Books listed for sale included the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion; pro-National Socialist literature by the late Colin Jordan; The Turner Diaries, a novel about a race war written by neo-Nazi William Pierce; and a number of Holocaust denial books such as Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last and Curated Lies: The Auschwitz Museum's Misrepresentations, Distortions and Deceptions. Other works by notorious deniers David Irving, Germar Rudolf and Nick Kollerstrom, amongst others, could also be purchased from the retailers’ websites. Dr Joe Mulhall, Senior Researcher at HOPE Not Hate, spoke to Imogen Dalziel about the campaign and its impact.
What prompted the start of the campaign against Foyles, Waterstones, Amazon and WHSmith regarding the sale of these books?
The prompt for the campaign came while we were conducting research into UK-based Holocaust deniers. We were looking at Nick Kollerstrom, author of Breaking the Spell: The Holocaust: Myth and Reality, who was due to speak in London. Whilst doing research, we noticed that his book was for sale at Waterstones, and so began to explore what else was available through mainstream booksellers. To our horror some of the most extreme antisemitic texts ever published in English, as well as a whole raft of denial books, were advertised on the websites of Waterstones, Foyles, WHSmith and Amazon.
Is there any way of knowing how long these books may have been on sale on these websites?
A New Chapter: The Campaign to End Major Booksellers’ Sale of Extreme Material
In March 2018, the British anti-fascist organisation HOPE Not Hate launched a campaign against four of the UK’s major booksellers – Foyles, Waterstones, Amazon and WHSmith – after discovering the sale of extreme material on their websites.
Imogen Dalziel