On
February 19, 2019, the leftist website Quartz featured a blog entry alerting
its readers that Amazon was selling books too controversial for zealots of political
correctness to tolerate. The article was adorned with a burning
swastika to give the reader the impression that the primary target of this call
for censorship were some truly evil people.
After
all, we all need to fret at all times that these evil Nazis are always waiting
for the next opportunity to throw people alive into gas ovens. And who wouldn’t
agree that such creatures really need to be censored…
The image Quartz used to terrify its readers ...
In case
you haven’t picked up on my sarcasm here, it may be time for you to relinquish
your voting rights, because you are evidently unfit to think rationally and to
recognize a bogeyman when he’s driven through cyber-town.
The
traditional enemies of free speech have been trying for years to bully Amazon
into banning items that are perfectly legal (1), at least in marketplaces such
as the United States, where the First Amendment to its Constitution prevents
the government from passing laws limiting free speech. Amazon simply used to
ignore them. And why shouldn’t they? Who is going to boycott Amazon for selling
a few copies of some fringe literature?
In 1998,
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, gave a speech at Lake Forest College in Lake
Forest, Illinois, where he explained the background of his company’s success
story, and simply stated in this regard:
“[…]
we’re taking a different approach. We’re trying to sell all books. We want to
make every book available. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” (starting at 14:30)
But in
early 2017, this all changed when Amazon turned its free marketplace of ideas
into an increasingly controlled market where the standards of political correctness
reign supreme. This is not trivial, because Amazon controls some 50% of all
book sales in the U.S., and their market share for other consumer products is
similar and growing. Many consumers rely on Amazon as a product search engine.
If Amazon doesn’t carry it, chances are that some 50% of all consumers will
never even learn about a product’s existence. If Amazon decides to flip the
switch on a certain company, chances are that vendor will not survive this
instantaneous loss of some 50% of their turnover. The power we, as consumers,
bestow on Amazon to decide what we can and cannot buy is becoming truly
frightening.
In March
of 2017, Amazon flipped the switch on one small British publishing
company: Castle Hill Publishers. Almost all their book
titles were banned overnight, with no warning. What kind of books are these?
Raving rants of racism and anti-Semitism? Not at all. Here are 9 of them, with blurbs describing
what they are about. For a full list of the 68 banned books, see here.
In the
eye of this censorship storm was actually a series of academic books dealing with the fate of the Jews in Europe prior
to and during World War II. Ah, you may say, that’s a fine way of
avoiding the third-rail term “Holocaust.” As a matter of fact, while many of
the books deal indeed with this topic, some of them don’t, or do so only
indirectly. But no matter what, they were all murdered by Amazon: “No academic
dissent permitted!”
Castle
Hill Publishers has described in detail in a separate book titled The Day Amazon Murdered History how and
why this massive book banning unfolded. For now, this book can even be bought from Amazon. But
you don’t have to buy it to read it, because it’s available as a free download from the publishers’ web shop.
If you prefer watching it as a documentary instead, visit the publishers’ YouTube Channel. But beware! The
“YouTube community” has flagged this documentary on book banning “as
inappropriate or offensive to some audiences,” so you have to first confirm
that you really want to be in shock and awe when learning about this. This
flagging prevents this video from ever showing up in any YouTube or Google
searches, and people cannot embed it either. (Needless to say, the publishers’ own web version comes without
these restrictions.)
So, not
only is censorship alive and well in the U.S. – on a corporate level – but the
powers that be moreover keep this ugly fact as invisible as possible from the
public’s eyes by hiding it from the accidental observer. You need to already
know that it’s there in order to find it!
(1)
See for instance:
Joshua
Levitt, “Amazon.com Selling Holocaust
Denial, Nazi Hate Literature, Despite Being Sued in 2009,” The
Algemeiner, Oct. 13, 2013
Enda
Crowley, “New Amazon shame: Holocaust denial,”
The Daily Dot, Oct. 14, 2013
Ryan
Gorman, “Amazon revealed to sell Holocaust
denial, anti-Semitic and white supremacist books,” Daily Mail, Oct.
15, 2013
Robert
Singer, “Don’t sell books that deny the
Holocaust, WJC urges Amazon.com,” World Jewish Congress, Oct. 17,
2013
Stephen
Oryszczuk “Petition to rid Amazon of
anti-Semitic texts,” Jewish News Online/Times of Israel, Aug. 14,
2014
Ron
Radosh, “Why Is Amazon Still Selling
Anti-Semitic and Nazi Propaganda?,” PJ Media, May 12, 2015
Michael
Schaub, “Sacramento rabbi wants Amazon to
pull Holocaust-denial books,” Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2015
David
Benkof, “Anti-Semitism at Amazon is the real scandal,”
Jewish Journal, Nov. 22, 2016
Mary
Papenfuss, “Amazon Gets Heat Over Holocaust
Denial Books,” The Huffington Post, Feb. 13, 2017
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