I like to say that our liberal friends have No Idea. They've been patting themselves on the back for generations about their commitment to free speech, and all the liberal ladies at the public library do their Banned Books thingy every year and think they are incredibly brave.
But now Powell's Books, the independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, is under fire from AntiFa for daring to sell Andy Ngo's book on AntiFa: Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy.
Of course, Powells isn't actually going to sell Unmasked in its store. Heavens No! Darling!
At Powell’s, a lot of our inventory is hand-selected, and hand-promoted. And a lot of our inventory is not. With several million titles available online at any given moment, complete hand-curation is not possible. Unmasked by Andy Ngo came to us through an automatic data feed via one of our long-term and respected publishers, Hachette Book Group. We list the majority of their catalogue automatically, as do many other independent and larger retailers. We have a similar arrangement with other publishers.
This book will not be on our store shelves, and we will not promote it. That said, it will remain in our online catalogue. We carry books that we find anywhere from simply distasteful or badly written, to execrable, as well as those that we treasure. We believe it is the work of bookselling to do so.
Decades ago we received credible bomb threats for selling the work of Salman Rushdie, and yet we carried on. We cannot behave any differently today when we feel differently about the book or writer in question.
As reported by Oregon Live: "Powell’s responds to protests over right-wing agitator Andy Ngo’s book: ‘We carry a lot of books we find abhorrent’" See, AntiFa has been doing mostly peaceful protests inside Powell's Books lately and Powell's has been closing early.
Actually, I feel for Powell's. There they are, just north of downtown Portland in the Rose District in a store that occupies a whole block. Whaddya going to do when AntiFa calls and the Portland City Council is busy defunding the police and the mayor is Ted Wheeler? Send for the Proud Boys?
This could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Because I doubt that a bookstore can afford to occupy a whole block in Portland's Rose District. Not any more.
And you think that all those hipster lefties in Portland are going to continue buying at a store that sells -- online! -- a vile right-wing agitator's screed about the mostly peaceful protesters of BLM and AntiFa?
It's all very sad. I've loved to visit Powell's for over 40 years, since I started driving down to Ashland's Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1978. We met my parents in Ashland for a week and went to three plays. So that when my daughters grew up the elder one started taking her kids to Ashland every year. On the way down, and on the way back: the guilty pleasure of a visit to Powell's.
I'm afraid to tell you that the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is not what it was. It was created by a high-school teacher in the 1930s, but now it is overrun with Wokeyness. There have to be opposite gender characters in pretty well every performance, and sometimes even in the main characters. For instance, we were to a Henry IV Part One with the Harry Percy played by a woman in tight camo with a big butt. Then there was the Julius Caesar with Caesar as a woman CEO.
When you do stuff like that you are advertising to the world that you have Literally No Clue.
But back to Powell's. The point about Powell's is that, when you check out a particular section, you find books you didn't know existed. That is perfectly wonderful. And in its psychology section there is a whole display bookcase exclusively devoted to Freud and Jung -- with Jung taking up 2/3 of the shelf space.
Only question is: how much longer?
I'd rather not think about that.
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