One of the Left’s most successful lies is that conservatives seek to “ban books.” It often works because Americans, rightly, loathe bans. Conservatives must then explain that what they want to do is save schoolchildren from exposure to smut and racial hatred.

Books that do that are not “banned.” They can be sold anywhere, just not given to children. We all agree that the pornographic Penthouse magazine should not be available in the school library. That doesn’t mean Penthouse is banned.

But, as any marketing professional will tell you, when you’re explaining, you’re losing.

So yes, we must explain that shielding children from books that, for example, endorse something as demeaning and addictive as pornography, or tell them the outright lie that the Revolutionary War was fought and the country started to continue slavery, is not a ban.

But conservatives can also play offense. Luckily, evidence once again emerges that it is actually the Left that engages in censorship, and yes, what leftists seek is the complete removal of ideas with which they cannot compete.

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We saw this in stark fashion when the House Judiciary Committee obtained emails that showed the Biden administration strong-armed Amazon to censor books that did not go along with the White House’s policy on COVID vaccines. The massive bookseller caved.

The White House official who implemented the policy of bullying Amazon and other media companies was once again Andrew Slavitt. He’s a former senior Biden adviser whose heavy-handed tactics came to light after Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022. Musk made public files that showed extensive White House pressure on that social media giant to censor speech with which the administration disagreed.

Slavitt has since left the White House. But as my Heritage Foundation colleague Tyler O’Neil reported this week, the committee has subpoenaed him. 

It told Slavitt that the committee had “obtained documents that demonstrate the central role you played in communicating the Biden White House’s censorship efforts to social media companies, including the White House’s demands to censor true information, memes, satire, and other constitutionally protected forms of expression.”

Taking a page from Hunter Biden, Slavitt is snubbing the subpoena. The Washington Examiner reported a week ago that Slavitt has defied the committee after being ordered to do so by the White House.

“To protect the constitutional separation of powers and the institutional interests of the White House, I write to inform you that the White House does not authorize Mr. Slavitt to appear at the Committee’s scheduled deposition,” the Washington Examiner’s Ashley Oliver quoted from a letter that White House counsel Richard Sauber wrote to Slavitt’s attorney.

Stauber equally prohibited Robert Flaherty, former White House director of digital strategy, from appearing in front of the committee, which is headed by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). 

Jordan’s committee is not alone in finding these administration officials engaging in outright censorship. A federal judge cited Flaherty, who is now working for the Biden campaign, multiple times for censoring Meta (which runs Facebook), X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.

Claims of “disinformation” are increasingly a weapon in the armory used by these government officials against information that unsettles the reigning orthodoxy. That is a double wrong. Government should not be abridging the First Amendment rights of people—something that is unconstitutional and thus illegal. Also, disinformation, or knowingly spreading false information, is a real problem. Cynically using claims of disinformation to silence opponents creates distrust about all claims, even valid ones.

The abuse of the state’s coercive powers to silence opposition, often through these fake claims of “disinformation,” predates the Biden administration. We now know that in the run-up to the 2020 election, the Department of Homeland Security made ample use of this technique to censor views that DHS honchos disagreed with and wanted to squash. 

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It wasn’t to help the resident of the White House at the time, mind you, but to help elect Democratic candidate Joe Biden. This will come as a surprise to absolutely no one who follows the news. 

And, again, we know this because the House Judiciary Committee blew the whistle. The New York Post reported that DHS acted through an entity known as the Election Integrity Partnership, which DHS asked Stanford University to set up.

The committee said that DHS and university officials “pressured social media companies to censor true information, jokes, and political opinions.” And the aim was to “censor Americans engaged in core political speech in the lead up to the 2020 election.”

The companies, again, caved. The committee, as quoted by the New York Post, said that “true information posted by Republicans and conservatives was labeled as ‘misinformation’ while false information posted by Democrats and liberals was largely unreported and untouched by the censors.”

All Americans are affected by this, but I have particular skin in the game. In 2021, when I published my last book, Amazon censored advertising of it by my employer, the Heritage Foundation. Amazon actually said that the reason was, “Content that revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics is not permitted.” 

We complained and explained that policy books, by definition, deal with “highly debated social topics.” Amazon retreated, apologized, and said the ban had been due to human error. In the meantime, the controversy really helped sell my book.

Well, guess what, my next book, this time with Katharine Cornell Gorka, comes out on April 2: NextGen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It.

So sometimes explaining works. But don’t just play defense when leftists spread the lie that conservatives seek censorship.