Neutralizing the political: Language ideology as censorship in Esperanto youth media during the Cold War

Abstract

This article takes a magazine for Esperanto youth as an entryway to explore the links between language ideologies and censorial practices. During the Cold War, Esperanto print media sought a connection with the Third World to present Esperanto as an alternative to US-led English and USSR-led Russian. With anti-imperialism gaining ground in these magazines, their editors struggled to adhere to the ideology that posits Esperanto as a neutral and international language. Analyzing the editorial work behind the magazine Kontakto, I explore how partly silencing anti-colonial perspectives worked to safeguard Esperanto's neutrality, ultimately asking: how can language ideologies act as mechanisms of censorship?