Since my latest book, False Flag: Why Queer Politics Mean the End of America, was released last Tuesday, its Amazon page has been acting extremely strangely. Not only was the book out of stock on Amazon for almost the entire week of its release, but friends I gave review copies before release day had a devil of a time getting those reviews posted to Amazon at all. Oh, did I mention people can’t find my book on Amazon when they search for it by name?
Perhaps the strangest behavior was Amazon’s reply to Federalist contributor John Lucas, who submitted his review of False Flag to Amazon on June 18, the day the book came out. Not until June 24 did Amazon send him an apparent autoreply that claimed his review contained “hate speech” or a variety of other Amazon no-nos. Here’s a screenshot of the Amazon response email John sent me, timestamped 5:04 a.m. ET on June 24.
Here’s the text of Lucas’ review as he submitted it on June 18. Judge for yourself whether it contains “hate speech,” “Profanity,” “Harassment,” “Sexual content,” “Illegal activity,” or “Private information.” Hint: It doesn’t.
Perhaps Lucas’ speech that triggered the Amazon reviewer was his assertion that “the military is being manipulated to embrace the barbarism of transgenderism.” A full chapter in the book documents the U.S. military doing exactly that. Several sections of other chapters discuss how heinous it is to strip the skin off a teenager’s arm to create fake male genitals and to regularly leave male genital amputees soaking themselves with urine every time they use the bathroom. Love is love, amirite?
Or maybe Lucas using the term “rainbow mafia” triggered the reviewer. As others have noted, however, Amazon sells copies of, for example, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s infamous autobiography that celebrates race-based hatred and murder. Amazon publishes books that compare Donald Trump to Hitler, certainly a more offensive comparison than “rainbow mafia.”
Amazon reviews of Matt Walsh’s book What Is a Woman? claim that gender extremists are “grooming” children and use the phrase “leftist woke mob.” An Amazon review of Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage says trans activists are “butchering” kids. Seems like “rainbow mafia” is within the already published Amazon review norms.
I reached out to Amazon to ask why Lucas’ review was flagged as violating their policy. As of publication, they haven’t responded. I’d also like to ask them about several other fishy things that have happened with this book on their book-selling platform. Here’s a rundown.
Book Title, Author Don’t Bring Up the Book
See these images friends sent me. Most people spell my last name incorrectly, with just one “N” instead of the correct two. To help with that, my publisher put the misspelled last name into the Amazon book page’s search terms. Yet still some people can’t find my book when they type my name and the book title into the Amazon search bar.
The misspelled last name does sometimes, however, bring up my previous book. That means Amazon knows “Joy Pullman” and “Joy Pullmann” are the same person and tied to the book titled False Flag.
Indeed, people who typed in “false flag” saw “joy pullman” in the Amazon search bar’s autofill, but then when they clicked on that autofill, it brought them to the page above, which, of course, does not show the only book that fulfills those search terms.
‘Out of Stock’ Almost Entire Week of Publication
A few hours after my book was released on June 18, Amazon listed it as “out of stock” and continued to do that for the entirety of release week. Here’s June 18’s screenshot.
Here’s June 19. Still out of stock.
Here’s June 20. Still out of stock.
No Ship Date or Delivery for Two Weeks
Amazon is famous for fast shipping. They can get me nail clippers from Germany in a day or two. Usually, Amazon can even deliver books that people preorder on the same day as a book’s release day. But people who ordered my book on release day got an email telling them they wouldn’t get the book for about another two weeks.
Some people who ordered the book in the days after it was released were given no ship date at all.
Slow Review Posting Time
Lucas was one of several dozen friends who volunteered to help other people hear about my book by reading an early review copy I shared and posting their honest opinions about it on release day. It took almost the entirety of release week for most of the reviews those friends submitted on Tuesday to go public. Some submitted on release day are still not publicly available, a week later.
There may be completely non-nefarious explanations for all this. Reportedly Amazon’s website and fulfillment can be extremely clunky, especially on the back end for sellers. They do route millions of products all over the globe, after all. But I’m getting emails and texts about this from dozens of people because they’re aware that Amazon and other Big Tech websites have a growing history of suppressing non-leftist speech, especially about sexual politics.
Amazon employees tried to get the company to refuse to sell Shrier’s book. The Seattle Times quoted internal messages from employees demanding the company sabotage Irreversible Damage, based entirely on its questioning of extremist queer ideology.
According to the Times, the company has a Books Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion group that advocates for choking books that question queer ideology out from the world’s No. 1 book-selling platform. A member of Amazon’s Books DEI team told the Times they fought to defenestrate Shrier’s book from the platform “for months.” That same year, 2021, Amazon refused to serve customers who wanted to buy Ryan T. Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally, banning that gender-critical book from its online shelves.
So it wouldn’t be surprising if some Amazon employees were sabotaging another book from the same publisher as Shrier’s that even more harshly criticizes an ideology that legitimizes child abuse, such as carving lifelong open wounds into children’s chests. You can get False Flag at multiple other retailers.
