A top ranking Democrat is asking Amazon to quit selling products that promote “hate” as defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a controversial group that regularly links conservative Christian organizations with neo-Nazis.
In a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos this week, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., deputy chair at the Democratic National Committee, said that he was “alarmed that hate groups can make money by selling propaganda on Amazon, and that Amazon is able to profit from these transactions.”
Ellison cited in his letter a report, called “Delivering Hate: How Amazon’s Platforms Are Used to Spread White Supremacy, Anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia and How Amazon Can Stop It,” from the Action Center on Race & the Economy (ACRE) and the Partnership for Working Families (PWF).
“How much money has Kindle Direct Publishing made from the sale of materials published by SPLC-identified hate groups since 2015?” Ellison inquired.
“Will Amazon stop publishing physical and digital materials from SPLC-identified hate groups in the next three months?”
The Delivering Hate document notes that the online giant has sold clothing and other paraphernalia with white supremacist and neo-Nazi messages and symbols, products the company stopped selling on its platform three years ago. Yet the document also highlights a Christian group, Chick Publications, a company that produces Gospel tracts, as a “hate group.”
The SPLC has a history of smearing Christians — usually because of their objections to same-sex marriage — by lumping them in together with many varieties extremists. For several years the SPLC has been labeling as “hate groups” socially conservative Christian organizations such as Alliance Defending Freedom, the Lake Charles, Louisiana-based Ruth Institute, the Family Research Council, and several others, pinning them on their widely distributed “hate map.”
Many corporations utilize the SPLC’s materials for some of their business purposes as do some mainstream media outlets to frame their reporting on ideological extremism.
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Source: Christian Post
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