Amazon: First they dropped Bibles, then they dropped books

Exclusive: Joseph Farah covers retailer's history of banning products, some at feds' behest

By Joseph Farah
Published October 21, 2022 at 7:34pm

Only four years ago, Amazon was asked to ban the sale of Bibles to people in China.

How do you suppose Amazon responded?

It instantly capitulated.

In 2018, Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post and one of the two richest men in the world, wanted to do business in China. He was told he could not sell Bibles. So he settled for selling everything else in China.

Now that Amazon sells virtually everything to Americans, how long do you think it will take the biggest seller in the U.S. to start banning books – one by one?

The answer is ... they have started already.

First, Amazon has adopted a policy to ban the sale of any book that "we determine is hate speech." In the current "cancel culture," that means conservative authors shouldn't be worrying about publishers banning their books; they should worry about whether Amazon is going to sell them. Remember, Amazon already sells about more than 50% of ALL books in the U.S. and has already destroyed most quaint little bookstores that once dotted the landscape throughout America.

Now that they have begun to play this game, initially in the case of Ryan Anderson's "When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement," Amazon will surely make this a much bigger thing. Banning books never stops at one or two or three. Just recall what the Nazis did.

I can now tell the story of how Amazon, after years of selling all of WND's books and movies, took a stand against one film. The retailer stopped ordering it – when it still had life. You wouldn't think the movie would be controversial at all. "70 Years: Israel's Prophetic Past, Present, and Future" was the title. Made in 2019, it was not the most controversial movie we ever made. Technically, Amazon did not refuse to sell it, but it was the first time the company killed a book or a film by not ordering them in sufficient quantities when the movie was selling at peak times.

I think Amazon killed it intentionally – and thus destroyed our once-lucrative movie and book business. This came at a time, coincidentally, that others in Big Tech were ravaging our revenues – mostly advertising. There was collusion between Google and Facebook, which at that time represented 80% of digital advertising.

Today, WND has been completely DEMONITIZED by the Digital Cartel – permanently.

WND had been in business at that time for 22 years – earning more than $150 million. Between these two calamities, our revenues dropped to less than $1 million. It was Donald Trump's second year in office. Despite that, we were down in the dumps. Broke. Begging for donations.

WND is now on Trump's Truth Social! Follow us @WNDNews

But Amazon has more than one way to kill a movie. It even stopped streaming a critically acclaimed PBS documentary on Justice Clarence Thomas, at the time the only black justice serving on the U.S. Supreme Court, during Black History Month. "Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words" has a five-star rating.

Amazon also banned the DVD version of the documentary – just days after Amazon announced that it "is kicking off Black History Month 2021 with a month-long celebration that is rooted in our commitment to being a place where Black leaders want to grow their careers, as well as supporting entrepreneurship and innovation in the Black community. We are committed to diversity and inclusion and always look for ways to scale our impact as we grow," Amazon states on its "diversity and inclusion" page.

So your choice of contemporary films celebrating Black History Month featured four movies on the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and two on Anita Hill, the woman who falsely accused Thomas of sexually harassing her during the confirmation hearing.

Last June, on the recommendation of the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, Amazon banned the mainstream Christian conservative activist group Family Research Council from its AmazonSmile program, which allows customers to choose a charity to receive proceeds from their purchases. The SPLC frequently labels conservative and Christian organizations as "hate groups."

In 2017, Amazon also banned D. James Kennedy Ministries from participating in the AmazonSmile program after the SPLC labeled it a "hate group." Before his passing, the much-loved Dr. Kennedy was perhaps the most influential Presbyterian minister in the world.

Being "banned in Boston" was once a badge of honor – and good for sales. Not the same effect for banned in Amazon.

You see, there's a catch on the way Amazon sets the rules.

It's not only "hate speech" that's on the chopping block. As Amazon defines it, the company will ban "other material we deem inappropriate or offensive."

Thankfully, someone else has discovered this – a BIG VOICE. Tucker Carlson.

"So you go on Amazon.com and you remember this started as a bookstore and online bookstore," he said on his show this week. "It's the biggest bookstore in the world. They have everything. There's nothing you can't find an Amazon, including used books. So if you were to go into Amazon to read books by a man who is in the news and whose ideas are directly bearing on world events, you look for a guy called Aleksandr Dugin. Dugin is one of Russia's most famous authors and political philosophers. He doesn't work for the government; he doesn't work for Vladimir Putin. He's just a philosopher. So if you're interested in like, 'What are they thinking over there?' you would search Dugin's author page on Amazon, but you would not find any results. Really? Kind of a big author to be left off Amazon."

Continued Tucker, "So we reached out to Amazon to ask, 'Why can't we find any books by this guy?' And then we realize because he's been banned from Amazon. So then we asked Amazon for a list of all books and authors who've been banned from their platform, and they wouldn't give it to us. So we went back and forth, back and forth. And finally, Amazon provided a six-word response, and we're quoting: 'Amazon complies with all applicable laws.'"

Hmmmmmm.

"Applicable laws? Well, in the United States, there are no laws against publishing books because we have the First Amendment," says Carlson. "The government can never, under any circumstances, censor any book. Period. Or anything that you have to say. Period. Because that's the core of our Bill of Rights."

So the show reached out to the Treasury Department.

"Did this really happen? Yeah, it did," he found. "They essentially confirmed it: 'We don't comment on possible enforcement matters, but the Treasury Department continues to vigorously enforce Russia-related sanctions.'"

Amazon has refused to provide Carlson with a list of the other books they are banning, "but they clearly are banning a lot of different books."

He pledges to get to the bottom of this in future shows.

Surprised? If you will ban the Bible in China, you will ban books the U.S. if the government adds it to the blacklist.

Don't forget – Amazon is Big Tech. Big Tech is too big to fail.

Not on Amazon, but available in the WND Superstore: "70 Years: Israel's Prophetic Past, Present, and Future""70 Years: Israel's Prophetic Past, Present, and Future."

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