As Groups Call For Facebook Boycott, Doesn’t Amazon Also Profit From Hate?

On Wednesday, a group of national civil rights organizations called for an advertising boycott of Facebook during the month of July in response to claims that the social media giant is not doing enough to reduce the hostility on its platform. But if Facebook profits as a haven for hate groups spreading their messages online, does Amazon profit from where those groups they get their gear?

On Wednesday, a coalition of groups including The Anti-Defamation League, NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color Of Change, Free Press, and Common Sense banded together to form a nationwide “Stop Hate For Profit” campaign, which calls on companies to “send Facebook a powerful message: Your profits will never be worth promoting hate, bigotry, racism, antisemitism and violence.”

“Facebook remains unwilling to take significant steps to remove political propaganda from its platform,” Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement. “We have long seen how Facebook has allowed some of the worst elements of society into our homes and our lives. When this hate spreads online it causes tremendous harm and also becomes permissible offline,” added Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO.

While the new campaign calls attention to how hate circulates on the internet, the number of deadly in-person extremist actions continues to rise. On Tuesday, Air Force Staff Sergeant Steven Carrillo was found guilty of federal charges including killing Federal Protective Service officer David Patrick Underwood. When announcing the charges on Tuesday, federal officials determined that Carrillo developed the plan to ambush the murdered officer during an online chat among right-wing extremist activists – exactly the kind of online connections that the NAACP/ADL boycott intends to limit.

Evidence also indicates Carrillo was aligned with the right wing “boogaloo” movement. The boogaloo boys, as they are often referred to, are a loose group of far-right individuals who are pro-gun, anti-government, and believe that another civil war in America is imminent, are often recognizable at protests with their frequent possession of firearms, as well as shirt patches that sport boogaloo references

But the question remains: when hate goes from online to offline, as it did in the case of Carrillo, where do the boogaloo boys and members of other extremist groups purchase their apparel?

One place they can find the products is on Amazon.

A cursory search of the online retailer’s website found dozens of products in the Amazon marketplace with references to boogaloo or “big igloo” products, including t-shirts, hats, and patches (including the type of patch referenced in the federal charges against Steven Carrillo). Almost all of the products are sold by third-party retailers via Amazon platform, and they range from simple logos to more provocative t-shirts with slogans such as “Second American Revolution – Coming Soon,” “Come and Start It,” and “Boogaloo Boy” that are often accompanied by photos of firearms.

Boogaloo-themed products are not the only products in the Amazon marketplace that might appear to promote violence. There are a range of so-called “Second Amendment” apparel products that also allude to possible violence, including t-shirts and patches with references to “Molon Labe” (or ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ), a classical Greek phrase meaning “come and take [them],” which is often used by proponents of gun rights in America. There are also shirts and products that allude to patriotism under the “Betsy Ross Flag,” which has historical meaning, but has also been appropriated by racial supremacy groups.

Amazon’s own guidelines prohibit the sale of products that incite hate, excluding books, music, videos, and DVDs: “Amazon does not allow products that promote, incite or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views. The Amazon website also notes that Amazon will “also remove listings that graphically portray violence or victims of violence.”

So why are the boogaloo and related products still available? It may be that since Amazon stocks millions of products online, they simply have too much inventory to review and rely, in part, on customers to flag offensive products. But with enough media attention on groups like the boogaloo movement that are seemingly inciting violence, shouldn’t Amazon be more proactive in making sure its platform is free from the very products it bars?

Like Facebook, Amazon faces a balancing act of making a profit while also making sure its platform isn’t one that allows hate and incitement to flourish. By leaving some incitement-related products in its marketplace, it may be unwittingly helping those who are spreading violent messages to not only find one another, but find a broader audience as well. And that is something that is as dangerous as it is careless.

In many ways, the past few months show that America depends more on Amazon than it ever imagined it would. Now America needs to depend on Amazon to do the right thing and make sure it doesn’t profit from the far-right.

And THAT shouldn’t be something we need to wait on them to deliver.

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