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December 4, 2020

The vicious leftism of the craft world again reveals itself

By Andrea Widburg

In 2019, conservatives learned that a fascist element in the knitting world was systematically banning and ostracizing Trump-supporters.  That kerfuffle faded away, but it's rearing up again with news that Etsy, an e-commerce platform that specializes in handmade goods and craft supplies, had banned someone for selling knit beanies stating "STOP THE STEAL" on the ground that this demand is "harmful misinformation."

For a long time, people assumed that knitters are cozy, grandmotherly ladies who knit ugly Christmas sweaters and solve murder mysteries.  In 2019, it became apparent that many knitters, in fact, are vicious and prejudiced leftists.  The first sign of trouble as far as the wider, non-craft world was concerned occurred in February 2019, when Vox ran a lengthy article entitled "The knitting community is reckoning with racism."

Don't be fooled by the title.  No real racism was involved in the making of that story.  Instead, the guilty racist party was tried and convicted for cultural appropriation when she said she was incredibly excited that she was going to go to India, a country that had always fascinated her.  She was soon accused of cultural imperialism and, inevitably, cravenly apologized.  Other knitters who had the chutzpah to admire crafting skills and products from other second- and third-world countries came in for equal opprobrium.

Three months later, the Vox story was old news when Ravelry, one of the largest craft-related social media networks and marketplaces, made headlines for openly discriminating on political grounds.  Thus, in June 2019, Ravelry announced that it was "banning support of Donald Trump and his administration" because "[w]e cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy.  Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy."  As part of its ukase, Ravelry asked its members to ferret out and report any deviation from the site's new fascist purity.

These fiber arts thought police showed themselves to be the kind of people who bring politics to everything.  In that way, there is no difference between fascist knitters and the athletes who have destroyed America's shared love of professional sports, something that used to transcended politics, by scorning the flag and supporting the violent, Marxist Black Lives Matter movement.

Then, as these things do, the whole issue sort of vanished.  Conservative knitters left Ravelry and found other social media knitting sites; leftists continued to preen about their moral superiority, and life went on in the craft world.

On Tuesday, that world exploded again.  This time, it was Etsy, the largest online handcraft marketplace, that decided to engage in anti-Trump censorship:

Please keep in mind that you can buy pro-communist products on Etsy.  These would be the same communists who killed 100,000,000 people in the 20th century.  You can also buy pro-socialist products on Etsy.  Etsy seems to have forgotten that the National Socialists were responsible for the Holocaust and a war that killed upwards of 70 million people.

If after reading this you still feel inclined to purchase goods from Etsy, go for it.  It's still (at least for the short term) a free country.  As for me, going forward, whenever I even think of Etsy, I'll get such a feeling of revulsion over its totalitarian tactics that I wouldn't dream of sending my money to anyone selling merchandise at that site.

Image: Women knitting, early 1920s.  Library of Congress.

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