Amazon removes book of epidemic, ‘ deprives US chance to self- reflect’

A book that surveyed and compared the US' and China's reaction to the COVID- 19 pandemic was removed from Amazon, the top ecommerce platform in the US, a move that again revealed the US' biased attitude on the “freedom of speech” it claims, observers said.

The banned book is titled Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID- 19 in China & the US. The book deals with the two countries' different attitudes toward the pandemic, highlighting the US' lack of social support infrastructure in contrast to its huge spending on military, police and prison infrastructure.

“Amazon bans ' Capitalism on a Ventilator,' a book of essays by prominent anti- imperialists. The book surveyed the role of capitalism in exacerbating the pandemic and contrasted China's effective response with the US failure – too much for Amazon, apparently,” wrote Max Blumenthal, a US independent journalist and online influencer on Twitter on Wednesday.

On Amazon, the book is listed as “out of print – limited availability.” However, publishers said the book was available from the publisher's website.

World View Forum, the publisher of the book, received a message from Amazon on September 24, 2020, the debut day of the book on Amazon, saying the book “does not comply with [ Amazon's] guideline,” reported Workers World website.

World View Forum immediately tried to reverse the decision and provided layers of authentication of information, to which Amazon never replied.

“Why is Amazon censoring out buying choices and what we can read?” questioned a reader.

Influential platforms like Amazon choosing to defy the truth in such events in order to pander to the American political elite violates the principle of objectivity and independence, said Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University. “It deprives the American public and policymakers of the opportunity for self- reflection,” Li said.

“When commercial giants like Amazon, ostensibly unrelated to politics, join the system of restricting speech, ordinary users' voices and information reception will be more systematically repressed,” Li noted.