Retailers Purge 'Vile' eBooks Following Critical Articles

UNITED KINGDOM—A controversial British online magazine called The Kernel that was forced to close earlier this year after failing to pay staffers and contributors is back with a vengeance, eager to pick up where it left off making enemies with “bitchy” articles whose purpose is to attract attention (and traffic). In the current atmosphere, what better way to do that than to embark on a vitriolic crusade against prurient ebooks? In the aftermath of the site’s bombastic campaign against the “filth,” online retailers are reacting in typical fashion, with the backbone of jellyfish. Needless to say, the U.K. media is also pouring fuel on the ebook fire with conspicuous broadsides such as the International Business Times’ “Amazon Accused of Profiting from Porn,” which reports, “Retailer Amazon has been forced to remove from sale a selection of ebooks that depict incest, rape and other sex acts in graphic detail. Books such as Forced by Daddy and Taking my Drunk Daughter have been removed following an investigation by Jeremy Wilson of tech news site The Kernel.” By investigation, what they mean is that Wilson, whose editorial style is pure Fleet Street hyperbole, simply perused the offerings of online retailers, looking for the sorts of fare that would easily allow him to gratuitously spew such terms as “vile,” “disgusting,” “epidemic,” “breathtakingly obscene” and “tsunami of filth,” to name but a few. Few retailers are exempt from Wilson’s withering indictments. His article published last Friday even contains old-style subheads outlining the egregious sins committed by some of the biggest brands in the publishing world: • Almost every book retailer’s website sells amateur literature that glorifies rape, incest, bestiality and ‘forced sex’ with young girls • Amazon and Barnes & Noble have the largest catalogues of filth • High Street newsagent WHSmith sells rape porn • Beloved bookseller Waterstone’s sells bestiality fiction • Iconic London store Foyles lists a book called Loving the Dog • No retailer brave enough to comment on our report It might be worth noting at this point that in an article posted two days earlier, titled “The Smut List,” in which Wilson provides “a list of the most disgusting amateur sex fiction shorts available on Amazon,” each selection explicitly states, in one way or another, that “All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.” Still, the very mention of themes involving “incest” or “rape” makes most publishers run for the hills, which exactly what is happening here. One famous retailer, WHSmith, even took its entire website offline rather than risk the chance that similar titles are still available on it. Referred to by Wilson as a much loved brand, WHSmith said it was “disgusted” to learn that it was selling titles such as Daddy Rapes the Virgin Daughter in the Attic (Taboo Forced Sex Erotica), Raped By The Big Fucking Trucker (Taboo Rape Erotica), Amber’s Rape By Her Parolee Father (Forced Sex Erotica) and Daddy Rapes the Virgin Daughter on the Roadtrip (Taboo Erotica). The unconditional reaction is understandable. Yesterday, the Mirror proposed that WHSmith and the others might face prosecution, claiming, “The firm could still end up in court if the books are deemed obscene.” As unlikely as that may be, no mainstream brand in today’s world is going to continue carrying such titles, even in a 50 Shades of Grey world, if obscenity prosecutions are afoot. In fact, a quiet purge of ebooks that contain what are perceived to be risky terms is already underway. The ebook industry, which probably thought the days of literary censorship were long past, is learning the hard way that nothing is safe in the current environment. To get the full flavor of the type of campaign being undertaken by The Kernel, Friday's opinion piece by 28-year-old editor-in-chief Milo Yiannopoulos is a good place to start. Titled On the Side of the Angels,” it lectures the reader from beginning to end on the proper course of action here. "We are told by morally censorious commentators that porn culture is now mainstream culture,” writes Yiannopoulos. “We’re told that, brought up on a diet of violent, exploitative videos available in bulk for free and at the click of a mouse, young people are conditioned to expect ‘porn sex’ and encouraged to treat one another as worthless sexual objects to be abused and discarded.” Yiannopoulos ensures the reader that he is not invoking the “c” word. “No one is proposing censorship,” he states. “If retailers really insist on selling this material, that is their right. Technically, most of it is legal – even if the circumventions are desperately tenuous. But if, as we must hope, this is a case of carelessness or negligence, it is right to bring attention to this material.” How’s that for some mind-fuck double-speak, Orwell-style?