One week before Christmas, on the same day that Donald Trump was impeached by the House, my small company, which sells left-leaning political bumper stickers and magnets, received an e-mail from eBay stating that our selling account was being suspended. Ironically, the bumper sticker that got us suspended was a “Dump Trump” bumper sticker. The sticker is one of several we had been selling on eBay since 2016 that features a photo of Trump adorned with a Hitler-like mustache. Partially visible in the background of these stickers is a swastika. Most of these items use various anti-Trump slogans such as “Not My President!” or “Dieser Führer ist ein Dummkopf!”
During the three days of our suspension, none of our stickers and magnets would show up in searches on eBay. Never mind that most of our stickers and magnets have nothing to do with Trump, Hitler or swastikas. According to the e-mail, we had violated eBay’s offensive products policy, again. According to the e-mail, “Listings that promote or glorify hatred, violence, or discrimination aren’t allowed…” I was puzzled because I felt my products were combating Trump’s hatred, violence and discrimination.
Occasionally, eBay had removed one of our other similar anti-Trump stickers from its catalog, but several in this series went unnoticed for nearly three years. However, after our temporary suspension, I decided to remove any anti-Trump listings featuring swastikas from eBay, fearing that if we did not, we might face a longer suspension, or even the permanent termination of our account.
At one time, these controversial anti-Trump products were also available through Amazon. However, Amazon also removed these products from its catalog for similar reasons. Currently, the only place you can buy these banned stickers is on our own company Web site, CarryaBigSticker.com.
Interestingly, Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, said in 2016, “This country has the best free speech protections in the world because of the Constitution but also because of our cultural norms.” Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, added, “You don’t want to create any climate of fear or chill with respect to those free speech norms.”
Unfortunately, Amazon has a different opinion. I learned this in late 2018 when several of our Hitler-themed anti-Trump bumper stickers and magnets were banned by Amazon. We had been selling such products on Amazon for more than a year. I was notified that some of our products had been removed from Amazon because they ran afoul of Amazon’s policy, which prohibits products that “promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance...”
I recalled a newspaper article about how Amazon was cracking down on Nazi themed products. The article, published in the New York Times on Aug 2, 2018, quoted from a letter Amazon sent to then-Congressman Keith Ellison in response to his inquiry. The letter said Amazon had a policy against offensive products and that this policy was rigorously enforced by using sophisticated automated systems and active human monitoring. The article included a photo of several controversial products, such as a baby onesie adorned with a burning cross, a Nazi eagle sticker, and a German SS hat, suggesting that these types of products were being removed from Amazon.
However, when I was writing this essay in December 2019, you could still buy the same types of products on Amazon. For instance, there was a “Peace Symbol Swastika Cross Pendant”, or a “Judge Enemy Punisher Skull Military Hook Fastener Patch” also known as a Nazi Totenkopf patch. (By late January, the swastika pendant was still on Amazon, but was listed as out of stock.)
I have no interest in buying or selling these sorts of Nazi and white-supremacist products. However, as a believer in free speech, I don’t want Amazon to ban them unless they explicitly advocate violence. If my neighbor wants to buy a Nazi themed T-shirt on Amazon, that’s fine with me. At least then I will know to stay away from him.
Of course, my real concern is that Amazon has banned my bumper stickers comparing the president to Hitler. As part of my effort to get my products reinstated, I spoke to an executive in Amazon’s Washington D.C. Public Policy office. He made an inquiry about getting my products reinstated but was unsuccessful. He said that their removal was not related to the letter from Ellison or the Times article. In fact, when I spoke to him in 2018, he noted that Amazon’s policy on offensive products had not changed. He said that he was not happy about what he felt was inaccurate media coverage.
A few weeks before I spoke to the executive, I was notified that my Amazon seller account was at risk of suspension because of my repeated policy violations. A U.S. based Amazon representative called to help me create a written plan that would outline how I was going to comply with Amazon’s policies. I was glad for the chance to get some clarity about Amazon’s policies. But the representative was not able to explain the policy, though she repeated the relevant wording about products that “glorify hatred.” Nor did she want to discuss my banned products, which, it turned out, she was not able to see, though she had a list of product titles. After much discussion, I agreed that I would submit a plan saying I would refrain from violating Amazon’s policies.
Submitting an acceptable plan turned out to be a maddening exercise requiring ever-more-detailed plans. My final plan promised employee meetings to review Amazon policies, updates to the employee handbook to include Amazon policies, and storage of controversial products in a locked area, among other things. (I should note here that I only have two part-time employees.) But even this plan was deemed unacceptable. It was only after I asked to have my case escalated to a supervisor that I was finally informed that my plan needed to explicitly state that I would not list products featuring swastikas. Never mind that swastikas are never mentioned in Amazon’s policies. As previously noted, swastikas do appear on certain Amazon products from other sellers. Amazon also sells books and DVDs about the Nazi era that often are emblazoned with swastikas.
I made multiple attempts at appealing Amazon’s ban of my Hitler-themed anti-Trump products, including sending a letter with samples of my banned stickers to Jeff Bezos.
At one point I was told by an Amazon representative, “I understand that the products does not depict hatred nor promote violence however, as the stickers are targeting one person and are against the person our team has removed the products...” Does this mean Amazon is going to ban all anti-Trump products, I wondered? There must be hundreds of such products on Amazon. My company alone sells dozens of anti-Trump products on Amazon. Another representative said our Hitler-themed anti-Trump products violated “cultural sensitivities.”
But whose cultural sensitivities? Most of the Amazon representatives I dealt with by e-mail wrote in stilted English and had names that looked Indian to me. The eBay representatives I occasionally speak with on the phone usually sound to my untrained ear like they are in the Philippines. They often have a hard time understanding my simple questions. I shudder to think how they would parse the nuances of American politics. Meanwhile, some product removals may be initiated after complaints from partisan shoppers, whose sensitivities might be mistaken for those of an entire culture.
My experience, combined with media reports, suggests that Amazon, eBay and other large selling platforms may be letting people in other countries make decisions about what Americans can say about their elected officials. Some of these decisions may be made by software that is able to recognize a swastika but is unable to understand what the symbol means in context.
Whether bumper stickers on Amazon or eBay are allowed to compare the president (or other politicians) to Hitler may seem unimportant, but with nearly half of all online product searches now starting with Amazon alone, and with elections often decided by tiny margins, little things like this could make a big difference.
When the First Amendment was ratified as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791, thanks largely to the efforts of James Madison, Madison recognized the dangers of limiting speech, especially political speech. What he could not have foreseen was that one day there would be gigantic corporations that would dwarf the size of the early U.S. government. Some of today’s corporations rival our modern government in terms of their influence on free speech. The First Amendment forbids the government from limiting speech, but there is nothing to prevent gigantic corporations from doing so.
Increasingly, a small number of huge corporations have the final say about what Americans can say about political candidates and elected officials. Often these important decisions seem to be in the hands of foreigners and automated systems that have little familiarity with the concept of free speech, let alone the First Amendment.
Our laws need to catch up to the new reality of giant online platforms run by corporations so that corporations are not allowed to stifle the free speech of an entire nation. Meanwhile, we can hope that these corporations will begin to see the light under pressure from customers.
“One thing I think is not appropriate that Donald Trump is doing, is working to freeze or chill the media that are examining him,” said Jeff Bezos in 2016. “We live in a world where half the population on this planet, if you criticize your leader, there’s a good chance you’ll go to jail or worse. We live in this amazing democracy with amazing freedom of speech, and a presidential candidate should embrace that.”
Dan Frazier is a former journalist who lives in Santa Fe, NM, where he runs his bumper sticker business, CarryaBigSticker.com.