Those of us in the small-house publishing world spend so much time trying to disseminate writings in the form of books, to get out to the world material that would (we hope) be useful to the society at large, that we sometimes fail to stop to think about the occasions when not publishing is the right thing to do.
The Milo Yiannopoulos case gives us a good reminder that not everything ought to be published.
The news story is that Yiannopoulos has signed a book deal, for $250,000, with the New York publisher Simon & Schuster. To be more precise: Yiannopoulos (apparently) signed with one of S&S’s imprints, Threshold Editions, which handles conservative books.
This has drawn a great deal of anger, not least from book reviewers around the country and some of S&S’s own authors, at least one of whom is “rethinking” her relationship with the company.
Threshold is not the only right-leaning imprint around, and there are (famously) plenty of authors on the right who have been published without major controversy.
So why is Yiannopoulos different?
It’s a matter of degree. Bloomberg called him the “pretty, monstrous face of the alt-right”, and describes: “Yiannopoulos is the 31-year-old British tech editor and star writer for Breitbart News, where he’s the loudest defender of the new, Trump-led ultraconservatism … Yiannopoulos gained his initial fame as the general in a massive troll war over misogyny in the video game world, known as Gamergate. He was permanently banned from Twitter in July after the social media company said his almost 350,000 followers were responsible for harassing Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones. … They admire the bravado of authoritarians, especially Vladimir Putin. Some are white supremacists. Most enjoy a good conspiracy theory.”
Simply, Yiannopoulos is a conduit for hate and conflict.
Slate posted a mini-debate over the publication, and Ben Mathis-Lilley argued, “his project of mainstreaming white nationalism is one that Simon & Schuster should be embarrassed to lend its reputation to. … Yiannopoulos and his followers aren’t just kicking around Bell Curve–esque ideas as an intellectual exercise—they also fetishize Nazism, i.e., the movement that put those ideas into practice. Yiannopoulos has posted photos of himself wearing an Iron Cross and holding books about Hitler, while his fans are notorious for their use of Holocaust imagery. “Provocative” beliefs about genetics are one thing; affection for the party that used those beliefs to justify the worst genocide in the history of civilization is another.”
In today’s publishing environment, you can’t stop someone from publishing themselves. I wouldn’t deny free speech to anyone, Milo Yiannopoulos included (albeit that he represents an acid test of the idea), and he would be at liberty to sell his wares with the help of S&S or not. In fact, since his audience is relatively inelastic, he’d probably fare as well financially if he went the self-pub route.
But when it comes to provoking race hatred and divisions in our society, is there any good reason – and profits surely are not good enough – that a respected name like Simon & Schuster has to add more fuel to the fire?
We have serious problems in this county, and this particular publication decision is making them worse, not better.
