From Fortune:
Rep. Keith Ellison Slams Amazon for Selling ‘Hate Group’ Merchandise
Prime Day is here, but Amazon is facing backlash for selling merchandise promoted by known hate groups. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Tuesday, voicing concerns about the company’s income from such items.
“I would like to know whether Amazon is committed to ceasing the sale of all products that promote hateful and racist ideologies,” wrote Ellison. “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.”
Ellison said that hate groups have been on the rise since the election of Donald Trump, and Amazon has historically failed to prevent hate groups and associated individuals identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) from making money on its platform. Ellison lists a range of the products in question available on Amazon, including children’s toys, clothes, and Kindle books.
This is the same SPLC that just had to settle a defamation suit for wrongly branding a person an anti-Muslim extremist. Even Politico had to question if the SPLC had simply become an anti-Trump/anti-Right win organization. Which, by the way, it has.
For Keith Ellison, if the SPLC hasn’t given political literature its blessing, Amazon shouldn’t sell it.
Ellison is both a lawyer and a Congressman, so one should assume he knows the text of the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I’m pretty sure a Congressman telling the worlds largest online retailer that it shouldn’t sell books that a group near and dear to the Congressman’s heart hasn’t approved is a hair’s breath from being a massive Constitutional violation.
But he’s a Progressive, so he’s just trying to make everyone better by banning hate literature, that’s not all that bad. He’ll get a free pass for this.
They dont have a problem with Amazon selling pedophilia how to books.
The “Noble” Quran and all of the works of ELI-ja Muhammad, including that whites sre a product of a mad scientist (or some such shit) ????????
“Ellison said that hate groups have been on the rise since the election of Donald Trump,…”
Well, Ellison is correct there. They are called “Democrats”.
It’s not a “hair’s breath” [sic] from any kind of constitutional violation, much less a massive one. Amazon is a private entity and can censor, or not censor, as they see fit. The fact that a Congressman urges them to censor has no constitutional implications whatsoever.
To violate the constitution, Ellison would have to propose a bill, have it approved by a majority in both houses on Congress, and have it signed by the President. Since there is zero chance of this happening, I’d say we’re miles away from a 1st Amendment violation.
Its a MASSIVE 1st Amendment issue. You don’t have to pass a law to violate the 1st Amendment. A powerful government agent accusing people of hate speech is MORE THAN ENOUGH to suppress their speech. Now they have to consider what might draw the wrath of Ellison with every book they sell. That’s 1st Amendment ground zero. Get a clue.
In other words, since Ellison and you share the same murderous totalitarian ideology, Amazon can do anything it wishes so long as it’s congruent with your own beliefs. Now if it had been the Kochs or Trump who owned Amazon and they were considering banning anything to do with Marxism, Socialism, Islam or Progressivism, you’d be screaming with outrage over the 1A violation.
Typical leftling hypocrisy.
Ellison is the crap. He is the worst example of an American the media could find. He should be exiled from America because he hates us and would kill us if we don’t think like him.
…the southern poverty law center and the muslim brotherhood are two of the biggest hate groups in the world…ellison, an avowed hater of Israel, America and Christians is a racist/fascist/black-supremacist second only to loony louie farakhan…muslims do not belong in civilized societies…period.