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?