‘Do not wake the beast’: Plan to reissue Mein Kampf in France for 1st time since 1934 takes heat online

New issues of the ‘Mein Kampf’ manifesto penned by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler over 90 years ago will be produced in France next year for the first time since 1934, much to the consternation of social media users.

Paris-based publisher Fayard raised the possibility of a reissue in 2015 and was met with an angry backlash, however La Journal du Dimanche reports that the company now confirms that they will bring out a new edition of the controversial book in 2020. 

Originally written by Hitler in 1926, the new French-translation text will be published alongside criticism penned by a group of 15 French and German researchers and Holocaust historians.

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One of the book’s translators, Olivier Mannoni, said it’s important to confront the taboos surrounding Hitler’s text, “because we are so afraid of the lies it contains that we refuse to talk about it,” BFMTV reports.

News of the fresh publication drew a mostly negative response on social media, with the bulk of reactions on Twitter saying it seems like a bad idea. “Even annotated and commented [on], do not wake the beast,” one commenter cautioned, as others shared gifs of people vomiting in response to the news. 

However, some pointed out that the text is already readily available if people want to find it, so what harm is there in republishing it in France? 

The anti-Semitic text was banned in Germany for 70 years before being reissued in 2016 as an annotated text.

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