Amazon has reinstated Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' after quietly banning the book last week
- Amazon has reinstated Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" after removing the book last week, as first reported by The New York Times.
- There is a copy for sale sold directly by Amazon, but none from third-party sellers.
- "As a bookseller, we provide customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including titles that serve an important educational role in understanding and preventing anti-Semitism," a representative for Amazon told Business Insider.
- Amazon has cracked down on certain titles before, including books by Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, books that claimed they contained cures for autism, and, more recently, books that contained misinformation about the coronavirus.
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Amazon has one again started selling Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" after quietly removing the book last week, The New York Times' David Streitfeld reported Tuesday.
Last week, Amazon sent emails to sellers that had been stocking the manifesto, saying it could not offer the book for sale, according to The Times. Now, the book is once again available on Amazon, though only through the ecommerce giant directly. A search on Amazon's website showed multiple books related to "Mein Kampf," but only one version of the original book.
"Mein Kampf" was originally published in 1925 and was the blueprint for Nazism and the Holocaust. The current listing for the book on Amazon's website contains a note from the Anti-Defamation League as well as a review from Amazon that describes the book as "the angry diatribe of history's most notorious anti-Semite."
An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that it takes the decision to sell the book seriously.
"As a bookseller, we provide customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including titles that serve an important educational role in understanding and preventing anti-Semitism," the spokesperson said. "All retailers make decisions about what selection they choose to offer and we do not take selection decisions lightly."
But booksellers told the Times that they hadn't received much clarity from Amazon about which books it will and will not allow, and others expressed concerns that Amazon was going too far in dictating what people were allowed to read.
The isn't the first time Amazon has removed titles from its store. Last year, Amazon removed books by Joseph Nicolosi, who is considered the "father of conversion therapy." Last month, it removed books by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell. And last week, it took down books that unscientifically claimed there is a cure for autism in children.
As the coronavirus continues to spread, Amazon has also taken down books that contained unreliable information about the virus.
