- Amazon is again under fire for allowing offensive items to be sold on its site.
- SWC says it’s not the first – or second – time it has called out the retailer for Nazi propaganda.
- Amazon has since removed those items, but related products remain, Gizmodo reported.
International Jewish Human Rights Organization calls out Amazon again for alleged Nazi-related content.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center blasted Amazon for “monetizing Nazi and neo-Nazi paraphernalia” on its website in a blog post Thursday. According to the post, SWC contacted the e-commerce giant via email on Wednesday asking the company to “immediately put systems in place to end the monetization of hateful products.”
The human rights organization said Amazon allowed various companies to market and sell neo-Nazi-related items, including swastika necklaces and face masks. They included screenshots of some of those items in the letter to Amazon.
While Amazon has since removed several items, there are still similar items listed for sale on the sales page, Gizmodo reported.
Simon Wiesenthal Center
“Amazon is the nation’s online store for every product imaginable,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, SWC’s associate dean and director of global social action, said in a statement.
“In an era when 63% of all religion-based hate crimes in America target American Jews — 2.4% of the U.S. population, at a time when black people are once again the number one target for race-based hate crimes, Amazon would not should have used its business model to market hate symbols and neo-Nazi paraphernalia,” Cooper continued.
Simon Wiesenthal Center
Cooper then pointed to a letter SWC sent to Amazon in 2022 for showing 30 films the organization deemed Nazi propaganda on Amazon Prime.
It wasn’t the first time consumers criticized the tech giant for allegedly carrying anti-Semitic items. In 2019, Amazon removed Christmas decorations depicting the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, according to an Insider report.
The company came under fire in 2020 for profiting from the sale of the Auschwitz Memorial Museum’s “vicious anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda” in a tweet, Insider’s Charlie Wood reported.
“It’s just not acceptable for the biggest economic giant on the block to play Whac-A-Mole games instead of fixing things,” Cooper said, according to Gizmodo.
Amazon did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment, but a representative referred the New York Post to the company’s policy on “potentially offensive products.”
“Our technology continuously scans all products listed for sale looking for text and images that we determine violate our policies, and immediately removes them,” the rule states.
“The field of potentially offending products is nuanced and diverse, and we review thousands of products every day against our policies to ensure compliance.”