Writers Tricks of the Trade Issue 1 Volume 8 | Page 29

NEWS
B OOKSELLERS REMOVE RACIST AND H OLOCAUST DENIAL
TITLES FROM THEIR WEBSITES
Excerpted from The Guardian
Sarah Marsh and Alison Flood
Anti-racist group Hope Not Hate says Waterstones, Foyles, WH Smith and Ama-
zon are lending respectability to offensive books, but retailers say listings come
from uncurated feed
Major booksellers have been accused of lending a veneer of respectability to antisemitic and neo-
Nazi books by featuring them for sale on their websites.
The UK’s largest anti-racist group Hope Not Hate published an investigation into the number of
far-right and antisemitic works available to buy on the websites of Waterstones, Foyles, WH Smith
and Amazon. These included a manual containing bomb-making instructions, extreme antisemitic
tracts venerated by Hitler and numerous works by Holocaust deniers. Many listings have since been
removed from the retailers’ websites.
Joe Mulhall, senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, said that the books were discovered on sale dur-
ing research on Nick Kollerstrom, an English author who is known for Holocaust denial.
“The first thing we could find on Goo gle about him was on Waterstones, so we thought we would
investigate to see what else we could find on mainstream seller websites and were shocked by how
much we could find,” said Mulhall.
He said that while people have the right to write books others disagree with, companies should
not profit from “extreme hate content” and making offensive books available to buy gave them “dan-
gerous” legitimacy.
Calling on the retailers to remove the titles from their sites, Hope Not Hate was joined by MPs in-
cluding Labour’s Ruth Smeeth, who said that extremist, hate-filled books had no place on the
booksellers’ websites. “No one is saying we should ban these books, but why do these high street
chains want to give these vile authors the veneer of respectability?” said Smeeth.
Authors Jon McGregor and Sunjeev Sahota also called on the booksellers to address the situation.
“These booksellers have earned the high esteem in which they’re held by writers and readers alike.
That’s what makes it so important they don’t lend their credibility to these horrifyingly extreme
books. Instead they can make a choice to remove these books from their websites,” said McGregor,
who recently won the Costa novel of the year award for Reservoir 13.
READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE on the Guardian
W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE
P AGE 21
S PRING 2018