Amazon’s Links With Neo-Nazism
Amazon’s poor pay, terrible working conditions and tax avoidance are relatively well documented. Less spoken of are Amazon’s links to Neo-Nazism or the selling of Neo-Nazi merchandise by the big internet companies. Hadas Thier raised Amazon’s relationship with Neo-Nazis at their German distribution centre:
Here, fast moving conveyor belts and scuttling robots move products across a sci-fi-looking landscape, along with several hundred very unlucky employees, paid about $11 per hour, if they have full-time status. Amazon has been known to quietly get rid of injured workers at their warehouses, station ambulances outside their doors to treat heatstroked employees, and … even hire a Neo-Nazi security firm at its German warehouse to watch and abuse the predominantly immigrant workforce there’. [1]
Hadas Thier, A People’s Guide To Capitalism
Amazon were obviously concerned that 5,000 workers in Germany would organize or unionize among one another. To combat this potential, Amazon hired ‘guards from a company called HESS Security wearing black uniforms, boots and with military haircuts’ who were ‘employed to keep order at hostels and budget hotels where foreign workers stayed’ [2] [3]. The guards ‘regularly searched the bedrooms and kitchens of foreign staff… Workers were allegedly frisked to check they had not walked away with any breakfast rolls’ [2].
HESS Security, it is suggested [2] [3], could be ‘an allusion to Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess’ and has strong connections with football hooligans and convicted Neo-Nazis in Germany [2].
It was revealed that when immigrant workers arrived in Germany they ‘were told their pay had been cut to below the rate promised when they applied for jobs at Amazon’ [2]. The workers were generally too frightened to complain. The employees included educated and skilled workers such as former teachers from Spain in their fifties. Workers walk up to 17 kilometres per shift.
After being inundated with complaints Amazon was pressured into ‘examining the allegations’ [our emphasis] that were made about their security guards [2]. It did not say if Amazon were actually investigating their security guards or why they had been hired.
Amazon’s relationship with fascist security companies is not the only disturbing link the company has with Nazism. More recently an increasing quantity of Neo-Nazi commodities for sale on sites like Amazon and Wish has been witnessed and reported on [4] [5].
‘Customers in the market for racist, white supremacist content can find plenty for sale in Amazon’s book section’ [4]. Amazon does make some efforts to police hate and violence, but racist groups selling such material often use gaslighting techniques to avoid automatic detection or to avoid infringing on terms and conditions; they abide by the word of the law and not the “spirit” of it — if there is such a thing (see this journal article on racial gaslighting in the US [6]). But Amazon’s terms of service around hate speech do not apply to ‘”books, music, video and DVD,” arguably the categories most likely to include such content’ [4].
Amazon justify the selling of fascist material by stating that they are providing ‘a variety of viewpoints’ including some that ‘customers may find objectionable’ [4]. An example of publications that have provided such objectionable viewpoints: a manifesto by a US hate group responsible for bombing a mosque in Minnesota, The Turner Diaries which ‘inspired extremists from Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to Idaho domestic terrorist group The Order’ [4]. Amazon has even allowed reviews of the works and has displayed an overall “rating” of 3.7 out of 5 for one of them. Such material continues to be sold on the site despite being exposed [4]. A book by the founder of the American Nazi Party is still sold on the website. Deeply anti-Semitic reviews accompany it, giving the book five stars out of five, which seventy-eight people “found helpful” according to Amazon.
The BBC also found ‘Neo-Nazi books and Ku Klux Klan merchandise’ for sale on Amazon, Wish and Google [5]. Such hate symbols were worn by the gunman who killed 51 people in Christchurch 2019 [5]. Algorithms on Amazon and Wish were found to have recommended these and other white-supremacist commodities. Anti-LGBTQ symbols were also on sale from Amazon, such as a burning LGBT rainbow flag. The company has since taken these items down from its website.
Amazon was recently criticized by the Auschwitz Memorial for its “dangerously insensitive” Hunters programme (starring Al Pacino). In one episode of Hunters a human chess match was depicted in which Jews were executed. Auschwitz Memorial claimed that this fictional event ‘welcomes future deniers’ with its ‘fake story’ about Auschwitz. The Auschwitz Memorial stated on Twitter that they ‘honor the victims by preserving factual accuracy’ [7]. The New York Times reported Rabbi Marvin Hier as saying ‘the show did not need to rely on dramatization… Just tell what occurred’ [8]. David Weil, the creator of Hunters responded to the criticism by stating:
“Why did I feel this scene was important to script and place in series? To most powerfully counteract the revisionist narrative that whitewashes Nazi perpetration, by showcasing the most extreme — and representationally truthful — sadism and violence that the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews and other victims…”
… “And why did I feel the need to create a fictional event when there were so many real horrors that existed? After all, it is true that Nazis perpetrated widespread and extreme acts of sadism and torture — and even incidents of cruel ‘games’ — against their victims. I simply did not want to depict those specific, real acts of trauma” [7].
After criticizing Hunters, the Auschwitz Memorial went on to call out Amazon for ‘selling and distributing the work of… a Nazi who was convicted of crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg trials’ [7]. Amazon responded by saying that ‘the company believes access to even “objectionable” [their quotes] books is important’ [7]. Amazon was also called on by Holocaust awareness groups to stop selling an anti-Semitic ‘illustrated children’s book… published in 1938… The book was used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials, during which [its creator] was convicted of directing and participating in crimes against humanity’ [8].
Amazon has since removed some anti-LGBT, anti-Semitic and other hateful products from its website after coming under pressure to do so. However Wish, for one, continue to advertise and sell such material.
References
[1]H. Thier, A People’s Guide to Capitalism, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2020.[2]T. Paterson, “Amazon ‘used neo-Nazi guards to keep immigrant workforce under control’ in Germany,” Independent, 14 February 2013. [Online]. Available: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amazon-used-neo-nazi-guards-keep-immigrant-workforce-under-control-germany-8495843.html. [Accessed 25 May 2021].[3]J. N. DiStefano, “‘Neo-Nazi’ guards at Amazon?,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 15 February 2013. [Online]. Available: https://www.inquirer.com/philly/blogs/inq-phillydeals/Neo-Nazi-guards-at-Amazon.html. [Accessed 25 May 2021].[4]A. Merelli and J. Rohrlich, “There’s a Disturbing Amount of Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist Material on Amazon,” Quartz, 19 February 2019. [Online]. Available: https://qz.com/1550143/does-amazon-sell-neo-nazi-and-white-supremacist-books/. [Accessed 25 May 2021].[5]J. Clayton, “Amazon, Google and Wish remove neo-Nazi products,” BBC, 25 July 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53518008. [Accessed 25 May 2021].[6]H. Tobias and A. Joseph, “Sustaining Systemic Racism Through Psychological Gaslighting: Denials of Racial Profiling and Justifications of Carding by Police Utilizing Local News Media,” SAGE, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 424–455, 2020.[7]C. Thorbecke, “Auschwitz Memorial slams Amazon series about Nazi hunters for its ‘dangerous foolishness’,” abc News, 24 February 2020. [Online]. Available: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/auschwitz-memorial-slams-amazon-series-nazi-hunters-dangerous/story?id=69175545. [Accessed 25 May 2021].[8]H. Murphy and N. Vigdor, “Amazon Confronts Criticism Over ‘Hunters’ and Sale of Nazi Propaganda,” The New York Times, 24 February 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/books/amazon-nazi-propaganda.html. [Accessed 25 May 2021].
