Brexit Nightmares

Some if not most people within populist and right-wing movements in Europe think it’s a good idea to leave the European Union and become a fully independent nation state once again. In a referendum on 23 June 2016, a narrow majority of voters in the UK agreed with that sentiment and decided to leave the Union. The process of actually implementing Britain’s exit (hence Brexit) was arduous and complicated, dragging on for years. It formally happened on 31 January 2020, but many effects of this exit agreement took full force only on January 1, 2021.

Castle Hill was hit with this right away on that day: All our book mailings into EU countries suddenly stalled, taking months to get to our customers, if they arrived at all. For decades, there had been no customs facilities, no customs staff, and no customs procedures for traffic between the UK and the continent. All this had to be freshly built, defined, instructed, and practiced before it could run smoothly. And running smoothly it was definitely not. Customer complaints about orders not received for many, many weeks were piling up at our end, and we were in the dark as to what was going on.

Furthermore, the ugly specter of customs control by the importing countries loomed large. Remember: Almost all our books are considered “contraband” material in almost all EU countries. Our material has always been, still is, and hopefully will always be perfectly legal in the UK. This is the reason why Castle Hill Publishers was established and has had its home always in the UK: We were part of the customs-free European Union, but out of reach of the continental Holocaust dictators and tyrants. Our mail could reach customers in Europe with no authorities ever able to intercept it.

Brexit has taken away this advantage. We are still legal in the UK, but we can’t get any books into Europe anymore without them risking to get confiscated, and our customers risking to get visits from the police. This is BAD.

Ever since the UK joined the EU, many companies have set up a branch or even their headquarters in the UK for their European operations, because the Brits conveniently speak – or rather have imposed on the world – our modern-day lingua franca. That makes it easy for international companies to get established. Moreover, mailing and shipping from the UK to continental Europe is astonishingly cheap, fast and efficient.

Brexit has pulled the rug out from underneath all that. With customs controls increasing shipping times to an irksome degree and rising costs due to customs fees, many companies are breaking down their tents in the UK and move to the continent. Great Britain is bleeding, in fact, hemorrhaging foreign capital and investments.

Castle Hill Publishers have now official joined the stampede to get the hell out of here. There is no point in staying in the UK, if we cannot do efficient business here anymore. While we will keep a PO Box in the UK for now, our European printing, storage and shipping operations are moving to a safe haven within the EU. The Brits among Castle Hill’s staff are sorry to see this happen, but they keep insisting that Brexit is a blessing for the UK. I disagree. It’s a nightmare for all who do European-wide business, and that’s a lot of companies, involving a lot of people, not just our little shoe-string operation. It’s an economic and financial disaster for the UK – and for revisionism.

So far, Brexit has been the most efficient censorship measure against Holocaust revisionism taken in Europe. I do not yet know whether Castle Hill Publishers will survive it, but we will try. From a mainstream point of view, that’s so far the only “positive” side of this entire quitter operation.