Iis that here, on the edge of Hall 3.0, at the end of row H, the dirty corner? Right-wing publishers have been criticized for visiting the Frankfurt Book Fair for a number of years. Boycott calls against the publishers are widespread. So far, however, they have always come back in the end. Two of them have been placed in Hall 3.0 this year: the weekly newspaper “Junge Freiheit” and the Gerhard Hess Verlag from Bad Schussenried in Baden-Württemberg, which a former AfD member of the Bundestag has just taken over. The Austrian publisher Karolinger-Verlag has a stand on the floor above. Left-wing activists would prefer not to see them at the fair either.
A poster is hanging at the booth of the “Junge Freiheit” that declares it to be a “safe space for freedom of expression”. The “taz” is demonstratively read at one of the bar tables there. In the current issue of “Junge Freiheit”, several articles are dedicated to the so-called “cancel culture” and the alleged power of left-wing lobby groups over the traffic light coalition. The texts sound angry and alarmist, are partisan and exaggerated, but certainly not an issue for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution or the courts.
“We will be seen here”
Dieter Stein, the publisher and editor-in-chief of “Junge Freiheit”, calls it “absurd” that one does not want to bear the presence of his publisher at the fair. He finds it shameful for an industry “that is committed to openness” that one cannot stand it when three of 4,000 exhibitors “oppose the mainstream”. He makes no secret of the fact that he enjoys being annoying with his presence. As a thorn against the “woken consensus”, Stein feels comfortable there, even if his booth is located in a remote corner: “We are still seen here.”
Stein calls up an article on his smartphone that reports that Frankfurt city councilor Mirrianne Mahn (Die Grünen) is calling for the resignation of Book Fair boss Juergen Boos. “Anyone who cannot distinguish between freedom of expression and hate speech has no place in this position,” said the Green politician on Instagram, where she also attacked “Young Freedom”. Stein is angry about this. “People talk about diversity, but want uniformity,” he says.
For Volker Münz, the ex-AfD member of parliament and new publisher of Hess-Verlag, it is not the right-wing publishers at the fair that are “a scandal” but something completely different: namely the book prize for Kim de l’Horizon. “A book like this gets an award just because transsexuality is all the hype,” he says. With his publishing house he wants to oppose this “gender ideology”. You certainly don’t have to be of this opinion either. Bear that it is uttered, but still.
