It’s hypocritical to denounce book bans while publishing their defenders.

Over on Balls & Strikes, law writer Jay Willis published an excellent piece about the Hachette imprint Basic Liberty publishing conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s So Ordered, a book about Alito’s “judicial philosophy and reflects on the roles of the law, the Constitution, and the courts in preserving America’s spirit of liberty.” Putting out this book at the same time they’re calling for others to fight book bans, is rank hypocrisy, Willis eloquently argues.

Conceding that “business is business, and that Big Five publishers are probably not concerned with maintaining ideological uniformity across every single title published by every single imprint,” Willis writes that choosing to publish a Supreme Court justice who is actively empowering book banners doesn’t square with Hachette’s professed values:

More troubling here, for me, is the message Hachette is sending by doing business with Alito. Last year, Alito wrote the majority opinion in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case about a Maryland school district that included in its curriculum a handful of children’s books that depict LGBTQ characters. In his opinion, Alito argued that the purpose of the books is to indoctrinate ‘young, impressionable children’ with ‘moral messages,’ which poses an ‘objective danger’ to parents’ rights to ‘guide the religious future and education of their children.’

Beyond his rulings, Alito has taken lavish gifts from GOP billionaires and flown multiple right-wing flags outside of his house and his vacation house, the first less than a week after January 6th.

At the same time as they’re paying and platforming this immensely powerful public figure, Hachette is ringing the alarm about book bans from the other side of their mouth:

…right now, Hachette’s website is all about book bans: how wrong and dangerous they are, and how readers like you can (and must) do your part to stop them.

And to bring the contrast into even starker relief, one of the same books that Hachette is encouraging readers to buy in order to fight censorship was challenged by parents in Mahmoud v. Taylor. Willis again:

So, on the one hand, Hachette is asking you to support authors, illustrators, teachers, and librarians by buying books like What Are Your Words?. On the other hand, Hachette is writing a generous check to the man who just gave reactionary parents the de facto power to ban it.

It’s maddening! I’m not so naive to be surprised that corporations are morally and ideologically flexible in the pursuit of making their profit lines go up. But to have the hypocrisy be laid out so starkly, just a few clicks away on the same website, is particularly galling.

Willis’s entire piece is worth your time. And if you’re inspired to take some meaningful, not at all hypocritical action against book bans, there are plenty of ways to get plugged in with Authors Against Book Bans.