This week, GOP Sen. Josh Hawley celebrated his book, “The Tyranny of Big Tech,” becoming a bestseller… on Amazon.
“Thanks for making The Tyranny of Big Tech a best seller all week on Amazon! You can get your copy here,” the senator tweeted on Thursday, adding a link to the Amazon listing for the book.
Clicking that link takes readers to a page that features the following description for his book: “Amassing unimaginable amounts of personal data, giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple — once symbols of American ingenuity and freedom — have become a techno-oligarchy with overwhelming economic and political power.”
Amazon, then, is one part of “a techno-oligarchy with overwhelming economic and political power,” and also capable of “making” Hawley’s book a bestseller.
Twitter users were quick to point out the irony that not only was he celebrating the book’s success on one of the e-commerce sites the book is ostensibly meant to criticize, but he was celebrating that feat on another controversial tech platform.
Steve Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” even noted that Hawley’s tweet was sent, per its identifying labels, from an iPhone made by Apple, another one of the companies the senator goes after in his book.
“The Tyranny of Big Tech” was published earlier this year by Regnery after Simon & Schuster’s decision to scrap the release, citing Hawley’s involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
After the siege on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6, Simon & Schuster announced it was dropping Hawley’s deal the following day, releasing this statement: “After witnessing the disturbing, deadly insurrection that took place on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., Simon & Schuster has decided to cancel publication of Senator Josh Hawley’s forthcoming book, THE TYRANNY OF BIG TECH.”
It continued: “We did not come to this decision lightly. As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom.”
Hawley was among the group of Republican lawmakers who publicly supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and vowed to contest the results during the joint session of Congress certifying the election.
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