Censored Again

by Armando Simón

Well, Amazon finally censored me.

This was not the first time I was censored. Medium is a site where anyone can write essays about anything—well, almost anything— without editorial help or interference. Supposedly. So I did. I was even able to include essays published elsewhere. Within Medium, there are several divisions. In the section called Reality Check there is a plethora of black racists and masochistic, self-loathing whites who, on a daily basis, snarl and whine respectively about all whites being racists, about microaggressions, and various delusions and fantasies. Reality Check should be renamed Paranoid Psychotics Check In.

None of the racists have been deplatformed.

I was.

As of almost three years ago no one can access my essays, though for some reason, my essays are still there and I can view them.

Anyway, back to Amazon.

Like countless others, I’ve been reviewing products that I have bought on Amazon for almost a decade. Around a year ago, I favorably reviewed a book titled SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police (I recommend it). Reviews are in turn reviewed by Amazon apparatchiks prior to being posted. My review of the book was taken down for going against some general standards (which in this case I was criticizing leftists who censor).

Life went on. I kept reviewing books, CDs, clothes, etc. and my reviews were always brief, like others in the site. Sometimes my reviews involving books on or by leftists were characteristically caustic, but no one minded.

Except a month ago, with my review of American Injustice (an extended review was accepted here, in The Iconoclast). It was not accepted for the usual vague reasons (“violates our Community Guidelines”). I could appeal, which I did.

Whereupon all of my reviews were taken down. My reviews on electronics, on t-shirts, on shoes, on books, on games, on films—all taken down. Apparently, the leftist censor thought that my reviews of Jorge Bolet. Rediscovered Liszt Recital, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, All Creatures Great and Small, Batman Forever, The Confessions of St. Augustine, Duck Tales Vol.1, Gandhi: An Autobiography, Blue Jasmine, World War Z, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Essential Artie Shaw, Jimmy Neutron- The Best of Season 2, Darwin’s Blind Spot: Evolution Beyond Natural Selection, The Biosphere, Lysenko’s Ghost: Epigenetics and Russia, Littleboutique Fashion Magazine Show Stiletto Sandals Nigh Club Strap Pumps, Basic Questions in Paleontology, The 39 Steps, The mosquito hypothetically considered as an agent in the transmission of yellow fever poison, 1881, 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, The Sex Lives of Cannibals, and many, many, many more were worthy of censorship.

Gone. All gone.

I appealed, of course, several times. Ignored each time.

I became an unperson.

I don’t mind too much. My ego is big enough to take a hit like that.

But, what about all of my countless readers who rely on me to get a fresh perspective on The Hobbit, Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land, Bela Lugosi’s The Black Cat, and How to Murder Your Wife?

I weep for them.