Swastika Dagger from the World’s Top Retailer

Everything a conservative’s heart could desire: An in-depth look at the offerings from online retail giant Amazon.com

While Amazon Germany is content to offer only Thilo Sarrazin’s neoconservative extremist literature and imperial battle flags, the American mother company offers the really hardcore stuff — from swastika flags to the “Blood and Honor” daggers carried by the Hitler Youth.

The dagger, with its 6-1/2” blade, swastika motif on the handle and “Blood and Honor” engraved on the blade in original German-script can be bought for just $12.45 — a 44 percent savings on the manufacturer’s suggested retail price. But there are only four left in stock, so the dealer advises everyone to “order now!” Customers are also advised that others have also bought the Nazi dagger in tandem with the imperial German battle flag and the swastika. Total package cost: $17.93.

With one simple click, we add the dagger and the flags to our shopping basket, end our shopping spree, and settle back to await a presumably problem-free delivery. No, the service leaves nothing to be desired because we’re shopping at Amazon.com, the international website of the world’s number one online retailer.

Of course the goods aren’t actually being sold by Amazon itself but by sub-dealers like sevenbrothersmercantile and Rite Edge. The Nazi memorabilia dealers use Amazon’s sales platform called “Amazon Marketplace.” Amazon offers these questionable merchandisers not only advertising space but also links their offerings to other dealers to form package deals making shopping more convenient for customers.

Sometimes, as in the case of the “Blood and Honor” dagger, the transaction is handled completely by Amazon. “Fulfillment by Amazon” (FBA) is the name given this service. Amazon warehouses these sub-dealers’ goods, packs and ships them worldwide, and handles all the payment details. They also boast that their FBA service will increase dealer sales volume because they “directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. In addition your products become eligible for Amazon.com merchandising programs like Prime and Super Saver Shipping.”

Not only dealers like Rite Edge can profit from such a service.

Amazon’s German offspring doesn’t go quite as far as the mother company, which was founded in 1994, is headquartered in Seattle, and has an annual turnover just under $25 billion. Amazon Germany offers “only” the completely legal imperial German battle flags for around five euros. Customers frequently order those together with the post-war red, black and gold flag of the German Republic — always found in the “Sport and Recreation” section.

Leading the book sales section for weeks now (how could it be otherwise?) is Thilo Sarrazin’s book, “Germany Abolishes Itself,” which is currently sold out with a one to three week waiting list according to Amazon. But private dealers have leaped into the breach here as well: Sarrazin’s garbage can be found in Amazon’s used book section, albeit at double the retail list price.

People can participate in any of 117 (!) forums that have sprung up around the Sarrazin book as well as a discussion entitled “The Hounding of Sarrazin.” Amazon edits out the crudest comments, but the ones that are published tell the whole story.

In Germany, “Germany Abolishes Itself” is often purchased together with “The Sarrazin Case” and “When Patience Comes to an End: Zero Tolerance for Juvenile Delinquents,” written by Kirsten Heisig, a juvenile court judge who was found dead near a Berlin lake recently, apparently by her own hand.

The brochure “The Sarrazin Case” is currently Amazon’s number one seller in the “sociology” category. Some Amazon employee must have shoehorned it in there because it has little in common with social science but has a lot to do with rabble-rousing. It is published by the “Society for Government Policy,” a new think-tank of the extremist right wing.

Amazon offers it with no delivery charge and gift-wrapped, if desired.