Kyrie Irving has been rightly condemned for promoting the antisemitic film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.” Among other things, it includes the wildly antisemitic claims of a global Jewish conspiracy to oppress Black people, and that Jews falsified the history of the Holocaust to conceal their nature and protect their status and power. Kyrie has more followers on Instagram than there are Jews in the world, and whether he likes it or not, when he advertises a product, it constitutes an endorsement. And it is definitely heard that way—the film and the book on which it is based have both gone from obscurity to the bestsellers lists since he first posted about it.
To be clear, Kyrie has a right to push whatever he wants on his social media. But that doesn’t mean that everyone else cannot call it what it is: hateful. And that does not mean that Amazon should get a pass for making that antisemitic content so easily available—and refusing to take it down, even during a time of rising anti-Jewish hate.
Apparently, even for a mega-conglomerate like Amazon, committing to the idea that antisemitism is wrong is still not quite worth the investment.
There is of course an argument to be made that a private marketplace like Amazon should not police ideas. Indeed, like Kyrie, they have the First Amendment right to publish (or not publish) anything they want. But Amazon itself has rejected that idea outright—Amazon’s official policy guidelines include an “Offensive Content” warning, which gives the website the right to remove any: “Content that contains derogatory comments, hate speech, or threats specifically targeting any group or individuals; [or] Content that promotes hate speech, incites racial or gender hatred, or promotes groups or organizations that support such beliefs.”
Having decided that they will actively regulate hate speech and remove what they find to be societally dangerous, in the quest for equality, consistency is key. There should be bare minimums for what we can all agree is dangerous and offensive—and yet as reported by The New York Times the company claimed that the film did undergo review, and that they had concluded it did not violate the prohibition on hate speech.
That is sad but not surprising, because Amazon has a history of letting things slide when it comes to antisemitism. In 2019, it took a wave of criticism for Amazon to finally remove holiday ornaments featuring the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. In 2020, The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum and the Holocaust Education Trust had to jointly call on Amazon to stop selling “The Poisonous Mushroom,” an illustrated children’s book with an antisemitic caricature on the cover.
The book, which was used as evidence of crimes against humanityat the Nuremberg trials, was designed to brainwash children into hating and fearing Jews. Last year, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, a Jewish organization focused on social justice, introduced a shareholder proposal asking for a comprehensive report on Amazon’s “efforts to address hate speech and the sale or promotion of offensive products throughout its businesses.” Amazon responded by asking federal regulators to block that proposal, among others. As of 2022, Amazon is still the world’s largest purveyor of original Nazi propaganda films.
If Amazon really “cannot tell” what is and is not antisemitic, even when the whole world is telling them, then here is an easy solution: They should remove the subjectivity and immediately adopt an objective standard for what is and is not acceptable by adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
The IHRA definition is the only internationally accepted definition of antisemitism that there is or ever has been. IHRA’s conduct-based, consensus-driven approach is already used by our federal government and dozens of other countries. It has been endorsed by a growing number of world leaders, including U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and U.S. presidents of both parties. It has proven to be an essential tool in identifying contemporary manifestations of anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions, and while it is not an exhaustive definition, its use as a standard continues to increase awareness and understanding of the parameters of contemporary anti-Jewish discrimination. Among the examples it highlights: promoting the myth of a world Jewish conspiracy, and accusing Jews of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
While it may be about antisemitism today, the truth is that Amazon isn’t great at stopping other forms of hate speech either. In 2018, the Partnership for Working Families and the Action Center on Race & the Economy released a joint report titled, “Delivering Hate: How Amazon’s Platforms Are Used to Spread White Supremacy, Anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia, and How Amazon Can Stop It.” The report found that Amazon enables the celebration of ideologies that promote hate and violence by allowing the sale of hateful products on its site (including products targeted at children), and facilitates the spread of hateful ideologies, by publishing propaganda.
Whether they intend to or not, Amazon has long enabled hate organizations and ideologues to spread their ideas, generate resources, and find new adherents—all while taking a cut of the revenue. It is high time that they invested some of that revenue back into making sure their systems are safe.
This is an Op-Ed written by Director Mark Goldfeder and originally published by Newsweek available here.
