What Do You Do With an Evil Book?

In this “Links and Stuff” special, I want to give some thought to an interesting quandary faced by the German government this year. On January 1st, 2016, Adolf Hitler’s MEIN KAMPF became public domain in Germany. MEIN KAMPF, or “My Struggle,” was written by Hitler in 1923 while in prison for his role in a failed coup in Munich. The book discusses his vision for Germany, in particular his desire to rid the world of Jewish influence, which he believed to be the reason for all that is wrong. The values that drive the ideology behind the book became the values that drove Hitler as leader of the Nazi Party, and made him one of the most reviled men in human history.

The book was enormously successful during Hitler’s life. When Hitler committed suicide at the end of World War Two, the state of Bavaria claimed his property, and, with the cooperation of the German government banned MEIN KAMPF. This ban held sway in Germany from 1945 to 2015. On January 1st, 2016, the first day of the year after the 70th anniversary of Hitler’s death, in compliance with German copyright law, all his works fell into the public domain, and all previous legal restrictions became moot. The Institute of Contemporary History in Munich undertook the publication of the first German edition (with annotations) of MEIN KAMPF since the War. Within hours, it had sold out on Amazon.

The publication of MEIN KAMPF in Germany has not been without controversy. The main fear is that its availability will stir Neo-Nazi sentiments, or give fuel and inspiration to existing Neo-Nazi groups. For this reason, some have opposed publication, and others have advocated restricting its availability. However, the book has been available in most other countries since 1945. The book’s U.S. publisher, Houghton Mifflin, published the book in 1933 until the U.S. confiscated the rights after the war. HM bought the rights back off the U.S. government in 1979, and have been reprinting ever since, reportedly selling about 15,000 copies a year.

What would you do with a book like this? Should it be freely available, or should it be banned? And what about all the money publishers make from the book–who should get that money? Is it okay for the publishers to keep it, or should they donate it? This has been an on-going issue for Houghton Mifflin, as reported in this Boston Globe article.  It seems they kept the profits from 1979-2000 (estimated between $300,000 to $700,000), but since then have been donating the money to groups like the Anti-Defamation League. Recently, they’ve broadened their horizons beyond Holocaust awareness groups to include groups that promote tolerance generally. Not all of these organizations want the money, however. To some, it’s like taking drug money. Consider this. The publisher has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits from the book over the past few years. That’s a lot of copies sold, which means a lot of people are still buying it. Is that good?

As for banning the book, that opens up a whole other bag of worms. Most advocates of free speech oppose banning books, even the most controversial ones, on the grounds that people have a right to decide for themselves what they will buy and read. Even if it’s a book by Adolf Hitler. But should this book be available to Neo-Nazis, or even young, impressionable teenagers? What kind of damage could exposure to these ideas do?

Here’s what I think. Yes, you could ban the book, or make it so prohibitively expensive to purchase that only government institutions and universities could afford it. The danger with that is you give the book a perceived value way beyond its actual worth. There’s a principle in retail whereby people will assess the quality of a product by its price. How often have you bought, say, a watch, a necklace, or some electronics at a ridiculously low price, and wondered, “what’s wrong with it?” That’s because you expect products to be priced according to their worth. If something is cheap, then it’s probably crap–that’s our perception, anyway. And this is why many products aren’t priced as low as they could be: if it’s too affordable, people see it as cheap and worthless. So I would make MEIN KAMPF available as a free e-book in every country, and sell the print version at cost. That way, no-one makes a profit from it, and it gets the price value it deserves.

As for the fear that people will be inspired by it, the fact is people buy into corrupt ideologies all the time. Simply banning a book, or making a piece of literature hard to obtain, won’t prevent this. Unfortunately, our society seems to think the way you deal with unpopular or “offensive” speech is to ban it, whether by law or by public shame. People these days don’t want to have their ideas hashed out in public discourse. It’s easier to thrust a finger in someone’s face and say, “I’m right, and you’re an idiot!” It’s easier to win an argument by suing someone than debating them. If we are convinced Hitler was evil, surely the best approach is to educate people on what Hitler said, and why he was wrong, not to silence him.

What do you think? Ban, burn, sell for profit, sell at cost, make freely available, or something else…?