Wal-Mart ends anti-Semitic book sale

[RamboLiberal]

http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/24/news/fortune500/walmart_judaism.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes

Bowing to a barrage of complaints from Jewish groups, retail leader Wal-Mart Inc. has stopped selling "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," an infamous anti-Semitic tract long exposed as fake.

Jewish leaders had complained that the book, which purports to tell of an international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, was being sold on Walmart.com with a description that suggested it might be genuine instead of a forgery concocted by the Czarist secret police in the early 20th Century.

The description, now withdrawn from the Wal-Mart (WMT: Research, Estimates) Web site, said, "If ... The Protocols are genuine (which can never be proven conclusively), it might cause some of us to keep a wary eye on world affairs. We neither support nor deny its message. We simply make it available for those who wish a copy."

In a statement e-mailed to Reuters, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman said, "Based on significant customer feedback regarding the book titled 'The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,' we have made a business decision to remove this book ... from our site at www.walmart.com."

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Frigging amazing.

One of the single most discredited works of intolerance ever written, and Walmart is selling it. It used to be you couldn't find it in anything but dusty bookstores frequented by marginals and incontenants.

What genius in Walmart's management made that decision and why? I am sure the answer would be fascinating.

[Dickie Flatt]

5. Also available at Amazon. And BN.com. [n/t]

[lordwhorfin]

23. The issue isn't the book.

It's this:

If ... The Protocols are genuine (which can never be proven conclusively), it might cause some of us to keep a wary eye on world affairs. We neither support nor deny its message. We simply make it available for those who wish a copy."

That's the problem RIGHT THERE. And gives a GREAT insight into the world-view of Wall Mart management.

Scary, scary, scary.

[DrWeird]

7. Are the still selling The Bell Curve?

The other single most discredited works of intolerance ever written?

They had them on big display shelves when it first came out.

[whistle]

2. Ooops, the forgot to remove these....

....from their online bookstore. Lookie here folks:

<snip>
4 items found for “Little Black Sambo”

Items 1-4 of 4 total sorted by: Best Match Price High to Low Price Low to High Top Seller New Alpha A-Z Alpha Z-A

The Story of Little Black Sambo
Bannerman, Helen
Hardcover, Cherokee Publishing Company (GA), 1994, ISBN # 0877972656
Hardcover List price: $16.95
Our Price: $10.68
You Save: $6.27 (37%)

Sam and the Tigers: A New Telling of Little Black Sambo
Lester, Julius
Hardcover, Dial Books, 1996, ISBN # 0803720289
Hardcover List price: $17.99
Our Price: $11.33
You Save: $6.66 (37%)

Sam and the Tigers: A New Telling of Little Black Sambo
Lester, Julius
Paperback, Puffin Books, 2000, ISBN # 0140562885
Paperback List price: $6.99
Our Price: $6.29
You Save: $0.70 (10%)

The Story of Little Black Sambo
Bannerman, Helen
Trade Cloth, Handprint Books, 2003, ISBN# 1929766556
Hardcover List price: $17.95
Our Price: $11.31
You Save: $6.64 (37%)

<link> http://www.walmart.com/catalog/search-ng.gsp?search_con...

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. A question for anyone who has read this or the associated books:

did you find it offensive? After all, Sambo is the hero. It's simplistic, but so are most books for very young children.

The name now has a derogatory connotation, but I think that developed after the book was written. Does that mean the book became no longer suitable? Or is it the conflation of Africa and India that people object to?

[Tangledog]

25. The one by Julius Lester

shouldn't bother anybody. He's African-American and his book "Black Folktales" is a hugely enjoyable classic.

Here's the etymology from OED.

a. Sp. zambo, applied in America and Asia to persons of various degrees of mixed Negro and Indian or European blood; also, a name for a kind of yellow monkey; perh. identical with zambo bandy-legged

It's a very old word, going back 300 years, and has been considered pejorative for much of that time. Frederick Douglass was reportedly quite surprised when Elizabeth Cady Stanton used the word offhandedly in conversation.

About 20 years ago, a restaurant chain called Sambo's changed its name to No Place Like Sam's because some people had issues with the original name. The chain went bankrupt a couple of years later. Possibly the Freepers boycotted it; the party line was that they had expanded too quickly and were up to their ass in debt.

Tangledog, the language pedant ;)

[donco6]

3. What's next? The Horst Wessel song on CD? eom

[colonel odis]

4. just when we running out of reasons not to shop at wal-mart, too.

n/t

[Dogmudgeon]

6. Why pay more?

It's available for free on the Internet.

I personally think that a careful study of the Protocols can be quite educational -- for insight into the workings of fascism and "thought contagion".

But as a mass-market consumer item? Oy, gewalt!

--bkl

[jmm]

12. That's why I read it.

I had to buy a copy for a class a few years ago and it was educational but I have a big problem with the the implicatins in this statement-

If ... The Protocols are genuine (which can never be proven conclusively), it might cause some of us to keep a wary eye on world affairs. We neither support nor deny its message. We simply make it available for those who wish a copy."

[Dogmudgeon]

18. Do you recall the language used?

A lot of the "language" of the Protocols has come into American Right-Wing rhetoric whole. This is one of the major reasons why it still has so much power in this country, in spite of our relative lack of anti-Semitism.

The Protocols started out as Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu by Maurice Joly, which was plagiarized from Eugene Sue's The Mysteries of the People, which was about the Jesuits, not the Jews. The Czar's secret police then lifted it from Joly and shaped it into the Protocols. Victor Marsden was the primary Russian-to-English translator, so he had the last gloss of the thing.

The irony is that much of the rhetoric of the American Right comes from a French satire reworked by anti-Communist Russians.

So this may be why the Wal-Mart copy editor made that inane statement: the rhetoric of the book probably resembled the rhetoric of his/her world view.

--bkl

[jmm]

20. Before I read it

I thought the main focus of it would be spreading anti-semitism but most focus in it is about gaining power. I bet if I posted this excerpt without it's source (or even if I did) many here would think of current politics-

http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/przion3.htm#PROTOCOL%20No.%207

PROTOCOL No. 7
1. The intensification of armaments, the increase of police forces - are all essential for the completion of the aforementioned plans. What we have to get at is that there should be in all the States of the world, besides ourselves, only the masses of the proletariat, a few millionaires devoted to our interests, police and soldiers.

2. Throughout all Europe, and by means of relations with Europe, in other continents also, we must create ferments, discords and hostility. Therein we gain a double advantage. In the first place we keep in check all countries, for they will know that we have the power whenever we like to create disorders or to restore order. All these countries are accustomed to see in us an indispensable force of coercion. In the second place, by our intrigues we shall tangle up all the threads which we have stretched into the cabinets of all States by means of the political, by economic treaties, or loan obligations. In order to succeed in this we must use great cunning and penetration during negotiations and agreements, but, as regards what is called the "official language," we shall keep to the opposite tactics and assume the mask of honesty and complacency. In this way the peoples and governments of the GOYIM, whom we have taught to look only at the outside whatever we present to their notice, will still continue to accept us as the benefactors and saviours of the human race.

UNIVERSAL WAR
3. We must be in a position to respond to every act of opposition by war with the neighbors of that country which dares to oppose us: but if these neighbors should also venture to stand collectively together against us, then we must offer resistance by a universal war.

[Voltaire99]

26. Nice post. From the Czars to the Waltons...

Well-put, BareKnuckledLiberal. Your surmise is far less tenuous than mine, but I'll gently push this interpretation of Wal-Mart's loathsome endorsement anyway.

The new Forbes 400 list is out. Half of the top ten billionaire spots belong to Walton family members. They're right wing Christians whose retail empire is a factor in the dissolution of small businesses, the consequent disruption of communities, and the constant downward pressure on wages. Culturally, their apocalyptic worldview leads to intolerance at home and war abroad. They are, in any number of ways, massively powerful; it is more than a little ironic for such people to be peddling the venomous Protocols to their working class employee/customers.

As life gets bleaker in Wal-Mart America, its masters will need to deflect the dissatisfaction of its wage slaves. Who must really be to blame for the lot of the Wal-Mart captive? Why is everything so crappy, just when prices are so low? At such times, overdogs like having scapegoats.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

8. The headline makes it sound like

WalMart was having a special sale on anti-Semitic books!

[Beetwasher]

9. Blue Light Special! All Titles Must Go! Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf, 1001

kike jokes! 50-80% off!

[slappypan]

10. Was it part of a package deal with all those guns they sell?

:shrug:

[baldguy]

13. Only if you buy "The Turner Diaries", too.

[Jim__]

14. Personally, I find it more offensive that they made a business decision to

stop selling the book than that they ever sold it. The problem with places like WalMart is that they can drive all legitimate book sellers out of business; then they can limit our selection of books to non-controversial, conformist garabge; and we'll all be safely protected from exposure to the occasional dangerous thought.

[jonnyblitz]

15. can you still get Mein Kampf at Walmart by any chance?

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

[Medium Baby Jesus]

22. Why Not!

Jesus Christ. Thought police are everywhere. Make sure they are not selling Huck Finn. It has the word nigger. I suggest a boycott.
:puke:

[Jane Eyre]

34. "Mein Kampf" is banned in Germany

I have met several German tourists over the years who have purchased a copy of "Mein Kampf" here in the US, simply because it is not available for sale in Germany.

It strikes me as quite ironic that a man whose crimes including burning books should have his own book banned as a part of his legacy to Germany.

"Mein Kampf" is a document of historical interest, but for a neo-Nazi it can also be a blueprint for the recreation of the Third Reich. Nevertheless, I believe that the book should be freely available in a country which respects the free speech rights of its citizens. There is a big difference between reading "Mein Kampf" and actively supporting its idealogies, which are clearly dangerous. A retail bookseller is within its rights to sell "Mein Kampf" or "The Protocols of Zion", but it should not place itself in a position of supporting the idealogies presented in those books or even hinting that those idealogies might have some merit by indicating that some people may support those idealogies. It is up to the individual reader to decide the merit of those idealogies, not a corporation.

[warrens]

16. WOW

Normally, they are censoring CDs, refusing to carry Rolling Stone, banning Al Franken and in general being dicks. My suspicion is they only did this to say, see, we DO ban right-wing books too. Me, I think they should sell whatever their customers want. Instead of what a minority DOESN'T want. Because, face it, the right wing NEVER STOPS.

[Tangledog]

24. Does Walmart ban Al Franken...

...from their shelves? It's not the type of thing I can immediately check out for myself.

[henslee]

17. Hmm, didn't know the Anti-semetic booksale was a reguar event, there.

[smallprint]

19. Just in time for Yom Kippur! How thoughtful!

They are really getting into the spirit of Atonement.

Then, next spring at Passover, they'll free the Chinese slave laborers that produce their cheap-ass plastic crap.

These guys are marketing geniuses!!

[Bridget Burke]

21. Has anyone read "Holy Blood, Holy Grail"?

In it, the authors say the Protocols may not be a fake document but a real plan for world domination. However, it was not created by Jews but by that shadowy group who possess secret knowledge of the lineage of Jesus. The Templars discovered some information buried in Temple Mount ("in Zion"). The Cathars & Rasputin are tied in, somehow. It's a long story....

The Protocols do propound to outline a blueprint for nothing less than total world domination. On first reading they would seem to be the Machiavellian program--a kind of interoffice memo, so to speak--for a group of individuals determined to impose a new world order, with themselves as supreme despots. The text advocates a many-tentacled hydra-headed conspiracy dedicated to disorder and anarchy, to toppling certain existing regimes, infiltrating Freemasonry and other such organizations, and eventually seizing absolute control of the Western world's social, political and economic systems.

The authors deplore the anti-Semites who seized upon the Protocols & used them for their own purposes. Darn you--you made me get out that 20 year old paperback. I may have to reread it.

And none of this excuses WalMart--which I rejected years ago for the sin of tackiness.

[Romulus Quirinus]

30. LOL

I think you've been had. You see, that book has recently been renamed and marketed under a different title. You may have heard of it: "The DaVinci Code." :D

[Bridget Burke]

31. I found "Holy Blood Holy Grail" quite amusing ....

Not that I believed it, but the authors wove an interesting web of certain old tales that may have been believed by some groups through history.

I've definitely heard that "The Da Vinci Code" is essentially "Holy Blood, Holy Grail for Idiots".

[dawgman]

27. real liberals don't ban books. What, do we live in South Dakota?

Are we afraid of what our children might think if exposed to evil?

C'mon this is nothing to celebrate. A book is in the process of being banned and that is never a good thing.

The book may be a racist piece of trash, but so is "The Jungle Book" by Rudyard Kipling.

[Nimrod]

28. Amen

Banning things we don't agree with should NOT be our method. "Unfit for Command" makes me ill that it even exists, but if anyone tried to put a ban on it, I would be forced to oppose that. Rant against it, barrage it with it's own innacuracies, oppose everything it says down to the publisher information on the inside cover... but don't ban it. Once we start burning books we don't like, some we DO like will be the next thrown on the fire.

Besides, a lot of important information and knowledge can be gained from reading things you don't agree with. I have read Mein Kampf. I did not enjoy it per se, it wasn't a fun read, but the perspective on the thought processes of someone with these views is extremely valuable.

In fact, I think once a year everyone should go out and read something they hate and oppose vehemently. Think of it as knowing your enemy if you like. We like to forget things we don't agree with and pretend they don't exist - sometimes the greatest service you can do for someone you oppose is ignore them.

[Starlight]

33. Banning books is definitely NOT the way to go!

Exposure to a wide variety of opinions & perspectives is an essential part of a good education IMO. How can you make an educated decision unless you have all the information?

I am not ashamed to admit that I actually *own* The Bell Curve & David Duke's autobiography. I've studied all the major religions and own books from all of them. At any given time, I have a couple dozen library books in my possession, which have included titles such as "Cannibalism & Human Sacrifice," "Mein Komf," and the library's entire collection of books on witchcraft & spells. :P I'm sure the FBI has a big thick file on me. :tinfoilhat:

[Democat]

29. Will Walmart ban the Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD too?

The right wing is trying to get them to ban Moore's new movie. Walmart are known right wing supporters, so we'll see what happens.

[Zhade]

32. And people still question if Wal-Mart is evil.

It may not be 'evil', per se, but its acts sure are.