JD Vance is a marked man. After accepting the nomination for vice president, Vance has been the subject of endless media attacks. Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris even questioned his “loyalty” to the country despite his serving as a Marine in the Iraq War. Yet, one of the most chilling attacks came from Germany where the publishing house Ullstein Buchverlage has stopped printing the sold-out German translation of Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 autobiography.
As we have discussed previously in this country, it is the modern left’s equivalent of book burning. After all, why burn books when you can simply prevent their being printed under blacklisting campaigns?
In this country, we have seen the left successfully force book bans for writers and even justices who espouse opposing viewpoints. We have seen actual calls for book burning recently (here and here).
Ullstein is facing a high demand for Vance’s best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy, but has refused to print more copies due to his political viewpoints (unrelated to the book).
First published in 2016 and made into a movie in 2020, the book returned to the top position on The New York Times‘ bestseller list after Trump chose Vance as his running mate.
HarperCollins is rushing to print more books to meet the demand.
Some in the United States are already balking at the selling of any book by Vance. Seven Stories Press wrote, “Seven Stories Press is extremely thrilled to have never published JD Vance.”
Ullstein published the German translation of Hillbilly Elegy in 2017 and held the rights to reprints.
The company cited Vance’s allegiance with Trump and his politics as the reason in a statement to German media:
“At the time of its publication, the book made a valuable contribution to understanding the drifting apart of US society…In the meantime, he is officially acting alongside him and advocating an aggressively demagogic, exclusionary policy.”
German author Gerd Buurmann posted a mocking response that we should be happy that Ullstein had just thrown Vance’s book out of its catalogue and not into the fire – a reference to the notorious Nazi book burnings of the 1930s.
Other Germans have raised the same objections and referenced the painful history of book bans and burnings in Germany under the Nazis.
German readers want to read the book, which Ullstein acknowledged is one of the most influential works of this generation. However, because the company disagrees with his political viewpoints, it moved to block others from reading the book.
We have seen similar campaigns leading to the banning or burning of books by figures like JK Rowling because of her opposition to some transgender policies. The left now protests any programs on Rowling’s work and opposes the selling of her enormously popular Harry Potter series or even video games based on the series. When authors have defended her right to be published, they have also been subjected to cancel campaigns.
Yet, Ullstein’s decision is particularly chilling as a publishing house. Again, we have seen editors at publishing houses sign petitions to bar books by conservative figures like Justice Amy Coney Barrett from being published.
In 1933, thousands of books by Jewish and leftist writers were burned throughout Germany. Publishing houses further banned the printing of these books. The books were announced as corrupting the minds of German citizens. Many books were banned or burned on the basis of the authors being Jewish or known socialists or anarchists.
Now the left has developed a taste for censorship and blacklisting. Editors and publishing houses are blacklisting those with conservative or libertarian views as forms of dangerous viewpoints or disinformation.
Ullstein will, of course, not stop people from reading the work of JD Vance. While it may make it more difficult for Germans to find copies, ideas like water have a way of finding their way out. Blacklisting and censorship have not succeeded in killing a single idea. What it does is reveal the true character and values of those who want to prevent others from hearing opposing viewpoints.
The freedom of the Founders would have produced this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MphDRrcVY-4
The freedom of the Founders would have produced this.
The freedom of the Founders would have produced this.
I happen just now to be reading “February 33: Der Winter der Literatur” by Uwe Wittstock, about German literature in the first weeks of Nazi rule. The book features several authors published by Ullstein who were censored by the Nazis: Erich Maria Remarque, Karl Zuckmayer, Erich Kaestner, Lion Feuchtwanger. How ironic!
Sorry, Autocorrect strikes again! Februar, not February.
Re: The Vance book German publication ban: There have always been stupid people in our world. The problem now is the stupid people are becoming more stupid, and the stupid population is growing exponentially.
BFD they will just buy the book from Amazon
I lived in Germany and they are not only antisemitic, but have really awful body odor.
Total lie. Germans are very clean, you’re thinking of the french
Some people are using this story to promote their political preferences. But they don’t do this genuine information, but, instead, post BS. For example, one poster points to some “latest” polls showing Harris can beat Trump. But polls aren’t the most reliable indicator of the outcome for many reasons. For example. the media has done everything in its power to attack Trump and promote the Democrat candidate, whoever that may be. This dynamic alone means that a person voting for Trump may well say “undecided” or may even say they support the Democrat candidate. This tilts the polling scale artificially in favor of the Democrat candidate.
A more reliable indicator is the strength of turnouts. Biden and now Harris have only attracted tiny audiencces, whereas Trump brings in massive number of audience members.
But the most reliable indicator of all time is still the London bookmaker odds. They currently have Trump as a favorite at about -$150. And they have Harris posted as an underdog at about +$140. What this means in practical terms is that you have to bet (or risk losing) $150 on Trump to win $100 (along with your original $150 bet) if Trump wins. But if you bet $100 on Harris and she wins, you win $140 (along with your original $100 bet). Obviously, the cash on the line says that Trump will win the US Presidency.
Now, reasonably intelligent people will ask in response to the London bookmaker odds: How many times have the U.S. Presidential odds turnout out to be “wrong”? That is, how many times has the favorite in a US Presidential election based on the London odd failed to win the U.S. Presidency?
Those are good questions. The answer is that the favorite has failed to win only twice in U.S. Presidential betting history. The first one was the Dewey-Truman election in 1948. Dewey was a favorite and Truman was the underdog. Most educated people remember having seen a photo of Truman holding up a newspaper that announces that Dewey has won the election. That’s how certain many people were that Dewey would win. But why did they think that? The answer was they relied on polls. But the polls were taken primarily via telephone interviews. That skewed results in Dewey’s favor because well-to-do people owned telephones then and average income people didn’t at that time–and the wealthy favored Dewey. So, the odds themselves made Dewey the favorite. The market generally learned after this experience not to trust polls alone.
The other time the favorite won was in the Trump-Clinton election of 2016. Clinton was the favorite and Trump was the underdog. But the betting market was fooled again by the polls, after a long break from treating polls as only one indicator, but not an ultimamte indicator. The polss said Clinton would win because Trump voters were reluctant to reveal their support for Trump, claiming they were “undecided” or even giving false information to the pollster, claiming they were voting for Clinton.
The above dynamics are being repeated again for this 2024 election, as several unrealiable polls have surfaced claiming that Harris has some advantage over Trump. In other words to get any realistic information from a poll, you have to take the margin or error in whatever particular poll you’re looking at and add that margin of error percenage to Trump before making comparisons. This is exactly that the oddsmakers are doing, which is why Trump is the strong favorite to win and has history behind him.
Of course, all of this was foreseen by the Democrat planners. But they’ve tried every trick in the book to try to defeat Trump and failed. They tried to brand Trump and racist, a misogynist, a hater of the Constitution, an enemy of Democracy, and all sorts of garbage, when the opposite was true. They failed. They tried a coordinated a simultaneous series of lawsuits at all possible angles trying to discredit Trump. But, again, their lawfare fake-cases have failed. And finally, they tried to have Trump killed. But they failed yet again. Now, they have the FBI, the Secret Service, the CIA, and Homeland Security engaged in a massive coverup of the Democrats’ criminal acts against Trump. But I believe that whistleblowers will step forward to reveal the treachery of those agencies. That will be the Democrats’ final death knell.
Keep telling yourself that polls mean far less than rally turnouts. Keep telling yourself that the majority of Americans really didn’t vote against Trump in 2016 and 2020 and that Trump wasn’t the cause of the loss of seats in Congress in between, or that the “red wave” never happened. Keep telling yourself that it doesn’t matter that Trump: 1. brags about grabbing women by the genitals; 2. was adjudicated to have sexually assaulted a woman and defamed her; twice; 3. that he is a convicted criminal and is under dozens of additional indictments; 4. that he is an adjudicated a fraudster; 5. stole classified documents, lied about returning them and lied about Biden granting the FBI permission to kill him, even though the “raid” was arranged through his attorneys and Trump wasn’t home; 6. that he didn’t take the successful economy left by Obama and turned it into the worst recession since the Great Depression; 7. that he repeatedly lied about COVID being no worse than the flu, even though it is 10xs more deadly, that hospitals had to hire refrigerated trucks to use as temporary morgues, that the country wasn’t mostly shut down for about 2 years, that kids couldn’t go to school, that unemployment was in 2-digits, that there was no leisure travel and that America didn’t set new daily records for COVID deaths and infections; 8. that Trump didn’t refuse to accept the fact that he lost, that he started lying about his victory being stolen by nonexistent fraud even before Election Day, that he didn’t rile up his fans to come to Washington to try to stop Biden’s victory from being certified, that he sat by for over 3 hours while his fans beat police officers, broke into the Capitol, defecated and urinated in the building, stole items, were hunting for Pence and Pelosi and tried to get Secretaries of State to falsify vote totals: “I just need you to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have”; and, he got fake electors to falsify Electoral College documents, which is a felony; 9. That Trump’s stupid tariffs didn’t result in higher prices and shortages of consumer goods and that his proposed 10% tariffs wouldn’t tank our economy, like multiple prestigious economists say; 10. that he wants more tax cuts for the wealthiest, and, although he tries to deny it after public outcry, in March he said on “Squakbox” that cuts to Social Security and Medicare were on the table. From “White House Fact Sheet” dated 3/21/2024:
“On Wednesday, the Republican Study Committee – which represents 100% of House Republican leadership and nearly 80% of their members – just proposed yet another budget that would cut Medicare, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act , as well as increase prescription drug, energy, and housing costs – all while forcing tax giveaways for the very rich onto the country. Their plan would even raise the Social Security retirement age.”
See, Trump and Republicans lie all of the time, including lying about their plans for cutting SS, Medicare and Obamacare to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest because they know these programs are popular.
Democrats don’t have to “try” to “brand” Trump as a racist–he calls brown people “animals, vermin, rapists and murderers”; the same for misogynist–“grab them by the puxxy”; crooked Hillary, “bird brain Nikki”; stupid Nancy.; “Kamala Harris is garbage”. Kamala Harris is our sitting Vice President. We wouldn’t stand for any foreign dignatary insulting our Vice President like this. As to the Constitution–from CNN–dateline 12/4/22:
“Former President Donald Trump called for the termination of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election and reinstate him to power Saturday in a continuation of his election denialism and pushing of fringe conspiracy theories.
“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote in a post on the social network Truth Social and accused “Big Tech” of working closely with Democrats. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!””
Of course, all of these claims about winning and fraud are just more Trump lies.
As to being an “enemy of democracy” look at Project 2025 that would give unprecedented power to the president to use the DOJ and FBI to go after his perceived enemies, take away protections from civil servants who refuse to be used as political pawns, do away with the Department of Education and NOAA (because it reports on climate change, and the oil companes that give Trump and Republicans money want to pretend there is no climate change), cut SNAP benefits, the ACA, Medicaid and school lunch programs for poor children. a “fetal personhood” law that would make a fertilized egg a human, thus eliminating any state laws that allow for abortion, eliminate the need to ban medication abortions, outlaw IVF and contraception, concentration camps and mass deportations of 20 million people.
Where in the hell do you get off lying about anyone besides possibly Thomas Crooks trying to kill Trump? According to the FBI, the bullets have been accounted for and there doesn’t seem to be proof that Trump was even grazed by a bullet. Where’s the conection between Democrats and Crooks? You just make things up or believe lies that MAGA media makes up. Trump is a pathological liar, who is afraid of going to prison. There is no bottom to what he would do to try to “win”, and he and MAGA Republicans are already trying to set the stage to scream “fraud” because Harris either equals him or exceeds him in polls. She is far ahead of him in favorability ratings, too.
Has the View called you about appearing on their show. I believe you would fit right in.
You can’t fix stupid. Nice summary of the Communist talking points (LIES). Please schedule and appointment for psychiatric help.
I couldn’t find a link to this on Fox News. I wonder why?
https://www.alternet.org/harris-ahead/
Jonathan: There is someone else who is concerned about Kamala Harris’s campaign. It’s Elon Musk who has endorsed DJT. And what is Musk doing to help DJT?
On Friday, Musk reposted on “X” an AI generated fake video of Harris with a voice-over, resembling the voice of Harris saying: “I, Kamala Harris, am your Democratic candidate for president because Joe Biden finally exposed his senility at the debate”. The fake AI video was originally posted by someone who did it as a parody. Musk picked up on the video but treated it differently. Musk’s repost had the caption: “This is amazing”.
No doubt we will see more of this from Musk and other right-wing influencers–desperate for DJT to win. I doubt the Harris campaign will resort to such fake AI generated videos. They don’t have to. DJT says so much crazy s—t anyway they don’t have to make anything up!
PS: Sorry but I am running late for a funding raising cocktail party for the Harris campaign. Want to make sure I make a large contribution.
It was a joke! Did you really not know this?
It was not only an obvious and open parody, it is very common now for people trying to gain some personal fame to produce these.
There are many very good ones, and Trump frequently “retruths” those he likes. Just as Musk did.
Dennis thinks that Jonathan Swift really wanted to eat babies.
I think you are throwing away
S&P might be a better bet!
You’re still pathetic.
Dennis, Musk endorsed Trump and committed to $48B in election integrity funding
Immediately after the assassination attempt and before biden dropped out.,
I know things happened fast, but try to keep up.
No one is concerned about the Harris campaign.
The Video as you noted is a parody – though all of it is actual Harris video and about 1/3 of it is actual Harris remarks.
No one is trying to pretend that Harris actually said much of it.
“No doubt we will see more of this”
No, we already have.
This is incredibly common this election – there are Dozens of independently produced Trump adds with AI Generated Trump voices,
often singing rap songs. Previsously there were a few AI generated Biden videos.
No one is pretending these are real.
“from Musk and other right-wing influencers–desperate for DJT to win.”
More accurately from people who support Trump and are happy that he is crushing it.
Republicans are NOT disparate.
Harris is not going to win. She is still behind in ALL swing states. It will require a miracle for her to win.
Further While Harris has significantly improved on Biden – Trump has also improved.
The Harris coup has tanked RFK jr – with defecting RFK jr voters going 1/3 Trump 2/3 Harris.
That may sound good until you look at the fact that it puts Trump at or very near 50% in many swing states.
Harris MUST win WI, MI, and PA and even if she wins that impossible combination, she Still might have to pick up one more EC vote if Trump picks up one EC vote in either ME or NE.
Betting odds still favor Trump about 2:1.
The Big change Harris has made tot he election – which isa the primary reason Joe was forced out, it that not only was Biden way behind but Democrats were despondant. There was a very high probability that several percent ofg Biden voters would not show up at the polls.
That would not have changed the presidential race but it would have been a disaster Down Ballot.
The biggest change that Harris makes is NOT defeating Trump – that is not happening.
It is keeping democrats from getting wiped out in the house and senate.
It is now possible that Democrats might retake the house.
It is near certain that Republicans will take the Senate – but probably by smaller margins than if Biden was the candidate.
“I doubt the Harris campaign will resort to such fake AI generated videos.”
She already has. Again catch up. This is just the norm now.
Or more accurately – I do not think either the Trump or Harris campaign have produced AI generate adds.
But AI adds for and against both have been independently generated and then get “retweeted” by the Harris or Trump campaigns, or people like Musk.
There is enormous power to produce these things now in the hands of ordinary people, and making a good political meme can bring you fame and fortune.
Again catch up – this is a GOOD thing.
” They don’t have to. DJT says so much crazy s—t anyway they don’t have to make anything up!”
Sorry Dennis – Harris absolutely takes the crown for Crazy.
Biden has an excuse – he is demented.
Harris is constantly saying things that are just meaningless.
“PS: Sorry but I am running late for a funding raising cocktail party for the Harris campaign. Want to make sure I make a large contribution.”
Please do – put all your money down a rathole.
From “Newsweek”, July 29, 2024:
“Vice President Kamala Harris has seen a significant boost in her approval ratings ever since she became the presumptive Democratic 2024 nominee, while Donald Trump’s has fallen, according to a poll.
An ABC News/Ipsos survey of 1,200 adults released on Sunday showed that Harris’ favorability rating stands at 43 percent, 8 points up from the 35 percent favorability rating she recorded in a previous poll conducted before President Joe Biden ended his 2024 campaign.
The number of people who hold an unfavorable view of the vice president has also fallen from 46 percent recorded in the previous poll published last week, to 42 percent in Sunday’s survey.
By comparison, Trump’s favorability rating has fallen 4 points between the two surveys from 40 percent to 36. The previous poll was conducted in the week after Trump was confirmed as the GOP’s 2024 nominee at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and following the assassination attempt against the former president in Pennsylvania.
The poll is the latest indication of enthusiasm behind Harris’ White House bid after Biden ended his reelection campaign following weeks of pressure in the wake of his languished CNN debate performance on June 27.
Biden, 81, had already faced concerns that he was too old to run for a second term, with multiple polls suggesting voters were not enthused that the 2024 election was going to be a rematch between the president and the 78-year-old Trump.
After Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris, multiple current and former Democratic figures have also backed the vice president against Trump.
Harris has also seen a surge of fundraising, with her campaign reporting it has raised more than $200 million in its first week, around two-thirds of which came from first-time donors.
Elsewhere, the ABC News/Ipsos poll shows nearly nine in 10 Democrats (88 percent) are expressing enthusiasm for Harris’ campaign as well as 70 percent of Black voters.
Harris has also seen a major rise in the number of independent voters who hold a favorable view of her, up from 28 percent last week to 42 percent in the latest poll.
The poll showed that Trump’s favorability rating among the potentially key independent demographic dropped from 35 percent last week to 27 percent in Sunday’s survey.”
Keep telling yourself that Americans really DO like Trump and HATE Harris, that they don’t care about Project 2025, that Trump is a racist, misogynistic xenophobe and habitual liar. Keep telling yourself that. Maybe you ought to stock up on ammo so if Trump loses again and issues a call to arms to try to force his way into the White House like he did in 2020, you’ll be ready.
You claim Harris says “crazy things”–what about Hannibal Lector, the electric boat sinking while the shark approaches, or Trump’s praise of Putin as “genius” for invading Ukraine and starting a war? Do you really think that most American forgot what a horrible job Trump did, the lies he told, the people he has insulted, the insurrection, the death of Ashli Babbit that he is responsible for, and all of the people whose lives he ruined, like Giuliani, Lindell, Cohen and all of those who invaded the Capitol and have been charged with and/or convicted of crimes because they believed his Big Lie?
You say Harris does not say crazy things – yet the the video you cite has 1/3 Actual crazy things Harris said – not AI generated, and there are many many many videos of Krazy Kamala spewing long bouts of nonsense that are not AI generated.
“STUDY: X Is Giving Congressional Dems a BOOST Before the 2024 Election”
https://mrcfreespeechamerica.org/blogs/free-speech/christian-baldwin-joseph-vazquez/2024/07/15/study-x-giving-congressional-dems
“Elon Musk has made strides to turn X (formerly Twitter) into a free speech platform but there are still remnants of the Old Twitter censorship regime and they are interfering in the 2024 election. It now appears that X is actively boosting content posted by Democrat congressional members’ accounts, while simultaneously de-amplifying their GOP counterparts in the middle of an election year.”
LOL — Many people have been saying for some time that Musktard is a complete FRAUD who engages in censorship that’s actually even worse than the previous FRAUD(S) that ran Twitter, but few people hear about it because anyone blowing the whistle on X censorship gets banned, not just at X but at Fox, the NY Post, and other FAKE “conservative” media sites.
Anyway, that article at Media Research Center is well worth reading.