For publishers in a racist world, neutrality is not a virtue

In the days before the Göteborg Book Fair, its director Maria Källsson defended the fair’s decision to allow one (and only one) right-wing extremist publisher a platform there:

How we are to tolerantly deal with intolerance is a major dilemma in our time. It is true that we can expel extreme exhibitors from the fair. After all, we decide who is allowed to have a stand there. But we can’t expel them from society. In order to understand our approach and our principles, you have to understand what the book fair is. The book fair is an open arena for free association and freedom of expression, and it does not forbid opinions. That principle comes with a price—even detestable opinions can appear at a book fair.

The Frankfurt Book Fair faced similar ‘dilemmas’, and defended their decisions in similar ways.

The argument that we should ‘tolerantly deal with intolerance’ seems satisfyingly logical. But it hides an abdication of responsibility that leads to terrible things – especially when espoused by publishers, whose job it is to make ideas seem credible, and the fairs that celebrate them.

If you genuinely believed detestable opinions can appear at a book fair, you would allow child pornography, manuals on genital mutilation, recipes for chemical weapons, or handbooks on torturing information out of people. All of these publications doubtless exist, and yet we would never allow them space at a book fair. We recognise here, so clearly, that freedom of expression doesn’t apply to promoting cruelty. It would be absurd to tolerate even one of those publications at a book fair.

And yet right-wing extremist views, which are primarily racist, escape prohibition. Racism, inexplicably, is not considered as harmful, despite the fact that it has driven every genocide in history, and continues to fuel the neglect, bullying, oppression, torture, and murders of people across the world. And it thrives in a world, contorted by hypocrisy, that allows racists freedom to express themselves even as they silence others. Perhaps racism is so widespread and so common that this seems normal.

Like racism itself, Källsson’s argument that we should ‘tolerantly deal with intolerance’ is not rare. It’s a symptom of that particular disease of comfortable people: the mistaken belief that neutrality is a virtue. This dangerous myth suggests that it is possible to debate racism with racists, as if hatred had a logic we might disprove if only we could work it out. And, as a result, our penchant for debate gives racist organisations a platform to ride, like a perfect wave, right into the centre of our lives and our politics.

So we must remind each other, patiently, over and over again: for as long as racism exists, neutrality is not a virtue. The same goes for misogyny. At best, neutrality and debate reinforce a cruel status quo.

The shadows of the human mind will always harbour terrible ideas. There is neither value nor virtue in making them stronger. As the folktale goes, the wolf that wins is the one we feed, and no one bears a greater responsibility for that than publishers.

3 thoughts on “For publishers in a racist world, neutrality is not a virtue

  1. this is a consequence of one of the barriers that society has imaginary place and now it has been showing or manifesting in a physical form

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