One of those gambling sites should have started taking bets on how long it would take RuPaul’s widely advertised “no censorship” bookstore to start taking books off the shelves.
It turns out that the answer was three days. Three days to go from “censorship of any book, perspective, or story is incompatible with the survival of democracy” and “banning books is never the answer” to “we don’t want to hurt the feelings of LGBTQIA12345678 people.
In response to so-called book bans, drag performer RuPaul started an online book store committed to selling all books.
Now, several right-wing titles have been removed. | @abigailandwords https://t.co/Ze0MQsBQFo
— National Review (@NRO) March 7, 2024
I have to admit that while I haven’t much of an opinion about RuPaul one way or another–he seemed benign enough given what little I know–I did like the idea of an “all-ideas” bookstore. While I don’t think, by a long shot, that every book belongs in K-12 schools, I also don’t think that banning books from sale is compatible with democracy.
In response to “book bans,” drag performer and television host RuPaul co-founded the “all-inclusive” online bookstore Allstora that would “carry all books,” ranging from Gender Queer to Mein Kampf, to “support all voices everywhere.”
“We’re a marketplace for all books and all stories, with a focus on elevating marginalized voices,” Allstora previously stated.
But just days after launching the website, the bookstore reversed its policy on “offensive” books and removed some content perceived as right-wing, including works by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Matt Walsh, Riley Gaines, and Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik.
When it was launched three days ago, RuPaul’s online bookstore Allstora, co-founded with “historian of LGBTQ+ politics” Eric Cervini and drag performer Adam Powell, welcomed visitors to the website with a pop-up message that warned “you may find books you disagree with.” A subsection about “offensive books” on the FAQ page stated that “Allstora has made the decision to carry all books.” Allstora said that “censorship of any book, perspective, or story is incompatible with the survival of democracy,” and “banning books is never the answer.”
I even think that a balanced college curriculum requires courses on CRT, Marxism, Nazism, and all sorts of vile ideologies. When I was a teaching assistant at Duke, the Political Science department required majors to take a “political ideologies” course where we read Marx, Hitler, Mussolini, and Adam Smith, among others. It’s called being educated. Ideas that move the world need to be studied.
RuPaul seemed to share that sentiment until he didn’t. He didn’t, I assume because believing in free speech is a cancelable offense on the Left.
In just three days, the bookstore faced backlash for selling “homophobic,” “transphobic,” “anti-woke,” and “Nazi” material.
Allstora revised its FAQ page to add a disclaimer and introduce a “flagging” mechanism. Given the “offensive” material, Allstora would “mitigate the potential harm of specific book” by “creating a community-led flagging system for titles that are contrary to our core values” and “donating all proceeds from these titles to fight book bans.”
Drag performer “Lady Bunny,” who has appeared on RuPaul’s drag-themed television shows, condemned the bookstore for selling books by Adolf Hitler, Mike Huckabee Sanders, Sarah Sanders, and “the extremely transphobic” Chaya Raichik. The performer further accused RuPaul of “rainbow capitalism” and asked, “Why not just stop selling what many on the left consider to be hate speech?”
“You can buy Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman? – a book widely criticized as transphobic in nature and one written by an author who in my opinion as a gay man is absolutely homophobic,” reads an article in The Tab titled “Erm, you can buy anti-trans, far right books from RuPaul’s new online bookstore.”
Allstora revised its FAQ page again and entirely removed its policy on “offensive” books. The website no longer pledges to sell all books.
Ironic, isn’t it? Books that instruct children on how to log onto sex hookup sites and give detailed instructions on how to perform various sex acts must be included in school libraries because democracy demands it.
But “Johnny the Walrus” by Matt Walsh, a sly parody of transgender ideology, is too dangerous to be sold even to adults. The same goes for many books written by conservatives.
That’s how quickly the worm turns when Leftist ideology gets involved.
Originally, the bookstore’s purpose was to promote the consideration of all points of view. In three days, it went into full propaganda mode.
Allstora has a “philanthropic initiative” called the “Rainbow Book Bus” that will distribute “diverse books to communities facing book bans and censorship, especially in LGBTQ+ communities.” The bus is scheduled to complete its first cross-country tour this year.
“I started reading books at a very early age, and they were a lifeline to the rest of the world for me,” RuPaul told People Magazine. “I loved the idea of knowledge is power, and knowledge is a way to transport yourself to wherever you wanna be.”
Was free speech absolutism simply a marketing ploy to generate public interest, or did Leftist activists enforce ideological purity on RuPaul and his “philanthropic effort” in record time?
I’m not sure which is better. Of course, lying about what they are doing is a Left-wing tactic that is embraced and celebrated–you can find plenty of Left-wing authors who make it clear that lying is a very effective way to infiltrate the culture. But I doubt that RuPaul is a crafty propagandist. He seems more like an entertainer whose charisma allowed him to rise to stardom and little more.
He doesn’t seem to be a communist activist, but I don’t follow RuPaul closely.
Whatever the case may be, Left-wing activism is so corrosive that it has turned the ACLU into a pro-censorship law firm whose mission seems to have become acting as the law firm for the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are currently pressing Christopher Rufo to release the names of his sources, which is about as far from their original mission as possible.
You do have to give the ACLU credit though: it took more than three days to do a 180 and become what they once fought.