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Amazon Customers Sign Letter To Jeff Bezos To Dump Donald Trump (thestreet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: More than 13,000 Amazon customers (including upwards of 5,000 Amazon Prime subscribers), have signed a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos calling for the company to stop selling Trump's line of menswear. UltraViolet Action is the organization hosting the petition, which calls for Amazon to "stop profiting off of [Trump's] brand of hate." The letter reads: "Donald Trump has consistently lobbed racist, sexist, and xenophobic attacks against entire groups of people, encouraged violence and vitriol against his political enemies and perpetuated a culture of violence against women. Amazon.com should want to distance themselves from this hateful rhetoric, but instead, they're profiting off his brand," explained Karin Roland, Chief Campaigns Officer at UltraViolet, in a statement. "Jeff Bezos needs to listen to his customers and ensure that Amazon doesn't profit off of Trump hate, and take immediate steps to dump Trump." If Amazon does take action, they wouldn't be the first. Macy's stopped carrying Trump's products last summer, and Univision and NBC cut ties with Trump over his statements as well.
The whole reason why Trump has become so popular is that corporations (particularly media) have been given him a podium from which to issue hate speech, and incite violence. I'm all in favor of the freedom of speech but these have already been ruled (for good reason) as types of speech that are not protected by the first amendment.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
People do have a tendency to call people racist when they really mean they disagree about race relate political issues. But that isn't what is going on here. Trump's words far exceed any sort of attempt to enforce current immigration laws. For example, his claims that Mexico was deliberately sending its criminals to the US http://www.laweekly.com/news/heres-a-fact-check-of-donald-trumps-mexico-bashing-5754639 which was demonstrably false. He plans on making a wall between Mexico and the US and making Mexico pay for it, despite the fact that the number of illegal immigrants has in the last few years been stable or declined http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/19/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/. He's claimed that a judge in a legal case was biased against him purely under the basis that the judge was Hispanic http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-27/trump-university-argues-ex-student-can-t-bow-out-as-trial-nears. And then there was the bit where he refused to disavow the KKK and then lied about it, claiming it was due to mishearing the question when his response indicates he understood exactly what was being asked http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/28/politics/donald-trump-white-supremacists/
And this is before we get to the fact that many of his other policy ideas about immigration have nothing to do with enforcing current rules (e.g. his ideas about banning all Muslims from entering the US).
I don't know if Trump is racist, but he's made a lot of comments that certainly move in that direction, and if he isn't racist he's making a concerted effort to appeal to racists and general xenophobic sentiments.
stereotypical liberal intolerance to contending ideas
Why must I be tolerant of intolerance? If Trump wants to ban Mexicans and Muslims, why am I not allowed to try to ban every trace of Trump?
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Attempting to do the same anywhere else (especially in my space), is simply an attempt to exert control over others and -that- is an act of intolerance.
Ridiculous. To express my disapproval is not the same as silencing your voice. To petition a private company as a means to express your viewpoint is no different. As Amazon is free to carry whatever products they want, to consider that carrying those products is equivalent to supporting to those ideas is perfectly reasonable. It's the basic idea behind every boycott. (Would you have us dispense with those entirely? Wouldn't that be a terrifying suppression of free speech?)
To say "I won't buy your products as long as you support x" is not intolerance as you're under no obligation to underwrite speech with which you disagree by supporting the company that enables said speech to further disseminate. Tolerance does not mean "you must pay to support my ideas, regardless of your beliefs". You'd have us believe that by not funding your message, we're being intolerant.
Amazon's customers are saying "we don't want to pay you to provide a platform for these ideas". That's not intolerance. That's not saying "I want to prevent Trump from sharing his ideas" (he's free to do so on whatever platforms he controls) it's saying "I don't want to pay you to promote ideas I dislike." Amazon is free to continue to carry those products and their message if they're willing to accept the natural social and potential financial cost the comes from supporting those ideas. Speech is never free from social consequences, nor should it ever be. How else would ideas compete?
If you are right and his ideas are so repugnant, then those ideas will simply die in the open air. To quote a well-know political commentator, "Sunlight kills bacteria."
This is all part of that process. People aren't perfectly rational actors, after all. Ideas die when they become socially unacceptable, not because they're shown to be objectively wrong, harmful, or whatever. Alternative ideas and dissent constitute the "sunlight" in your metaphor.
Required reading for internet skeptics