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The
danger and futility of book-banning
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Author: Albert
S. Lindemann
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 17:26:51 -0800
In my opinion best-selling antisemitic
books must be seen as a reflection of popular moods
rather than as basic causes of those moods. Books like
Mein
Kampf cannot be considered
fundamental causes of antisemitism. As several posts have
suggested, encouraging people to read it may even help to
combat hatred of Jews; readers can judge for themselves,
and it does not take an unusually perceptive reader to
detect the crudity of mind, to say nothing of the vicious
nonsense in Hitler's book.
So too with many other antisemitic best-sellers:
Marr's Der Sieg des Judenthums
ueber das Germanentum, Drumont's
La France juive,
Chamberlain's Foundations of the
Twentieth Century, or Ford's
The International Jew. The
popularity of each of these works, such as it was,
reflected rather than caused Jew-hatred.
To be sure, their popularity helped then to spread or
legitimize antisemitism, but by no means all or even most
of those who bought and read those books became
antisemitic or were so beforehand.
Over a generation ago Gershom Scholem denounced
Philip Roth for accomplishing something that
antisemites had so far failed to do: write a successful
antisemitic novel. Portnoy's
Complaint remained a record-breaking best-seller
for many years, with many more readers than any of the
above-mentioned works. Even if one does not agree with
Scholem's judgment, there is little doubt that negative
images of Jews abound in Roth's novel (and of course in
his many other very popular writings).
But did this enormous popularity, this exposure of
negative Jewish stereotypes to many millions of readers,
result in an increase in antisemitism in America? Most
scholars have reached opposite conclusions, that is, that
from 1960s on there has been a steady decline in
antisemitism. Banning books, or trying to do so in a free
society, is much more likely to attract readers than to
limit their access to such "forbidden" works.
For Jews in particular to try to ban books is
extremely ill-advised, since antisemites thrive on
charges of a Jewish-controlled publishing world.
Efforts by some
Jewish spokesmen to prevent the publication of
David Irving's biography
of Goebbels is a good case in point. They may have
succeeded in the short run, but in the long run Irving
has gained much publicity for his book with a new
publisher, and in the process "the Jews" have ended up
looking bad 
(I
put "the Jews" in quotations marks because, in my
judgment at least, most Jews do not support censorship,
even of Irving's books).
[Free
download of book: click for download
page-->
I myself have begun reading the book in part to see
what all the fuss is about. What I have discovered in the
first 100 pages or so, skipping around a bit, confirms
what is often said (and by prominent scholars) about
Irving's other books: He has done very impressive
archival work and offers fascinating information.
I see nothing (so far) in the book that I find
offensive or biased in favor of the Nazis, and it is
certainly not an attempt to present a favorable picture
of Goebbels. I am of course reading it with
caution, which is what one should do with any book of
history, but even if I were to find it deeply flawed and
morally offensive I would not support efforts to ban it
-- again, for principled reasons of freedom of expression
and because, practically, banning works simply does not
ork in a free society.
- Albert
S. Lindemann
- History Department
- University of California,
- Santa Barbara
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Irving comments:
write to David Irving