Recently I noticed through one of the promotional sites that I send to authors with Lost Telegram Press, was promoting a new book by a UK author. At first I thought it was a joke as it contained some extremely juvenile hate speech towards Jewish people. I proceeded to look up the book and sure enough it was real. The cover of the book was plastered with swastikas, images of SS soldiers, Hitler and all of the rhetoric of far-right, antisemitic hate language. The back cover has the image of a fist holding a snake covered in the Star of David. It accuses the western world of having a Semitic-seprematist hold on the government.
Now the interesting thing is, this is a book sold in the Amazon marketplace, a place where anyone can really sell anything, almost like an eBay store. There are no checks and no safeguards. In the United States that may be fine with an item like this as hate literature is not only legal to publish but also sell. In Canada it is not.
There are several parts of the criminal code in Canada that prohibit this behaviour, including;
318 (1) Every person who advocates or promotes genocide is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years.
(2) In this section, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part any identifiable group, namely, (a) killing members of the group; or (b) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.
319 (1) Every one who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is guilty of (a) an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or (b) an offence punishable on summary conviction.
(2) Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group is guilty of (a) an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or (b) an offence punishable on summary conviction.
(2.1) Everyone who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes antisemitism by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust (a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or (b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.
So what is the solution, if any. Report it right? Well… there is no current system to specifically deal with illegal items like this since the company operates in many countries through one umbrella website. But they offer free shipping. So that makes it all better. Right?
It’s always best to shop at your local bookstore or directly from a publisher which both operate within the law. Both are not only contributing more to the economy and distributing money more evenly but are much more active in the discussion with their patrons. The open-market style place to buy books like Amazon, eBay or similar places are much like buying food from vendors on the street in 110 degree weather; you don’t know what you are going to come away with and you take the risk of how negatively it will affect you.
