Amazon removes Nazi and neo-Nazi items after human rights group protests

Although several of the items pointed out by the SWC have been removed from Amazon, many similar items remain available for purchase.

Simon Wiesenthal Center

• Amazon is once again under fire for allowing offensive items to be sold on its site, human rights group claims.
• The SWC says it isn't the first — or second — time it has called out the retail giant for Nazi propaganda.
• Amazon has since removed the items, but more related products remain, Gizmodo reports.

An international Jewish human rights organization is once again calling out retail giant Amazon for alleged Nazi-related content.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center blasted Amazon for "monetizing Nazi and Neo-Nazi paraphernalia" on its website in a Thursday blog post. According to the post, SWC reached out to the e-commerce giant via email on Wednesday requesting the company "immediately put in place systems that will end the monetization of hateful products."

The human rights organization alleges Amazon allowed items associated with neo-Nazis, including a swastika necklace and face masks, to be sold and marketed by various businesses. They included screenshots of several of the items in a letter to Amazon.

Although several of the items have since been removed, there are still similar items listed for sale on Amazon, tech news site Gizmodo reported.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center

"Amazon is the nation's go-to-online store for every imaginable product," Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action at the SWC, said in a statement.

He continued: "In an era when 63% of all religious-based hate crimes in America target America's Jews—2.4% of the US population, at a time when Blacks are again the number one target of race-based hate crimes, Amazon should not be using its business model to market hateful symbols and neo-Nazi paraphernalia."

The Simon Wiesenthal Center

Cooper went on to note a letter sent by the SWC to Amazon in 2022 for featuring 30 films the organization deemed Nazi propaganda on its streaming platform Amazon Prime.

It wasn't the first time the tech giant had been slammed for reportedly carrying antisemitic items. In 2019, Amazon removed Christmas ornaments featuring Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, according to a report from Insider.

In 2020, the company came under fire for profiting from the sale of "vicious antisemitic Nazi propaganda" by the Auschwitz Memorial Museum in a tweet, Insider's Charlie Wood reported.

"It's simply not acceptable for the biggest economic giant on the block to play games of Wack-a-mole rather than fix things," Cooper said, according to Gizmodo.

Amazon didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, but a representative directed the New York Post to the company's policy on "potentially offensive products."

"Our technology continuously scans all products listed for sale looking for text and images that we have determined violate our policies, and immediately removes them," the policy reads.

"The realm of potentially offensive products is nuanced and diverse, and we review thousands of products every day against our policies to ensure compliance." 

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