Dutch book store Bruna selling anti-Semitic, right-wing extremist books

Bookstore Bruna sells several books with anti-Semitic and extreme right-wing ideas, BNR reports based on its own research. The Dutch bookstore automatically took over these titles from foreign book suppliers. According to the National Coordinator for Combating Anti-Semitism (NCAB), Bruna must, by law, remove the anti-Semitic books from the market.

Bruna takes over millions of mostly English-language books from foreign catalogs, such as from Libri and Ingram. But it seems incapable of screening these books’ content.

For example, Bruna currently sells two parts of The Culture of Critique trilogy - books written by the American conspiracy theorist Kevin B. MacDonald, who believes in white supremacy. His books, written from a quasi-scientific perspective, describe how, according to him, Jews undermine the interests of white people.

Bruna’s website also contains books with titles like On Jews and Their Lies, a reissue of an anti-Semitic pamphlet from the 16th century by the German theologian Martin Luther. The book was translated into English by a writer who published several books under the pseudonym Thomas Dalton, in which he trivializes the Holocaust and questions the death toll. The summary of Luther’s book on the Bruna site is full of anti-Semitism, describing European Jews as “arrogant, greedy, and stubborn.” The book calls for the destruction of synagogues and for putting Jewish people in forced labor or expelling them from Europe.

The Dutch bookshop’s online store also sells books containing other forms of hatred, including the handbook of the American Klux Klan and the controversial When Harry Became Sally, in which gender dysphoria is equated with a mental illness.

“The judge has been very clear: the sale of anti-Semitic books is prohibited. The shops must now take action,” Eddo Verdoner, the National Coordinator for Combating Anti-Semitism (NCAB), told BNR. He understands it can be difficult to screen millions of books for content. “But that does not release these shops from their obligation to remove these books.”

Bruna’s parent company, Audax, told BNR that “millions of books are loaded onto bruna.nl,” the content of which cannot always be traced. The company also said that it strives to exclude titles that incite hatred, discrimination, and racism from its range.