There is a publishing house in Germany called Unrast Verlag that recently came to my attention. From its web site, I think it’s anarchist-aligned or at least anarchist-supportive and also seriously feminist. It appears to be quite well established as the site lists about 650 authors. I can’t read German, but I heard from a friend that they had published a German translation of a book of mine, Practical Utopia, and indeed, I saw it listed. They also published German translations of four of Chomsky’s books. 

My friend brought all this to my attention because in late February this publisher announced, and this is a quote direct from them: “UNRAST Publishing will remove Noam Chomsky’s works The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal, Hope in Times of Decay, The Terrorism of the Western World, and Focus on Palestine from its catalog and will no longer distribute them. The works were published in German translation by UNRAST Publishing.”

This is a cancellation. How should we assess such an action by any publisher of any author, and more generally cancellation of people and their ideas?

Let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, and against all reason, that Chomsky or any author of Unrast’s, had done something really heinous. Okay, that is actually absurd in Noam’s case and probably also for all or at least very nearly all the other Unrast authors as well. For Noam, which is the case in question, no one even asserts it. But let’s assume that some years back Unrast had published works by an actual paedophile, or perhaps by a head of state who had, while smiling and perhaps even while bragging about it, overseen tens or hundreds of thousands, or even millions of deaths by bomb, starvation, or what have you. Or if you prefer assume they had published works by a German accused of supporting Nazis or even of being a Nazi. In that case, I think many people might reactively say, okay, sure, pulp the books, which is what Unrast Verlag told my friend they intended to do to their four Chomsky titles. Seriously. I am not making this up. And I claim that what they proposed to do is book burning by another name. 

Do you perhaps remember when there was a furor over John Lennon saying the Beatles were more popular than Jesus? Do you remember the bonfires into which Beatles albums were hurled? Is there a meaningful difference that I don’t see? So the situation makes me ill. And the burner is in this case not a disgruntled religious fan, but an anarchistic, feministic, publisher. Incredible, isn’t it? But why, you might wonder, does this perverse situation induce nausea in me? 

A book is not its author. A book is, however, brought into being by its author’s labor. A book’s contents may or may not reflect some aspect of its author’s life choices that you or I may like or abhor. Those life aspects may conceivably even infect the book’s words. Yet even if we ignore ugly precedent, which is another reason to oppose book burning by any name, whether a book is worthy or unworthy is a function of and must be judged by its actual content, not by its author’s life practices. 

When Unrast Verlag published Chomsky’s books, their action facilitated the book’s distribution and Noam’s visibility in Germany. Their action therefore aided Noam. Did they later read the books and find that they had made a mistake? That the books’ contents were in fact unworthy? No, they did not. The books’ pages gave no evidence of poor judgement much less of support for having sex with kids.

So was the publishing house guilty of what it presumably decided Noam was guilty of or might be guilty of, or perhaps just looked to some like he might be guilty of, due to the time worn norm that like accused witches you’re guilty until proven innocent? Is Unrast also guilty due to having aided Noam who by their judgement aided Epstein because Unrast did aid and indeed did closely attend to Noam, and did know his work, and yet didn’t attack him and did spread the work? If we employ Unrast’s approach to Chomsky, and we emulate their choice of what to do about people deemed guilty, to be like Unrast should we now pulp not only Noam’s book’s but all books published by Unrest who abetted Noam?

Similarly, when I published and also solicited and promoted Noam’s works when I was a publisher, I certainly aided their distribution without denouncing him. So am guilty? And as a writer, I am sure that like many on Unrast’s list, I have quoted Noam, used lessons learned from Noam, and so on. So am I guilty for that too? Should Unrast pulp my book that they chose to publish in German? Should they investigate all their authors, and also themselves for guilt by association with someone they have presumed guilty by association? 

If this discussion seems weird to you, or even utterly unhinged, good because it ought to. Not only because Noam is accused only of having been mislead or had bad judgement. But also because to not like, even to revile, even to hate a person (though I would say, not Chomsky) can be warranted due to the person’s choices, one would hope it would be based on something significant. And, yes, one can also not like or even revile a book or books due to what they say or urge. But does to not like or even to revile an author personally, or even a book itself, warrant urging or undertaking cancelation as in pulping or burning the book? Can that inclination possibly be remotely legitimate? Such behavior has consequences. It does damage. Worse, once undertaken, it tends to spread. 

I don’t have vast reserves of careful research about examples of book burning or lynching authors to bring to bear. But here is at least what you may find to be a relevant and instructive anecdote. A branch of a massive corporate publishing operation, Warner publications, itself a subsidiary of Time Warner, many years back, around the time their main house published Richard Nixon’s autobiography, solicited a monograph—I think that’s what they called this type of short work—from Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. Noam and Ed wrote and submitted it. The monograph was titled “Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda.” I can’t remember for sure, but I think it was 50 or perhaps as much as 75 pages. The monograph branch accepted, prepared, and printed it. But then someone in the larger sponsoring organization, Time Warner, got wind of the project and was horrified. They moved to stop it, to cancel it. 

There was a contract, so Ed and Noam had a case. But the parent organization of the monograph division hated their views. Time Warner couldn’t break the contract without legal problems, so they simply disbanded their monograph branch and pulped 20,000 copies of the work. Noam later asked if we, I was then with South End Press, would publish an enlarged version, and we said of course. Rewritten, it became the two volume set, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, and After the Cataclysm, together called the Political Economy of Human Rights, which ran to about 900 pages. It was not more verbose, rather we told the authors to include as much as they wanted. Of course, in contrast to the Unrest case, there was no translation involved…and Time Warner was a major capitalism-identified and operated U.S. publishing house, not a well established radical and even anarchist-identified and feminist aligned German publishing house. But pulping is pulping, isn’t it? And how is pulping different than burning?

Another anecdote. Robin Hahnel and I, having proposed an economic vision called participatory economics by us, participatory socialism by some others, often ran into a strange reaction. We, the authors, were white men. Where do you get off writing an economic vision, we were asked. By virtue of who you are, it cannot be any good. If someone thought our background and habits in a sexist society, or even our genetic chromosomes in any society, could corrupt our thinking, okay. But then you would need to demonstrate the associated flaws. But there was no reference to anything actually in the vision, only to attributes of its authors. So it was the same practice, in that respect. That response judged the book, not by its contents, but by the presumed guilt/ignorance of its authors, in this case regarding views and practices they must have regarding gender relations or even all relations due to their gender or their background or their associations, but not due to the unaddressed content of the material. It was even humorous because sometimes someone with this dismissive attitude toward the vision paused, thinking, wait a minute maybe given the name Robin is actually a woman. 

Cancel culture in general most often involves a kind of rabbit hole dynamic. Something is said about someone. An accusation is heard. Perhaps it is true, perhaps not. A teacher affronts a student and is labelled racist. A man by being male labelled inadequately feminist or infected with misogyny. Or perhaps some philosopher, physicist, or poet is claimed to have associated with or even advocated Nazis policies. The claim disturbs some people who get angry, nasty, harsh. They burn baby burn, the philosopher, physicist, or poet’s books. But they do so based on very little if any evidence of fascistic behavior by the person, much less regarding the books’ contents. It is mainly just outrage by purported association. Others say hold on, the accusation isn’t even true much less as horrible as you assert. Each side digs in. Tactics get ugly. To defend the accused is to in turn be accused of the same failing. To attack the accused is to be deemed disgustingly ignorant or malicious. Attention to facts and reason exit stage right. 

One has to wonder. Shouldn’t to cancel a human be a profoundly serious business, supposing it could ever make sense at all? The dynamics in these situations tend to not only often dispose of worthy people and their products along with unworthy targets, they also affect the person or in this case the book publisher who does the disposing. The agent is seriously and harmfully bent by their own actions. The environment is polluted by the choice. State censorship. Corporate repression. And, yes, movement cancel culture. There are consequences. Is it exaggerating to say book burning is like a flesh eating disease of the human psyche and soul.

Watch a video of Nazis burning books and tell me what you see. Then consider the Stalinists in the Soviet Union cancelling Einstein’s theories, and yes, Chomsky’s. Or, can you get a video of Unrast’s pulping to watch. Is each such act unique? Theirs bad. Mine good. Or are they sadly similar?

So, let’s return to Chomsky’s case. An accusation is voiced. Some hear the accusations, feel anger, betrayal, confusion, or what have you and start to get steadily more aggressive. Before long they claim that someone who they yesterday admired is today and has always been an enemy of humanity. Sometimes this can be a reasonable hypothesis. Much of the time it is obviously false and even ridiculously false, as with Chomsky. But no matter. Having once hurled epithets, even only in tweets, only anonymously, it is hard for a canceler to back off much less admit error. Indeed, many tend to double-down, even more reflexively than when they began their spiral. Consider caring Israelis calling Palestinians vermin. Consider caring activists calling cops pigs. 

So, why does this sort of thing happen?

Why did the folks, and I assume they are wonderful folks, at Unrast not just rush to implicitly abide the dictum that Chomsky or any author or person is guilty until proven innocent, which would be bad enough, but then also decide to pulp that author’s published work? How close is the analogy to Time Warner? It isn’t the same, clearly, but is it seriously different? Is it even worse? 

Time Warner pulped something that the boss actually hated. The direct analogy would be if Unrast commissioned a book, received it, printed it, and then someone in power there realized they hated its substance, and ordered it pulped. It would be like if a left press, publishing a work on, say, economic vision, received it, published it, and then pulped or even just quietly sabotaged its distribution, as another anecdotal example. In Unrast’s case, however, they pulped what the press actually liked. It is more like how various respected and notable left writers have rhetorically pulped someone they admired and I bet still admire, Chomsky. 

So why does it happen? The easy answer is optics. To avoid anger from other pulpers. In this view, Unrast didn’t want to suffer criticism. They didn’t want to be labelled a paedophile abetter (though they were implicitly willing to label someone else, Noam, that way). They would call their choice wise, I guess, for their interests, for their publishing house. Someone else might call it cowardly coupled with hypocrisy. Whatever anyone calls it, once done, even if entirely unwarranted or even ridiculous, the next step is typically for those who did it, or who applauded doing it, to very rarely acknowledge their error. Instead they more often double down and slip-slide into the cancellation rabbit hole. 

A bit more complex albeit related dynamic is that sometimes the initial impetus isn’t so much to avoid criticism that might lead to lost revenue, as it is to be on the (momentarily) winning team. Or maybe, as with Time Warner, not to mention with Trump and his ilk, it is to wipe out resistance. Or what about when some leftists dehumanize opponents to dismiss them and their claims without serious rebuttal and a degree of human empathy. Any which way I look at it, I find that book burning and indeed human cancellation, guilt by association, and guilty until proven innocents are nothing to applaud. Maybe you can think up another answer for why it happens. A benign answer. Or even a well motivated, well intended, well meaning answer. Regardless, I hope we can all see that however they are incited or intended, book burning’s and people dehumanizing’s consequences are dreadful, so they should not occur.Email