Sunday, September 26, 2004

WALMART STOPS SELLING "PROTOCOLS"

Walmart.com stops selling 'Protocols'

From Reuters:

Bowing to a barrage of complaints from Jewish groups, retail giant Wal-Mart Inc. on Thursday 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The description, now withdrawn from the Wal-Mart Web site, said, "If ...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."

More on this protest from Chicago Jewish News.

The best debunking of the book is available from the Simon Wiesenthal Center: Dismantling The Big Lie: Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion.

Amazon and Barnes & Noble continue to sell 'Protocols' online, but with dislaimers that are much stronger than Walmart's 'we neither support or deny.' Amazon's disclaimer recognizes the book as a 'pernicious fraud', and includes this:

'The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion' is classified under "controversial knowledge" in our store, along with books about UFOs, demonic possession, and all manner of conspiracy theories. You can also find books in other sections of Amazon.com's online bookstore that analyze The Protocols' fraudulent origins and its tragic historical role in promoting anti-Semitism and Jewish persecution, including 'A Lie and a Libel: The History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'


No comments: