There are many other forms of motivation and reinforcement other than explicit threats of firing pople, and most of them are less aggravating. In fact I very much doubt Amazon actually does that constantly, and I also doubt that it was the key reinforcement in this specific case, even if it wasn't simply an exaggeration.

Refusing to do what you're told will in fact get you fired in most European companies as well. I actually witnessed that happening not too long ago. So what's even the argument here?

Apart from results (for whom?) being not the only thing to judge a compan culture for, I am pretty damn sure that Amazon does not, in fact, rely primarily on constant explicit threats of firing people to make people just fucking do what their boss tells them to do.