RuPaul’s ‘All-Inclusive,’ Anti-Censorship Book Store Immediately Removes Right-Wing Titles

In response to “book bans,” drag performer and television host RuPaul co-founded the “all-inclusive” online bookstore Allstora that would “carry all books,” ranging from Gender Queer to Mein Kampf, to “support all voices everywhere.”

“We’re a marketplace for all books and all stories, with a focus on elevating marginalized voices,” Allstora previously stated.

But just days after launching the website, the bookstore reversed its policy on “offensive” books and removed some content perceived as right-wing, including works by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Matt Walsh, Riley Gaines, and Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik. 

When it was launched three days ago, RuPaul’s online bookstore Allstora, co-founded with “historian of LGBTQ+ politics” Eric Cervini and drag performer Adam Powell, welcomed visitors to the website with a pop-up message that warned “you may find books you disagree with.” A subsection about “offensive books” on the FAQ page stated that “Allstora has made the decision to carry all books.” Allstora said that “censorship of any book, perspective, or story is incompatible with the survival of democracy,” and “banning books is never the answer.”

“We cannot fight the ideologies of hate if we lack the ability to study, understand, and react to them. We do that by reading books,” the Allstora website previously stated.

Additionally, the bookstore commits to uplifting voices “of underrepresented groups, including LGBTQ+ people, women, and communities of color” and allows consumers to filter books by themes such as “pansexual,” “gender non-conforming,” “two-spirit,” “Latinx,” and “Middle Eastern.” 

In just three days, the bookstore faced backlash for selling “homophobic,” “transphobic,” “anti-woke,” and “Nazi” material.

Allstora revised its FAQ page to add a disclaimer and introduce a “flagging” mechanism. Given the “offensive” material, Allstora would “mitigate the potential harm of specific book” by “creating a community-led flagging system for titles that are contrary to our core values” and “donating all proceeds from these titles to fight book bans.”

Drag performer “Lady Bunny,” who has appeared on RuPaul’s drag-themed television shows, condemned the bookstore for selling books by Adolf Hitler, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and “the extremely transphobic” Chaya Raichik. The performer further accused RuPaul of “rainbow capitalism” and asked, “Why not just stop selling what many on the left consider to be hate speech?”

“You can buy Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman? – a book widely criticized as transphobic in nature and one written by an author who in my opinion as a gay man is absolutely homophobic,” reads an article in The Tab titled “Erm, you can buy anti-trans, far right books from RuPaul’s new online bookstore.” 

Allstora revised its FAQ page again and entirely removed its policy on “offensive” books. The website no longer pledges to sell all books. 

Allstora has stopped selling some titles by high-profile right-wing writers. National Review found that previously sold works by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Bill O’Reilly, Matt Walsh, Riley Gaines, and Chaya Raichik are no longer available.

Some titles by conservative publisher Brave Books have been removed, such as the Christian book Little Lives Matter about the “sanctity of life.” Allstora still sells some work by Brave Books, including one co-authored by congressman Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas). 

Works that had been suppressed by Amazon, such as Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage and Sohrab Amari’s The Unbroken Thread, are not currently sold on Allstora.

Social-media users demanded that the books You Weren’t Born that Way and The Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality be removed from the store, and they are no longer available. 

Allstora has not removed all conservative works. For example, God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley (with an introduction by Michael Knowles), America’s Cultural Revolution by Chris Rufo, and What is Marriage? by Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George remain on the website. The website also continues selling some books written by authors who are critical of gender theory, such J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and Abigail Favale’s Christian book The Genesis of Gender.

Allstora has a “philanthropic initiative” called the “Rainbow Book Bus” that will distribute “diverse books to communities facing book bans and censorship, especially in LGBTQ+ communities.” The bus is scheduled to complete its first cross-country tour this year. 

“I started reading books at a very early age, and they were a lifeline to the rest of the world for me,” RuPaul told People Magazine. “I loved the idea of knowledge is power, and knowledge is a way to transport yourself to wherever you wanna be.”

Allstora did not respond to a request for comment.