Amazon, PayPal and Spotify Inadvertently Fund White Supremacists. Here’s How.
Counter-Currents.com, a Web site you probably do not encounter in your standard Internet travels, exists to advance the books of noted neo-Nazis and the creation of an all-white nationalist state.
Amazon.com, a site visited by 80 million people daily, exists to sell things.
But for the past five years, Amazon and Counter Currents have been entwined in a little-seen symbiosis: Counter Currents belongs to Amazon’s Affiliates program, which means it funnels traffic to the Amazon store. In exchange, Amazon sends Counter Currents a percentage of the sale — 7 percent or more.
Counter Currents made more than $5,000 through the program between 2010 and 2012, according to its own reports. And according to Heidi Beirich, who directs research at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a noted civil-rights advocacy group, it’s only one of a number of white supremacist groups that Amazon inadvertently funds through Affiliates. Neither Amazon nor its public relations firm responded to multiple requests for comment, which is not unusual for stories involving the company.
More: Amazon, PayPal and Spotify Inadvertently Fund White Supremacists. Here’s How.