When social media giants began censoring conservative voices in earnest, a number of right-wing commentators warned that it was just the beginning. They have now been proven right as Mastercard and Visa, at the behest of the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center, have stopped processing donations to organizations that the SPLC deems to be “hate groups”.
The David Horowitz Freedom Center recently discovered that both credit card giants had immediately stopped processing donations for their non-profit organization while Jihad Watch was banned from crowdfunding website Patreon at Mastercard’s request. Web-based funding platform Freestartr, founded by conservative Charles Johnson as an alternative to other left-wing payment platforms, was recently banned from using both PayPal and Stripe. The move affects not only the platform itself but also the many conservative groups and individuals who use it.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and its left-wing cohorts in the media have naturally been celebrating the recent censorship efforts as a “good thing”. SPLC spokeswoman Heidi Beirich claimed that a lot of the money from Freestatr went to neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and made it clear that the SPLC’s end goal is to get all financial institutions to stop servicing organizations that the SLPC deems to be “hate groups.” The problem is, the SPLC has an extensive list of such groups and they include not only actual white supremacists and neo-Nazis, but also conservative Christian organizations that happen to hold politically incorrect views on issues regarding sexuality, marriage and abortion.
Some of the hundreds of organizations on the SPLC hate list include Liberty Counsel, The American College of Pediatricians, The Center for Family and Human Rights and the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Any group can land on the list if it has views that the SPLC deems to be anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-immigration, misogynistic or racist. Holocaust deniers can also land on the list, and there is even a “general category” for hate groups that don’t fall under one of the above-mentioned criteria.
Naturally, organizations that are being hounded by the SPLC and those who act at their behest aren’t likely to emerge from their censorship efforts unscathed. Both Charles Johnson from Freestartr and Robert Spencer are seriously considering lawsuits against those who are unfairly targeting their work.
The SPLC is currently facing an astounding sixty different defamation lawsuits across the United States for its unabashed efforts to cause problems for organizations that don’t hold to its left-wing values; furthermore, there are plenty more conservative organizations and individuals who are closely watching the outcome of these lawsuits to decide if they should file lawsuits of their own. It is also worth noting that the SPLC was recently forced to publicly apologize to Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation, and pay the organization nearly $3.4 million in compensation after including the Quilliam Foundation in its 2016 “Hate Group” list.
Freedom of speech is a foundational right in American society. Without it, the United States is really no better than the dictatorships commonly found in Africa, the Middle East and other countries in Asia. Unfortunately, there is a common yet deadly misconception that “tolerance” of others means that only those who are deemed to be “tolerant” should have the right to function freely in the country.
The SPLC’s stated claim that it wants to utterly destroy any organization that does not hold to its own values, combined with its political power and successful efforts to harass conservative organizations and individuals, is extremely misguided at best and downright dangerous at first. No single organization should have the power to hound, persecute and cut off funding to multiple groups and people throughout the country.
~ Liberty Planet
