Amazon Censors Ads For Book That Criticizes Black Lives Matter
When The Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank organization, tried to promote their new book linking the BLM movement to Marxism, Amazon stepped in to thwart them.
According to a Heritage press release, Amazon tried to quietly eliminate any advertising for their book, “BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution,” on the grounds that the ads were too “controversial.”
From the presser: Amazon claimed that the book “no longer complies with our current Creative Acceptance Policies. Specifically for the following reasons: Your ad contains books or content that is not allowed. Content that revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics is not permitted. Please remove this content from your ad.”
Upon appeal, Amazon nonchalantly reversed their original decision, claiming that “human error” was the cause for the original ban. In other words, Big Tech did what it brazenly gets away with each day: censorship of ideas that it deems problematic. A person within the company, tasked with reviewing said materials for a massive online retailer that supposedly serves all opinions under the First Amendment, took it upon his/her self to quiet an idea they likely found personal offensive. Only once the company was forced to review the decision under threat of potential blowback did they allow the advertising to continue.
Heritage concluded that whether this outcome was the result of an algorithm or human action, “the outcome is censorship.”
The book was written by Heritage Senior Fellow Mike Gonzalez and released on September 7. Gonzalez says his book explores the left’s obsession with identity politics and racial divisions.
“I wrote this book because most of the press refused to cover the important questions about the people and organizations behind Black Lives Matter. Now, Amazon is trying to limit how many Americans read this book,” Gonzalez said. “The American people deserve answers to those questions, especially after the 630 or more riots that left our cities burning, businesses destroyed and billions in damage, and Americans dead.”