Tucker Carlson slammed Amazon for banning the sale of books by Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin and signed a light on the government's key role in this censorship on "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
TUCKER CARLSON: So you go on Amazon.com and you remember this started as a bookstore and online bookstore. It's the biggest bookstore in the world. They have everything. There's nothing you can't find an Amazon, including used books. So if you were to go into Amazon to read books by a man who is in the news and whose ideas are directly bearing on world events, you look for a guy called Aleksandr Dugin.
Dugin is one of Russia's most famous authors and political philosophers. He doesn't work for the government; he doesn't work for Vladimir Putin. He's just a philosopher. So if you're interested in like, "What are they thinking over there?'" you would search Dugin's author page on Amazon, but you would not find any results. Really? Kind of a big author to be left off Amazon.
So we reached out to Amazon to ask, "Why can't we find any books by this guy?" And then we realize because he's been banned from Amazon. So then we asked Amazon for a list of all books and authors who've been banned from their platform, and they wouldn't give it to us. So we went back and forth, back and forth. And finally, Amazon provided a six-word response, and we're quoting: "Amazon complies with all applicable laws."
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Applicable laws? Well, in the United States, there are no laws against publishing books because we have the First Amendment. The government can never, under any circumstances, censor any book. Period. Or anything that you have to say. Period. Because that's the core of our Bill of Rights.
Then we learned that Amazon and the Justice Department were ignoring our Bill of Rights. Amazon apparently based its decision on a Treasury Department designation concerning "disinformation." And that designation applies not only to Dugin, but also to his family, though not to his daughter, who was murdered recently by the Ukrainian government. But we're not allowed to say that. What did she do wrong? Well, I guess she said the wrong thing, but that's cool because we're fighting for freedom.
But that's not the point. The point is in our country, which is very different from Ukraine, we're allowed to read whatever we want. But we can't now because the Biden administration is demanding that the biggest bookseller in the world censor books that they disagree with, and Amazon complies without asking any questions. Now, this is as clear a violation of the First Amendment as you could concoct in a law school class.
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So then we reach out to the Treasury Department. Did this really happen? Yeah, it did. They essentially confirmed it: "We don't comment on possible enforcement matters, but the Treasury Department continues to vigorously enforce Russia-related sanctions."
Oh, really? There is no legal basis for ever censoring any book if you're the US government. That is not allowed. That's the main thing that's not allowed in this country. Period.
We don't care who wrote the book. You're allowed to read it. You can read any book you want. You're an American. And if you cease to be able to read any book you want, it doesn't matter if you're an American because you're just a serf. Well, Amazon has refused to provide us with a list of the other books they are banning, but they clearly are banning a lot of different books.
And why can't we know what those books are? We're going to continue to look into this, and if there are any legal challenges to the book banning, which is one click from book burning. We hope there are legal challenges.We'll let you know about those as well.
