory, only to very serious researchers.I went to school there and was informed of its existence. It is unknown if it has ever been actually taken out since its arrival. Rather than being preserved, should this book be burned?
Much as your point is well taken, there may well be extremes that we can universally agree go too far, but unless one is prepared to call Chappelle and Barrett as evil as Hitler, we need not decide where that extreme line is.
My belief is, that as evil as this book is, it should not be burned either. Book burning (literally or figuratively),, like all forms of censorship, is a slippery slope. If this book is not burned, then no other book should be burned either. The restricted availability of this book is out of respect to the dead, to the principle that no one should profit from a crime they committed, and to a common sense of decency. Likewise in society we can generally agree that certain books should not be available to children, without that being “book burning”.
Even if we could agree that there are books kids should not be able to access (I’m not at all sure we could), we’d probably never be able to agree about just which books those are. Once you start, there’s really no stopping point.
Doesn’t mean that everything should get published, but the decision to publish or not ought not to be left to populist whim – or to an autocratic elite.
For a moment there, i thought i had clicked on a Snopes’ entry on Eduard Pernkopf’s Topographic Anatomy of Man.
I don’t think it’s exactly the same. Book burning occurs after the book as been published. Refusing to publish reflects a decision not to involve oneself in the creation and propagation of a book. If I’m a publisher why can’t I decide not to involve myself with certain authors? There are other publishers who will publish the book, and there is no shortage of vanity publishers for an author. With Internet an author can create their own blog. I think the Random House employee petition is overly dramatic, and over-the-top, but is it really the same as book burning?
If the publisher chose not to publish a book, that would be entirely within its discretion. But here, they chose to publish the book, and only after the decision was made did this happen. It really shouldn’t be necessary to explain the distinguishing facts a second time using smaller words for your benefit. Focus.
Penguin Random House has already made the decision to publish. The people who wrote the letter object; and are trying to stop the book from coming out.
They can put all the spin and makeup on it they want; but the authors or the letter are engaging in censorship of Justice Barrett.
Nope. Despite all resulting in less content, destroying content, censoring content, and declining to amplify content are not the same.
Which of those apply to the actions by employees to try to coerce their employer for having already made the decision to publish a book?
Each individual made the decision to exercise their own freedom of speech and association, at the risk of their career, on whether or not they would participate in amplifying speech that they did not agree with.
Respectfully, I think your use of the word ‘coerce’ when it’s an employee communicating boundaries with their employer, is dramatic and inaccurate, given the relevant balance of power. The fact that a given position happens to be popular with a lot of individual employees does not change who has the power in this situation. The publisher always has the option to tell them all to get bent and then hire employees that will carry out their will.
>The publisher always has the option to tell them all to get bent and then hire employees that will carry out their will.
I can only imagine the calm and rational response from these same people if all the signatories were fired tomorrow.
Precisely. The employees appear to hope that the present woke trends will protect them, and those trends may. But the cultural and political tides appears to be turning so I wouldn’t bet my mortgage on it.
Particularly when, on the way out the door, severance and agreement not to deny an unemployment claim will be contingent on signing a non-disparagement clause.
I am curious, what “boundaries” does an employee have that allows them to dictate business decisions and practices to their employer? Between on clock hours and personal, off clock hours – sure, depending on the job, certain boundaries as dictated by employment law – certainly. Business decisions – don’t like them? Then find another employer who’s practices you agree with, been there done that. But you don’t get to tell the board how to run the company.
Your narcissism is showing.
Every business I’ve worked for had a suggestion box.
Of course the book will be published somewhere by someone regardless of whether Penguin caves. But the logic of the letter/demand is that whoever that publisher happens to be also should not publish it. The claim that they aren’t advocating censorship of the book is true only in the limited sense that the letter was written to just the one publisher who’d agreed to publish it. If they could stop everyone, they would.
Censorship to the limits of ability.
Penguin should reply to the censurious demands of the self important the same way Spotify handled Neil Young attempting to de-platform Joe Rogan.
I believe “duty of care” is a BS justification and these arrogant wannabe moral arbiters should express themselves by resigning and starting their own woke publisher.
What nonsense is this? I think it’s safe to say the signatories of the letter are not so abjectly ignorant as to think that the operations of the Supreme Court are funded by the Justices’ book royalties. Which mean they are being disingenuous, pretending to believe book royalties have anything to do with the “funding” of the Court, so as to dance around what they’re actually doing, which is attempting to impose personal reprisals on members of the judiciary for unpopular decisions.
The entire letter smacks of dishonesty. “Dedication to freedom of speech”, indeed. That in itself should have counseled them against sending it. The fact you feel the need to pretend you aren’t doing what you obviously are doing ought to be a dead giveaway that you ought not to be doing it.