Why Was Walmart Selling White Nationalist T-Shirts?

Walmart has removed a pair of T-shirts for the infamous white-power group Skrewdriver that were on sale on the company’s website via third-party retailers.

At least two shirts were available; one emblazoned with an illustration of a raised white fist on a black background and the words “White Power” beneath Skrewdriver’s name. Another featured the cover art for Skrewdriver’s Boots and Braces, a 1987 album that later turned into a compilation with another record called Voice of Britain (both album titles appeared on the shirt). 

Based on screengrabs of the listings taken by Rolling Stone Monday morning (Sept. 23), it appears that two different third-party retailers were selling the shirts. The listings, which have now been deleted, also appeared to garner some attention on Reddit over the weekend but had not been widely reported on. 

A spokesperson for Walmart told Rolling Stone, “Like major online retailers, we operate an online marketplace that allows outside third-party sellers to offer merchandise to customers through our eCommerce platform. This item was listed by a third-party seller and was removed because it did not comply with our standards and policies.”

Walmart’s rules for third-party retailers preclude the sale of a variety of goods, from alcohol and precious metals to funeral products and vapes. The company also prohibits the sale of items that may violate its “Offensive Content” policy, including goods that “promote intolerance, hate, humiliation or the mistreatment of others due to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, body image or similar characteristics.” Under this umbrella, the policy specifically cites: “Items, media, or propaganda associated with Nazism, white supremacy, or any other hate groups which promote prejudice or bigotry.”

Skrewdriver was first active as a skinhead/Oi! band in the Seventies and became an explicitly white nationalist, neo-Nazi group after frontman Ian Stuart Donaldson resurrected the group in the Eighties (Donaldson died in 1993). Skrewdriver was part of the Rock Against Communism movement, which staged white-power concerts across the U.K. Their music is unavailable on most major commercial platforms.