Update, 4/9/19: Rather than host a book launch for author Max Blumenthal at Politics and Prose’s location at The Wharf, the bookstore is instead supporting his event slated for April 10 at the Justice Center.

The local book purveyor announced the decision on Twitter this Tuesday.

https://twitter.com/PoliticsProse/status/1115680822638665728

Original: After the postponement of a controversial book talk at Politics and Prose, the author says he’s concerned that the bookstore is setting a disturbing precedent by caving to complaints, while the owners of the independent bookstore maintain they are still trying to find a way to move forward with the event.

Days before author Max Blumenthal’s scheduled book talk this week at Politics and Prose’s location at The Wharf, the owners say they began hearing concerns about it. “We were caught off guard by a number of people who were reaching out to us and the passion of their comments,” says Bradley Graham, the co-owner of the local bookstore chain, which hosts more 700 events a year.

Blumenthal is a longtime independent journalist whose investigative work focuses on American militarism (he’s also the son of former Bill and Hillary Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal). His new book is called The Management of Savagery: How America’s Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump, which he describes as an attempt to put “Trump and the European far right in a new context, and place blame on the warmakers who caused the refugee crisis.”

While Blumenthal has been a polarizing figure for his writing about Israel and U.S. foreign intervention, he’s held three book launch events at Politics and Prose before without incident.

But on April 2, the Syrian American Council, which advocates for U.S. and United Nations intervention in Syria, tweeted that it was “dismayed that @politicsprose invited Max Blumenthal, an Assad supporter who has mocked victims of war crimes, to speak tomorrow. This sends a dangerous message to P&P’s supporters and is damaging to those who have been directly impacted by Assad’s atrocities in Syria.” (Blumenthal says the characterization of him as a genocide denier is a “libelous and absurd allegation that they level against anyone who gets in the way of their agenda.”)

A subsequent tweet told the account’s followers to voice their concern, and included the phone number of the bookstore, along with Graham and co-owner Lissa Muscatine’s email addresses. Syrian American Council Executive Director Suzanne Meriden tells DCist that she also privately emailed Graham and Muscatine asking them to reconsider their decision to host Blumenthal.

Graham says it wasn’t just the Syrian American Council that opposed Blumenthal’s event. “We were hearing from people who were customers of the store, not necessarily affiliated with the Syrian American Council,” he says. “But they are aware of Max or aware of events in the Middle East or in other subjects that Max has written and talked about, who were writing very upset that we were holding this event for him.”

As described by both Graham and Blumenthal, the author and bookstore engaged in a back-and-forth about changing the event’s format to include another speaker in the conversation, though they couldn’t agree on the other person.

On Wednesday, Politics and Prose announced that it was postponing Blumenthal’s book talk, scheduled for that evening, “as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding.”

Graham says that the term “postpone” is sincere. “We are still, as we said in our statement, trying to work through this,” he says. “We just didn’t have enough information to be able to assess what some of Max’s critics were saying and so we just needed some time and also, I wanted to read his book. I haven’t read it yet. It’s just a challenge now to deal with the extent of emotion and allegations and counter allegations being thrown back and forth.”

Blumenthal calls the pressure campaign the “internet version of having a book burning.” He says that, while his new book isn’t focused on Syria, “the people who are trying to censor me and shut down my book tour—and they’re trying to shut it down everywhere—many of them are people who have been directly involved in trying to sell the war [in Syria] to the American public.” While Blumenthal has also written about the oft-controversial topic of Israel and Palestine, he says “the Syrian interventionist lobby has been more vicious than anything I’ve faced.”

He says Politics and Prose’s decision concerns him because it “sets a precedent where any journalist who exposes powerful interests and established lobbies gets targeted with an intimidation campaign … [from people who] want to avoid engaging with me directly and delegitmize me as a journalist by getting an established bookstore to cancel me and then say, ‘Well, Politics and Prose cancelled on him.'”

Meriden says that her organization is comprised of “American citizens exercising our right to speak up when we feel something wrong is taking place. Max is free to speak anywhere he wants to, but it’s also our right to protest what kinds of platforms he’s getting to speak.”

Blumenthal says the bookstore has a double standard because it has hosted former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano last week and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum last year, and “didn’t ask them to have an interlocutor on stage, and that’s because they didn’t face a pressure campaign from powerful interests because these people represent powerful interests.”

But Graham says that a protest that disrupted the Napolitano event last week played a part in their decision to postpone Blumenthal’s talk. “Having these demonstrators suddenly appear and disrupt the event at the Napolitano talk was on our mind. We just didn’t want to go through that again,” he says. “We didn’t know that there was going to be any protest with Napolitano, we didn’t have any warning. With Max’s event, we had some warning. We’re actually trying to be more responsible in preparing for this event.”

Blumenthal says he is still willing to do an event at Politics and Prose “because I want my arguments and the facts to be heard.” Meriden says that, while she is grateful that the owners have reconsidered the event, “we hope to keep this conversation going so we can completely cancel the program.”

Graham says that this level of contention is highly unusual for the store. “We’re trying to figure out now, in the wake of these situations, a way to better anticipate and better vet our list of events,” he says, while emphasizing that the store isn’t trying to avoid hot-button issues or conversations. “We’re trying to avoid disruption because we want people to be able to listen to the arguments, absorb them, question them if they want. But demonstrating in a way that shuts down a speaker and avoids open questioning seems to me to be counterproductive to what we’re trying to achieve.”

This story has been updated.