The idea that we're "being bullied" into believing that a man who drew extremely racist anti-Japanese war propaganda was perhaps not beyond reproach in terms of his views on race is, itself, revisionism. When you say "he was never racist", you're either woefully misinformed or lying.
He very much was racist; and after the war, regretted it, and ended up campaigning against the sorts of "America first" views he once championed.
You're drawing a distinction between the "4chan neckbeards" and the "alt-right edgelords" that I don't think meaningfully exists. ("Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company", after all.)
They were very much the same group; the "prank" could only lead to two outcomes, both of which were desired by the "pranksters". 1, they could successfully co-opt the symbol and permanently associate it with their ideology (symbols are arbitrary, after all, and how many mass shooters have to flash one before people connect the dots?). 2, they could troll with it enough that some would then see the symbol as an alt-right dogwhistle and decry it, only for them to turn around and say "haha! see those libtards? they're even offended by the OK symbol!".
And who, exactly, is "imposing restrictions" on you? Ebay? It sounds like a more honest analogy would be that you have gone to a "woke only" bookstore and are whining that you don't have the ability to force them to carry the books you want.
No, it doesn't. "Freedom to" rob does not supersede "freedom from" robbery. "Freedom to" kill does not supersede "freedom from" death. This is an asinine and juvenile view of how rights work.
Not really sure why it would need to; I was just pointing out that claiming what "a substantial majority" of people think ought to have something backing it up, especially since it didn't jive with either of our anecdotes.
Considering that the actual topic here is discussing "what you call a person", I don't think this comparison is fair. How justified "I feel offended because I can't call someone a specific word" is is really context-dependent; and there are plenty of people who feel "policed" because the use of ethnic slurs is looked down on.
Counterpoint: I graduated from a university still named after the confederacy that held "slave auction" fundraisers all the way into the 80s. I think it's easy to downplay how pervasive racism still is in America, and to imagine that hypersensitivity is the result of "fragility" instead of "constant exposure".
Keep in mind that Seuss's early career involved drawing racist WWII propaganda. While he largely reformed in later years, it would be inaccurate to say that some of the content has merely "not aged well"
> A substantial majority of people consider this foolish
[citation needed]. While ebay banning them may be a bit much, I don't know anyone IRL who is upset that Dr. Seuss's B-list books with offensive stereotypes are no longer being sold.