Amazon Censor Bad Reviews of Hillary Clinton's New Book
Hillary Clinton’s book “What Happened”, a memoir of a fairly disastrous and ridiculously expensive Presidential campaign, went on sale a few days ago. Within hours it had over 1500 reviews on Amazon, many of them very, very negative.
Amazon responded by deleting over 900 of them. 95% of those left are 5 star reviews. Zero Hedge have a great selection of screengrabs showing the progression.
Putting aside the questions of corruption and corporate censorship, this is not new ground for Clinton’s camp, or for power structures in general. During the early stages of the Ukrainian coup in 2014, many mainstream news outlets (and especially the Guardian) responding to dissention in the comments by deleting swaths of them. That policy is the very reason this website exists.
During the Presidential election the press was filled to the brim with babble, that never once touched on some important issues. American TV networks cut-off people mid-interview for saying the wrong thing. Three. Separate. Times. The media completely denied Clinton was sick, deriding it as a “conspiracy theory”, until she literally collapsed in the street. Some newspapers are already claiming the hate for her book is just misogyny.
Separate from the personal political agenda – Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, was a big Clinton supporter – there is the ever-present cause of every self-respecting American: money. Simon & Schuster already paid Clinton an $8 million advance, one they are very unlikely to make back.
Amazon are no strangers to corruption, it is well documented how small a percentage of their taxes they pay, it would be foolish to assume that practices of that type end there. It’s possible, even likely, that certain publishers, movie studios, television networks etc, already pay amazon to publish good reviews (real or not) and delete bad reviews. Bad reviews could sink this book before it gets anywhere, so there is every motive.
In this instance Amazon released a statement claiming that the reviews were clearly fake because none of the people had confirmed purchases of the book, and it had not been on sale very long. True or not, this misses the point. It can’t be up to a nameless authority to decide which views are censored and which allowed to stand.
Again and again we see attempts to create a real-life Brave New World, in which we are expected to simply pretend we didn’t see things, didn’t hear things, don’t know things. It doesn’t work. Everybody knows about Clinton’s background, whether CNN tells them or not. You can find out the truth of Syria with a simple google search. The Ghostbusters remake was terrible. Wikileaks has five million twitter followers.
In a way, what we have here is a perfect microcosm of the last Presidential election. Clinton writes a book in which she (apparently) comes over as bitter and unlikable, the public review it badly, and then the billionaire donor, owner of both a multinational mega-corporation and the Washington Post, has his machinery click into gear to pretend it didn’t happen.
You’d think they’d have learned it doesn’t work, by now.
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Amazon deleted this verified purchaser’s Three Star Review FOUR TIMES. It is very well written, reads better than the Five Star one liner dribble so many others wrote. https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1ZGUU9ZWWNQOD/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B01MYE7QP0
Jeffrey St Clair’s review of the book in Counterpunch is very good, and very well written. Here’s the link:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/15/hillary-happened/
Chances are Amazon have just limited the reviews to verified buyers. They have clearly deleted 5 star reviews as well (46% of 1616 is 743 5 star reviews so over 300 deleted). The people who paid for the book on release are more than likely to be hardcore Clinton supporter and willing to just give endless praise,
What I found interesting about this was the polarisation, 50% one star, 46% 5 star.
With a record like the Clintons & Amazon have, why try and stretch this when lots of examples of their real corruption exists.
Considering most of the ‘reviews’ were not actual reviews at all I’d say it Amazon was right in deleting them.
A review field for a book is not the right venue to spew hate towards the author. It should be really be about the book.
Would tend to agree but given that the end result was almost 100% 5-star reviews, I would have to say they are just as guilty (or more in their position) as those who flooded with false ratings.
If they would have simply restricted it to “Verified purchases” that would be fair but unlikely it would be all 5-star results.
Or if they simply closed reviews admitting that they have no way to control the politicizeation of the reviews and they are meaningless. – That would be fair too.
Was the same policy applied to Bernie Sanders new book? That got multiple unverified negative reviews.
I think the Clintons are a crime family just like the Bush clan. The difference between these two families and other mob outfits is these two know that organized crime is for saps. Organized politics is where the big money is. And unlike mobsters who can’t write the laws to put themselves outside it, these mobsters can and do.
Yes, Michael McMulty these two are indeed members of ” crime families ” and as such their greatest crime is the continuance of the renowned USA Oligarchy, a sect of powerful and perverted peoples, whose secret and illegal style includes a totalitarian embrace debauchery and even worse sexual crimes of pederasty.
These two criminals Bush and Clinton are falsely claiming to the wider electorate allegiance to the earlier traditional division of Democratic and Republican political promotion.
Which is proof-positive that the USA is a state of gross immorality, and similarly undemocratic.
As far as I am concerned, no one is looking at this story in the right way. It’s a cover-up for sure: HRC is indiscriminately spraying blame like bullets fired in a “drive-by shooting” (Jeffrey St Clair: thanks for the link Bevin) – based on the presumption that America has a functioning democracy – and power and the Presidency were hers to lose. They were not. This would further suppose that a couple of third rate lawyers from Arkansas (whose only real credentials were their combined talent for corruptibility) – made it, first into the Governor’s Mansion, then into the White House – on their own merits. They did not. Even if they displayed a prodigious ability for sociopathic Messiah complex megalomania every step of the way: leaving a Category 7 tsunami of human misery in their wake – from Little Rock, via Rwanda, Kosovo, Haiti, to Libya, and beyond. Their crimes against humanity are too many to list: but my point is, they are not their crimes alone.
HRC: as one half of the most despicable power couple in history – has rightly drawn all the invective the world can offer – but it is misdirected. Just how did a coke addicted sexual predator and his equally despicable ‘wife’ rise so meteorically to power. The short answer is that they were inducted into the pre-existing power nexus by the Deep State – precisely because of their vice(s). The Soros-Bush-MIC-intelligence/industrial-Wall St-protoFascist-Israel First-complex King-(and Queen)-makers welcomed them as kindred spirited like-minds. Here were two people they could do business with: with no fear of exposure. These are the untouchable real criminals that have drawn so many ‘bad reviews’ – without prejudice. Hillary and Bill were, and are, surrogates. Fetishes, if you want (with the persecution complex to match).
I don’t know why she lost to the second worst candidate in history. In the main, because she was exposed as a continuity-Obama Deep State conduit for war. Partly, I suspect, that she was seen as a security risk (storing unencrypted data – some of which was born Beyond Top Secret – which WAS hacked by Russia, Iran, China, and any 16 year old with a laptop or smart phone [Robert Gates])? It could be that enough of the Game of Thrones Deep State Queenmakers switched sides (Bibi’s main sponsor Sheldon Adelson certainly did)??? I don’t know: and probably never will. I do know (as does everyone else) that it had nothing to do with Bernie and his Sandernistas, Trump, Comey, Guccifer 2.0, Cozy Bear, Fancy Bear and the Russians. In a funny way, I do even suspect she may be, in a sense ‘blameless’? Certainly not innocent – but with the Deep State backing she had – her Throne (and the adulation she so cravenly desires) was hers: but was she betrayed from behind the scenes? I guess we’ll have to wait for the sequel???
People like HRC (and her entourage) just do not know better. They had a plan to swindle their way into the whitehouse, and it did not work. They have no idea why it did not work, and they still have no idea, because they really have no other idea other then how to swindle their way into things they want.
That is what happened.
The poverty of ideas from these powerful people is pathethic, but also quite scary. If the best they can come up with any plan, is swindle, you can rest assure that their plans will be desastrous.
That is still happening.
Reblogged this on Floating-voter.
If you own Amazon, and also own the CIA mouthpiece Washington Com-Post, the lines become blurred, but this certainly jumps the Shark. Seems the Deep State will never recover from their selected stooge getting her fat arse kicked by Donald Trump, of all people.
This story is a keeper. But I have to say, and I usually don’t (for a number of reasons, including English not being the writer’s first language), this writing is extremely bad. “Amazon are no stranger to corruption, it is well documented how small a percentage of their taxes they pay, it would be foolish to assume that practices of that type end there.” That’s three sentences. Three. Not one. And Amazon is no stranger to corruption.
Oh please.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Just pondering the selection of Clinton’s book, “What Happened”, explains why she failed. The title suggests backward-vision without direction for humanity moving forward, plus the narrowest of perspective – that of Hillary Clinton’s ego, another huge negative turn-off for voters who became repulsed with her constant references to “Me” and “I”. She could have chosen a better, more hope-inspiring title such as “A Plan for World Peace”, “The Brighter Possible Future”, “Fight the Good Fight” or something similar, She chose not to. Hillary Clinton has nothing approaching a profound world vision.
Quick ! Slip over to Counterpunch and read Jeff St Clair’s (Hillarious) review before Google delete it.
Someone important once said,”Do not be angry” and “Love your enemies”.
This might be the very heart of the matter in terms of fixing our problems, including the political system. As Emanuel Swedenborg said: ” Demons (including our own) are very keen on punishment but Angels (who channel the spirit of God) want to forgive.”
Well, I guess it is equally possible that Republicans paid people to write bad reviews too….and if they did, deleting them seems like evening up the score.
I have no idea if Republicans did that or not, but any true court of public opinion must consider whethet thry did or not…..
sure, as anybody banned by the guardian knows, censorship/propaganda is rampant. at least those could have been answered.
what isn’t there/seen can’t be.
The World Wide Fog descends, the dumbed down stumble around and the exploiter/parasites suck wealth.
Welcome to the Great Fall.
The (((usual))) suspects can deodorise their whore. They can plaster lipstick an inch thick all over her degenerate gob. It ain’t going to do them a bit of good. The idiots running with a whore of Babylon will eventually discover that they too are pox-ridden and they too have a price to pay.
The masses have abandoned the print media. How long before Amazon suffers a similar fate? Here’s hoping.
If the reviews deleted were anything like your comment then I’m not surprised they were deleted. It is not civil, evidence based or factual. And by the way, I don’t like a lot of her policies either.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe loathing should be put aside in the mind. It doesn’t help. I should apologise.
When I see H Clinton I see the destruction of Libya … manipulated crisis-creation followed by the slaughter of innocents by the thousand by OUR bombers. Clinton, Bernard-Levy, Sarkosy, Cameron … and (let’s face it) the likes of you and me who tolerated this at the time. It’s our fault too. Maybe that’s what’s unbearable.
There has always got to be room for invective -SOMEWHERE!! But really, and accepting that you will be speaking largely to the converted on this particular site, if you wish to influence people it is wise to be silver tongued.
I could feel your rage and sympathise with it too regarding that woman, but there”s too much invective around nowadays and it really doesn’t do much good.
but it has nothing to do with her gender.and strictly she isn’t any worse than the rest of the war mongers.
I agree, people like her subhuman, need to be treated so, well done.
you sound somewhat old timey misogynistic.
would you say that about any male politician?
I have done. Yes. But won’t again. They’re all whores. Truth-allergic warmongers.
I’ve learned something from this outburst. Would like OffGuardian to take it down really. Trying to see some positive value in the bloodthirsty Clinton, we can be grateful that some wickedness is so transparent. A demonstration to which all persons of good intent should and must respond.
I would say it about anyone who was quick to go to war and slaughter thousands of innocent people, it’s makes it worse for a women who actually give life she is nothing, dirt, as I posted before subhuman evil bitch.
the fact that women can get pregnant and birth doesn’t make anything they do more evil.
why are we being held up to this unrealistic standard?
Evil is evil regardless, I just think it makes it harder for a female to do it, and in her case, without doubt, she is evil, and subhuman, to rejoice the way ghadaffi was murdered , really celebrating his death, and you see nothing wrong in her opinions, I think she’s a detestable cancerous lump of low down filth, and had she won, we probably wouldn’t be here now having this exchange
another hurdle men don’t face who are given credit for just NOT being the worst.