No Room for Nazis at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Making Marginalized Voices Heard.

„How do we want to live?“ is the motto of this year‘s Frankfurt Book Fair. So far, the fair does not provide an answer to this question, but a suggestion on how to approach it: by listening to each other.
With the decision to make room for (neo)right publishers such as Oikos Verlag and Jungeuropa Verlag at the fair, supposedly in order to guarantee freedom of expression and represent the plurality of opinions within the German society, we see hate declared as opinion and violence against marginalized people legitimized. It is tolerated that representatives of new-right publishers bring their extreme right-wing, violent, environment with them. Thus, for people who already fear racist and anti-Semitic violence every day and who urgently need to be listened to, participation in the fair becomes a security risk.
Not only since the attacks in Hanau, in Halle and the murders of the NSU, it is indispensable for our social coexistence to amplify the voices of people who are exposed to everyday racist and anti-Semitic violence – on the streets, on the internet and at the book fair. With the statement of the author Jasmina Kuhnke, in which she explains the threats against her and announces to cancel her appearances at the fair, the fair management should have taken a clear anti-discriminatory stance. Because here it concerns not freedom of opinion, but direct racist discrimination. Since the fair publicly professes not to tolerate discrimination, it should not accept the absence of authors and publishers who experience racism in Germany and therefore make use of its domestic authority.
The exclusion of the National Socialist Druffel publishing house from the 1958 book fair on the grounds that the publisher‘s presence was an „imposition“ on the „numerous foreign visitors“, shows that it is possible to intervene consistently against inhuman attitudes.

We call on the fair management not to adorn itself with diversity phrases, but to actively ensure that marginalized people can participate in the debates and are listened to. It is the task of the fair management to take a stand against racism and anti-Semitism, but also that of the entire book industry to show solidarity and not to let the annual courting of new-right publishers happen without comment. We declare our solidarity with all those who wonder whether and how they can participate in the book fair protected from Nazis!