by Justin Trouble for the Culture War Encyclopedia
Last updated March 1, 2024, 1:30pm
“They are essentially denying my existence, and trying to force me into homelessness, and ultimately death.” ~ Enrique Tarrio
Preface
In this section of the Culture war Encyclopedia, in addition to social media posts that we don’t list immediately below, we quote from/discuss the news articles that we do list immediately below…
In Orwell’s 1984, an ‘unperson’ is someone who is denied existance.1 There are many ways “authority” can unperson a person. One way would be to deny a person habeus corpus. An other way would be to deny them their freedom of speech or their right to bear arms.
An other way would be to deny them financial standing. Christians may recall that it states in Revelations 13:17
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
In other words, any person who refuses to be a cog in the machine of centralized and tyrannical bureaucracy economically unpersoned. Such a person is effectively ostracized from participating in society. Such an act deprives such persons of life itself unless they are fortunate enough to have loved ones upon whom they can depend. However, few people would be happy or healthy living as a burden to others.
People who are denied their financial personhood are 2nd or 3rd class citizens, one could say.
A very common, almost universal, human folly is the tendency to think and argue that if a given person is despicable enough, it is permissible to betray our own principles, to violate the Constitution. An other such folly is faith in the lying propaganda machine that poses as “the news” and which pretends to exist to inform us of the facts of the world and current events.
When the media tells us that a person is so evil that we should sacrifice all of our rights in order to punish the person, we should doubt their claims, question their motives, refuse to comply and recall that even if the person is actually guilty of being as disgusting as they are accused of being, that would still not justify any compromise of our principles or any denial of our rights.
I don’t care how much your little feelings agonize to you, get your damn lit match away from the Constitution, fool, or you will learn what real suffering is. If you do not defend principles and rights for all, even for those you hate, you are a harmful idiot at best, or a conscious saboteur, a traitor.
It begins with society accepting and allowing those they hate to be unpersoned. It ends with the unpersonhood of all people.
Documented below are the first incremental steps towards universal denial of the human rights of all individuals.
The sources below may or may not be honest/accurate. I certainly do not take their word for it.
We present these first few news stories below from 1998 onward because these may establish the hypocrisy of Chase seeing what they would later do.
The Chase Manhattan Corporation said yesterday that it is investigating allegations that it froze accounts of Jewish customers in Paris during the Nazi occupation of France before formal orders to freeze the accounts were issued.
Chase, one of the largest American banks, said it was also examining whether its Paris office was ''overly cooperative in providing banking services to Germany during the Occupation'' and whether assets seized by the Nazis and Vichy Government were ever returned.
We encourage you to read the entire piece.
Allegedly, in addition to Chase Manhattan Corp., J.P. Morgan & Co., seven French banks and Barclays Bank, a unit of Barclays PLC of the United Kingdom, Deutsche Bank, which, they reported, “is acquiring Bankers Trust Corp.”. Here’s some of their report,
Barclays last week settled its part of the suit by agreeing to pay $3.6 million to Jews whose assets were seized from its French branches during the war.
The new lawsuit, in which Chase and J.P. Morgan were named along with the same seven French banks, was filed on behalf of 17 named non-American Holocaust survivors and victims' relatives and is seeking class-action status on behalf of potentially tens of thousands of others. . .
Also,
Chase and J.P. Morgan are the latest banks to be implicated in wrongdoing concerning assets seized from Jews during the war. Deutsche Bank , which is acquiring Bankers Trust Corp., has also been named in several suits that may have an impact on the regulatory approval process for the $10.1 billion takeover.
And in August, Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion to compensate tens of thousands of Jews whose assets were seized during the war.
Chase is already in discussions with the World Jewish Congress after acknowledging that it seized less than 100 accounts held by Jews in its Paris branch during the war.
In a statement, Chase described the suit as "meritless" and "unnecessary." It added that it would "continue to work with the World Jewish Congress to facilitate payment to former customers directly and without unnecessary delay."
A J.P. Morgan spokesman declined to comment.
Report From 1945 Cited
The suit cited a 1945 U.S. Treasury Department report that found that Chase "operated in Paris throughout the German occupation and engaged in various activities which indicate an overriding desire to continue operating even though this required a close collaboration with the German authorities."
The lawsuit added, "The Paris branch of Chase, with full knowledge of its New York home office, collaborated with the German authorities and displayed excessive zeal in its enforcement of anti-Jewish laws."
Citing the same Treasury report, the suit claimed "J.P. Morgan's loyalty was above all to its own interests rather than to the United States or France."
The new lawsuit, in which Chase and J.P. Morgan were named along with the same seven French banks, was filed on behalf of 17 named non-American Holocaust survivors and victims' relatives and is seeking class-action status on behalf of potentially tens of thousands of others, said Kenneth McCallion, partner in Goodkind Labaton Rudoff & Sucharow, the lead lawyer on the case.
Also,
Chase and J.P. Morgan are the latest banks to be implicated in wrongdoing concerning assets seized from Jews during the war. Deutsche Bank , which is acquiring Bankers Trust Corp., has also been named in several suits that may have an impact on the regulatory approval process for the $10.1 billion takeover.
Additionally,
The suit cited a 1945 U.S. Treasury Department report that found that Chase "operated in Paris throughout the German occupation and engaged in various activities which indicate an overriding desire to continue operating even though this required a close collaboration with the German authorities."
The lawsuit added, "The Paris branch of Chase, with full knowledge of its New York home office, collaborated with the German authorities and displayed excessive zeal in its enforcement of anti-Jewish laws."
Citing the same Treasury report, the suit claimed "J.P. Morgan's loyalty was above all to its own interests rather than to the United States or France."
Chase Manhattan Corp. announced that before and during the early years of World War II, one of its predecessor banks helped the German government exchange marks that may have come from the forced sale of assets by Jewish refugees.
Chase Manhattan Corp. apologized yesterday for aiding Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich by converting German marks into U.S. dollars between 1936 and 1941.
Because many countries refused to accept German currency during the war, the Nazis used foreign banks like Chase National to change the currency into money that would be accepted.
“We are sad to learn and deeply troubled about the involvement of one of our predecessor banks in a program that benefited Germany during that period,” said William Harrison Jr., chief executive officer of Chase.
“We have a responsibility to make this information public and wish to express our sincere apologies to the Jewish community and to the American public.”
Chase does not, however, intend to make financial reparations for the role it played in aiding Hitler and the Nazis.
The bank did not say how much money it converted for Nazi purposes, nor did it name any of the other banks that also aided Hitler by exchanging marks for dollars.
Chase is just the latest American corporation that’s been caught up in Nazi-era scandals.
Ford Motor Co. was accused last year of using Jewish prisoners as slave laborers in its assembly plant in Cologne, Germany, during the Second World War. Survivors and their heirs are suing Ford for a financial settlement.
This isn’t Chase’s first brush with troubles emanating from the war.
In 1998, the French branches of Chase and other banks were accused of unlawfully holding safe-deposit boxes, plundering accounts and not returning money and valuables to their rightful owners after the war.
WITH CHASE NATIONAL BANK ASSISTANCE, the Nazi government earned dollars in the United States through the sale of special German marks—known as Ruckwanderer (“returnee”) marks—to U.S. residents of German descent. The currency scheme began in the late 1930s and lasted until the June 1941 executive order freezing German assets. Newly declassified FBI records offer a far more detailed picture of how and why the Nazi regime gave Germans abroad generous terms to move back to Germany and how they financed these subsidies through seized Jewish assets.
In potentially the most significant attack on WikiLeaks to date, PayPal on Friday froze the account of the German foundation accepting donations for the secret spilling website, claiming that WikiLeaks was in violation of PayPal’s terms of service.
“PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity,” reads a statement on PayPal’s website. “We’ve notified the account holder of this action.”
Most of the over $1 million in contributions WikiLeaks has drawn in the last year have come through its PayPal account, which belongs to the Wau Holland Foundation, a German non-profit group that manages the bulk of WikiLeaks’ money.
Attempting to donate to Wau Holland though PayPal on Friday night produced the message “This recipient is currently unable to receive money.”
PayPal’s move comes amid mounting U.S. pressure against WikiLeaks over its cache of over 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables. Struggling with denial-of-service attacks on its servers earlier this week, WikiLeaks moved to Amazon’s EC2 cloud-based data-storage service, only to be summarily booted off on Wednesday. Then on Thursday its domain-name service provider, EveryDNS, stopped resolving WikiLeaks.org, after the DNS provider was battered by the DoS attacks.
There was an element of theater to WikiLeaks’ supposed struggles against electronic censorship this week. WikiLeaks kept its domain hosting at EveryDNS even after the company gave WikiLeaks notice that it was pulling the plug. And though WikiLeaks has no shortage of hosting options outside of U.S. influence, founder Julian Assange selected Amazon instead, in what he described Friday as a test of the company’s commitment to free speech.
The attack on WikiLeaks’ money flow, in contrast, is the real deal, and has the potential to genuinely impact the organization.
PayPal’s public statement doesn’t detail the “illegal activity” WikiLeaks promotes, but presumably it’s the leaking of classified information. Sometimes such leaks are indeed illegal. And sometimes classified leaks — legal or not — reveal warrantless wiretapping of Americans, secret CIA prison networks,and massive government waste hidden in black budgets. The reasoning PayPal offers for its newfound intolerance for WikiLeaks would seem to apply equally well to the New York Times and the Washington Post.
This article uses the terms ‘redlining 2.0’ and ‘weblining’ as in the following,
Redlining, outlawed in 1968, is the practice of refusing to do business with so-called "high risk" applicants from "high risk" neighborhoods who are otherwise completely qualified. Since the 1930s, actual maps with red lines were used by banks to demarcate black and hispanic neighborhoods, and redlining became a verb: To redline a community was to cut it off from equal financial access, rights and opportunities. Being redlined was a death sentence for getting out of poverty.
In 2014 Chase began a targeted campaign of account evictions in a neighborhood called porn. One of the victims, performer Teagan Presley, told press that Chase's stated reason was because it considered her line of work to be in a "high-risk" category. When reached for comment on the 2014 closures of porn stars' accounts, Chase told Engadget, "We did not make any blanket account closures related to this specific industry."
There are no literal lines on a map here, but it appears there are virtual ones around an entire section of the internet. So let's call this "weblining."
What's happening to female entrepreneurs in the sex business can no longer be written off as isolated incidents. Weblining's targeted populations are porn performers, sex workers, independent retailers, erotic writers and the internet's new generation of online pornographers: business sectors comprised of a disproportionately large number of women and LGBT people. When Engadget spoke with Chase regarding the impacts of weblining, Chase emphasized, "our firm takes pride in supporting LGBT, from our HRC score to our Pride and ally programs. We take this very seriously."
Also,
Nowhere is the practice of weblining more evident than with PayPal. For over ten years PayPal, the world's most ubiquitous payment processor, has emerged as the king of denying service, seizing accounts and freezing funds for anyone discovered to be associated with sexual content online -- even educational or artistic content.
The stories about PayPal's denial of financial services to anyone discovered to be in sex "neighborhoods" are plentiful. It's troubling to note just how much the impact is disproportionately on women.
Additionally,
WePay blames credit card companies, Patreon blames PayPal, and PayPal blames the credit card companies.
Companies like Square are likely to blame to Chase's Paymentech, who, like JPMorgan Chase and other banks, operate under the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) guidelines -- which puts the problem of weblining squarely on the US federal government's doorstep.
The circle of redlining 2.0's deniability would be complete ... if it weren't for the fact that both Visa and MasterCard issued statements saying they have nothing to do with the actions of PayPal, or anyone in the business of denying financial services to erotic material.
We encourage you to read the entire piece, but here’s one more quote,
Two threats have emerged for weblining, namely the FDIC clarified its rules around "high risk" to edge out sex, and a federal judge strengthened First Amendment protections for websites by ruling speech can be irreparably harmed by withdrawal of payment processing.
In this piece by a group, we must note, called Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks, they write that it is
of concern is the fact that Mastercard and Visa are providing services to this extremist and far right anti-Muslim group. Any transaction processing company should not be engaging with this group, nor should it be associating its brand with this group.
Recently, we had extensive news coverage on the closing of bank accounts involving a number of organisations who served or engaged with Muslim communities. The reasons that are coming out regarding HSBC’s decision, are allegedly based on the ‘level of risk’ of such groups and we are aware that the groups involved have stringently denied any involvement in extremism and there are challenges underway to HSBC’s decision. Yet, a legitimate question can be asked as to how banking and transaction facilities are being provided to a known extremist and far right group which some call a ‘political party’ – Britain First.
Last year international banking giant HSBC suddenly closed the bank accounts of several prominent British Muslims.
This same CNN piece writes that on July 22, 2014, several British Muslim individuals and institutions recevied a letter stating,
“HSBC bank has recently conducted a general review and has concluded that provision of banking services to Finsbury Park Mosque now falls outside of our risk appetite.”
We encourage you to read the rest by clicking the link above. By the way, by linking to a CNN article, we are NOT implying that CNN is accurate or honest. Take it with a grain of salt or for whatever it is worth.
After being deplatformed, controversial figures like Roosh Valizadeh and Alex Jones are struggling to make ends meet.
Roosh Valizadeh—a “men’s right activist” who has argued that rape should be legal on private property, organized fat-shaming campaigns, and defended white nationalist Richard Spencer—announced yesterday that his website Return of Kings will be going on hiatus. This comes after PayPal banned him last year, and Amazon prevented him three weeks ago from selling his new pick-up book, Game, which argues “smartphones, feminism, and anti-masculinity propaganda” is making it more difficult for men to meet and have sex with women.
“The first factor for this hiatus is that site revenues are too low,” Valizadeh wrote. “We’ve been banned from PayPal and countless ad partners, which forced me to lay off the site editor last year and also lower payments to regular contributors.”
The announcement bolsters anecdotal support that removing people from platforms who support hate speech effectively limits their ability to spread their ideology by cutting off their money supply. Milo Yiannopoulos, former Breitbart editor who associated with the men’s rights movement and the far right, faded to relative obscurity after he was banned from Twitter last year. And notably, after conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was banned from PayPal, YouTube, Twitter, Spotify, and the iOS store, his daily audience has halved.
Amazon retains the right to remove controversial or offensive listings that could, among other things, “promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views.” But Valizadeh argues that his removal from Amazon was not fair, and claims he does not know exactly why his product was removed.
Here’s an other passage,
Yesterday, Alex Jones filed a lawsuit against PayPal for more than $75,000, alleging that by banning InfoWars.com and PrisonPlanet.com, the platform violated California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, which protects consumers from discrimination based on protected characteristics.
“A PayPal representative stated that, after extensively looking at the News Sites [InfoWars.com and PrisonPlanet.com], PayPal determined instances that ‘promoted hate and discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions,’” the lawsuit alleges. “Discrimination based on political affiliation or ideology is forbidden under Unruh, as it is a personal characteristic.”
October 27, 2018
In “Paypal bans Gab following Pittsburgh shooting” by Andrew Liptak for The Verge, we read,
The gunman had a history of anti-Semitic posts on the site
Earlier today, a gunman walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and killed eleven people before being apprehended by police. The suspect has since been identified as 46-year-old Robert Bowers, who appears to have had a history of anti-Semitic speech on the social network Gab. Following these revelations, Paypal banned the site from its payment platform — the latest action taken against the troublesome social network by a major technology company.
In a statement to The Verge, a PayPal spokesperson confirmed the ban, citing hate speech as a reason for the action:
The company is diligent in performing reviews and taking account actions. When a site is explicitly allowing the perpetuation of hate, violence or discriminatory intolerance, we take immediate and decisive action.
Almost immediately after the shooter’s identity was revealed by media outlets, screenshots of his profile on Gab appeared, revealing a slew of anti-Semitic rants. Gab released a statement on Medium, saying that it “unequivocally disavows and condemns all acts of terrorism and violence,” but it has long been welcoming of hate speech on its platform.
Take note of the weasel word “welcoming” here. “Welcoming” is not a neutral word. It implies favoritism. In this context, the implication is that Gab favors hate speech. Gab is a platform. It is neutral as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and others should be. Perhaps one could say that, because it is a neutral platform, Gab is tolerant of hate speech. But perhaps it is best to simply state that it is neutral as a platform should be. Abdrew Liptak also writes,
It says that it contacted law enforcement officials after it was notified that Bowers had a profile on the site, and that it turned over relevant information to them before suspending his account.
…but which is archived here. See the screenshot below.
Paypal is the latest major platform to boot Gab. Apple has refused to host the site’s app in its iOS store, and in August 2017, Google removed the app from the Google Play store, for violating the company’s hate speech policy, while Microsoft threatened to stop hosting the site after a pair of anti-Semitic posts were published on the site in July of this year. With Paypal’s revocation of its services, Gab could be deprived of a major revenue conduit.
Since Paypal’s action, Gab’s Twitter feed has struck out at Facebook and Twitter, saying that it doesn’t “allow terrorists on our platform,” and dismissed the idea that the rhetoric on its platform translates into real-world violence. But researchers have found that anti-Semitic messaging on online platforms is on the rise, and the attempted bombing of prominent Trump critics in the past week has put a spotlight on the role that online rhetoric has played in recent weeks, months, and years.
Elegy Records, the second oldest and longest running USBM record label, is closing its doors after 22 years due to social justice warriors lobbying to get them kicked off of credit card processors.
De Sandford also, wrote,
Elegy Records dies the most metal death in the history of record labels as they were literally dubbed literally too extreme to exist and holocausted out of “capitalist” America.
Elegy was one of the first labels no-platformed by PayPal at the instigation of friends and colleagues of MetalSucks (if not Matt Goldberg and Ben Umanov themselves). The targeting continued as they became dropped by more and more online payment processors. PayPal has since dropped Moribund, No Colours, and other cornerstone black metal labels from the 1990s, likely due to the organized complaints of the same people. It remains to be seen whether or not these labels will meet the same fate as Elegy.
While the end of a legendary underground label is a big enough story, there is a bigger picture regarding the fate of all labels who, past and present, have released music outside of the moral paradigm of the social justice warrior mob currently ruining all culture. Do not mistake this for an isolated incident; this is a prelude to the systematic purge of all non-politically-correct music off of the internet, which means the majority of metal as we know it will soon cease to exist.
Active since 1996, Elegy Records was responsible for key releases from Evoken, Judas Iscariot, Abazagorath, and Craig Pillard-era Incantation early in their careers. Other notable works include albums from Weltmacht (Neil Jameson’s Pagan Front Collaboration), Merrimack’s debut, and releases from Maniac Butcher, Hate Forest, Thor’s Hammer, Vardan, and Rob Darken’s side project THOTH. Like all black metal labels from the 1990s, Elegy pushed whatever extreme content they could with no regard to moral or political limitations. True to itself from day one until the end, Elegy resisted the thrift store tendencies of vinyl and cassette releases and stuck completely to the most sensible physical format, the CD.
De Sandford then writes that Rob Darken, the owner of Elegy Records explained,
There was no reason given to me from PayPal other than an email stating that I could not use their service anymore. I did try to contact them, phone calls and emails and in the end to no avail. The only response I received was that I violated their terms of service but nothing more concise; if you are aware of TOS it covers everything and anything.
Given the public’s addiction to the convenience of PayPal (a.k.a. laziness) and the monopoly the processor has over online payments, this understandably resulted in the loss of many disgruntled consumers who took their business elsewhere. However the nightmare wasn’t over, in fact, it was just getting started, as Rob would later be abruptly dropped from the credit card processor he had been with since 1996. In his own words:
They didn’t even have the business courtesy to inform me they were going to cut ties. I came to the realization of this when I went to process an order and the response message was “Invalid Merchant account” When I spoke to a representative, they informed me they did not wish to work with me because I promoted hate. I did receive a letter from them stating they were going to end the business relationship the date of termination was a day before the letter was written and a day before it was mailed. What a great banking service.
This was a death blow, at this point I had no means to accept any form of payments aside from cash or Money order but there is no way to survive in that business model.
I did bounce from other services such as Square, stripe and a few others but over and over I was suspended from using their services.
Things were dire with thousands of CDs and no way of collecting payment for selling them, but a USBM legend like Elegy Records wasn’t going down without a fight:
I attempted to circumvent all of this by trying to get a high-risk processor, the same ones that work with online porn, gambling and things of that nature and one after the other I was denied.
When the processors would run a check on me and my business it comes back as HIGH RISK and RERPUTATIONAL RISK some of the red flags come back as: Promoting hate speech, promoting rape, promoting violence and promoting hatred.
An absolute atrocious characterization and a very convenient way of fusing music band names, titles to an actual call to arms. The slightly veiled assertion is one that marks me as one who is inciting these actions. The overlords now wish to control what you can sell and what you can purchase. Speaking with a few individuals within the banking system (underwriters) as well as other labels [I learned that] this started with Operation Choke Point from the DOJ to curtail predatory lending, which, like most [rulings] has now expanded its tentacles.
Rob and Elegy would eventually find a company to work with them, but they would have to sign a contract in which they would hold a $10,000 reserve against them. They begrudgingly went with this option, which enables them to take payments currently, but the underwriter informed them that they had the right to back out of the contract any time they wanted. Rob’s final words on the matter:
I knew what had to be done and therefore I’m liquidating all the merchandise as it would be better to make some profit and pass all the CDs to those who support the music and do not stand with such an unfair commerce act.
I was surprised to receive all the emails of support and good words. It means a lot. The sale will run until the final days or until I lose the ability to take payment.
Welcome to the new American’t, a nice hot cup of cocoa and a coloring book for all those triggered by the ideas, merchandise, and policies they may encounter.
It’s terrifying to think that this could happen to any record label or merchant over “hate speech and promoting hatred” as literally all of metal does this, whether it’s hate against the government, Fascism, Christianity, men, or just people who succeed in general (though of course, none of these groups are going to whine about it.. leaving only gay communists losers, transgender mutants, and other pests with physical and mental deformities pushing this censorship). This is simultaneously the systematic unraveling of the metal underground and the American free market as we know it.
The book of Revelation predicts an age where one will not be able to buy or sell goods without worshiping a perverse ideology to the extent of being physically marked in their hands or forehead. With both money and the general marketplace moving in a purely digital-only direction, and with morally bankrupt tech overlords increasing their grip of censorship and ideological regulation, it appears increasingly likely that such a prelude to the apocalypse may happen in our lifetime.
Whether the oncoming purge of (real) metal from the internet will result in either reinvigoration of the scene offline or complete obliteration remains to be seen. Perhaps we will return to the days of tape trading and mail order, perhaps Bitcoin will reign supreme, or perhaps future generations will be too neutered to continue the heavy metal spirit.
Many across heavy metal history have claimed to be “too extreme” but only Elegy Records has been deemed too extreme to be allowed to take credit card payments. Thus Elegy dies the most metal death in history – striking terror and destruction into the hearts of the weak to such an extent that these feeble beings had to cowardly lobby big tech to protect them.
Internet payment services giant PayPal has blacklisted Infowars from its platform for allegedly promoting “hate and discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions.”
Infowars was informed of the ban this week, and it claims to have been told “off record” that the ban was due to “criticism of Islam and opposition to transgenderism being taught to children in schools.”
“The ban was instituted despite InfowarsStore.com containing no political content whatsoever, emphasizing how the decision was a broader attack on the Infowars platform,” Infowars declared in a statement. “PayPal representatives said they were giving Infowars 10 days to switch payment processors, after which all services would be terminated.”
Infowars further claimed that the ban was due to lobbying from “George Soros-funded group Right Wing Watch” who “published an article” several weeks ago “demanding that PayPal terminate its agreement with Infowars.”
Last month, Infowars was banned from most Big Tech platforms and services within the space of a few days, following a pressure campaign from CNN, BuzzFeed, Hollywood, and Democrat senators.
PayPal has previously banned users for political reasons, including WikiLeaks, Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch, Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative, conservative pundit Chuck Johnson, and Toronto mayoral candidate and YouTuber Faith Goldy.
Other major payment processing services, such as Stripe and Patreon, have also engaged in political banning, prompting the liberal digital rights advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation to express concern over payment processing services becoming “de facto internet censors.” Mastercard led efforts to cut off payments to Jihad Watch and the David Horowitz Freedom Center in a similar fashion.
Free speech social network Gab was blacklisted by its web host, Joyent, and by Big Tech payment processors PayPal and Stripe, Saturday, prompting the social network to announce the possibility of it going offline for several weeks.
“Breaking: @joyent, Gab’s new hosting provider, has just pulled our hosting service. They have given us until 9am on Monday to find a solution,” announced Gab on Saturday. “Gab will likely be down for weeks because of this. Working on solutions. We will never give up on defending free speech for all people.” The email from Joyent posted by Gab alleges “a breach of the Joyent Terms of Service.” “We will continue to fight for free expression and individual liberty online for all people. Big tech cannot stop us. The mainstream media can not stop us,” the social network continued. “The People will defend freedom against tyranny as they always have and always will.”
Gab CEO told Breitbart News that he is in active negotiations with several new hosting providers that are “unequivocally devoted to supporting free speech.” He added, “Our goal is to have zero downtime, but due to the absolutely unreasonable nature of Joyent’s deadline to find a new host, Gab may experience downtime ranging from several days to several weeks as we finalize a new hosting agreement.”
Gab was also blacklisted by payment processing services PayPal and Stripe — both of which have banned prominent conservatives and libertarians from using their services before.
They then included a tweet by Gab (@getongab) which has since been taken down. We found an archive. See below.
By the way, the @getongab account is still down. See below.
They continue;
The social network, which prides itself on supporting user free speech and only cracks down on illegal content, was targeted after Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting suspect Robert Bowers allegedly made several anti-Semitic posts on the platform — despite the fact that Gab disavowed Bowers and worked with law enforcement.
After PayPal and Stripe banned Gab from using their services, several users online pointed out that they still associate with Twitter, despite Twitter allowing anti-Semitic posts from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan — including one post which compared Jews to “termites,” which Twitter refused to remove this month.
The article originally included a tweet (shown below) that was from an account that was subsequently suspended . . .
. . . but archived here. It’s the second in the archivedthread shown below.
Though most media outlets and figures, including #NeverTrump Republican Rick Wilson, celebrated Gab’s blacklisting and the possibility that it might be down for several weeks, several notable figures criticized the blaming of Gab.
Nash then includes a tweet which, in part, was a retweet of a tweet that is no longer with us. It has thankfully been archived and below is a screenshot of the tweet included in Nash’s report and below that is a screenshot of the entire (now deleted but archived) tweet being shared.
Below is the screenshot from the tweet shown above.
Nash then include a tweet by Joe Biggs which has since been removed. It has been arched here an below is a screenshot.
Nash continues;
“But why single out Gab? Why not the other web services the person used? A lot of evil people use the Internet, we all do. They post their maniacal thoughts everywhere, not just on one part of the web,” questioned game designer Mark Kern. “Whether or not you agree with deplatforming Gab, it is a concern that this was not a government action, represented by our elected officials, but a pure, corporate power play. A play that was uniquely one-sided in view and, dare I say it, helmed by competitive firms.”
Gab faced similar issues in 2017, when both Apple and Google blacklisted the platform’s mobile app from their stores, preventing the vast majority of users from being able to utilize the apps.
In this piece, they write the following about Robert Spencer (that’s ROBERT spencer, not to be confused with RICHARD Spencer),
Some right-wing figures say they are planning legal action after PayPal and credit-card companies cut off their fundraising.
Far-right blogger Robert Spencer logged into fundraising site Patreon last week expecting to see how much money he had raised in a new bid to build a studio for his YouTube videos. Instead, Spencer found out his nascent funding campaign was over about as soon as it had started: at Mastercard’s request, Patreon was kicking him off the platform.
As far as I have seen so far (fact-checking), Robert Spencer is factually accurate about Islam. In fact, at least according to Jihad Watch, Spencer has an MA in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has been studying Islamic theology, law, and history in depth since 1980.
Later in the piece, the Daily Beast writes,
White supremacist groups have been financially under pressure online since the fatal 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia Spencer’s views, on the other hand, are relatively mainstream within the Republican Party and right-wing media, suggesting that a broader enforcement from the credit card companies could be ahead.
While he’s made a number of anti-Muslim statements, including writing in his 2017 memoir that he’s fine with being “the right kind of Islamophobe,” he’s also regularly appeared on Fox News. Spencer told The Daily Beast that his ouster from Patreon is “obviously” the latest example of tech giants’ bias against conservatives.
Spencer blamed the Mastercard response on the Southern Poverty Law Center, the anti-racist group that has dubbed him an “extremist.” SPLC spokeswoman Heidi Beirich told The Daily Beast that Mastercard contacted the organization ahead of warning Patreon about Spencer’s account, although Beirich said the Mastercard response was prompted by a separate campaign from Color for Change, a group that has pressured financial companies to ban extremist figures.
In a press release last week, Color of Change said its members had pressed Mastercard to “take proactive steps to stop processing payments for white supremacist groups.”
“We want PayPal, we want Mastercard, we want all of them to stop servicing hate groups,” Beirich said.
The payment crackdown has even reached fundraising platforms that fringe right-wing figures set up as backups for personalities banned from the main sites.
In July, Canadian right-wing activist Faith Goldy was kicked off PayPal. Goldy then told her fans she would instead be taking payments through Freestartr, the Kickstarter-style site started by conservative media gadfly Charles Johnson.
In the past, Johnson’s fundraising sites have helped fund legal expenses for neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin and a man accused of sending journalist Kurt Eichenwald a .gif file meant to induce a seizure. But Freestartr was soon also banned from PayPal and payment processor Stripe, leaving Goldy and the other right-wing figures who had turned to Johnson’s site bereft of yet another way to get money from their fans.
Both Spencer and Johnson say they’re planning legal action over their payment issues. Like Spencer, Johnson blames the SPLC, claiming his site was targeted “because we allowed others to use our platforms to defend themselves against their lawfare.”
Asked about Johnson’s claim that the SPLC is behind Freestartr’s payment issue, Beirich said that much of the money that went through the site was sent to “bad guys.”
“We’re glad that money isn’t getting the hands of neo-Nazis and white supremacists,” Beirich said.
Losing access to online fundraising has forced far-right groups to resort to more old-fashioned methods. White nationalist group Identity Evropa tweeted in July that, after being hounded off various online fundraising platforms, it would now have to accept donations through a post office box.
We encourage the reader to not believe what they read. Fact-check.
November 9, 2018
In “Tommy Robinson Brands Paypal Ban ‘Fascism’ After Tech Giant Stops Payments” by Victoria Friedman for Breitbart reported, in part;
Citizen journalist and activist Tommy Robinson has branded Paypal’s decision to stop processing his payments “fascism,” saying the company is trying to “silence” him.
Paypal confirmed that it had stopped handling payments for the founder and former member of the English Defence League, saying that while it could not comment on individual account holders, it says it regularly reviews accounts to check they are abiding by their ‘acceptable use’ policy.
“Striking the necessary balance between upholding free expression and open dialogue and protecting principles of tolerance, diversity and respect for all people is a challenge that many companies are grappling with today,” Paypal said in a statement.
“We work hard to achieve the right balance and to ensure that our decisions are values-driven and not political,” they added.
In response to the ban, Mr Robinson said, “They just don’t like my opinion and want to silence me.”
“The government and establishment can see I have public support, they can see I have the ability to fight back.”
He also claimed that Paypal has frozen “a lot” of money for 180 days.
The tech giant had blocked Infowars in the past, in alleged off-record comments because of its “criticism of Islam and opposition to transgenderism being taught to children in schools.”
Mr Robinson, who was also banned from Twitter in May, has recently been freed from his bail restrictions whilst awaiting his next court appearance for contempt of court.
The citizen journalist was bailed following successfully challenging his contempt of court conviction. In May, Robinson was arrested, arraigned, and jailed within a matter of hours for livestreaming outside of a grooming gang trial at Leeds Crown Court.
Payment processing service PayPal has blacklisted free speech YouTube alternative “BitChute,” stopping the platform from receiving or sending any money through its service, which BitChute used as its main payment processor. BitChute blames the action on its “stand against the current trend in censorship.”
BitChute announced the blacklisting in a blog post, Wednesday, declaring, “A few hours ago BitChute received a notice that our PayPal account has been permanently limited, with immediate effect, and that we will no longer be able to accept or send payments.”
“The notice included the following information: ‘The User Agreement for PayPal Service states that PayPal, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to limit an account for any violation of the User Agreement, including the Acceptable Use Policy.’ This decision seems to be final although we will try to appeal,” BitChute founder and CEO Ray Vahey explained. “BitChute has had a Paypal account since 2016, we have used it to settle payments and to receive subscription payments from supporters along with other discretionary payments. It’s our belief that it is our stand against the current trend in censorship that has resulted in this action.”
“BitChute is politically neutral and we have a diverse community in interests and backgrounds. We require that users only upload legal content that complies with our terms and community guidelines. We carry out moderation to remove all content that breaches our terms and community guidelines, including but not limited to videos from terrorists, child abuse or pirated video,” continued Vahey, adding, “BitChute is pro-free expression which is a universal human right.”
Vahey concluded that BitChute is currently “working to get a replacement credit card payments processor.”
BitChute has previously called out payments processor Stripe for blacklisting Gab, another alternative social network, and in an April interview with Breitbart Tech, BitChute declared, “What we need is more competition, more alternatives, more freedom.”
A bit further on, Nash writes that in August of that year, 2018, Mastercard and Visa blacklisted David Horowitz whom Nash describes as a conservative writer. Nash also writes,
“The creeping exclusion of the right from online platforms like Twitter and Facebook is well-known, drawing the attention of Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale and the RNC. But a greater challenge is on the horizon: the exclusion of the right from financial services,” proclaimed Breitbart Tech Senior Reporter Allum Bokhari in July. “Conservatives have long been the target of shadowbans, biased algorithms, and account bans on social media. Not content with silencing their voices online, the left now wants to stop the right from using the web to fundraise. Thanks to the increasing willingness of online fundraising platforms and payment processors to ban clients for political reasons, they are getting their way.”
“As the left prepares for the 2018 midterms and the 2020 general election, they want to ensure that only they have access to that tremendous power. And with PayPal and Stripe withdrawing support from politically neutral fundraising platforms, they are well on their way to achieving that aim,” he continued. “Like the social media purges, this represents an existential threat to the conservative and pro-Trump movement.”
In the same month, liberal nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation claimed to be “deeply concerned” that payment processors were becoming the “de facto internet censors.”
Black metal music label Elegy Records is closing down after it was allegedly blacklisted by PayPal and credit card processors.
According to Death Metal Underground, which has previously been targeted itself by Antifa, Elegy Records was one of the “first labels no-platformed by PayPal” in 2017, following complaints made by activists.
“PayPal has since dropped Moribund, No Colours, and other cornerstone black metal labels from the 1990s, likely due to the organized complaints of the same people. It remains to be seen whether or not these labels will meet the same fate as Elegy,” Death Metal Underground reported. “Active since 1996, Elegy Records was responsible for key releases… Elegy pushed whatever extreme content they could with no regard to moral or political limitations. True to itself from day one until the end, Elegy resisted the thrift store tendencies of vinyl and cassette releases and stuck completely to the most sensible physical format, the CD.”
The owner of Elegy Records claimed in a statement to Death Metal Underground, “There was no reason given to me from PayPal other than an email stating that I could not use their service anymore. I did try to contact them, phone calls and emails and in the end to no avail. The only response I received was that I violated their terms of service but nothing more concise; if you are aware of TOS it covers everything and anything.”
The article comes to a tweet at this point. Normally we would simply embed the tweet. But tweets/X posts no longer embed in our Substack and when we include links to our Substack articles in posts on X, thumbnails are not generated. It seems there is bad blood between Substack and Elon Musk.2
Enrique Tarrio, who is the Chairman of the Proud Boys fraternal organization, had his personal Chase bank account shut down abruptly earlier this week.
In a letter obtained exclusively by Big League Politics, the bank informs him that he must shut down all of his accounts by April 1st, 2019, without giving a reason.
Crane also writes,
This comes just days after Chase Bank’s payment processor, Chase Paymentech, de-platformed him on a website he runs that allows groups and charities to sell merchandise, and raise money for causes. The website, 1776.shop, is most known for selling the famous “Roger Stone Did Nothing Wrong” shirts which Stone was spotted in during the late-night arrest at his home.
Tarrio has been facing months of backlash for his affiliation with the Proud Boys, first getting onto the radar in an article published on The Daily Beast, which asserts that people of color are joining white supremacist organizations. Tarrio is both Cuban, and black, and was profiled in that article.
The Proud Boys, despite simply being a fraternal organization that believes in Western culture, have been smeared as a hate group. Gavin McInnes, the group’s founder, is currently suing the SPLC over their hate group label.
Since the Daily Beast article, Tarrio has been facing an onslaught of targeting by both tech companies, and financial services.
He tells Big League Politics he has been banned from the following services, among others:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Airbnb
FirstData
Square
Stripe
PayPal
Additionally,
Now that he has lost his bank account, his own life will become much more difficult, as Tarrio explains.
“How am I supposed to get food to feed my family? Are taking the directions of the Governor of Virginia and trying to abort me 34 years after birth,” Tarrio questions. “They are essentially denying my existence, and trying to force me into homelessness, and ultimately death.”
Tarrio believes that unless President Donald Trump steps in, the de-platforming and dehumanizing of conservatives will continue.
Lower down in the (archived) responses, Biggs states,
Further on, Laila writes,
“I’ve had my account with Chase since around the year 2000,” Biggs said.
Chase Bank sent Mr. Biggs an email letting him know his account had been permanently closed.
Screenshot of email from Chase to Joe Biggs provided to The Gateway Pundit:
To quote an other passage,
Chase Bank withdrew all the money that was in his account and gave Biggs a wad of cash.
“I have to find a new bank now,” Biggs told The Gateway Pundit.
Joe Biggs is a huge supporter of the 2nd Amendment and also makes documentary films focused on the border crisis but he says YouTube has taken down most of his videos and demonetized his channel.
Tyranny from big tech and big banks in the US is reminiscent of the ‘social credit score’ in China which is used to silence and control the population.
She also wrote,
Political activist and reporter Laura Loomer was recently banned from Twitter, PayPal, Uber, Uber Eats, and Lyft because she tells the truth about Sharia law and Islam.
How is the US any different from a Communist nation if Americans live in fear that if they dare express their political views they will be unable to use various financial services that are essential to living in a modern society?
February 17, 2019
In my video “Financial Unpersoning – Joe Biggs & Enrique Tarrio (Proud Boys)”, I discuss the how Chase, who collaborated with the Nazis, financially unpersoned an afro-Cuban-American man Enrique Tarrio (head of the Proud Boys) and Joe Biggs, both of whom were unjustly labelled. In this video, among other things, I discuss and/or show;
It happened again. Enrique Tarrio’s company, 1776 Shop has been dropped by their payment processor Elavon the 19th and latest company to cut off 1776 shop and/or Enrique Tarrio. Enrique has been deplatformed by/kicked off of/deleted by a great number of social media monopolies and others and Chase Bank has closed his account.
We may be the first (and perhaps only) to report that Enrique’s payment processor for his Chase bank has told him why they cut him off for political reasons – for a shirt with a joke on it, (the whole “Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong” joke which is associated with the “Free Helicopter Rides for Commies” joke, the “Make Commies Afraid of Helicopter Rides Again” joke, the “Roger Stone Did Nothing Wrong” joke and so on), or, and this is probably the truth, that is just the excuse they used. As far as I know at this time, they have not given the others I mentioned any reason or excuse.
Now Elavon is using a different T shirt as an excuse – this one right here which is one of a few shirts that mock AOC who is a public figure, by the way. Enrique told me that Elavon says it is hate speech. Hate speech! Calling one person – not a group of people – one person – a public figure and a public servant – an idiot – not a racial slur or a sexist term – just calling one public servant an idiot is hate speech?!?!? It is not hate speech even by the standards of the regressive left/SJW crowd.
This just in, I am informed that Elavon also claim that the shirt that says, “Alyssa Milano Sucks Dicks for Gigs” is an issue and that they consider these shirts to be a “reputational risk”. Milano has recently been criticized by the regressive left itself for saying that she is a transgender person and a person of color and a gay man. I have contacted the representative for Elavon that is involved in this but I have been unable to get her on the phone.
Chase Bank joins social-media giants in shutting down prominent non-leftists.
I have been a Chase Bank customer for years. Who knows how much longer it’ll be? Will the company’s thought police come for me next? How about you? If you are a non-leftist who does business with the financial giant owned by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., you need to ask questions and get answers.
On Tuesday, investigative journalist James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas team released a disturbing new video on the runaround that Chase officials gave Texas conservative entrepreneur Enrique Tarrio about his canceled account. Big business may very well be enabling America’s very own version of the Chinese social-credit system in which political dissent is flagged, shunned, punished, and eradicated.
She provides some background which we have already seen. Later in her piece, she writes,
When I asked on Twitter in February why we can’t have just one financial institution that doesn’t cave to social-justice warriors, the official Chase Twitter account tweeted me back:
“Hi Michelle, this article is inaccurate. We did not close his personal account. We do not close accounts based on political affiliation.”
I pointed out that Chase’s letter clearly stated that the company had closed his account. “So if not for political reasons,” I asked, “why, ‘after careful consideration,’ did you close his account?” The social-media manager of Chase’s corporate Twitter account, previously so eager to spill the tea, replied: “For privacy reasons, we can’t say more.”
Thanks to Project Veritas, we now know more. Undercover audio and video exposed how:
One Chase employee blamed “clerical” issues for Tarrio’s account cancellation.
Another stated: “I see nothing that indicates any reason why the account should be closed. I don’t see any outstanding transactions or anything ridiculous.”
Another explained: “Chase is not involved with any like, you know, alt-right people or anything.” Those with “no moral character” are people that “the bank usually doesn’t get involved with in any business relationships, period.”
Several repeated a company line in Tarrio’s mysterious file: “Decision is not reversible.”
Others who received Chase shutdown notices so far in 2019: conservative Rebel Media contributor Martina Markota and U.S. Army combat vet and vocal Trump supporter Joe Biggs. Were Markota’s and Biggs’s removals “clerical” errors or unfounded, or were they based on an ideological litmus test disguised as a “moral character” assessment?
More questions arise:
How exactly is J.P. Morgan Chase’s $500,000 donation last year to the SPLC left-wing operatives being put to use?
Why did the company embrace a known defamation racket whose stated mission is to “destroy” its political enemies on the right?
What comment does Chase have now that SPLC’s top leaders have been purged amid internal accusations of intolerance and discrimination within the walls of the notorious Poverty Palace?
Does Chase keep tabs on high-profile conservative customers’ political speech on social-media platforms?
Is Chase operating from the same playbook as Paypal, which is booting off conservatives in consultation with the SPLC? One of its most recent victims: Luke Rohlfing, a young reporter for BigLeaguePolitics.com, who had exposed how the payment processor was allowing Open Borders Inc. heavyweight Pueblo Sin Fronteras to raise money for illegal-immigrant caravans conspiring to break our immigration laws — even though Paypal’s own terms of service state clearly that users may not engage in any activities that “violate any law, statute, ordinance, or regulation.”
Tarrio warns of the speech-squelching pattern emerging across Silicon Valley and on Wall Street: “First we get silenced on social media, then Paypal, then I get debanked. It’s a very dangerous trend.”
As for Chase Bank, I sent all my questions to chief communications officer Patricia Wexler, who challenged the authenticity of one of the employees recorded by Veritas (O’Keefe showed proof of the Chase New York media relations number dialed and had audio of the employee identifying himself as a Chase rep) and ignored the substance of the report.
Evasion and denial are surefire ways to lose business. Is it Chase Bank or Chase Away Bank? Inquiring customers would like to know.
This was a written report and a video from yours truly. Below is the thumbnail for the video and quotes from my written verson…
I have some updates on the situation with Joe Biggs and Enrique Tarrio cases and a new case: multi-media personality and creator Martina Markota. What do these 4 people have in common? They are all right wing or at least considered to be and the bank that closed or suspended their accounts is Chase Bank.
Chase bank has no moral high ground upon which to stand and not just because they engage in usury, I personally see nothing wrong with charging for services provided, but because, it seems, they preyed upon Jews under the Nazi occupation of France, allegedly closing the bank accounts of Jews in Paris under the Nazi occupation of France and they were possibly ”overly cooperative in providing banking services to Germany during the Occupation” and apparently having a hand in the seizing of assets by the Nazis which may not ever have been returned.
Update on Enrique Tarrio’s Case
I spoke with Enrique Tarrio the Chair of the Proud Boys on the phone on February 26th to ask him if there has been any updates on his situation with Chase Bank. His answer, which was on the record, was, well, complicated.
I think, so as to not try your patience, that I should just sum it up as such; since the initial articles by Big League Politics and others have come out, he has contacted representatives of Chase Bank and Chase Payment Tech, which are separate entities and which have both closed his accounts. The operators he talked with on the phone for both have more-or-less confirmed that his situation was unconventional. That is to say this is not a routine situation, not a simple mistake, not a standard situation. When he asked them why his accounts were closed, both said something like, “Sure, let me pull that up.” as if it were routine and then both said something like , “Oh, unfortunately I can’t tell you because this is being processed by an internal department” and both said that they had never seen anything like this before.
But they gave him no clear simple answer. They did not give him a legitimate reason nor did they admit to being politically biased against him.
Tarrio told me that after the news about Chase closing his accounts came out, his supporters told Chase what they thought about it on Chase’s Twitter and that after that, Chase sent him an unsolicited email offering him reasons why they closed his account. This is complicated, but I think it is fair to sum their reasoning up as this – one of his companies sells some controversial stuff like the “Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong” T shirt (which, if you don’t know, is actually just a trolling joke meant to trigger communists. You see, Pinochet, the story goes, gave communists in his nation “free helicopter rides” and they were thrown to their deaths from these helicopters). I think the gist of what Tarrio told me was that Chase said that they do not want to be associated with that sort of controversial stuff.
Also, Tarrio stated quite clearly that he is not far right. So again, as I have proven in a number of videos in the past, the much of the media lies about him and about the Proud Boys in general.
I asked him if he thinks this may have something to do with his relationship with the maligned long time Trump adviser Roger Stone and he said it might, but who really knows?
Update on Joe “Rambo” Biggs
Apparently, after fellow veterans complained and threatened to close their accounts on his behalf, Chase told Biggs they would reinstate his account, despite still not giving him a reason why they closed his account. Biggs has (wisely, I think) declined to reinstate an account with Chase on principle. In fact, he encourages #dumpchase.
No one has reached out to me about my chase business account ending business with me. This is a huge deal for me as I have an active indiegogo campaign with over $33,000 in jeopardy. I’m not an e celeb enough to care about?
Conservative commentator, and former burlesque dancer Martina Markota has joined an elite list of Trump supporters who have had their Chase Bank accounts shut down in recent weeks.
Along with Markota, Proud Boys’ Chairman Enrique Tarrio, and Trump supporting Army veteran Joe Biggs have had their Chase Bank accounts shut down in recent weeks.
Speaking to Big League Politics, Markota explains that the account shut down was linked to an Indiegogo campaign which has raised over $34,000 for a graphic novel she is working on, making the account shut down all the worse.
Upon getting notice of her account shutdown, Markota contacted Chase Bank by phone to ask why her account was shut down.
“They refused to tell me why,” Markota stated. “They said they have the right to end our relationship and not tell me why.”
Also…
Markota’s former co-workers from her burlesque days have been on a crusade to make her life miserable ever since she came out as a Trump supporter.
Their harassment got so bad that Markota is pursuing legal action against the most vicious tormentor.
“I am currently pursuing criminal charges against a performer who has tried to solicit my information to antifa and other left-wing media groups to defame me and put me and my family’s life in danger. They refuse to leave me alone, every step of the way. These people are relentless and angry. I left their scene, I left NYC, I moved on to another career and they still follow my every step and try to sabotage my life. At this point I think they want me dead.”
has made no secret of its support for liberal causes (see its decision to cut ties with the gun industry).
Durden’s piece concludes,
If political motivations were in fact behind her de-platforming, that would make Markota the latest in a string of conservatives including Alex Jones, Laura Loomer and Jordan Peterson who have been financially targeted for their political views by what are still perceived as unbiased, apolitical organizations, when in reality financial isolation and boycotts is precisely how outspoken, ideologically opposing voices get silenced.
is one of several conservatives dealing with the onslaught of financial blacklisting and deplatforming that arguably kicked off with the removal of Alex Jones across multiple platforms in 2018. Chase bank itself has been overtly political than its competitors. Chief Financial Officer Marianne Lake told reporters that JPMorgan Chase bank and gun industry relations “have come down significantly and are pretty limited.”
When activist Laura Loomer was financially blacklisted by PayPal, she lamented her plight on Instagram, that “Left wing terrorists and tech tyrants” are trying to shut her down because she is a ”Conservative Jewish woman who speaks truth about Islam.” She mentioned how this struggle is now taking a serious financial toll, ”How am I supposed to pay my bills? I can’t get a regular job because I have been accused of being a Nazi. Am I supposed to be homeless?”
Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin left Patreon this past January in protest against their selectively enforced censorship and deplatforming policies. This was partially triggered by Patreon changing its own rules to deplatform free speech advocate Carl Benjamin, better known as Sargon of Akkad.
Left-wing activists have forced Mastercard to hold a shareholder vote on the creation of a “human rights committee” that would monitor payments to the “far right,” with a view to cut off disfavored individuals and political groups from receiving money from supporters.
BuzzFeed reports that the proposed Mastercard human rights committee would “stop designated white supremacist groups and anti-Islam activists, such as Tommy Robinson, from getting access to money sent from donors using the company’s card payment services.”
The Board of Mastercard has opposed the proposal, urging stockholders to vote against it.
The proposal was submitted for a vote at Mastercard’s upcoming meeting of stockholders on June 25, 2019. The proposal was submitted by left-wing advocacy organization SumOfUs, whose board members are linked to Color of Change, a group that has been pressuring banks, payment processors, and credit card companies to cut off service to right-wingers, Islam critics, and critics of progressivism.
In response, the board of Mastercard recommended that stockholders vote against the proposal, stating that the company operates on the principle that consumers should be able to make “all lawful purchases.”
The Proposal focuses on the use of our products by certain organizations. We operate our network on the principle that consumers should be able to make all lawful purchases, and our franchise rules ensure compliance with the laws pertaining to the acceptable use of our payment processing services by merchants, acquirers and issuers. We regularly monitor activities involving our products and services for any alleged illegal use. When we process payment transactions, we do not have visibility into goods that are purchased or the use of those goods. When we are made aware of illegal activity or rules violations, we work closely with law enforcement and acquirers to shut down those activities.
Accordingly, because Mastercard has a committee with oversight over issues of corporate social responsibility and has disclosed its commitment to and oversight of human rights issues, the Board does not believe that establishing a separate human rights committee is necessary to properly exercise its oversight of this important area, nor does it add to Mastercard’s existing commitment to social responsibility and human rights.Therefore, our Board recommends that our stockholders vote AGAINST this joint proposal.
Although Mastercard’s board says it is committed to the principle of allowing “all lawful purchases,” online payments platform Patreon says that Mastercard asked it to withdraw service from Islam critic Robert Spencer, founder of JihadWatch.org, in August 2018.
Mastercard has yet to respond to a Breitbart News inquiry into why, if Patreon’s allegation is true, the company used its influence to cut off Spencer.
Conservative activists are calling out America’s largest financial institution charging they are being targeted.
JPMorgan Chase is under fire for closing the bank accounts of several customers in the conservative movement as other right-wingers are threatening to close their accounts unless the bank plays nice.
“If Jamie Dimon can’t absolutely guarantee that Chase Bank won’t ever discriminate against conservatives, conservatives should consider banking elsewhere,” warned David Almasi, vice president of the conservative-leaning National Center for Public Policy Research, referring to JPMorgan’s chairman and CEO.
JPMorgan first landed in hot water soon after conservative activists Enrique Tarrio, Joe Biggs, Laura Loomer and Martina Markota discovered their accounts at Chase were closed within weeks of each other earlier this year — and without satisfactory explanations, they claim.
Tarrio is a Trump supporter and head of the Proud Boys organization. Several Chase managers could not give him a satisfactory reason for the account’s closure. One even called the closing “mind-boggling.”
Last week’s shareholders meeting reminded Almasi of George Orwell’s “1984.” Almasi delivered a copy of the dystopian futuristic novel to a JPMorgan Chase employee to present to Dimon. That was to underline his view that the current “debanking and deplatforming” of conservatives by American businesses — from JPMorgan to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter — is akin to how political adversaries had their identities crushed in Orwell’s searing book.
Almasi and other critics fear the recent account closures by JPMorgan may be part of a larger purge by the bank, not yet public, of other accounts affiliated with right-leaning causes. And he said Dimon has only muddied the waters, after assuring him the bank is not currently closing accounts for political reasons — but falling short of a flat-out blanket denial.
“I was able to tell him that we have circumstantial evidence that people lost their bank accounts,” Almasi told The Post, recalling how he questioned Dimon at the shareholders meeting, held in Chicago last week, when he asked whether Chase had, “debanked conservatives and will not wield its power against conservatives in the future.”
Almasi, representing his group’s Free Enterprise Project, said Dimon assured him the bank has not pulled any more customer accounts. “But he stopped short” of saying it won’t do it in the future, Almasi added. And while there’s no immediate evidence of a hidden blacklist, Almasi frets that conservatives like him, who bank with Chase, could be targeted.
“If you noticed, Dimon kind of skirted that issue of whether they would do it or not,” said David E. Johnson, CEO of Strategic Vision PR Group, a public relations and branding agency that advises companies on how to handle social messaging. “Dimon was not at all clear,” Johnson added. “And if he opens up for any reason by doing that, then it becomes a major story.”
Dimon, using acronyms for laws deployed by banks to stop crooks, told Almasi at the shareholders meeting: “Very directly, we have not and do not debank people because of their political views. We have not and do not. And we debank people ’cause they’re DSA, AML, KYC or unable to meet regulation-regulatory-type of requirements for them.” JP Morgan didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story.
Bank industry analyst Dick Bove said US banks should not shut down customers’ accounts if they disagree with their political views.
“Presumably freedom of speech still exists in the United States,” he added.
Conservative activists are calling out America’s largest financial institution charging they are being targeted.
JPMorgan Chase is under fire for closing the bank accounts of several customers in the conservative movement as other right-wingers are threatening to close their accounts unless the bank plays nice.
“If Jamie Dimon can’t absolutely guarantee that Chase Bank won’t ever discriminate against conservatives, conservatives should consider banking elsewhere,” warned David Almasi, vice president of the conservative-leaning National Center for Public Policy Research, referring to JPMorgan’s chairman and CEO.
JPMorgan first landed in hot water soon after conservative activists Enrique Tarrio, Joe Biggs, Laura Loomer and Martina Markota discovered their accounts at Chase were closed within weeks of each other earlier this year — and without satisfactory explanations, they claim.
Tarrio is a Trump supporter and head of the Proud Boys organization. Several Chase managers could not give him a satisfactory reason for the account’s closure. One even called the closing “mind-boggling.”
Last week’s shareholders meeting reminded Almasi of George Orwell’s “1984.” Almasi delivered a copy of the dystopian futuristic novel to a JPMorgan Chase employee to present to Dimon. That was to underline his view that the current “debanking and deplatforming” of conservatives by American businesses — from JPMorgan to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter — is akin to how political adversaries had their identities crushed in Orwell’s searing book.
Almasi and other critics fear the recent account closures by JPMorgan may be part of a larger purge by the bank, not yet public, of other accounts affiliated with right-leaning causes. And he said Dimon has only muddied the waters, after assuring him the bank is not currently closing accounts for political reasons — but falling short of a flat-out blanket denial.
“I was able to tell him that we have circumstantial evidence that people lost their bank accounts,” Almasi told The Post, recalling how he questioned Dimon at the shareholders meeting, held in Chicago last week, when he asked whether Chase had, “debanked conservatives and will not wield its power against conservatives in the future.”
Almasi, representing his group’s Free Enterprise Project, said Dimon assured him the bank has not pulled any more customer accounts. “But he stopped short” of saying it won’t do it in the future, Almasi added. And while there’s no immediate evidence of a hidden blacklist, Almasi frets that conservatives like him, who bank with Chase, could be targeted.
“If you noticed, Dimon kind of skirted that issue of whether they would do it or not,” said David E. Johnson, CEO of Strategic Vision PR Group, a public relations and branding agency that advises companies on how to handle social messaging. “Dimon was not at all clear,” Johnson added. “And if he opens up for any reason by doing that, then it becomes a major story.”
Dimon, using acronyms for laws deployed by banks to stop crooks, told Almasi at the shareholders meeting: “Very directly, we have not and do not debank people because of their political views. We have not and do not. And we debank people ’cause they’re DSA, AML, KYC or unable to meet regulation-regulatory-type of requirements for them.” JP Morgan didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story.
Bank industry analyst Dick Bove said US banks should not shut down customers’ accounts if they disagree with their political views.
“Presumably freedom of speech still exists in the United States,” he added.
Conservative media personality Joe Biggs is the latest figure in the conservative movement to face mass deplatforming. Earlier in July, the two-time Purple Heart recipient was permanently banned from Twitter without explanation. He was also banned from Shopify at the time. Today, payment providers Venmo and PayPal terminated his accounts.
Biggs, who had over 241,000 followers at the time of his suspension on Twitter, reported that he lost his verification checkmark after he posted tweets calling out AntiFa after members of the leftist movement brutally assaulted journalist Andy Ngo at a rally in Portland. He was banned shortly thereafter. Twitter has not commented on his ban.
“Venmo is the one that hurts me. I literally use that to send money to my child for doctor’s appointments and to my mom who has cancer. If that’s suspicious activity, I’m glad I’m no longer with them.”
Known on social media as “SSGBiggs” or “Rambo Biggs,” the retired Army Staff Sergeant entered the public spotlight in 2013 following the mysterious death of Newsweek reporter Michael Hastings. Since then, Biggs has remained in the public eye and become an outspoken opponent of AntiFa.
Since his Twitter ban, Biggs announced plans for a counter-protest against the presence of AntiFa in Portland – activity that may have caused him to run afoul of PayPal and Venmo, platforms which previously suspended conservative personalities for political involvement.
PayPal CEO Dan Schulman told The Wall Street Journal in February that the company works with the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to identify accounts to ban as part of its mission toward “diversity and inclusion.”
Conservatives have raised questions about the company’s partnership with the far-left organization, which lists several Christian and pro-life organizations as “hate groups” or “extremists,” including the Family Research Council. The organization also listed Muslim reformers Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali as “anti-Muslim extremists.” The SPLC was forced to apologize and pay Nawaz and his Quilliam Foundation $3.375 million to resolve his defamation claims against the organization.
PayPal and Venmo (which is also owned by PayPal) suspended Biggs’ accounts today for alleged violations of the companies’ user agreement.
“We have recently reviewed your usage of PayPal’s services, as reflected in our records. Due to the nature of your activities, we have chosen to discontinue service to you in accordance with PayPal’s User Agreement. As a result, we have placed a permanent limitation on your account.”
For now, the service is allowing Biggs to withdraw the remaining balance on his account into his bank account.
Biggs’ deplatforming by the two largest payment providers on the Internet further strengthens the argument that social media platform access should be a civil right.
Biggs told his followers on Instagram that he uses PayPal to take donations to “go on trips to cover rallies or speak at them around the country.”
Venmo informed Biggs that he was banned after it “detected some business activity on your account, which is prohibited by our User Agreement.” The company did not elaborate.
The retired soldier says that he does not use Venmo for anything other than transfers to and from his friends and family.
“With PayPal – we know they are openly biased,” Biggs told Human Events. “Venmo is the one that hurts me. I literally use that to send money to my child for doctor’s appointments and to my mom who has cancer. If that’s suspicious activity, I’m glad I’m no longer with them.”
Biggs’ deplatforming by the two largest payment providers on the Internet further strengthens the argument that social media platform access should be a civil right.
PayPal and Venmo have not yet responded to requests for comment.
PayPal has also blacklisted investigative journalist Laura Loomer, WikiLeaks, Infowars, conservative commentator and Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes, political activist Tommy Robinson, blogger Roosh V, free speech social network Gab, YouTube alternative BitChute, and a black metal music label.
PayPal CEO Dan Schulman, who has reportedly partnered with the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center for guidance regarding which accounts to ban, discriminately blacklists conservatives to achieve “diversity and inclusion.”
Schulman explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in February that the company first began gearing towards the implementation of so-called social justice after pulling out of an investment with North Carolina because the state passed a bill making it mandatory for people to use the bathroom of their biological sex.
“I think North Carolina was probably the moment that was the most visible, where we basically said this violates our core value and we need to make a very public stand on it,” he said. “Businesses need to be a force for good in those values and issues that they believe in. It shouldn’t come from backlash or people taking heat on it, because then it’s in response, as opposed to the definition of who you are and then how you react to the context that you find yourself in.”
Schulman claimed it “was a defining moment for us as a company,” that was “difficult,” because, “the line between free speech and hate, nobody teaches it to you in college. Nobody’s defined it in the law.”
July 26, 2019
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Canadian MP Mark Strahl tweeted Sunday that the bank account of a single mom called Briane was frozen after she gave $50 to the Freedom Convoy
Authorities say 206 bank accounts had been frozen under the power granted by federal emergencies act
Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair told CTV on Sunday that the act it 'isn't targeted at small donations'
The powers have been in effect since last week, but Parliament is expected to ratify the action on Monday
Financial accounts of those who refused to leave the protests in Ottawa will remain frozen while the act is in force
Canadian trucker Derek Brouwer told Fox News that his accounts have been frozen since Friday, and his truck was seized
The Ottawa protests - the movement's last major stronghold - appeared to be largely over by Sunday. Fencing and police checkpoints remained
A Canadian MP says the bank account of a single mom with a minimum wage job has been frozen after she donated $50 to Freedom Convoy.
Conservative lawmaker Mark Strahl says the mom, named only as Briane, has had her life ruined for donating the small sum to the anti-vaccine mandates protest.
Strahl shared Brianne's story as concerns grow that scores of ordinary people will no longer be able to pay for food and basics after their accounts were frozen for donating to a group of protesters.
'Briane is a single mom from Chilliwack working a minimum wage job. She gave $50 to the convoy when it was 100% legal. She hasn't participated in any other way. Her bank account has now been frozen. This is who Justin Trudeau is actually targeting with his Emergencies Act orders.'
Response on social media varied from those angry at the situation, stating this would have never happened to Black Lives Matter protesters, and offered to help Briane, to those who questioned whether Briane really exists. DailyMail.com has contacted Strahl for further information.
'Thank you to those who have read this and offered to help someone you've never met,' Strahl tweeted. 'Shame on those who have read it and attacked someone you've never met. I will keep working with Briane to resolve this matter with her bank and will provide updates as they are made available.'
'To those of you, especially the media, demanding more details on Briane, having seen what has been said about her online today and what has been done to other convoy donors in the last weeks I am not going to help you dox her,' Strahl continued. 'I know who she is and I won't stop fighting for her.'
There are a number of other images included in their article but we’ll skip ahead.
Meanwhile, Canadian trucker Derek Brouwer told Fox News that his truck has been seized, and that his personal and business bank accounts have been frozen since Friday, because of his involvement with the protests.
'They've taken my truck - I don't know where it is - and on Friday, they locked up my personal and my trucking business accounts,' he said.
He added that they also locked the account for another business he owns that he said has nothing to do with trucks or the protests.
Brouwer said he hasn't heard anything from police or the government on what steps to take next.
He is attempting to work with the bank to rectify the situation, but was not getting anywhere Monday, which is a bank holiday in Canada.
Brouwer also told Fox News that from what he heard in Calgary on Sunday, the truck convoy protests aren't finished yet.
As Briana's story continued to spread across social media, multiple questions remain on the reach of the Emergencies Act powers that allow banks to freeze accounts of people involved in the blockades.
Canadian banks have been freezing the accounts and canceling credit cards of people linked to the trucker protests in accordance with the Emergencies Act, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked last week in an attempt to clear the demonstrators from Ottawa.
Further on, this report reads,
But as of Monday, Canadian authorities said 206 bank accounts had been frozen under the power granted by federal emergencies act.
Mike Duheme, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) deputy commissioner of federal policing, said Sunday that finances associated with certain individuals and companies believed to be involved in the protest will continue to be frozen.
'Provisions of this Emergencies Act have allowed us to maintain the perimeter, restrict travel and ensure that we can continue to choke off financial support and other assistance to protesters,' Duheme said.
The RCMP froze 206 financial products, including bank and corporate accounts, Duheme said at the news conference, adding it disclosed the information of 56 entities associated with vehicles, individuals and companies; shared 253 bitcoin addresses with virtual currency exchangers; and froze a payment processing account valued at $3.8 million,
The powers have been in effect but Parliament is expected to ratify the action Monday.
Until then, there are still reports of accounts being frozen.
Also…
The powers under the Emergencies Act Vote allows banks to target the accounts of people who have donated to crowdfunding platforms, like the fundraising campaigns on GoFundMe and GiveSendGo, that have fueled the ongoing protests, but authorities would not give 'specifics of whose accounts are being frozen.'
On Monday, GoFundMe was blasted for allowing the donation page to raise cash for armed Antifa members who were shot during the deadly confrontation in Portland despite axing Freedom Convoy page.
GoFundMe canceled the Freedom Convoy 2022 fundraiser earlier this month for allegedly violating its terms of service.
The trucker protests grew until it closed a handful of Canada-U.S. border posts and shut down key parts of the capital city for more than three weeks.
But all border blockades have now ended and the streets around the Canadian Parliament are quiet.
Ottawa protesters who vowed never to give up are largely gone, chased away by police in riot gear. The relentless blare of truckers´ horns has gone silent. A large police presence remains in Ottawa and some areas are fenced off.
Here’s a bit more…
The self-styled Freedom Convoy shook Canada´s reputation for civility, inspired convoys in France, New Zealand and the Netherlands and interrupted trade, causing economic damage on both sides of the border. Hundreds of trucks eventually occupied the streets around Parliament, a display that was part protest and part carnival.
Authorities moved quickly to reopen the border posts, but police in Ottawa did little but issue warnings until the past couple days, even as hundreds and sometimes thousands of protesters clogged the streets of the city and besieged Parliament Hill.
Truckers ignored warnings that they were risking arrest and could have their rigs seized and bank accounts frozen under the new emergency powers invoked by Trudeau.
Attorney General Ashley Moody called on JPMorgan Chase & Co. to stop their alleged “blatant” hypocritical business practices after the company was accused of discriminating against dissenting religious beliefs or political affiliations.
The Florida AG, along with 18 other state attorneys general argue the bank “has not extended its openness and inclusivity to everyone,” pointing to the company’s “pattern” of denying service to religious and conservative-leaning customers, like the National Committee for Religious Freedom.
“The company publicly promotes inclusion yet arbitrarily denies service to customers with different beliefs,” the Attorney General’s Office said in an email Tuesday.
“For a company to promote its inclusiveness, then arbitrarily act against those sharing a different point of view, it is blatant hypocrisy,” Moody said.
She added the bank faced backlash for refusing to disclose and investigate such policies after a report revealed Chase has “unclear or imprecise policies” that allow it to “deny service for arbitrary or politically biased reasons.”
In addition to AG Moody, the attorneys general of the following states signed the letter: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.
Nation’s largest bank rebuts claims of GOP attorneys general and treasurers, who say the bank mistreats people of faith
JPMorgan employees have been receiving emails over the past several days, making the same points as the letters, according to people familiar with the matter and a sample email viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The pressure campaign comes ahead of JPMorgan’s annual shareholders meeting on Tuesday. An investor has submitted a resolution asking the bank to launch an investigation examining the Republican claims. The board is recommending shareholders vote no.
The accusations underscore a growing challenge posed to U.S. businesses in a nation riven by ideological and partisan differences. The dysfunction in Washington is driving both Republicans and Democrats to pursue their agendas in the states, which are lining up on opposite sides of thorny questions over environmental issues, abortion rights, gun laws, diversity and inclusion.
Corporations, used to operating seamlessly across 50 states, are left to straddle the growing divide.
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JPMorgan strenuously denied the claims but declined to address details of individual accounts. “We have never and would never exit a client relationship due to their political or religious affiliation,” a spokesperson said in a statement, also noting the bank serves 50,000 accounts with religious affiliations.
The Republican officials also are demanding the bank publicly clarify its position on a range of issues at the center of conservative causes, from free speech to religious rights. The request comes in the form of a new tool called the Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index, which allows investors to measure corporate respect for free speech and religious freedom, according to its website.
The survey asks extensive questions about whether a company assures employees are free to say what they want on social media. It also asks how much money the survey respondent has donated to well-known liberal nonprofit advocacy groups, which it mentions by name: Center for American Progress, for example, a progressive advocacy group, or the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil-rights group known for legal work against extremist groups.
The index is designed as a mirror image of other such surveys—conducted by ratings firms or research universities—which typically show how extensively an institution is committed to environmental, social and governance-based investing, or ESG, which has become shorthand for a broad array of causes, whether climate or social issues, that are often championed by progressives.
The letter from the attorneys general, dated May 2, notes that JPMorgan celebrates its strong scores in a survey by Human Rights Campaign, an LGTBQ advocacy group. But when JPMorgan was asked to fill out the survey probing positions important to conservatives, it sent the following response:
“Thank you for contacting JPMorgan Chase & Co. Investor Relations,” said the bank, when asked to take the survey, according to an email. “Unfortunately, we must decline completing this survey as we do not believe the organization is appropriately aligned with JPMC’s diversity initatives [sic] and direction.”
JPMorgan says that response was a mistake. “We recently learned that the survey was emailed to a mailbox in 2021 that doesn’t generally receive surveys, and, without proper reviews, the request was declined,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“We are actively considering participating in the survey in its 2023 round,” the spokesperson said, “and are shoring up our processes for reviewing and whether or not we respond to the myriad survey requests we receive each year from around the world.”
The letters are part of a broader effort to target financial institutions. Oklahoma last week banned 13 financial institutions from doing business with the state for environmental policies that the state said amounted to a “boycott” of its fossil-fuel businesses, a significant source of jobs in the state.
The current ESG model has critics across the political spectrum. Some investment managers who had embraced ESG say they still believe it is a good idea in theory but that it has failed to live up to its promises. A former BlackRock executive wrote a book arguing that ESG has proved to be neither a reliable generator of returns nor a real catalyst for change.
But the costs of resisting the ESG movement can be considerable. In 2021, Texas banned five large financial institutions from underwriting the state’s municipal bond issues in response to the lenders restricting business with firearms or fossil-fuel companies. The move reduced competition among underwriters, driving up costs. As a result, “Texas issuers will incur $300-$500 million in additional interest on the $31.8 billion borrowed during the first eight months” after the ban was enacted, according to a joint study by the Wharton School, a business school of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
Republicans say they are worried institutions like JPMorgan—the U.S.’s largest lender—have grown so large that they can dictate decisions on, for instance, the environment, to their customers and to the communities they serve.
“Everyone is trying to leverage their power to become policy makers,” said Sean D. Reyes, Utah’s attorney general and a signatory of the letter.
19 Republican states accused JPMorgan of closing bank accounts on political or religious grounds.
In a letter to CEO Jamie Dimon, they say the bank asked questions about religion and politics.
The attorneys general wanted JPMorgan to participate in a diversity survey linked to free speech.
Republican attorneys general from 19 states have accused JPMorgan Chase of closing accounts and discriminating against customers due to their political or religious beliefs, a report says.
In a letter sent to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Republicans representing 19 states said the bank had canceled major organizations' checking accounts and had asked screening questions focused on religion and politics before reinstating them.
The attorneys general said JPMorgan "abruptly closed" the checking account of the National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF), a non-profit, before a letter informing it about the decision had been delivered.
The complaint said that an employee at the bank eventually told the group that JPMorgan would restore the NCRF's account if it provided a list of its donors, a list of the political candidates it intended to support, and details of the criteria used to determine its support and endorsements.
"The bank's brazen attempt to condition critical services on a customer passing some unarticulated religious or political litmus test flies in the face of Chase's antidiscrimination policies. Worse, it flies in the face of basic American values of fairness and equality," the signatories of the letter said.
A bit further on, this report reads,
In March, treasurers from 14 Republican states also wrote to Dimon with similar claims, The Journal reported.
JPMorgan was also accused of declining a proposal to participate in a survey for the Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index, which measured a company's respect for "freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief as a standard part of doing business," per its website. JPMorgan received a score of 15% for the index in 2022.
Further, the letter claimed JPMorgan asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to ignore a proposal for the bank to disclose its policy for closing accounts.
A JPMorgan representative told The Journal: "We have never and would never exit a client relationship due to their political or religious affiliation."
A spokesperson for JPMorgan said: "We do not close accounts due to religious or political affiliations, and did not in these cases."
Reportedly, the bank account of the woman behind Libs of TikTok was temporarily disabled. On this day at 11:15am, she posted this on X,
BREAKING: @stripe disabled my account. They’re also holding onto my funds and won’t release them. I called and emailed and they aren’t giving me a straight answer. This has been going on for a month. Nobody has been able to subscribe to my newsletter and my funds are frozen.
. @elonmusk you sure you want to partner with @stripe for X payouts?? They will just disable accounts if they don’t like your views. Doesn’t seem aligned with your free speech objectives.
UPDATE: @stripe fixed my account. Took 30 minutes. All thanks to the backlash on X. I really tried handling this internally before blasting them. Thank you all. Thank you X. I think we’re all wondering what @stripe and @patrickc are doing to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else.
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