How Amazon, PayPal and eBay are Financing Hate
PayPal, a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay, serves as the main financial tool for transferring money to American hate groups, and it earns fees on every transaction that vary in size according to a variety of factors. Research conducted by the Intelligence Report finds that at least 69 of the hate groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) rely on PayPal to help finance their activities.
The irony is that PayPal bans such activity in its terms of service. PayPal says that its policy “regarding payments for goods and services that may promote hate, violence, or intolerance” considers the following factors: 1) The promotion or glorification of hate, violence or intolerance because of a person’s race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation; 2) any graphic portrayal of violence or victims of violence; and 3) previous activity associated with the account holder. It specifically bans the sale of “[i]tems containing Nazi, SS, or Ku Klux Klan symbols, including authentic German WWII memorabilia.”
More: Financing Hate
PayPal is not the only merchant service that serves hate groups, however inadvertently. Over at Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, it’s possible for hate sites to earn money in a number of ways. Hate groups can and do advertise qualifying Amazon products on their own sites and earn commissions of up to 10%. A neo-Nazi site, for instance, could advertise books about World War II sold by major publishers and earn fees for referring its supporters to Amazon to buy them. In addition, even without advertising specific Amazon products, hate sites can and do encourage their visitors to do all their shopping at Amazon via portals on the hate sites, again generating significant commissions for the sites’ operators.
Amazon helps sell hate literature like John Derbyshire’s From the Dissident Right. It also pays commissions to hate sites like VDARE when followers shop at the online retailer via a VDARE portal. - via http://www.splcenter.org/Take the blog VDARE.com, named after Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the Americas and a potent symbol for white nationalists. VDARE specializes in bashing non-white immigrants and is home to such illuminating essays as “IQ: Why Africa is Africa — and Haiti Haiti.” In December, VDARE was carrying a banner ad atop its front page reading, “Amazon.com: Stop by Christmas Corner,” and linking to holiday products on Amazon’s site. On the same front page, VDARE implored supporters, “Remember to enter Amazon via the VDARE.com link and we get a commission on any purchases you make—at no cost to you!”
The Report contacted Amazon in September about the participation of hate groups and hate sites in Amazon programs that earn them commissions. Amazon said it would assign “appropriate teams to investigate, review applicable policies, and take appropriate action” but that it would not give out “information about any action taken.” Three months later, in early December, the Counter-Currents and VDARE hate sites were still earning commissions through Amazon.