Keith Ellison’s letter to Jeff Bezos focuses on an alleged neo-Nazi’s material being sold at Amazon and published on Amazon’s self-publishing, but Ellison makes more sweeping statements, particularly his opening gambit: “I am writing to you with my concerns about the amount of money Amazon has made from the sale of literature and music published by entities identified as ‘hate groups’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).”
Clearly Ellison wants Amazon, which has (with Barnes & Noble) a virtual monopoly on book sales in the U.S., to stop selling books by people designated as “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Like the establishment media, Ellison assumes that the SPLC is a reliable, unbiased arbiter of what is and isn’t a hate group. The SPLC’s hard-Left bias and determination to destroy legitimate conservative groups by lumping them in with neo-Nazis and white supremacists is nowhere recognized.
The far-Left Bezos likely also thinks that the SPLC is a reliable authority, and so it is entirely possible that he will comply with Ellison’s demands and purge Amazon of all materials by people that the SPLC has smeared and defamed. Given Amazon’s dominance of the book market, that would be a serious blow to the freedom of speech, as the SPLC is making an all-out attempt to delegitimize the full spectrum of opinion that dissents from the Leftist agenda — on Islam, immigration, social issues and more. If Amazon drops SPLC-designated “hate” material, there should ensue a national discussion about whether the SPLC is really a reliable authority, and whether only one viewpoint should be allowed in the public square. If not, this will just be another nail in the coffin of the freedom of speech in the U.S.
Ellison has spoken at a convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Yet ISNA has actually admitted its ties to Hamas, which styles itself the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Justice Department actually classified ISNA among entities “who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood.”
It gets worse. In 2008, Ellison accepted $13,350 from the Muslim American Society (MAS) to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The Muslim American Society is a Muslim Brotherhood organization: “In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation’s major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members.” That’s from the Chicago Tribune in 2004, in an article that is now carried on the Muslim Brotherhood’s English-language website, Ikhwanweb.
Also, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) raised large amounts of for Ellison’s first campaign, and he has spoken at numerous CAIR events. Yet CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.
Anyway, please do preorder The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, which tells truths about Islam and jihad that Keith Ellison doesn’t want you to know, while you still can: click here.
Here (thanks to Vikram) is Keith Ellison’s letter to Amazon top dog Jeff Bezos:
July 17, 2018
Jeffrey P. Bezos
CEO
Amazon, Inc.
410 Terry Avenue
North Seattle, Washington 98109Dear Mr. Bezos:
I am writing to you with my concerns about the amount of money Amazon has made from the sale of literature and music published by entities identified as “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). I would like to know whether Amazon is committed to ceasing the sale of all products that promote hateful and racist ideologies. For a company with a policy prohibiting the sale of “products that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views,” there appear to be a disturbing number of groups with hateful, racist, and violent agendas making money using Amazon’s platform.
Since the election of Donald Trump, hate groups have been on the rise, and racist violence has swelled in this country. The increase in political organizing around hateful ideologies like white nationalism has provided a growing base of support for racist policies like the Muslim ban, and the “zero tolerance” immigration policies that have driven family separation. Over the last decade, hate groups have used Amazon to fund their activities and spread their ideologies. Historically, Amazon has not responded effectively to this issue, and continues to allow hate groups and SPLC-identified neo-nazis and white nationalist writers to make money using its platform.
According to a recent report entitled Delivering Hate by the Partnership for Working Families and the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE), available online at https://bit.ly/2tX37yK as of June 2018, Amazon has been selling baby onesies, toys, children’s Halloween costumes, flags, clothing, and jewelry emblazoned with nazi, neo-nazi, white nationalist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and violent, racist imagery. I am disturbed that Amazon would make racist and hateful products for children available on its platform.
Further, there appears to be a staggering amount of neo-nazi and white nationalist propaganda available for sale on Amazon, both in e-book and print format. For example, five volumes of the Occidental Quarterly, a racist journal edited by SPLC-identified neo-nazi Kevin MacDonald, remain for sale on Amazon. Your company states that it takes 30-65% of revenue from all Kindle e-book sales. Amazon also takes 40% of revenue from the sale of physical books published by its CreateSpace self-publishing platform. I am alarmed that hate groups can make money by selling propaganda on Amazon, and that Amazon is able to profit from these transactions.
As stated earlier, Amazon has a strict policy against hateful and racist products on its platform. The availability of all the material listed in the aforementioned report indicates to me that either Amazon is willfully refusing to enforce its own policies against the sale of racist products, or its sheer size makes it impossible for the company to police itself. In either event, Amazon must immediately cease doing business with groups that promote racist violence. To better understand how hateful propaganda makes its way to be sold on Amazon, and how your company plans to correct this problem, I seek the following information:
1. How much money has Kindle Direct Publishing made from the sale of materials published by SPLC-identified hate groups since 2015?
a. How much money has Amazon made from the sale of SPLC-identified hate groups via its CreateSpace self-publishing service since 2015?
2. How much money has Amazon made from the sale of SPLC-identified hate music, since 2015?
3. How does Amazon enforce its policies against the sale of racist and hateful items?
4. Will Amazon destroy any merchandise with hate symbols currently in Amazon-controlled warehouses within the next three months?
5. Will Amazon stop publishing physical and digital materials from SPLC-identified hate groups in the next three months?I respectfully request answers to my questions by July 31, 2018.
Sincerely,
Keith Ellison
Member of Congress