Nazi Internet Trolls Are Harrassing Our Librarians

Many or most Swedish archaeologists are in the same labour union as the country’s librarians, archivists and public information officers. But as a scholar and frequent outreach guy I feel a stronger kinship than most with these groups. I’ve hung out in libraries for over 40 years. Through decades of mostly rather lonely research, the Academy of Letters’ librarians and archivists have been my daily workmates.

When the union reports that one fifth of our librarians in the public sector have met with hate speech and offensive language from members of the public, I take it personally and I get fucking angry. Every third public information officer is at a workplace that has received a threat. The themes of the attacks are overwhelmingly racist, sexist and anti-hbtq.

This is not “polarisation”. This is a small demography of brutish asshole internet trolls who have been emboldened by online hate forums to forget the most basic rules of decency. Their mothers would be ashamed of them. And I remember what Dr. Jones taught us: punching Nazis is a core part of an archaeologist’s job description.