Right now, the single most existential threat to free speech in America is the rise of financial deplatforming. If conservatives want to preserve the ability to think and speak freely in the decades to come, they must act to prevent the country’s most powerful financial institutions from imposing a brutal censorship regime on the entire country.
Lenin never actually said “the capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them,” but that apocryphal quote exactly describes the present-day hapless Republican party’s relationship to Big Tech and the left. In Congress and across fifty state legislatures, the GOP’s shortsighted support for laissez-fair economics is allowing left-wing corporations to plot their destruction.
Conservative writer Bay Buchanan recently summed up the danger in a piece for CNS News:
Time and time again, corporations [have] bent the knee before outraged activists and stifled the free speech of ordinary Americans. We see this when social media giants regularly censor and ban individuals who run afoul of liberal orthodoxy. … Less noticed is the threat of financial de-platforming. This growing menace means those who dissent from the official left-wing line won’t even be allowed to bank or use a credit card. [CNS]
Throughout the Trump era, the left has increasingly leveraged its cozy relationships with oligarchic corporations to make it difficult or impossible for patriots to raise money or obtain other financial services essential to modern life.
In New York, state financial regulators pressured banks and insurance companies to deny services to the NRA on the grounds that those services created “reputational risk” that would invite further regulatory harassment.
Conservative activist and former Congressional candidate Laura Loomer has been banned from PayPal, GoFundMe, and Venmo in an effort to keep others from donating to her.
At the request of the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, Visa and MasterCard stopped processing donations to the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
In 2018, Citigroup announced that it would not help any company borrow money or use banking services if it was involved in the (legal) sale of firearms to those under 21. Shotgun manufacturers have had their bank accounts closed. So have contractors working with federal immigration enforcement.
In 2019, Chase Bank forcibly closed every account for Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. Tarrio has also been banned by PayPal and many other credit card payment processors. The intent is clear: Because Tarrio is linked to a group the left hates, he must not be allowed the basic trappings of a normal life.
It is inevitable that under a Biden Administration these tactics will get more and more aggressive. The time to start fighting back is right now...
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