Free Speech, International

German Publisher Stops All Printing of JD Vance’s Book Hillbilly Elegy

JD Vance is a marked man. After accepting the nomination for vice president, Vance has been the subject of endless media attacks. Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris even questioned his “loyalty” to the country despite his serving as a Marine in the Iraq War. Yet, one of the most chilling attacks came from Germany where the publishing house Ullstein Buchverlage has stopped printing the sold-out German translation of Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 autobiography.

As we have discussed previously in this country, it is the modern left’s equivalent of book burning. After all, why burn books when you can simply prevent their being printed under blacklisting campaigns?

In this country, we have seen the left successfully force book bans for writers and even justices who espouse opposing viewpoints.  We have seen actual calls for book burning recently (here and here).

Ullstein is facing a high demand for Vance’s best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy, but has refused to print more copies due to his political viewpoints (unrelated to the book).

First published in 2016 and made into a movie in 2020, the book returned to the top position on The New York Times‘ bestseller list after Trump chose Vance as his running mate.

HarperCollins is rushing to print more books to meet the demand.

Some in the United States are already balking at the selling of any book by Vance. Seven Stories Press wrote, “Seven Stories Press is extremely thrilled to have never published JD Vance.”

Ullstein published the German translation of Hillbilly Elegy in 2017 and held the rights to reprints.

The company cited Vance’s allegiance with Trump and his politics as the reason in a statement to German media:

“At the time of its publication, the book made a valuable contribution to understanding the drifting apart of US society…In the meantime, he is officially acting alongside him and advocating an aggressively demagogic, exclusionary policy.”

German author Gerd Buurmann posted a mocking response that we should be happy that Ullstein had just thrown Vance’s book out of its catalogue and not into the fire – a reference to the notorious Nazi book burnings of the 1930s.

Other Germans have raised the same objections and referenced the painful history of book bans and burnings in Germany under the Nazis.

German readers want to read the book, which Ullstein acknowledged is one of the most influential works of this generation. However, because the company disagrees with his political viewpoints, it moved to block others from reading the book.

We have seen similar campaigns leading to the banning or burning of books by figures like JK Rowling because of her opposition to some transgender policies. The left now protests any programs on Rowling’s work and opposes the selling of her enormously popular Harry Potter series or even video games based on the series. When authors have defended her right to be published, they have also been subjected to cancel campaigns.

Yet, Ullstein’s decision is particularly chilling as a publishing house. Again, we have seen editors at publishing houses sign petitions to bar books by conservative figures like Justice Amy Coney Barrett from being published.

In 1933, thousands of books by Jewish and leftist writers were burned throughout Germany. Publishing houses further banned the printing of these books. The books were announced as corrupting the minds of German citizens. Many books were banned or burned on the basis of the authors being Jewish or known socialists or anarchists.

Now the left has developed a taste for censorship and blacklisting. Editors and publishing houses are blacklisting those with conservative or libertarian views as forms of dangerous viewpoints or disinformation.

Ullstein will, of course, not stop people from reading the work of JD Vance. While it may make it more difficult for Germans to find copies, ideas like water have a way of finding their way out. Blacklisting and censorship have not succeeded in killing a single idea. What it does is reveal the true character and values of those who want to prevent others from hearing opposing viewpoints.

279 thoughts on “German Publisher Stops All Printing of JD Vance’s Book Hillbilly Elegy”

  1. The book will be published in mid August by another publishing house in Germany.

    The rights to Hillbilly Elegy in German have now been picked up by the Munich publishing house YES, which has announced a reprint of the book available for sale starting August 15

    https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/07/german-publisher-drops-vances-book-hillbilly-elegy-over-allegiance-with-trump/

    Perhaps a publishing house will make available a book detailing Kamala Harris’ rise from a 29 year old California bimbo to a DEI DNC Presidential Bimbo Nominee (insert double entendre here) without earning a single vote.

    OTOH, it is cause for having pity on Kamala’s awkward position, given the coup the Democrats did to Joseph Biden. She has no accomplishments to her life while JD Vance wrote an inspiring biography the world wants to read.

    2. @At Estovir.

      You have Vance who pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
      Then you have Harris who rose to her position by putting on her knee pads… keep in mind she doesn’t play volleyball. (Although a different sort of balls were involved…)

      And yes, I went there.
      #TeamDeadPool!

      -G

    3. It is not just that Vance Wrote Hillbilly elegy – which is an excellent well written book demonstrating one of his MANY skills,
      It is also that he LIVED the life he wrote about.

      Vance has DONE things in his life – he has Risen from abject poverty that is almost non-existant in this country anymore.
      He grew up in an enviroment that typically leads to drugs,. crime, violence or at best just a dreadful life.

      Vance has raised himself up by his bootstraps, Harris has benefited from an assortment of priviledges her entire life.

  3. Song by Bob Dylan
    The problim of solvin a problim
    Is not a problim.
    But when a problim solves a problim
    without any problim
    Then the problim
    Is not at all a probliiiim.
    Oops, that’s by Kamala Harris.
    Sorry Bob.

  4. I did a little research on this publishing house. In their lobby entrance they have portraits of Bill Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Whenever possible socialists have banished any printed opposition to their ideas. History of such actions has no effect on the elites in America. Rasmussen did a poll of people with a masters degree and higher and eighty two percent of them believe that Americans believe what they believe. These people vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Obviously this gifted elite class believes in centralized government. They have all the evidence to know that the majority of people do not agree with them but they choose to believe the opposite. To add insult to injury if you do not agree with them you are delegated to the basket of deplorables. They hate Trump because he says BS to that. They utter populism with a sneer.

  5. Almost as if Germany had learned absolutely nothing from its last little experience with canceling people. I am of German origin and it really pains me to see this kind of thing.

    1. Uhm… ok.

      So are you referencing the outlawing of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ and the Nazi party post 1945?

      Or something else.

      Asking for a friend.

  6. OT

    “Compared to Biden, Kamala Harris is like Socrates.”

    – Gov. Ron DeSantis

  7. Leftists are not like normal people. Their main goal in life is to project an image of themselves as morally superior beings, able to discern important moral issues to a higher degree than “the masses”. This, they are constantly on the search for “demonstration events” where they can flout their higher sensibilities. Some call this “virtue signalling.” I would call it a “plumage display.” It gives them a pitiful purpose in life and a cheap satisfaction.

    2. The Left is like any other group advancing self interest and gain instinctually. What made Pol pot invade and murder Vietnamese people? Instinct. Every living organisms does that. Weeds will choke out your bermuda lawn?

      Instinct can only be countered by moral standards, laws and advanced by speech. Speech includes listening, writing and reading. Only man has a brain with a developed speech center. It is only speech that sets man apart from the apes and all other living organisms. Only man can counter instinct such is the power of speech.

      Yes, Mr Turley, it’s the thing itself. Bravo.

      1. This publishing house by instinct used round-up or so it appears used instinct and not the inherent law given by the creator, freedom of speech.

        Bear in mind the weeds always do that. Goathead sticker weeds are a prickly bunch.

      2. Huh?! Pol Pot never invaded Vietnam. It was the other way around. The Vietnamese communists invaded Cambodia and deposed their rival communist Pol Pot.

  8. The censorship by the demoncrats in the USA is way beyond not printing Republican leaning books.

  9. Is it censorship when a bakery refuses to bake a cake in the shape of a phallus?

    3. Is it censorship when a bakery refuses to bake a cake in the shape of a phallus?

      Does Captain Obvious need to do a house call and intervention to point out it’s only devout Christians that get targeted with demands they provide a service that is in direct conflict with their religious beliefs? And NEVER Muslims – despite this being the age of the Democrats’ Muslims leading their New Hitler Youth Movement celebrating radical Muslims?

      You haven’t heard courts repeatedly say – and explain – that it isn’t? Particularly when the homosexuals making the complaints confess under oath in court that same baker is more than happy to sell them anything else in his bakery? That the only issue is when they demand he use his artistic skills to make a cake celebrating homosexuality when he is a devout Christian who will not create designs celebrating homosexuality that his religion says is a sin? Just as he won’t produce cakes that celebrate swearing, racism, etc?

      Is it obvious that these Soviet Democrats, whether the Alphabet Sex Pride gang or the Soviet Democrat New Hitler Youth Movement, ONLY target Christians?

      Anyone ever hear of a Muslim Palestinian caterer in Michigan being asked to BBQ pork for a Christian wedding? Must be a few heterosexual Republican Christians clinging to their bibles and guns that have done that by now? Or are there no Christian Republicans in Michigan – only religion in Michigan is Islam?

      How about a devout Muslim baker in Oregon being asked to create a wedding cake for two homosexual Birthing Person Questioning Females that displays splayed legs and a gaping vagina? No homosexual versions of Justice Ketanjj Brown Jackson living in Oregon about to marry and wanting such a cake created by a Muslim cake artist?

      Captain Obvious is overdue for making a visit to your parents’ basement to help you out.

      I can help you resolve your cowardice about identifying yourself with a username; you don’t have to remain a cowardly ‘Anonymous’ – unless you want to.

      Signed
      Old Airborne Dog

    4. It’s forced labor if an alternative is available. It’s a ceremonial cake and not eaten for purposes of hunger but can be eaten as such if hungry.

  10. Sort of like Conservative news networks and the late Rush Limbaugh (private sector businesses) choosing to cherry-pick or omit news stories that go against their political agenda.

    Not a government censor.

    3. suspect that you’ve never watched any Conservative news networks or listened to the late Rush Limbaugh. are you similarly upset when left-wing networks and other media “cherry-pick ” or omit stories?

      1. PeterK tried this: suspect that you’ve never watched any Conservative news networks

        Suspect you’re pleading ignorance that there is nothing anywhere close to presenting a “leaked” political hit job like the ‘Russia Dossier’ as the extreme far left Mainstream Media did for YEARS for Soviet Democrats. And some still do, btw.

        Any examples you have in mind regarding Conservative news networks running with a lie of the magnitude of the “Russia Dossier” story? And have the Pulitzer Prizes for cutting edge investigative journalism that were won by pushing the “Russia Dossier” Soviet Democrat lie been returned.

        Suspect you never actually listened to political commentator – not news journalist – Russia Limbaugh. But you’ve certainly got lots of time in listening to “Russia Dossier, Russia Dossier, Russia Dossier” Rachael Maddow, another political commentator.

        As you cosplay of being a Rush Limbaugh listener, versus a cut ‘n paste parrot for Soviet Democrats, what news stories did you see Limbaugh choose to hide from you in his audience?

    4. Sort of like Conservative news networks and the late Rush Limbaugh (private sector businesses) choosing to cherry-pick or omit news stories that go against their political agenda.

      Channeling mixed in with gaslighting and flat out lying. It’s like the brand Soviet Democrats put on public display as their identifying mark. Accuse those in your way of doing exactly what you yourself have been doing for decades.

      I don’t recall Fox News refusing to repeat the Soviet Democrats lie regarding the Soviet Democrats’ “Russia Dossier”. Nor repeat the Bribery Biden’s lie about the Biden Bribery Laptop i.e. “51 Intelligence experts say the laptop isn’t Hunter’s, it’s Russian election disinformation”.

      And I’ve heard that Limbaugh regularly – and apparently gleefully – tore apart Soviet Democrat lies before Bolshevik Barack was ever elected president and began lying “If you like your doctor or your health care plan you can keep them under my Obamacare”.

      When did CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Rachael Maddow, The Morning Mika and Joe Adultery Show, etc ever stop being the political arm of the Soviet Democrat party? When did they ever once apologize for the YEARS they continued to sell the Clinton/Obama/DNC “Russia Dossier” as verified intelligence agency evidence Trump was a bought and paid for Putin stooge. When have any of them apologized for the Biden Bribery Laptop lies?

      When will Anonymous cowards lying and pimping for the Soviet Democrats stop hiding by using the generic ‘Anonymous’ to escape having a username that tags them with their long history of lies?

      Signed,
      Old Airborne Dog

  11. I guess it depends on whose definition of censorship you would like to use. There are many to choose from.

  12. Jonathan Turley, almost every adult in Germany reads English and speaks English fluently, both British and American style. So no translation is required. But since the publisher of the German translation version is giving up the contract, another can pick it up if they think there is still a profit to be made.

    You’re making a mountain out of a flattened molehill.

    1. You’re making a mountain out of a flattened molehill.

      Walter Duranty, NYT’s ace Joseph Stalin reporter, said the same thing when Europeans and Americans accused Joseph Stalin of the Holodomor, genocide of Ukrainians. For his defense, NYT was awarded a Pulitzer Prize – for covering up Stalin’s atrocities

      Germany’s closure of hard-right magazine ‘may be illegal’

      Compact magazine, which had a circulation of 40,000 and reached hundreds of thousands more people over the internet, was shut on the orders of the national interior minister, who accused it of “stoking a climate of hatred and violence”.

      https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/germany-shuts-hard-right-compact-magazine-calls-afd-ban-grow-svgkk6mfw

      If the metric for shutting down an organization is “stoking a climate of hatred and violence”, Democrats since 1990s e.g. Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the entire DNC MSM, and Kamala Harris wouldn’t have had a lucrative career in politics. Kamala may have survived however given her talent in servicing older men in positions of power like Willie Brown

    2. David, if the person who holds publishing rings decides not to publish, that doesn’t mean someone else can. They would have to buy the rights and the current holder would have to be willing to sell, which seems unlikely in this case. And you’re right about Germans generally speaking English, which does help, but it no doubt raises the cost and wait time, possibly significantly, since the English version would have to be shipped into the country, and not everyone in Germany would necessarily want to read it in a foreign language.

      If a conservative German publisher refused to publish a book written by a liberal, I doubt you’d think anyone who criticized that was making a mountain out of a molehill.

      1. old, as reported here in a subsequent comment, another publisher is going to publish this book.

    3. Yup… Very much nazi like response…. Burn the books, ban the books, they can find it somewhere else…
      So much for a flat head

    4. David B. Benson, Soviet Democrat party apparatchik: You’re making a mountain out of a flattened molehill.

      Also known as the well known party gaslighting tactic: “Nothing to see here folks, don’t believe your lying eyes, move on now”. Soviet Democrats race to assure us there’s nothing here when an opinion writer points out the obvious and it looks terrible for them.

      Don’t believe your lying eyes when it’s Dr. Seuss. Don’t believe your lying eyes when it’s JK Rowling. And of course, please don’t believe your lying eyes when it’s JD Vance (he’s virtually Hitler!) added to that list.

      Three very different genres of author and only one common thing links them together: what they wrote years before Soviet Democrat sponsored Woke politics, now offends Soviet Democrats and their Woke Marxist Useful Idiots today, where before their books were celebrated and enjoyed despite the skin color or sexuality of their readers.

      Yep, nothing to see here David – we’ll decide for ourselves whether or not to believe our lying eyes or not.

    5. “You’re making a mountain out of a flattened molehill.”

      David, Professor Turley made a simple point that went over your head.

  13. Jonathan: When you can’t find books banned here in the US by the “left’ you turn to Europe. This time in Germany where JD Vance’s book is no longer published by a small publisher. Ullstein Buchverlage is not a big book publisher. It’s not even on the top 24 book publishers in Germany. So their decision will probably have little impact on the sale of JD Vance’s book in Germany. But you bizarrely claim UB’s decision is the “modern left’s equivalent of book burning” and what happened in Germany in the 1930s. Doesn’t even come close!

    Back here in the US, “Hillbilly Elegy” is back on the NY Times best selling list. Has been for the past 90 weeks. Proof positive there is no “banning” of JD Vance’s book. Your column is equivalent to shouting fire in a crowded theater. When you start complaining about the actual banning of books in schools and libraries in FL under right-wing Republican Gov. De Santis then we will treat your columns on book banning seriously!

    2. Dennis: Commutative law and logic would disagree with you. Your two statements that a. that Ullstein is not a major book publisher and b. that its decision represents the “modern left’s equivalent of book burning” = are not equal. Do you get that?
      And your conclusion that Elegy’s standing on America’s NYT bestseller list “[proves that there is no ‘banning”] reaches the level of absurd humor. Go back to school, pal.

    3. Dennis McIntyre is back with the communist-lite groomer/pedophile teachers union complaints: that parents refusing to allow the Democrat groomers and pedophile teachers in public classrooms to shove copies of Hustler Magazine and Gender Queer in their childrens’ faces is “actual book banning”. A pretty obvious link to the ongoing epidemic of Democrat teacher pedophilia and rape in those unionized public schools. Well done Dennis!

      https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/forbidden-fruit-and-the-classroom-the-huge-american-sex-abuse-scandal-that-educators-scandalously-suppress/ar-BB1pKm5t

      “Book banning”? Does that include where Soviet Democrat school boards putting that porn in schools won’t allow parents attending their meetings to read aloud the porn in those books to the adult audience – claiming the porn they want to show to the kiddies is too obscene to be spoken to an adult audience. Is that “book banning” as well Dennis? Sounds like a Soviet Democrat trope and lie to me.

      When you start complaining about the actual banning of books in schools and libraries in FL under right-wing Republican Gov. De Santis then we will treat your columns on book banning seriously!

      What’s with this “we” stuff, Dennis – your pockets are full of communist cockroaches when you use Turley’s blog as your own?

      Is there ANY book that Dennis McIntyre and the Soviet Democrats believe parents should have the right to tell their school boards they don’t want put in front of their childrens’ faces?

      Where can we go to see the list of banned books you think groomer and pedophile teachers in Florida should be able to put in front of kids who still believe in Santa Clause?

      No surprise in normal America that it is Soviet Democrat public school union teacher groomers and pedophiles who give hundreds of millions to Soviet Democrats, and agree with Soviet Democrat Dennis McIntyre that they have a right to show porn to kiddies.

    4. Um, those books in Florida are not banned…nice try… Cancel your book banning campfire…

    5. By the number of times you and your alts/like-minded deviants post about it, you must really obsessed with kiddie porn in schools.

      1. It’s a topic worth being obsessed about. Especially if you’re a parent whose child attends one of these schools and is constantly at risk of being exposed to it. Anything that can’t be read aloud at a School Board meeting should automatically not be allowed in the school library, let alone on the curriculum or reading list.

  14. It begs the Question: Who’s Faction is manipulating this Election?
    Who put JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy on the Blacklist? ~ German “state policy” (staatsraison)

    Germany’s Blanket Support for Israel Undermines Its International Standing
    German political elites generally believe that the protection of Israel is part of a so-called German “state policy” (staatsraison), no matter what Israel does.
    By: Stasa Salacanin ~ May 17, 2024
    https://www.wrmea.org/web-exclusives/germanys-blanket-support-for-israel-undermines-its-international-standing.html

    “Zionism Über Alles”
    The German political establishment has abandoned the belief that the Holocaust gave it a responsibility to humanity and replaced it with a responsibility to Israel alone.
    By: Hans Kundnani ~ March 15, 2024
    https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/zionism-uber-alles/

    The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
    By: Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, Professor of International Relations at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University.

    The book describes the lobby as a “loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction”.[3] Mearsheimer and Walt decry what they call misuse of “the charge of anti-Semitism”, and argue that pro-Israel groups place great importance on “controlling debate” in American academia. The book “focuses primarily on the lobby’s influence on U.S. foreign policy and its negative effect on American interests”.[4] The authors also argue that “the lobby’s impact has been unintentionally harmful to Israel as well”.[5]

    [Link] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy

  15. I’m usually with the Professor, but not on this one. The company made a (poor) business decision, and did it legally. They used their free speech to explain their position. A smarter company picked up the contract and is making lots of money on it. Think of it as a Dylan Mulvaney/Bud Light business decision.

    1. I’m usually with the Professor, but not on this one. The company made a (poor) business decision, and did it legally.

      If Turley said what they did was illegal, you saw something in the article I didn’t. If he said they didn’t have a free speech right to choose political Woke Hatred over the financial bottom line, I didn’t see that either.

      What I DID see was his comments of where this mindset flows from, whether it’s books by Vance, JK Rowling, or Dr. Seuss.

  16. Censorship is absolutely required in Communism 2.0. It would appear that some in Germany are taking a page out of Kamala Harris’s book Jonathan…..

  17. Somewhere along in here we’ll get an admission that cartel censorship is preferable to book burning because book burning makes climate change worse, just before they emphasize that point by defacing the Mona Lisa. Again.

    1. TiT,
      Anyone who thinks that is what America needs to strive to, is an idiot.

      1. Upstate, as time passes more information is surfacing about who Kamala Harris is. When CBS is calling her out for being in charge of the border and never making a visit to the border you know there’s a problem. Even CNN asked her about being the most liberal Senator. Even more liberal than Bernie Sanders. More plainly put she is more of a socialist than Bernie Sanders. She takes words from Marx and restates his positions in even less understandable language. She really isn’t very well known but by November all of America will know about her hidden philosophy. The left is trying to keep who she is from the American people but thankfully the internet is forever.

        2. “. . . as time passes more information is surfacing about who Kamala Harris is.”

          Obama was the first anti-American president. She is the first anti-Civilization presidential candidate.

          (When you tout a fundraising campaign for rioters, murderers, rapists — you are anti-Civilization. Ditto when you applaud that absurd, “chaotic mess” of an Olympics opening.)

  19. They banned his book not because of its content, but rather the “color” of his skin. This is very much in line with the Getman National Socialists of the past and Democratic socialists present. A dogmatic principle of Diversity (i.e. color judgment, class bigotry) under the secular Pro-Choice religion adopted in progressive sects executed with liberal license.

  20. Dear Prof Turley,

    To tell you the truth, I’m not sure the pure Appalachian translates very well into proper German to begin with.. . I’m not sure Americans understand it.

    J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is just scratching the surface. As luck would have it, Ma had moved me back into to the very place J.D. was moving out of .. . so I speak it fluently.

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