Approach to selling anti-Semitic books online | Inland

Conspiracy theorist David Icke was not allowed to enter the Netherlands last weekend to speak on Dam Square in Amsterdam because he regularly expresses himself anti-Semitic. But anyone can buy his books from reputable Dutch bookshops on the internet. According to Verdoner, it exposes exactly the problem. People who go over the line legally can be dealt with very well. But these people often also have a whole revenue model with their books and writings with which they can increase their following. Putting a stop to that is a much more difficult story, the national coordinator has noticed for some time.

Selling anti-Semitic literature is prohibited. The Public Prosecution Service also accepts reports about this. However, in recent years there have been dozens of books in online bookstores that should not be sold. “The practice is now that an owner of a small, physical bookstore is immediately punished if he puts an anti-Semitic book in the window. But at very large online booksellers, those books too often slip through. That is unacceptable. They too have a responsibility,” says Verdoner.

Bol.com has been discredited in recent years. Two years ago, the Federal Jewish Netherlands filed a complaint against one of the largest web shops in the Netherlands, because hundreds of extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic books were offered in which, among other things, the Holocaust is denied. Also last year there were still dozens of discriminatory and hate-mongering books for sale.

After the report, Bol.com stated that only books banned by the government were banned and the company emphasized that it did not always support the content of all books, but that it was a greater danger as a company to determine which books people should. or not allowed to take. Preventive checks were not done; action was only taken after reports or in the event of a public outcry.

That mindset has now changed. Bol.com is now the first company to join the national coordinator’s approach. Verdoner wants major online booksellers to search their catalogs much more actively for books with discriminatory content. But above all that they exchange knowledge with each other on how exactly they do this and draw lessons from it to do it even better.

The thousands of books that are automatically uploaded to Bol.com every week have now been actively reviewed by six employees since September. To determine what could be hateful, discriminatory or anti-Semitic, the company has consulted experts in recent months, such as the Discrimination Hotline. With that knowledge, employees can better evaluate books for anti-Semitic content and remove them if necessary or label them to warn potential buyers. Books are also subject to further investigation after reports from customers.

Books by David Icke are still for sale at Bol.com, but some titles that are controversial because of anti-Semitism have been removed, such as The Robots Rebellion. “We don’t look at the person, but the ideas that are distributed in books via our platform are important,” says Sophie Berends, project leader of the quality team. With the six employees now focusing on the books, all new books are reviewed, but the catalog that has been built since 1990 contains 20 million copies. “So there is still something in the attic that we need to clean up.”