Books as signifiers, the paradox of tolerance, and Nazi bars

“Could you have a quick look at this manuscript? I think it could do with a fresh pair of eyes.”

A request like this wasn’t unusual in the early days of Unbound, the now defunct and disgraced London-based publisher. Even though it was funded as a startup – their shtick was that they were building a crowdfunding platform that specialised in books, which was a story that a certain type of investor loved – and overloaded on technical staff, it was still firmly in its “scrappy make-do” era of company growth, so it wasn’t unusual to be asked to look at something or quickly do a thing, even if it wasn’t strictly speaking a part of your job.

Around that same time I’d been asked to look over a book that referenced Iceland and Nordic culture, which turned out to be trite piece of shit, leaned heavily on cliches, had rote sentence structure, and clearly was not based on anything even vaguely resembling research. I’ve never had much of a filter, which is why I was not allowed to talk to authors directly when I worked there.

The book in question was going to be put through a CSS-based typesetting process we were testing that used Pressbooks and PrinceXML, so being asked wasn’t a surprise.

“What’s it about?”

“Oh, free market policy. That kind of thing.” The person who was in charge of digital production there at the time, and had asked me to read the manuscript, had his back turned to me, busy working on something on his laptop, which should have been a dead giveaway.

“Ugh, okay.” I open up the manuscript and the first thing I see, on the very first page, was a quote from Ayn Rand.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! Could you be more of a fucking cliché? What sort of dimwitted hack opens a book on libertarian politics with a quote from fucking Atlas Shrugged? You have got to be kidding me!”

Everybody at the table started to laugh. For a moment, I genuinely thought somebody had mocked up a fake manuscript with the most dreadful clichés they could think of just to get a rise out of me, no, it was real. The joke was that somebody had been betting on how long it’d take me to say something.

Not long.

This manuscript would need a lot of work, and even more drama, before it would be finally ready to be published, but the book ended up making a lot of money for Unbound, as did its Bitcoin-oriented follow-up.

Both were genuinely awful books, even with the generous editorial polishing they got. I kept seeing the Bitcoin follow-up book in stores for years afterwards. Most of the time it was the only nonfiction book I’d worked on that I ever encountered in English-language stores.

For a while, one of Unbound publishing strategies was to take right-wing tripe from reactionary influencers like Julie Burchill and give it enough of an editorial polish for the book to be taken seriously by the media establishment.

Though, in their defence they’d also publish weird experimental literature, such as an intentionally abstruse, award-winning book written by an English nationalist, Brexit-supporting author who would later convert to Christian Millenarianism.

(Whoops?)

Then, with The Good Immigrant, Unbound’s management seemed to realise there was much more cultural cachet on the progressive side of politics and – from the outside, as I’d left the company by then – it looked like their publishing strategy pivoted on the spot.

You’d better believe that if somebody told me they liked those books – the facile garbage that passed for political commentary from the early days of Unbound or that nationalist ode to 1066, a year often cited as the birth of the English national identity, written in a poorly thought-out made-up language – I’d straight-up assume they were a complete asshole.

The paradox of tolerance

The other day, I published a link to a blog post by Manu Moreale with the following quote from it on Mastodon:

Now, some preferences can raise eyebrows: if I tell you my favorite book is the Mein Kampf, you have every reason to be perplexed and ask follow-up questions. But if you just assumed, based on that, that I’m a Nazi sympathizer, that would be wrong.

And I posted it with this response from me:

What on earth possesses somebody to write this paragraph! If your favourite book is Mein Kampf then you are absolutely going to be a Nazi sympathiser, if not an outright Nazi.

In hindsight, I’m pleasantly surprised that I didn’t swear more. I guess I’m mellowing with age.

The responses to my shock have in turn been a bit odd. Or, they were odd for a short while after Manu Moreale posted a follow-up linking to it, saying that he’s bad at choosing examples but otherwise sticking to his argument. In the follow-up he talks about how the controversy might be because he might have misunderstood the word “favourite”.

In either case, whether it’s down to poor choice of example or a misunderstanding of the language, the result is the same: he made an argument for tolerating Nazi rhetoric in our public discourse and it’s obvious from the discourse I saw in my feed reader – mostly from micro.blog accounts – and my replies, quite a few people found the argument compelling.

This matters because Mein Kampf means something very different from, for example, the Gor novels, distasteful as those books are. Mein Kampf is a book that’s of a very, very different species than your average controversial novel.

The history of publishing is full of controversial or even outright unsavoury literary books, but Mein Kampf is not that. It is a political manifesto. It is routinely used as an explicit signal of political affiliation.

Anybody who talks favourably about the book Mein Kampf in a social context, as opposed to noting its role in history, is unambiguously doing so to let on that they are a Nazi sympathiser in a way that some parts of “polite” society find acceptable.

That’s what Mein Kampf isfor.

That’s the manifest purpose of declaring a nonacademic interest in Mein Kampf in any social context.

The defining document of the Nazi movement is not an extreme example of whatever sliding scale or gradient we use when we debate the relative merits of controversial books.

It’s a book that is categorically very different from, for example, Fight Club or Ender’s Game. Loving it, liking it, or enjoying it tells you something very specific about that person.

The example Many used means he made a very different argument from the one he thought he was making. He sleepwalked into the paradox of tolerance.

Similarly, if somebody said that they found The Turner Diaries compelling. Not even a “favourite” and not even Mein Kampf.

That still means they are a Nazi sympathiser and are specifically mentioning the book to test out whether you tolerate Nazi rhetoric.

Adopting overt Nazi and fascist insignia or praising Nazi or Nazi-adjacent documents like Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is what people do to make others aware of their political inclinations and to find those like-minded. They are testing the boundaries of what kinds of discourse you find socially acceptable.

By doing so with signifiers rather than through action, communities mistakenly let these authoritarians and extremists recruit and spread their ideology of violence until preventing their violence becomes impossible. These ideas must be scorned by open societies if they wish to remain open.

Let’s use a non-fascist example.

Imagine you have regular dinner parties where you invite interesting people from the local community to chat and network. One of your guests starts saying that society’s ills are caused by women not knowing their place and that the best way to fix society would be for all women to be beaten regularly.

If you say nothing, or even limit yourself to polite objections, the women in your party will know that they aren’t safe there. Those who can leave will leave. Those who can refuse to attend the next party will refuse. Those who feel they have to attend, because of their job or spouse, will go quiet and hope not to be noticed.

The implicit threat of violence in the intolerant speech will drive away those targeted as well as anybody who doesn’t agree with it, leaving you with only those who agree – tacitly or not – or those who don’t mind the idea of violence as long as they aren’t the target.

Tolerating intolerant speech in your community, your social gatherings, and your immediate surroundings, will cause that intolerance and violent language to grow and take over the community and, quite often, actual violence will follow.

This was exactly what Karl Popper was arguing against in 1945.

Any attempt to protect Nazi rhetoric from mockery and scorn needs to be rejected outright and publicly.

No matter what Manu intended, what he made was a public argument for tolerating Nazism and allowing Nazi rhetoric into our public discourse.

That’s crossing a line and, in an era where the US president is literally demanding to be handed entire sovereign nations because the US needs “lebensraum”, it’s a line that absolutely should not be crossed.

But, even if we do throw Karl Popper overboard, dismiss everything his generation learned about fascism and violent extremism, and take Manu’s argument at face value, then it’s still nonsense.

Because you absolutely should judge people based on the books they like. That’s what talking about books is for.

You talk about the books you like to find like-minded people. You reference books to signal that you share an interest with those around you who recognise the reference. You mention your favourite book because it tells us something about you. People prominently display the books they like in shelves for visitors to see.

We expect people to draw conclusions about who we are based on the books we favour, because one of the role books have in our society is act as a signal of our interests, personality, and social inclinations.

Books are a signal

Like many, I have a limited repertoire of clever stories to tell at parties. You don’t have to hang around me too long before you start hearing me repeat old stories.

Bad company stories – both the ones that focus on a poor choice of friends and those of shit employers – tend to work best when you already know the people around you have similar experiences.

Odd neighbours are a surprisingly rich vein – I’ve had a few decidedly odd ones and everybody seems to have had strange neighbours – but those stories, such as the ones about the scouse thug I had as a neighbour once and his con artist friend aren’t really “first meeting at a dinner party” material.

Books and publishing-related stories tend to be my standby – my first social weapon of choice – in a conversation with strangers, closely followed by film discourse or photography.

Mentioning specific books or specific genres are often a very effective way of sussing out which people are likely to be good company at a party. Talk about your love of specific romance novels, such as those by Loretta Chase or Courtney Milan, and you’ll find out very quickly which of your party is an insufferable snob and which are open-minded about what they read. Usually you end the conversation with a list of books to put on your “to read” list.

If it doesn’t make sense for me to mention a book directly as a conversation starter, then mentioning that I’ve worked quite a bit in publishing is usually a good introduction to a story from the publishing industry and those usually do well as icebreakers. Anybody who has worked in the industry for any period of time will have a few choice ones, as writers are generally fantastic instigators of anxiety and drama.

Back when I was working in Montréal for an open education startup, this would have been 2016 or thereabouts and the startup later morphed into a open education charity, the then-CEO invited a few of us to a meetup near the office that he thought would be an interesting opportunity for networking.

Once there, we set out to mingle and, after getting pulled into a group of people I didn’t know, I quickly went through the “inventory” of stories, ruled out the “the software industry is dysfunctional” ones and figured that getting introduced as somebody working for an open education startup would serve as a solid segue into a publishing industry story.

So I told the “Ayn Rand is a libertarian cliché” story from the start of this essay as the drama of that book’s road to publication is a fun story to tell, despite not being itself suitable for publication. The author is an asshole and the stories absolutely do paint him as one of the worst persons in publishing, so publishing the tale of woe on the web is a recipe for disaster, but it is great party fodder.

But what I hadn’t realised was that this wasn’t a publishing or education meetup.

This was a tech meetup.

“Why is that funny? Ayn Rand is my favourite author and philosopher. Her books have inspired everything I’ve done in my career.”

Right at the outset, I’d run into the “tech is actually full of Objectivist assholes” landmine. I tried to make a friendly joke but, since I’m not known for my ability to camouflage my emotions, the only move I had left was to gulp down my drink and cite the need to refill as an excuse for moving on in polite haste.

I didn’t ask the Ayn Rand fan any follow-up questions. I didn’t engage in a conversation to “explore our differences”. I already know what our differences are, she told me what they were when she praised Ayn Rand. To follow Manu’s advice would have only given her opinions the respect they do not deserve and would have given her the false impression that I wanted the company of her or anybody like her.

I’m certain she felt the same.

That’s the lie inherent in Manu’s argument. Nobody believes this shit. Not the Ayn Rand fans, the Fight Club men’s rights assholes, or the “genocide is tragic but necessary” Ender’s Game apologists.

The only reason why people would argue that you have to debate them if you find their declared favoured books distasteful is when they want to cross your boundaries and force something on you.

It’s abuser logic.

It’s also nonsense logic.

Those who argue that we shouldn’t judge people based on what they say they like and should instead ask them questions imagine some sort of friendly exchange where come to an agreement where they see the logic in each other’s position.

Ah, I see that Harry Potter has some literary merit and, although you do support and agree with how the author has funded a massive campaign to strip an entire class of people of their civil rights, that is incidental to your love of the setting and the characters.

Bullshit. The last thing anybody who declares an interest in a “problematic” book wants is genuine questions you’d get from an annoyed person with a comp. lit. degree when you tell them that your favourite book is a controversial novel.

You can still talk about these books without driving people away. You just can’t pretend they exist without context. Everybody today knows about Rowling or Woody Allen. Pretending that context doesn’t exist is insulting.

If you keep referencing Harry Potter or quoting Woody Allen (even that McLuhan scene) without acknowleding the context, you are doing so kowning their reputation. You simply can’t have missed it by now. Pretending that context doesn’t exist just isn’t plausible.

But you can acknowledge it and in doing so open up a very different conversation from what you otherwise would have had.

There’s an entire generation of millennials who still have a fondness for the books of Harry Potter. They can talk about what those books mean to them while still acknowledging that the fondness is now somewhat tainted by the author’s reputation actually works, and they can do that without causing drama or getting accused of transphobia or the like.

How do I know?

Because I’ve been on ther other end of that conversation several times.

I personally never liked the books. Read the first one; didn’t like it. But I’ve had quite a few conversations with coworkers or friends about the Harry Potter where the conversation began with an acknowledgement of the context that now inevitably follows the series.

It usually ends with me recommending they seek out Diana Wynne Jones’s books, which are amazing and tap into a similar cultural reservoir, and it’s never ended in recriminations and accusations of extremist politics.

In my experience, it’s the people who loudly proclaim you shouldn’t judge Harry Potter fans who are the most problematic.

The people who shout loudly in defence of the great unwashed masses, who demand that the masses should be allowed to continue in their innocent context-free love of a bestselling series, who are the zealous in defending other people’s right to love Harry Potter who are likely to be massive bigots. Normal people with bittersweet feelings about a piece of childhood nostalgia usually know better.

Unless they actually are bigots. That happens. We wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in if society didn’t have its fair share of bigotry.

The same tactic of acknowledging the issue even as you mention the book applies to most of the controversial creative works you can think of, from Lolita – “it’s tragic how a horrific tale of abuse, written by an abuse victim, has been adopted by abusers” – to Fight Club – “most fans completely misunderstand it”.

But it doesn’t apply to Mein Kampf, The Turner Diaries, or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Leave them to academic discourse.

The people who really want to talk about these books on social media, dinner parties, or at the pub?

Nazis.

Let the Nazis talk about Nazi shit and, soon enough, you’ll end up with a Nazi bar.

Books symbolise many different things. They can signpost political affiliations, opinions, identity, and inclinations.

Some books, however, are just curses embodied in paper.

The Bitcoin book I had to work on, the one written as a follow-up to the libertarian sludge whose manuscript annoyed me so much on first reading, followed me all around the world like it was an indelible stamp of nonsense and bile etched into the fabric of reality.

I now live in Hveragerði, a small town in Iceland that I often refer to as being at “the end of the world”. A couple of years ago as I wandered past the town library, I glanced at their giveaway shelf. Libraries need to prune their collections regularly and the books that can’t be given away get sent to recycling.

Right in my eyeline, cover facing out, there it was.

That goddamn Bitcoin book.

It had followed me to the end of the world.