Bookstagram’s Struggle

I suppose sometimes it’s a little difficult to consistently come up with content that will stir up engagement (if that’s what you’re looking to do), and eventually it gets to the point where any attention ends up feeling like good attention even if you’re going to end up worse off by the end of it. Seeing as an incident like this has happened twice now, I suppose I should start talking about it.

Bookstagrams (Instagram accounts with the gimmick of book-reading and book promotion) are a dime a dozen, mostly sticking to a “cozy” little aesthetic to promote and review books they’ve read during the year. People—mostly women—who are looking for a curated list of book recommendations and who’ve developed trust in their favorite Bookstagrammer will often buy and read books that come highly praised by those who ostensibly have similar tastes. So…what happens when these gimmicky little accounts start to stagnate with their follower counts and they begin to fall off as rival accounts gain? What could a Book-Related Instagram do to drum up some kind of engagement? Is there such a thing as engagement-bait when it comes to crafty little photoshoots of special editions?

Turns out: Yes! In 2025, Instagram Book Influencer clockworkchapters (real name Priya) posted on Holocaust Remembrance Day the three books that she claimed had helped her to “understand” the Holocaust. Now, for many of us this would include titles such as Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (new drinking game for my blog, take a shot for every time I mention this man’s book), or the ever-present specter of essential reads: Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. But Priya didn’t pick any of these low-hanging fruits and instead chose the oddest collection imaginable. Starting off poor, she chose The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by controversial author John Boyne which garnered criticism for its sympathetic portrayal of otherwise (regarding narrative events) unrepentant Nazis. Her next abysmal pick was The Tattooist of Auschwitz which has faced significant controversy for its audacious insistence that it’s based on a true story despite its grievous historical inaccuracies and a purposeful ignorance of the complex traumas experienced by those within Auschwitz. Now…her third pick is why we’re really here. At least the first two were an attempt made at remaining faithful to the spirit of Holocaust Remembrance Day, but Priya really pulled the rug out from under us the moment she included a physical copy of Mein Kampf.

I’m just gonna pause here for a second so that can really roll around in your brain.

In the event that you’ve been living under a rock for your entire life, Mein Kampf (My Struggle) is a borderline unreadable piece of drivel that somehow manages to pass itself off as a manifesto. Written when he was imprisoned after the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, Mein Kampf made Adolf Hitler’s political aspirations completely obvious when it was published in 1925. In it, he asserts validity of common antisemitic hoaxes such as the existence of the fabricated document The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and announces his intentions of creating a “New Order” which included overt references to genocidal acts not only toward Jewish populations but toward the infirm or handicapped as well. Though there do exist versions of Mein Kampf where the footnotes are longer than the actual text, there is no guarantee that any copy bought from publishers outside of Europe will contain any critical commentary and seeing it even sitting on a shelf of anyone who was not a history major, professor, or World War II history buff is a bit of a shock to the casual observer. For context, I went to college for history focusing on Europe in the 20th Century and I’m a Nazi fetishist and I don’t own a copy of Mein Kampf. I don’t need it, and neither do you.

The only function by which someone might “understand” the Holocaust better by reading Hitler’s book would be in the understanding of his reasoning behind doing it during his reign as dictator, this reasoning boiling down to a warped understanding of European cultural exchanges and plain old revenge power fantasy circle-jerking. To be frank, it’s important in some contexts to know how these emotions and thoughts and aspirations were formed and how they culminated into the expansion of Hitler’s personal political power, but the average human being on planet Earth doesn’t need to own their own copy of Mein Kampf to come to these understandings and they certainly don’t need to be announcing their ownership of it on a specific global day of remembrance to solemnly contemplate the immense human-led carnage that the author himself wrought upon the Earth.

Priya, predictably, deleted her post as soon as the incredible backlash began, issuing an interesting little apology citing her “lack of deeper knowledge on [the] subject” and claiming that her “heart was in the right place.” She thanked those who provided polite feedback and stated that she would try to do better in the future. Unfortunately, she can’t speak for other Bookstagrammers who would later make the same “mistake” that she did though at least they didn’t do it on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Enter: theshelfescape (AKA: KK Murphy), a somewhat popular Book Influencer with over 8,000 followers. An information post in 2023 revealed her to be a “Filipina living in Oman for 7yrs now” [sic] and hints at her age as she claims to have a 20-year old son who, incidentally, she mentions could by now be an AI engineer (ew). Recently, she posted a photo of a couple of her new reads which happened to include a little aesthetic photoshoot of her deluxe edition of Mein Kampf. This hard-cover edition comes emblazoned with a small portrait image of Hitler along with embellishment under the title and byline including a small swastika along with gold sprayed edges. Naturally, this raised more than a few eyebrows among the book-savvy folks of Instagram and Katie of katie.the.reader (13.3k followers) stated in a video that Bookstagram should “bring back shame” and “at least your freaky grand dad kept it hidden in the attic.”

Of course, anything having to do with antisemitism is a complete minefield of bad faith as the Israel-Palestine Conflict’s acceleration over the last few years has put much of the world on edge, leading many across the globe to erroneously relate Judaism to Zionism and vice versa. In at least one instance, we have seen this issue crop up amid this small controversy as insta user and ostensible Zionist @chayailanabackup posted their “call out” of Murphy including a cropped direct message in which the influencer states “I dont need you and your followers! I dont need zios and baby killers in my page. Keep crying and playing victim 24/7. THE WORLD SEE YOU ALL NOW SO Please go away all of you!” [sic]. While out of context, this might seem like a fairly awful thing to say to someone with Jewish roots, as one might consider it a reiteration of the common antisemitic hoax of blood libel, but now that Israel has taken to bombing hospitals and large amounts of civilians in both Gaza and now Lebanon, it’s relatively understood that Israel now is a government which endorses the murder of children and @chayailanabackup, being a Zionist themselves, is not being targeted for their Jewish ethnicity/religion but for their blithe support of Benjamin Netanyahu’s murderous (genocidal?) regime.

Now just because I’m absolutely disturbed and appalled by the audacity and violence of the government of Israel and by extension Zionists doesn’t mean that I’m going to let you slip by me with your gold foil deluxe edition of Mein Kampf without a bit of “That sure was a choice.” At first Murphy declined to delete the post after critical comments. One coming from @bookishly_vintage asked, “Did…did you just happily post about your special edition of MEIN KAMPF??” going on to explain that learning history and reading the text is all well and good but to aesthetically post a special edition of a manifesto which eventually lead to the deaths of millions was “highly inappropriate.” Murphy, in turn, posted an image with text doubling down on her decision to share her edition online and condemning the “dogpile” she experienced after screenshots of her posts were shared both on and off the platform. She stated that “[…] it just shows you’d rather perform outrage than understand it, Reading isn’t only endorsement, it’s education, and I’m not going to pretend history doesn’t exist just because it makes people uncomfortable […]” which would be a fine and dandy sentiment had the subject of the posts been treated with the solemn contemplation it deserved rather than an excited showcase set to Coolio’s Gangster Paradise. Now I think we can all agree: That sure was a choice.

Speaking of choices, where did she even get this version of Hitler’s manifesto? Would a publisher or printer not understand how tasteless and offensive this recreation was? A few simple clicks through to the online bookstore that Murphy cited which is located in Oman revealed that their deluxe edition of Mein Kampf was available through an Indian publisher that seems to specialize mostly in deluxe editions of many long-time classics along with some newer titles by mostly Indian authors. This comes really as no surprise as the book has enjoyed relative popularity in India as it is regarded somewhat differently in comparison to those whose Jewish ancestors were directly affected by Hitler’s political and genocidal goals. Still. Gold edging? It’s like spraying the edges of your third grader’s composition notebook after they scribbled their various grievances with you for putting butter on their rice. Why in the world would you bother?

Most of us won’t be able to conjure answers to “why” anyone would make these choices, but then again I’ve been well known for tastelessness in the past and can’t really condemn anything with absolute certainty. Perhaps this all was done to drum up attention and engagement as rage bait really does seem to pay off in a lot of cases and across a lot of platforms. Perhaps it’s one of those things that is done to seek out particular sorts of followers or discourage others (like bright stripes on a snake) and if there’s a bit of collateral damage, so be it. If you were to ask me, though, I think it just comes down to a cultural difference as the Americanization of the internet causes many users to adopt the particular little taboos that are common in the American social paradigm. Should, say, a member of the NaZine crew own a deluxe edition of Mein Kampf, we would likely nod with an acknowledgement of “Interesting find!” but as Instagram is not a “closed” model and is instead a very public platform, one cannot rely on intellectual acceptance of a relatively niche collector’s item in the context of wider attitudes toward Nazism, Hitler, and the memory of the Holocaust.

So…that’s all to say that if you do have a deluxe edition (or any edition) of Mein Kampf, that sure is an interesting find! Nevertheless, I cannot in good conscience suggest that you share your find as an aesthetic post on Instagram. Depending on your Bookstagram branding, I think there should be several books you ought not post simply for the sheer irrelevancy of their inclusion. Are you cutesy and cozy? Maybe don’t post your salvaged copy of The Turner Diaries. But of course this is just my opinion, and you’re free to do whatever it is you want as long as you’re prepared for the predictable response the internet is bound to have.