The company gives extremists and neo-Nazis banned from other platforms unprecedented access to a mainstream audience — and even promotes their books.
Featured Graphic: Extremism flourishes on Amazon’s self-publishing arm. (Tom Gauld, special to ProPublica )
This story is a collaboration between ProPublica and The Atlantic and is not subject to our Creative Commons license.
Fair use excerpt (go to link above for full story):
“Give me, a white man, a reason to live,” a user posted to the anonymous message board 4chan in the summer of 2017. “Should I get a hobby. What interests can I pursue to save myself from total despair. How do you go on living.”
A fellow user had a suggestion: “Please write a concise book of only factual indisputable information exposing the Jews,” focusing on “their selling of our high tech secrets to China/Russia” and “their long track record of pedophilia and perversion etc.”
The man seeking advice was intrigued. “And who would publish it and who would put it in their bookstores that would make it worth the trouble,” he asked.
The answer came a few minutes later. “Self-publish to Amazon,” his interlocutor replied.