Conservatives Ask Amazon to End SPLC’s Role as ‘Hate Group’ Sheriff

A conservative free-market group hopes to convince Amazon, the world’s largest retailer, not to rely on the Southern Poverty Law Center as a gatekeeper for its philanthropic giving.

The scandal-plagued SPLC, a left-wing advocacy organization, routinely labels mainstream center-right organizations as “hate groups” on a list that includes actual hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazis.

“Amazon likes to inoculate themselves from criticism. That’s what our proposal is trying to do is pierce that inoculation,” Justin Danhof, director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

At issue is the AmazonSmile program, in which online buyers may contribute a small percentage of purchase prices to the charity of their choice, whether it’s their church or a nonprofit such as the Red Cross. To the chagrin of conservatives, Amazon allows the Southern Poverty Law Center to decide whether the chosen charity is appropriate.

“Amazon can say, ‘We’re not deciding that the Family Research Council can’t be in the Smile program. Someone else does that. Go yell at them,’” Danhof said in the interview.

“We are piercing that veil with our resolution, making it clear with the tens of thousands who have signed the petition to the [Amazon] board of directors and investor relations: We are holding you accountable for the SPLC being the gatekeeper because you gave them the keys to the gate to keep,” added Danhof, also general counsel for the National Center for Public Policy Research.

The National Center for Public Policy Research is leading a shareholder resolution on viewpoint discrimination to be voted on at the Amazon shareholder meeting next Wednesday.

“Amazon’s implementation of viewpoint-discriminatory policies in the Smile Program itself stems from a reliance on viewpoint-discriminatory, partisan, and discredited sources,” the shareholder resolution says, using a footnote on a news article about SPLC and adding:

The shareholders should be aware of the extent to which discrimination against social, political, or religious views by Amazon in its partnerships, content policies, and options for customer-selected charitable donations may jeopardize Amazon’s current market-dominance and may negatively affect important social dynamics beyond Amazon’s immediate business impact. …

AmazonSmile, the nonprofit charitable arm of Amazon, has relied on SPLC’s “hate group” list in dropping certain groups from eligibility for receiving donations, Danhof and other critics say.

SOURCE