Booksellers Waterstone's has apologised for inappropriately promoting Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf as a "perfect" Christmas present.
But the UK's largest bookshop chain has denied it is attempting to bolster sales of the infamously antisemitic work, despite the JC discovering several stores deliberately and prominently displaying the book.
Staff at Waterstone's in Huddersfield used a festive point-of-sale sticker to promote the book as "the perfect present" with an accompanying personal recommendation message by a staff member trumpeting the book as "an essential read for anyone".
A manager at a bookstore I worked at once noticed that a staff member had faced out a copy of The Turner Diaries on its shelf in fiction. He asked the employee why he did it, and the employee said it was to show that we carried everything, regardless of political inclination. The manager agreed that bookstores shouldn't censor the books that they carry, but he added, "Just because we have to carry that piece of shit book doesn't mean we have to make a big fucking production over it." The book stayed on the shelf, but it stayed inconspicuous, spine-out, from that point on. That strikes me as a pretty good rule of thumb for bookstores, I think.
