Charlottesville Public Library. Wikimedia Commons.
Let me tell you about Walter. You know, the 68-year-old retiree that volunteers at your library. The older white gentleman who’s been faithfully reading to the kids at Saturday Story-Time every week for six years. Kids love Walter. The way he makes silly voices. The knowing grin when the pigeon can’t find his shoe or the mouse somehow gets into the bear’s house for the umpteenth time. The way he reminds them of Santa Claus, maybe. Walter is a great volunteer. He also happens to be a Klan member.
Or, let me tell you about Tyler. The junior political science major that reserves a large study room every Wednesday night from 5:00 to 7:00 for his study group. Always turns the key in on time. Never bothers other patrons. This week, Tyler and his friends are meeting to plan for a road-trip to join a neo-Nazi protest against the planned removal of a Confederate monument.
What about Kelly? She’s the week-end part-timer that covers the reference desk on Sunday afternoons. She’s always there with a smile on her face and an eagerness to help whoever comes to the desk. After her shift, she heads home to write her weekly post for a white nationalist blog.
See, here’s the thing. Librarians are arguing over whether or not to let white supremacists and Nazis and other hate groups into the library. About the library, they say, “you can’t invite into it people who want to publicly announce that they want to drive away some of them with torches and threats.” And, sure, when the alt-right shows up to the circulation desk with their tiki torches, you should absolutely kick their hateful asses out. If a neo-Nazi group wants to rent space for a public memorial service for a Holocaust denier, you ought to push back. If white supremacists are marching down your Main Street, by all means, resist them. Chris Bourg is right: “As an organization, we must condemn white supremacy in all its manifestations.” And we should call out tone-deaf arguments from white guys who think this is all some sort of abstraction about freedom of speech and who want to recite the ALA Code of Ethics as some sort of gospel.
But, odds are, at your library, you’re not going to have to deal with these sorts of things. You won’t have tiki torches at your circulation desk or neo-Nazis rallying by your makerspace. No, you’re just going to have Walter and Tyler and Kelly.
White supremacy is endemic. It’s part of the fabric of this country. And it’s good at hiding in plain sight. For every fascist wearing a Pepe shirt, there are a thousand more who aren’t. And the more we focus on the most egregious displays of hate coming from the alt-right, the more we risk overlooking the hidden hatred that lives right next door. The hate that perpetuates discrimination and inequality. Redlining loan officers don’t carry torches. The high-income hipsters whitewashing Harlem aren’t carrying Confederate flags. George Zimmerman wasn’t wearing a white hood when he shot Trayvon Martin. Remember, after the white supremacists rally, they go home, take off their silly costumes, and blend back into white, suburban banality. And how do the Walters and Tylers and Kellys blend in? Because we let them. We nice white folks let them. To me, that’s more frightening than any rally.
So, while librarians argue on the Internet about whether to punch a Nazi or let the Klan hold a rally in the library, kids are listening to Walter the casual Klansman read about an owl who can’t fall asleep…and they’re loving it.
Sense & Reference 
Just like Communists in the era of Joseph McCarthy, there now seems to be a fascist or neo-Nazi under every bed. Sounds to me like the author of this column is for freedom of speech only as long as it doesn’t offend anyone. I guess now when we screen volunteers and new hires, we need to not only do a background check for any criminal record, but we now have to vet them for their political and social views.
Those are some interesting ideas you’re proposing. I don’t agree, and they don’t have anything to do with what I wrote, but thanks for contributing.
I totally agree with you on the matter of “selective” Freedom of Speech by the author of this article. Perhaps they need to revisit the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Hi Bev, perhaps you should read what I wrote, rather than what Cyril wishes I wrote.
I am absolutely aware that white supremacists and neo-Nazis (and communists for that matter) abound and are as you say “hidden in plain sight”. However, are simply trying to create awareness? I disagreed with the previous response about you asking to screen volunteers for their political beliefs because I finished the article thinking “and…”. I hear no call to action or remedy.
Not calling you out, I liked your information, just trying to understand.
Hi Julie. At this point, I don’t have a call to action; that’s for someone far more intelligent than I. This post was just meant to highlight that for all the attention the neo-Nazis are receiving, we should not lose sight of the fact that white supremacy is and has always been all around us.
The fact that Walter & Kelly are in the library interacting positively with the general public may be a more significant action than one realizes. (Tyler keeps to himself, so he presents a different challenge.) When people with problem views about those unlike themselves meet and serve people unlike themselves, those interactions can become a wedge to dislodge the problem views.
When I was a girl in the 1960s, my dad said that the country’s political life started going downhill when women got the vote. I asked him if he thought I shouldn’t be able to vote. Being proud of me, he said of course not. Did he think I wasn’t smart enough to vote wisely? No. Aren’t there a lot of smart girls whose fathers love them like you love me, who are just as responsible with their votes? Silence, then, Yes. My dad’s attitude toward women in politics began to change after that. I was the wedge.
People change themselves based on what they encounter. We can present people with opportunities to reevaluate their own thoughts, through experiences and ideas.
One day, Walter may form a bond with a little child who is not white, because he and the child were both welcome in the library. He may find his own ideas affected by this. He may take his new thoughts to the Klan meeting. We don’t know. But it is possible because it has happened.
To expect Walter to give up his Klan membership, which is probably part of his social support system (as a fellow old person, I appreciate the importance of that), is unrealistic. To provide him with a wedge to an alternative viewpoint is not.
I would like the author to please elaborate: 1. Do we know that Walter the Klansman to be a klansman as a matter of fact confirmed by the mouth of Walter himself, or through another means, like community gossip, or presumption on the part of patrons or library staff? 2. How does Walter use his speech when on he is on library premises? Does he say things that are explicitly threatening to individuals within the library or against abstracts of groups, whether announcing them aloud, or speaking to staff or patrons, or is what Walter saying merely presumed to be ‘coded language’ for racist ideology by staff, who may be projecting identities onto Walter based on their own biases or lack of information? 3. Let us say that it is an established fact that Walter belongs to the local branch of the Klan. Since approval of volunteers is at the discretion of library management, staff can choose whether or not to authorize Walter to formally host a program listed under the library’s official Programs, like story-time for children. However, do you deny Walter entry into your library, and discourage him from participation in your library’s programs, or do you permit him to stay as a member of the public? Thanks in advance
Hi Peter. Walter can be whoever you want him to be. For the purposes of this post, the specifics don’t matter. What matters is that the librarians who debate what to do about overt displays of white supremacy (like those in Charlottesville) should not lose sight of the fact that white supremacy is more often subtle, disguised, and banal. How do you deny Walter entry to the Library? Should you? How do you really know what someone believes? Is he *really* a white supremacist? Or just a victim of slander? Those are important questions when face-to-face with a real-life Walter. My point was not to answer them, just to bring them up.
I found your article to be very interesting. But, just like other articles I have read and recent emails I have received from YALSA and ALA which are filled with resources to use to combat this particular situation, there are never any resources given or articles written about how to combat the other side of the spectrum. For example, Black Lives Matter. There have many, many incidents of violence, call to harm police, riots, looting, etc. all in the name of Black Lives Matter. Where are the calls of outrage? Why are there not emails sent to me with resources on how to handle these situations? As a librarian, we should be neutral and offer our space for ALL groups regardless of who they identify with. Your article brings out that important point. But YALSA and ALA are far from neutral and I am finding this to be extremely troubling. As the library manager, I want our library to be welcoming to all. I want there to be a variety of materials that will satisfy all of our customers and I want the biggest library organization in the country to be neutral as well. Provide resources, that is what they should do, but provide resources for both sides, not just one!
Hi Melisa. I’m just going to go ahead and reject your claim that there “have many, many incidents of violence, call to harm police, riots, looting, etc. all in the name of Black Lives Matter.” Yes, there was looting in Ferguson and Baltimore, but it wasn’t instigated by Black Lives Matter. More to the point, if looting and riots are a concern, perhaps, rather than seeking blame, it would be good to reflect on the social, political, and material causes for said looting and riots. As far as resources go, you may want to look to the Ferguson Public Library as a model for how to react: http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/10/us/ferguson-library-award/index.html
And as far as “providing resources for both sides,” that’s a false moral equivalence. I am no more going to provide white supremacist resources than I am going to provide unfettered access to resources on homeopathy, flat-earth theory, or phrenology. Misinformation and disinformation are criteria for exclusion, not inclusion. Thank you for your comment.
Lane, I was with you until this: “I am no more going to provide white supremacist resources than I am going to provide unfettered access to resources on homeopathy, flat-earth theory, or phrenology.” Are you really a librarian? It’s not up to librarians to be the gatekeepers of information. We’re supposed to provide access. Period.
Hi EFK. Please keep in mind that we don’t all have the unlimited budget that you do, so I can’t just order anything I want without considering its value to my community. Though you may see no problem with buying homeopathy books for the Nursing school or flat-earth books for the Geology department, that only takes funds away from collecting materials they actually want. Same goes for white supremacist materials; they don’t fit our collection development policy because we can’t waste our money on hateful trash. Sure, if I had your unlimited budget, I’d buy everything. But I don’t, so I can’t.
Thank you for the thought-provoking article. I understand having limited resources to purchase materials, and one should purchase the materials for their population of library users. I’m conflicted about providing controversial literature. I think it was the great journalist Linda Ellerbee who urged that it is important to read the opinions and information that you do not agree with. That’s why, when I had a larger budget at a different institution, despite my discomfort, I purchased a limited number of inexpensive books on creationism to accompany my much larger collection about evolution. I haven’t done that for years, however, because of limited budgets, and that so much is online now. I’ve found that the more you know about opinions or theories that you do not agree with or that are completely wrong, it’s easier to debate those opinions or theories. In today’s era of information overload and short attention spans, however, I expect most people won’t read information they disagree with.
I’m gonna follow suit with Lane, and say “no, no there have not been.” Black Lives Matter, in as much as it is a movement, is concerned with _getting people (mostly white law enforcement) to stop killing people of color_ and then _finding justice in the court system when people of color are shot_. These seem like perfectly reasonable aims…one might even think they are a given in a civilized society, but alas it appears that we have to actually say things like this out loud now.
I would love to see evidence of your claims.
As well, I agree that you are engaging in massive false equivalence if you are equating _literal Nazis_ with activists. If you see no moral delineation between white supremacy and the rise of public appearance thereof and the activists that are combating fascism and racism…well, I’m not quite sure what to do.
I think Melisa has a point. No one has told us how to combat Black Lives Matter. I mean, look at their crazy goals! black people having equal opportunity, equal access to quality education, not being systematically targeted by police, equality in the criminal justice system, having the same rights we white people do??? Well that’s just crazy, right? Oh, it’s not? But look at their methods! Well, I’m sure, Melisa, if you were systematically oppressed, you would not resort to protesting and disrupting things to get your grievances redressed. You’d sit there nicely and quietly and wait for people to recognize your right to exist. You’d engage in civil discussion. All of those things have been shown time and again throughout history to be tremendously effective in ending oppression. Clearly the people who are fighting for equality and the people who are fighting to keep them unequal are just two different sides of the very same coin. Maybe, Melisa, if you look back in issues of American Libraries from the 50s and early 60s, perhaps they provided advice to the many libraries that were segregated on how to deal with those crazy civil rights agitators who thought they had the right to use the library in their community. I’m sure whatever methods they used will work just as well in this situation.
Don’t just suspect your volunteers, report them! Dox Walter, and tweet Kelly’s photo to YesYourRacist! It isn’t as though you’re constructing strawmen for a simple-minded,, paranoic post that strokes your feelings of woke. Nazis are emptying your return bins right now, and you need to uncover them!!
And how, you may reasonably ask,do I know this so well,without ever meeting you? The same way you know of the hundreds of thousands of fascists in every corner of this country! Or, it might be as the 1st commenter attempted to point out, and you are engaging in a pattern of thought that can in fact lead to witch hunts, pogroms, and if/when your faction comes to power, genuine undisguised fascism.
Teague: I urge you to check out your local library. I’m sure they have wonderful literacy programs that can help with your reading comprehension.
Why thank you Lane, I’ll do that. While I’m there, I’ll ask the smarter people to stop by and either proscribe some remedies for you or explain gaslighting, depending on what you most need help with.
Teague, you’re adorable.
Teague, I’m still waiting on your witty repartee.
Interesting that several commenters not only go with the false equivalence of Black Lives Matter to the klan/nazis but also put words in your mouth to make you out to be calling to ban the latter from libraries. As a library worker at a library where a regular patron proudly displays a confedeate flag that covers the rear window of his vehicle, I understand the internal conflict between the commitment to serving the information needs of the entire community and the desire to ostracize white supremacists.
Thanks, Pete. I intentionally avoided any prescriptive recommendations. It would certainly be appreciated if commenters refrained from reading their own insecurities into what I wrote. But, you know, trolls gotta troll.
No, Trayvon Martin was pounding his head into the pavement.
The white supremacists, a marginal, almost nonexistent group that now lives in the paranoiac fantasies of Leftists everywhere, has as much right to have a meeting at the public library, paid for with their tax money, as anyone else.
The chance that a Klan member is reading to kids at storytime is almost nil, because the Klan has almost no members, and no influence. The Ku Klux Klan, formerly the militant wing of the Democrat Party, has been replaced with other militant groups: Black Live Matter, Antifa.
It is utterly appalling that a librarian, allegedly in favor of free speech, is calling for the silencing of people he disagrees with. It is becoming increasingly obvious that, in the coming fight for the First Amendment, librarians are going to irrelevant, or actively working for the totalitarians.
Hi DGD: It’s obvious you completely missed the point of what I wrote. It’s like you read a completely different post altogether. The funny thing is that even though you completely failed to understand my point, the fact that you can only make your case using racist and uninformed conspiracy theories sort of proves my point. Which, again, you missed. Thanks for commenting!
“Racist conspiracy theories”? Here’s a tip: when you have to resort to calling your interlocutor a racist, you’ve lost the argument.
I didn’t miss your point. Your point was fear-mongering that there’s a racist behind every tree, as further evidenced by your insistence on calling me one. And I didn’t give you any “conspiracy theories.” I gave you facts: the Hispanic George Zimmerman acted in self defense, which is why he got off.
You are repeatedly, in your responses to your comments, using a technique called motte-and-bailey. You’ve made outrageous claims, and when challenged, you retreat to pretending that you said something commonsensical.
Oh, DGD, I didn’t call you a racist. I said you were using racist and uninformed conspiracy theories in your defense. The whole “KKK-Democratic Party” line is a classic non sequitur that ignores the past 100 years of social and political change. I suggest you Google the Dixiecrats to learn about the rift over civil rights that lead to a mass exodus of racists from the Democratic Party. You may also be interested in looking up Nixon’s Southern Strategy to learn more about how the Republican Party successfully attracted racists away from the Democrats. And it’s arguable who was acting in self-defense between Martin and Zimmerman; witness accounts varied. It is inarguable that Martin was running away from an angry white man chasing him. Zimmerman admitted it. The cops even told him to stop. But, something tells me that you don’t care about any of that.
My point in this post was that if librarians are going to debate whether to serve white supremacists, they should also acknowledge that they probably already are and don’t realize it. If that’s outrageous to you, and you want to to read “there might be a racist reading at storytime” as the hyperbolic “there’s a racist behind every tree” then I suppose we’re at an impasse.
The Democrat Party is as racist as it’s ever been. That’s why they call them “Uncle Toms” whenever anyone leaves the plantation.
You may also be interested in looking up Johnson, who declared, and I quote, “I’ll have those ni**ers voting Democrat for a hundred years.” If you want to play “less racist than thou,” we could no doubt go back and forth all day, but the fact remains that the virulent racists are largely Democrat. The KKK was Democrat; this is an historical fact. Black Lives Matter is Democrat. The people who call for the extermination of whites in public today are Democrat. As long as we’re snootily telling each other to look things up, try a web search for “LOL your grandkids will be brown.” By contrast, white supremacists are exceedingly rare, and only found in dark corners, like the Nazi LARPers on /pol/, and they have no public support from anybody.
If you think they are reading stories to kids at your library, you are paranoid. Chances are good there are no white supremacists in your library. Chances are you know none at all.
Zimmerman isn’t white, and he shot a man who assaulted him. The evidence is in his favor that he acted within the law; his only mistake was following someone suspicious, which was foolish, but not illegal, nor did it violate the “reasonable man” doctrine. I could refer you to an expert in gun law who has carefully broken down the case, but instead I’ll imitate your snarky attitude and declare, “something tells me that you don’t care about any of that.”
Vox Day, whatever his faults, is right about three things: SJWs always lie, SJWs always project, and SJWs always double down. You’ve lied about the point of your post, which was to vilify everyone to the right of you on the political spectrum, and then you’ve lied in response to your commenters when called out for it. After claiming you’ve got white supremacists crawling all over your library, you’ve accused me of “conspiracy theories,” so you’ve projected. And here you are, doubling down.
Thank you for proving my point.
I have to wholeheartedly agree that complete neutrality is not possible, nor should it be the main goal for libraries in defining their services. Open-mindedness yes, but not blindness to the potential harm that could befall your communities by saying “we can’t judge! come on in!” to hate groups.
All institutions (even the ALA) need to have guiding morals. “Open access” is not a neutral standpoint so that we can serve “all”. It’s a moral one, set against the values like “only those who are worthy/have money may be educated” and against many values that white supremacists represent. It exists so that we can serve ‘as many as possible’ and try (hard is may actually be) to fall into pits of judgement and bias that would cause us to marginalize others.
If a white supremacist walks through the door at my library, proudly wearing a swastika (not the original, eastern religious symbol), and asks for help finding books, I will help him. If he asks for help using the copy machine to make flyers for his KKK get-togethers, I will (reluctantly) help him. If he asks to post said flyers on our community board, or to use our space for a meeting, I will decline. We can try to be open to helping as many people as possible, or work with many different kinds of people, and to allow many different points of view to be represented in our space. But lines do need to be drawn. If not, you risk dis-serving your community by not taking a stance against something that is preventing many others from feeling safe and welcome in your building.
This article is well written by showing us all how very dangerous the hidden supremacy groups are and how they quietly infiltrate our daily lives. I find the similarities post WWI mirror the situations in Germany when the majorities were suppressed, which provided a breeding ground ripe for subliminal infiltration by NAZI propaganda. We often discuss “how could so many people have been manipulated to allow such atrocities?” But if we truly look and listen, this article clearly discusses the importance of not only being a voice against hatred and violence, but it must start with parents in their homes, discussing age appropriate information against these behaviors with our children, before they are turned during troubled years. Give them the tools to protect the freedoms of all human beings in America. Freedom of speech is a gift, not an access to hatred and propaganda. The ALA is a standard of excellence in providing all human beings with the education and knowledge to stand against hatred without violence but with strength with intelligence, in values and ethical practices throughout government and corporations. Making a stand against fascist, hate groups is not a choice but a right in this country. Keep America free and keep educating all people so all have the tools needed to make a stand.
Interestingly, I just filled out paperwork to become a US citizen, and they still ask whether or not you were affiliated with the Nazis during WWII. This doesn’t have anything specific to do with libraries – your post just reminded me of it, because clearly, the US is still saying that it does not want Nazis here, if it is asking this question in immigration paperwork. (That said, I have to wonder how many of the people involved then are still alive. I knew a man who was forced into the German army at age 15, not long before the end of the war, and sent to the Russian front immediately, where he was captured and nearly died. He died recently, just shy of age 90. It seems to me they might wish to question current Nazi-like affiliations, if they are going to ask about this.)
[…] « The Nazis in your library […]
Wow. I think the best part of this post was actually the comments, which, as you astutely point out, really proves the point of your piece. Racists are everywhere, and they don’t even think they are racist.
This is crazy and the people should be in Russia or some communist society. These people have rights just like the people that would deny them rights. They would or will or are denying African Americans equal rights to their priviledge life style. This is America and I can join whatever organization I want to. This isn’t Germany or Russia. This is America. We are free from slavery because it is America. These people are talking about denying rights.
Lesley Williams said recently that racist is white people saying they aren’t racist while taking advantage of all that come with being white. I may have misquoted her somewhat. Tracking people because they affilate with a particular group is as racist as it comes.
You are exactly like the klansmen the kkk.
THE KKK: “black people are inferior and we should be allowed to discriminate against them.”
LANE: “don’t discriminate against black people”
MARGARET: “I can’t tell the difference!”
Witch hunts are among the oldest and ugliest of human pursuits. They are carried out by the Right and, as sad and paranoid piece shows, by the Left as well. The hunts will always be with us, but why the ALA chose to link to this piece of garbage is a mystery.
Who said anything about a witch hunt? Doug, try not to let your imagination get the best of you.
[…] The Nazis in your Library, by Lane Wilkinson […]
[…] Farkas, Whose Rights Matter More?, Info. Wants To Be Free, (Sept. 1, 2017); Lane Wilkinson, The Nazis in your library, Sense and Reference (Sept. 1, 2017). Recently, a group of Illinois librarians—the […]
[…] community.” However, the former carries with it, various problems, like the issues of Nazis in the library or other bigoted individuals, which none of his blogs, that I found, ever address. The closest he […]