Baby onesies adorned with burning crosses? Necklaces made of swastikas? Fidget spinners emblazoned with alt-right icon Pepe the Frog and a swastika?
These are just some of the items that Amazon says will no longer be available for purchase on its website.
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Amazon’s announcement banning white nationalist and neo-Nazi paraphernalia from its marketplace came in the wake of an NGO report accusing the company of selling items in violation of its own policy barring “products that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views.”
But despite Amazon’s new commitment to removing hateful content or products from its site, there’s plenty of problematic material still available for purchase, including several of the items identified in the NGO report, “How Amazon’s Platforms Are Used to Spread White Supremacy, Anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia and How Amazon Can Stop It.”
The company did not immediately return a VICE News’ request for comment.
“Amazon has reviewed the products and content referenced in your letter, and we have removed those listings, and permanently blocked the seller accounts found to be in violation of our policies,” Amazon’s Vice President of Public Policy Brian Huseman wrote in a letter to Rep. Keith Ellison, which was first reported by Buzzfeed. “We have restricted the inventory to prevent it from being sold and are in the process of removing it from our fulfillment centers.”
But although Amazon said the products flagged by the congressman had been removed from Amazon’s website, other white supremacist literature mentioned in the NGO report was still available for purchase at press time, including “White Power,” by George Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, who also has a children’s book available for purchase on the site.
Customers who purchased “White Power,” according to Amazon’s data, also enjoyed books like “Nazi Dis-Illusion,” a book glorifying Nazism, and “Jews and their Lies.”
Cover image: Workers monitor data on large display screens at the Amazon.com Inc. fulfillment center in Passo Corese, Rieti, Italy, on Thursday, July 26, 2018. Giulio Napolitano/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
