On
the censorship of Michael Hoffman’s books by Amazon
[This
article was written for the Unz Review]
12
September, 2018
A
couple of months ago I did an
interview with one of the foremost scholars of rabbinical Judaism,
Michael Hoffman.
The occasion was the release of his latest book “The
Occult Renaissance Church of Rome”.
At the time I did not expect to have to ask for a follow-up interview
with him, but when I learned that Amazon had censored his books
(please see
Hoffman’s own account of this here).
Specifically, the ban is on three of his books. A complete ban
(Kindle + printed book) on Judaism’s
Strange Gods: Revised and Expanded,
as well as The
Great Holocaust Trial: Revised and Expanded,
while his textbook, Judaism
Discovered, has
been removed from the Kindle. I felt that I had to talk to him again
and he kindly agreed to reply to my questions. I submit to you the
full text of our Q&A which I will follow-up with a short
commentary.
*******
The
Saker: Please summarize what happened to your books and Amazon and
tells us what specific explanations were given to you. Did Amazon
ever offer you a “page and paragraph” list of “offending”
passages? Do you have any means of knowing exactly what your book is
being banned for?
Hoffman:
Whether it is Facebook, Google or Amazon, the excuse most often cited
for suppression is “content guidelines’ violation.” Amazon
notified us on August 13 that two of our titles, which they have been
selling for years and in thousands of copies, Judaism Discovered, our
1100 page textbook published in 2008, and Judaism’s Strange Gods:
Revised and Expanded, published in 2010 — were being permanently
removed after “review” by the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) unit
of Amazon. A facsimile of the KDP notice can be viewed here:
In
their e-mail they told us that “…we found that this content is in
violation of content guidelines.” In studying their content
guidelines one encounters a vague, generic statement about not
permitting that which is “offensive.” There is no guidance as to
what “offense” has suddenly arisen after these books were sold on
Amazon for several years. Like the Red Queen in Wonderland who
declared to Alice that, “A word is anything I say it is!” —
that which “offends” is anything Amazon says it is. A third book,
The Great Holocaust Trial: The Landmark Battle for the Right to Doubt
the West’s Most Sacred Relic, was also forbidden.
Does
Amazon have the chutzpah to publicly categorize these books as “hate
speech” or some other alibi for censorship that could be contested?
No, they do not. They leave authors and publishers twisting in the
wind, making it more difficult to appeal the decision and report to
the public on the tyranny. Although since they allow no appeal, it’s
a moot point. Personally, I have no doubt concerning why my books
were censored.
The
Saker: What is, in your opinion, the true intent behind the ban on
the sales of your book? What is Amazon’s interest in this?
Hoffman:
I don’t believe Amazon has much interest in this. It is more likely
that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SLC) is the interested party.
Last August 7 the New York Times online published a revealing piece
by David French in which he wrote: “We live in a world where the
Southern Poverty Law Center, a formerly respected civil-rights
organization, abuses its past trust to label a host of mainstream
organizations (including my former employer, the Alliance Defending
Freedom) and individuals as ‘hate groups,…based sometimes
on…outright misreadings and misrepresentations of an individual’s
beliefs and views…Amazon recently booted Alliance Defending Freedom
from its AmazonSmile charity program because of the center’s
designation.”
At
around the time in 2017 that the SPLC was trying to interfere with
the business operations of people such as myself, by intimidating
banks and credit card processors into refusing to process payments
for books, Paypal notified us that due to the contents of our website
(www.RevisionistHistory.org) we were an embarrassment to their brand
and they were terminating our account. As long as Paypal was owned by
libertarians, all was well and we had a high customer satisfaction
rating for our integrity and dependability. The original Paypal
mainly cared about whether you were a responsible seller. A
politicized administration eventually took over Paypal and in 2017 we
were terminated, very likely on the “advice” of the SPLC.
To
return to Amazon, CEO Jeff Bezos founded it in 1994. It was very much
a libertarian book operation from the start. From 1994 until a year
or two ago, Amazon only refused to sell hard core pornography and
books that constituted direct appeals to violence or law-breaking,
which is how it should be. Every other type of book was sold, without
censorship, which is one reason for Amazon’s early success and
increasing market share. Then last year, after Mr. Bezos had reached
the status of one of the world’s wealthiest persons, and Amazon’s
total value was beginning to approach that of Apple and Google,
Amazon staged a huge purge and eliminated more than a hundred World
War II revisionist history books published by Germar Rudolf’s CODOH
organization (books smeared as “Holocaust denial”). This year it
was my turn. Next year it might be any author not part of the
university press syndicates or the major houses. Such is the heedless
power and immunity of Amazon.
It’s
important to note that the thought police who removed three of my
books were based in the digital division of Amazon, where the
electronic Kindle books are marketed and managed. A Kindle permits
anyone connected to the Amazon website to read approximately the
first thirty pages of any Kindle book free of charge. Consequently,
my Judaica scholarship was on display around the world and therefore
it was much harder to lie about me and mischaracterize my Talmud and
Kabbalah research under those circumstances.
We
were also beginning to sell ever increasing numbers of these Kindle
books to people in Asia, particularly India and Japan. It’s my
hunch that Big Brother is not half so worried about printed books as
the digital kind. Removing the three books from the Kindle was the
primary objective.
To
be banned by Amazon is not equivalent to being banned by any other
private business. Most publishers will admit that Amazon has replaced
Bowker Books in Print as the industry’s authoritative guide to what
books in English have been printed in the past and what is in print
now. Amazon is currently the reference source. For a book to be
forbidden by Amazon renders it largely invisible. It is equivalent to
burning the book. So this is not a matter of Amazon exercising the
prerogative of private enterprise. Amazon is a monopoly. It has no
rival. If your book doesn’t exist on Amazon, then for most people
who are not research specialists, your book doesn’t exist. The
consequences for the pursuit of knowledge are ominous.
There
is a problem here for Amazon as well. The more Amazon excludes books
that embody facts and ideas that constitute radical dissent, the more
it becomes a narrow censor’s aperture rather than a reliable bridge
to the entire range of the Republic of Letters.
Apologists
for censorship of radicals and authentic conservatives often claim
that no First Amendment rights are violated when Amazon bans books,
therefore it is not a civil rights issue, merely an inconvenience of
the capitalist system. In the 1950s however, when the privately-owned
movie studios banned certain directors, actors and screen-writers
judged to be Leftists or Communists, that action on the part of
private enterprise was inscribed in the rolls of the culture wars as
the infamous “Blacklist,” and we are still reading and weeping
over it sixty-five years later. So it depends on whose ox is being
gored.
My
Judaica studies are free of “Jew hate,” as anyone who peruses the
sections in both books titled “To the Judaic Reader” knows. There
we state that the books are dedicated to pidyon shevyuim (redemption
of the captive), i.e. rescuing those Judaic persons who are in
bondage to the Talmud and the Kabbalah.
Our
enemies easily turn to their advantage books containing hatred of
“The Jews.” What they absolutely have no credible answer to is a
critique predicated, as our books are, on a sincere foundation of
true Christian love. Boundary-breaking scholarship united to
compassionate concern for the welfare of Judaic people is almost
unprecedented in this field. This approach makes my studies of
Judaism among the most powerful and effective because they are free
of the “hate speech” which is the pivot upon which turns the
machinery of liberal-approved censorship. For that reason, making
Judaism’s Strange Gods: Revised and Expanded, and Judaism
Discovered available on the Kindle undercut decades of hatred and
libel. Therefore those volumes had to be suppressed.
The
Saker: Since this ban was put in place – what reactions have you
heard? who has spoken in defense of your scholarship and right to be
heard? has anybody taken your defense or spoken up for you?
Hoffman:
Ron Unz allowed me to publish a note on the ban at unz.com and you,
the Saker, have taken an interest. Our many friends, readers and
subscribers have expressed outrage on Twitter and in e-mail.
Meanwhile we have contacted everyone from a columnist for Taki’s
website to the legacy media, to no discernible effect thus far. The
Washington Post, which is owned by Mr. Bezos, has as its motto,
“Democracy dies in darkness.” Yet it is in that very darkness
where Amazon’s book-banning dwells, due to the apathy of the media
and the American Library Association. To ban books by a vulnerable
independent scholar is not exactly a daring move in this age where
“hate speech” is anything that offends someone’s cherished
myth. The definition is so loose it functions as an inquisitor’s
sword.
On
the positive side, we have seen an uptick in orders to our own online
store for the printed books which Amazon has banned
[https://truthfulhistory.blogspot.com/2016/02/judaica-books-and-resources.html].
There is no replacement for the banned Kindle editions, however.
The
Saker: What do you believe could be done to resist this state of
affairs? what can we all do to put at stop to this kind of
censorship?
Hoffman:
In a general, the supporters of the lies of the Overlords wage
spiritual and psychological warfare with far more dedication,
commitment and self-sacrifice than the purported allies of God’s
truth. The Cryptocracy’s defenders are 24/7 militants resolved to
contend with their perceived foes with every ounce of their being.
Whereas on the side of Christian conservative renewal, with honorable
exceptions, I find mainly armchair warriors and folks so enormously
distracted by the choices offered by the Internet’s deluge of words
and images, that they are nearly paralyzed by the spectacle.
Compare
the reception Judge Kavanaugh received in the Senate hearings with
that of recent Supreme Court nominees Kagan and Ginsburg. The
Republicans were too cowed to seriously confront those ladies.
Maintaining decorum was the chief concern of the timid GOP at the
time, while Kavanaugh faced a near riot in the visitor’s gallery
and extremes of withering interrogation and contempt from defiant
Democratic senators.
When
CODOH’s books were banned we reported the case extensively online
and in our printed newsletter. We contacted an executive with the
American Library Association to elicit his response and express our
outrage. We did what we could even though we have almost no
relationship with CODOH. We would do the same for any person of good
will who is denied the right to advance human learning with
suppressed facts and ideas. This was formerly a truism in America, up
until the rise of the punks of social media who seem to be more like
a branch of Antifa than an intellectual class invested in discovery
and enlightenment.
Advances
in human knowledge are achieved on the basis that “error has
rights,” for the reason that enshrined dogmas are often wrong and
demonized dissidents are sometimes the bearers of rare discoveries.
But the epigram of our time is “Error has no rights,” which was
the doctrine of the fiery Inquisition, of the head-chopping French
Revolution and of the Bolsheviks and Maoists. If error has no rights
then neither does truth, in that what is denounced as hateful error
by the mob is sometimes a destabilizing, necessary and even cosmic
truth.
*******
Reading
Hoffman’s words I thought that what happened to him is so typical
of the Orwellian world we live in where the what I call the “Skripal
rules of evidence” (aka “highly likely”) have replaced even
basic evidentiary notions, a world in which false flag attacks are
announced weeks in advance, a world in which the Planetary Hegemon
has declared urbi et orbi that nothing in the body of international
law applies to the “indispensable nation” (or to the parasitic
host feeding off it) and where “might makes right” has become the
motto by which everybody lives. Of course, the censorship of a book
cannot be compared to the initiation of a war of aggression (which is
the “supreme international crime” under international law: this
was the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trial on this topic: To initiate
a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime;
it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war
crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the
whole). Still, there is something uniquely devious and evil about the
censorship of Hoffman’s books by Amazon, several things in fact:
What
is attacked in not a person or even a group, but ideas, arguably the
most precious attribute of mankind. This is therefore not only an
attack on a human being, but an attack on the very notion of humanity
as such
While
the method is different, the intention here is no different from the
book burnings of the Nazis or the Papacy except that in these latter
cases it was obvious who ordered the burning of putatively
“degenerate” or “heretical” books. Thus the ideological
motive of the Nazis and Papists was always clear whereas in the case
of Hoffman this ideological motive is hidden (even if obvious with
anybody with a modicum of intelligence).
The
ultimate hypocrisy lies in the fact that most so-called libertarians
(from the Left to the Right) have nothing to say about this because
this is not a case of censorship by government but the action of a
corporation which has the “right” to do as it wishes, nevermind
that the result is still a clear de-facto infringement of Hoffman’s
First Amendment rights and the freedom of academic scholarship.
The
US government and Congress, by allowing monopolistic corporations
such as Amazon to have that kind of power are basically engaging in
what I would call “censorship by proxy” which is to be expected
from a deep state which now does almost everything by proxy in order
to bypass fundamental US and international laws (“extraordinary
renditions” anybody?).
Unlike
the government which does have to produce at least some evidence
before it can censor an individual or organization, a US corporation
does not even have to justify itself by a single word. This is viewed
as a triumph of deregulation by mindless libertarians who would
gladly surrender all their freedoms as long as it is not to the
state. In the real world, of course, they still end up handing over
their freedoms to the state, except that the state is hiding behind
their beloved corporations.
It
is also pretty obvious that those who might, at least in theory, have
something to say about this kind of censorship by proxy remain silent
because, at least according to them, Hoffman is an “anti-Semite”
(which, having read many of his books, I can attest is a total
falsehood; by way of evidence here are sample pages from his book:
https://twitter.com/HoffmanMichaelA/status/1039159686233088000) and
thus he is undeserving of support. So-called “anti-Semites” are,
along with the pedophiles, the “consensus villains” of the day (I
explain that in detail here) but what the anti-anti-Semites fail to
realize is that each time a “consensus villain” is deprived from
his rights, this sets a precedent for everybody else. This is why
Yehuda Bauer warned us when he wrote: “Thou shalt not be a victim,
Thou shalt not be a perpetrator, And above all, Thou shalt not be a
bystander”. To no avail, alas: we live in society of silent
bystanders apparently! And when YouTube decides to silence all the
Syrian state channels to better prepare for a false flag chemical
attack, everybody looks away – “ain’t my problem”…
We
all know that in Europe (and in Russia) you can be jailed and your
books banned if a court finds them to be “revisionist” or
“anti-Semitic” or “hateful” and the like. But at least in
Europe (and in Russia), you get your day in court and you can defend
yourself against accusations which the state has to prove. In Russia,
just last week, a man accused of “rehabilitating
National-Socialism” (for reprinting an article by another author!)
was found non guilty by a majority of jurors (5 to 3) (the punishment
he was facing was a fine and several years in jail). Thank God, in
the “home of the brave” no such thing could happen, right?!
True,
Hoffman does not risk jail (yet!). But in terms of crushing
crimethink, I submit that the US system is much more effective
because it allows the deep state to hide behind the veil of corporate
malfeasance. There have been plenty of revolutions against a state,
but I don’t know of any revolutions against the corporate
dictatorship.
You
tell me: which is worse, the absence of freedom or the illusion of
freedom?
Personally,
I find the latter *much* worse.
I
never expected the corporate presstitutes to really care about our
freedoms, ditto for the libertarians and the progressive Left. They
are all too busy with their narrow ideological agenda. As for the US
academic world, it has shown its true face when it allowed the
persecution of Professor Norman Finkenstein. But I have to say that I
am shocked by the fact that the blogosphere and the so-called
“alternative media” has remained so silent in the face of such a
blatant censorship by proxy by the deep state against one of the
foremost US historians.
I
urge all those reading these lines to speak up on Hoffman’s behalf
and to support him by purchasing his superb and censored books. This
is how every one of us can resist the Hegemon and his rule!
The
Saker
On
August 13, 2018 Amazon banned Judaism’s
Strange Gods: Revised and Expanded,
which was published
in 2011 and sold by Amazon for the past seven years. Along with the
much larger study, Judaism
Discovered, (sold
by Amazon since 2008), it has had an international impact both as a
softcover volume as well as a digital book circulating on the Amazon
Kindle.
Sales
to India, Japan and the Middle East were rapidly growing. The digital
Kindle format is particularly important for the free circulation of
books because it bypasses borders and customs and hurdles over the
prohibitive cost of shipping which the US Postal Service imposed on
mail to overseas destinations several years ago (eliminating
economical surface mail).
Amazon
has also banned The
Great Holocaust Trial: The Landmark Battle for the Right to Doubt the
West’s Most Sacred Relic (sold
by Amazon since 2010).
These
volumes maintain a high standard of scholarly excellence, had a
majority of favorable reviews by Amazon customers, are free of hatred
and bigotry and have sold thousands of copies on Amazon. Out of the
blue we were told that suddenly “Amazon KDP” discovered that the
books are in violation of Amazon’s “content guidelines.” Asking
for documentation of the charge results in no response. It is enough
that the accusation has been tendered. The accused are guilty until
proved innocent, although how proof of innocence is presented is
anyone’s guess. There is no appeals process. This is what is known
as “Tech Tyranny.”
There
is a nationwide purge underway that amounts to a new McCarthyism —
blacklisting and banning politically incorrect speech and history
books under the rubric of “hate speech”
accusations, initiated in part by two Zionist thought police
organizations, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL). It’s a flimsy pretext for
censoring controversial scholarly books that can’t be refuted.
In
addition to our books being hate-free, we note that there are
hundreds of hate-filled Zionist and rabbinic books brimming with
ferocious bigotry for Palestinians, Germans and goyim in
general, which are sold by Amazon.
In
1997, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen wrote Hitler’s Willing
Executioners, one of the most racist books of the modern age. In
it he purported to demonstrate that the Nazi “holocaust” stemmed
from an ingrained German predisposition to murder Jews. His book
promulgating a theory of a genetic homicidal trait infecting an
entire nation of people is proudly sold by Amazon and, if the
current zeitgeist persists, it will never be banned
by Amazon. The target of Mr. Goldhagen’s hatred are Germans.
Consequently, his is the right kind of hate— the approved hate that
does not offend the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Many
dozens of books containing savage attacks on Christianity are sold by
Amazon. These volumes are immune from removal and suppression.
Meanwhile,
the censors demand for their own media (Jeff Bezos, the owner of
Amazon, owns the Washington Post newspaper) freedom
of expression for the writers they employ and the speech of which
they approve. In this two tiered ethical system we observe the
familiar hallmark of revolutionary tyranny: the insiders demand and
grant to themselves and their comrades the freedom they deny to
outsiders, using the “hate” imputation as their excuse.
Our
critique of Orthodox Judaism in our books constitutes a radical
reassessment founded upon the depth of the documents and arguments we
marshal in the course of advancing our thesis. Our powerful and
original scholarship employed in our study of Orthodox Judaism is
never “anti-Semitic” and never hateful. This would be easy to
prove if there were an Amazon “tribunal” fair enough to consider
a little something known as evidence.
Inside
both Judaism
Discovered (on
p. 39) and Judaism’s
Strange Gods: Revised and Expanded (on
p. 25) there are statements
addressed “to the Judaic reader,” explaining our love and concern
for their welfare and liberation. No book of “anti-Semitic hate”
would ever print any such charitable and compassionate statements!
To
create a special category of informed theological criticism that is
banned from the Amazon Kindle is a grave disservice to the
advancement of learning. T o make an exception for Orthodox
Judaism forbidding the sale of the best scholarship critical of it,
does no favors to Judaic people. Many Judaic persons don’t approve
of this type of suppression and censorship of books and desire access
to our information.
Our
information is persuasive. It has the potential to liberate Judaic
people from the bondage of the Talmudic micromanagement of their
lives, and all people from the hatred and racism
toward the goyim which problematic sacred rabbinic
texts have fomented. If we are wrong, show us where we are wrong,
don’t signal through censorship that our facts are too explosive to
be handled by inquiring minds; that type of suppression will only
blowback on the censors.
It’s
time that someone, including multi-billionaire Bezos, had the
fortitude to stand-up to the virulent book banning lobby that
continues to engage in one of the lowest forms of ignorance and
superstition known to history: silencing a writer who can’t be
refuted by free and fair debate.
Amazon’s
monopoly over the sale of books is so extensive that to be banned by
Amazon is, in many cases, tantamount to a death sentence for a book.
The public ought to know of the shameful tactics of the hypocrites
who are so fearful of the radical scholarship for which they have no
credible answer, that they must ban the books that contain
irrefutable challenges to their sacred dogmas.
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