Various online fundraising platforms have recently blacklisted and ceased the availability of outstanding payments for the activist Robert Spencer who runs the website Jihad Watch, due to Establishment organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center falsely labeling him as a “hate group.”
Robert Spencer is an anti-Islamization activist whose name is often confused with Richard Spencer who is a neo-Nazi, although that was not the reason for the blacklisting.
An online financial payment service called “GoFundMe” has notified Robert Spencer that they are not going to reimburse him for over $3000 that he has raised on that platform. The company told him: “It seems you’re using WePay for one or more of the activities prohibited by our Terms of Service. Unfortunately, you can’t use WePay to accept additional payments. Any pending payments will be canceled and you won’t be able to withdraw funds at this time.”
The actual terms in question are: “WePay is unable to process payments related to Hate, violence, racial intolerance, terrorism, the financial exploitation of a crime, or items or activities that encourage, promote, facilitate, or instruct others regarding the same.”
Spencer explains, “GoFundMe, like Patreon and MasterCard, allow no appeal, no discussion, no questioning of the SPLC’s fiat … [And it] isn’t just the SPLC; it is now taken for granted by large segments of the American population, and by innumerable people elsewhere, that to oppose jihad mass murder of innocent civilians and Sharia oppression of women, gays, and others is ‘hate’.”
“I’m going to be doing what I can to challenge GoFundMe’s uncritical acceptance of the SPLC’s smear of me, and the likely same uncritical acceptance by MasterCard/Patreon. But the SPLC has hundreds of millions of dollars and I don’t. And many who don’t realize how vulnerable they are will applaud what is happening to me because they don’t realize or believe how easily the same tactics can and will be turned on them. But they will be.”
A MasterCard spokesman wrote in an email to Spencer: “As part of our normal process, we share information about websites that may have illegal content with the acquirer – or merchant’s bank – that connects them to our network to accept card payments. The acquirer would then review the site for compliance with legal requirements and our standards. They would then determine what action to take. In this case, the acquirer advised us that they decided to terminate acceptance.’”
.. To which Spencer laments: “So to what ‘illegal content’ is MasterCard referring? It is not (yet) illegal in the United States to criticize Islam and oppose jihad mass murder and the Sharia oppression of women, gays, and others. It is, however, illegal to do so under Sharia. Is MasterCard operating according to Sharia blasphemy laws now?”
SPLC spokesman Heidi Beirich said about the situation, “We want PayPal, we want Mastercard, we want all of them to stop servicing hate groups,” and she said that it was actually a group called “Color of Change” who was the driving force behind Spencer’s blacklisting.
“Color of Change” is a leftist Establishment organization that was founded by CNN’s “Van Jones.” The same Breitbart article linked to in the previous paragraph explains that Color of Change attempted to associate Robert Spencer with white supremacists in a statement which also announced that they pushed MasterCard to “take proactive steps to stop processing payments for white supremacist groups.” (Note— I couldn’t find that statement online, but I did find a link on their website entitled “Stop corporate funders of hate groups,” which contains only a single image of a credit card being held in front of a neo-Nazi website. It’s interesting that the Color of Change organization is closely aligned with the “Black Lives Matter” organization, which is itself a hate group.)
Issues with a “Daily Beast” smear article about Robert Spencer
A leftist website called “The Daily Beast” ran a smear article gloating about the situation of Spencer being kicked off of the Patreon platform, claiming that he is a white supremacist. Following are excepts from Spencer’s reply to the allegations:
On what aspects of my work do you base this false and libelous implication? Can you produce even one statement from me, from 18 books, thousands of articles, and 50,000 blog posts, that gives even a hint of support for white supremacy? Or are you just taking the SPLC’s word for it?
…
You claim that in my “2017 memoir that [I’m] fine with being ‘the right kind of Islamophobe.’” Are you aware that the book in question was not actually a memoir? Are you aware of the context of the statement, which was that I noted that any opposition to jihad terror and Sharia oppression was labeled “Islamophobic,” and stated that everyone should actually oppose jihad terror, Islamic anti-Semitism, stonings, amputations, the brutalization of women, etc., and thus become that kind of “Islamophobe”? Surely you oppose such things yourself, don’t you?
Spencer also notes about the article’s author: “Remember: the Nazis operated in exactly this way, first barring those they hated from holding various professions and making it impossible for them to make a living. Sommer and his ilk are quintessential neo-fascists.”
ALL ONLINE CREDIT CARD PAYMENT COMPANIES DISCRIMINATE BASED ON THE POLITICAL VIEWS OF THEIR CUSTOMERS
A Breitbart article written by Allum Bokhari explains the current situation of all online credit card payment companies discriminating against activists for their political views.
Following are issues that are mentioned in the article:
Issues with fundraising platforms
— The fundraising platform Patreon doesn’t allow groups that it accuses of being associated with “hate speech,” although it has a double standard of discriminating against conservatives who don’t actually engage in hate speech while it continues to allow fundraising for leftist hate groups such as ANTIFA who even engage in violence.
— The fundraising platform Kickstarter banned the project of a Swedish academic Ann Heberlein who was raising funds to study the correlation between immigration and rape in Sweden since the government has ceased to keep records about that.
— The fundraising platform GoFundMe deleted the fundraising campaign for a Christian bakery in Oregon which was facing a $135,000 fine for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, and it also deleted campaigns for a Jamie Glazov anti-Sharia law tour, a campaign to expose Hillary Clinton’s anti-Israel sentiments, and a campaign to raise funds to protect the family of an organizer of a “Draw Muhammad” contest.
— The crowdfunding site IndieGoGo bans any campaign that “promotes hate” or “promotes hate symbols and/or hate terms on their website, as defined by the Anti-defamation league,” and it bans any gun rights related crowdfunding. (The Anti-defamation league blames “Trump supporters” for increasing anti-Semitism.)
Issues with the online payment processors “PayPal” and “Stripe”
— “In order to build a fundraising platform, you need a payments processor. And the market for payments processors is dominated by just two companies: PayPal and Stripe. And they’re just as intolerant as the fundraising platforms.”
— The conservative activist Lauren Southern was banned from Patreon, so she set up her own fundraising platform which made use of the “Stripe” payment processor. But after she was banned from the U.K. for distributing leaflets satirizing Islam, Stripe withdrew their service from her.
— “Stripe has also withdrawn services from FreeStartr, an alternative to Patreon and GoFundMe set up by free speech maximalist Chuck Johnson. Johnson says the platform has also been banned by PayPal.”
— Stripe withdrew their service from FreeStartr because it had a legal defense fund for the white supremacist Richard Spencer. Johnson says, “Everyone will think like, ‘oh it’s Richard Spencer, he can go f*** himself’ — but they shut down my entire business over his account.” Johnson explains that his goal was to build an open, neutral platform, and not to personally endorse the people who use it.
— Johnson further explains, “My position on this is simple, it’s the same position the ACLU had in Skokie. .. Everyone has certain rights … If they need a legal defense, and people donate to it, and all the money’s legal, then I don’t see an issue with it. People have a right to donate to controversial causes.”
— “Johnson says the platform has also been banned by PayPal. Already notorious for freezing WikiLeaks’ account in 2011, PayPal also withdrew services from nationalist YouTuber Faith Goldy earlier this week.”
— An organization called “MakerSupport” is another alternative to Patreon that promised to allow creators to raise funds regardless of their political affiliations, but Stripe has also withdrawn their services from that platform.
— It would be nearly impossible for a conservative company to be created to compete with Stripe or Paypal because of the regulatory hurdles and the massive resources that would be needed to create such an organization.
Even banks discriminate based on political views
— “Citi, the fourth-largest bank in America, announced in March that it would withdraw its services from weapons and ammunition stores that refuse to accept a range of progressive gun control demands, none of which are mandated by U.S. law. These included prohibitions on the sale of bump stocks and ‘high-capacity magazines.’”
Some activists are still able to make use of those services
— The dissident Canadian academic Jordan Peterson is still able to be supported by over 9,500 small donors on Patreon.
— Memories Pizza, the Indiana-based pizza parlor which was forced to close its doors after it was publicly attacked by the Establishment media for refusing to cater to gay weddings, was able to reopen after its supporters raised over $800,000 via GoFundMe.
LEGISLATION REQUIRING EQUAL TREATMENT BY FINANCIAL SERVICES COMPANIES BASED ON POLITICAL VIEWS IS NECESSARY
The Brietbart article that was summarized in the previous section of this article explains why it would be almost impossible for a payment processor company that supports free thinking to be able to be created to compete with Stripe or Paypal:
“Can a conservative competitor to Stripe or PayPal be created? Almost certainly not. The regulatory hurdles of setting up a payments processor, the difficulty of forging relationships with major banks, and the complexity of the technology and scarcity of talented programmers with experience in the field mean the operating and start-up costs are high. A payments processor targeted at the niche market of former Patreon users who have since been banned from the platform will not turn a profit. Anyone willing to set one up would have to be willing to burn a lot of money. Much like competing with Google or Apple, it’s easier said than done.”
“Moreover, a PayPal or Stripe competitor would still be dependent on business relationships with banks and credit card providers, none of which have any incentive to be first amendment friendly. MasterCard proved that back in 2011 when they joined a financial services boycott against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In order to fully guarantee a politically neutral service, you would need more than your own version of PayPal: you’d need your own bank and your own credit card business.”
Clearly such companies are monopolies and they are also “finite resources,” and as such the government should step in to implement First Amendment protections for the people who make use of those services.
Currently those companies formulate their policies based on the agendas of corrupt Establishment organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.
CRYPTOCURRENCY IS AN IMPORTANT POTENTIAL FUNDING ALTERNATIVE FOR ACTIVISTS
Cryptocurrency is digital money such as “BitCoin” or “Eherium” which is used as a medium of exchange over the internet similar to how credit cards are used. The currency is made up of computer code which is distributed on the internet in a decentralized peer-to-peer encrypted “blockchain” that keeps track of the existence of the currency without any government oversight.
Following are many of the benefits of cryptocurrency:
— Cryptocurrency minimizes fraud due to it not being possible to counterfeit or reverse engineer that system.
— Cryptocurrency transactions are immediate and automatic without the involvement of other people, and they involve little or no fees unlike traditional money transfers.
— Cryptocurrency does not use your identity, unlike a credit card which draws information from a centralized database which is maintained by the credit card company.
— Anyone anywhere with an internet connection can make transactions using cryptocurrency, which makes it available to be used by people in the developing world.
— The process of cryptocurrency is completely decentralized. A network of computers all over the world keeps track of the transactions, with the owners of the computers receiving a small commission for every transaction.
—Since cryptocurrencies are decentralized, they operate without a single potential point of failure as traditional currency systems do.
— As long as you store your cryptocurrency properly, it is not possible for it to be “revoked” by a centralized power such as a government.
— The ownership of your currency is determined by you owning your cryptographic “keys” for it. The cryptographic keys are only long garbled strings of text which you need to keep track of and protect. Your identity is not attached to those keys.
— Cryptocurrency transactions happen whenever you need them, they aren’t limited by the time, day of the week, or holidays.
— There is no other type of electronic cash system where your account isn’t owned by someone else.
— Cryptocurrencies aren’t linked to the laws, rules or regulations of any government, corporation or bank.
Due to all of these reasons it’s easy to see why cryptocurrency is an ideal monetary system to be used by people who speak about topics that the political establishment wants to censor.
If the current situation with the financial service companies continues as it is, it’s likely that cryptocurrency will become much more widely adopted.