This is very troubling in many ways:

PayPal CEO Dan Schulman admitted during an interview with the Wall Street Journal that PayPal works with the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) when it considers blacklisting conservatives. , , ,

PayPal has blacklisted WikiLeaks, Infowars, conservative commentator and Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes, political activist Tommy Robinson, investigative journalist Laura Loomer, blogger Roosh V, free speech social network Gab, YouTube alternative BitChute, and a black metal music label.

Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch, and Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative were also temporarily blacklisted by PayPal, before being reinstated.

I’m also troubled by Schulman’s statement, “Probably the most important value to us is diversity and inclusion,” in support of his company’s decision to cancel a planned investment in North Carolina due to that state’s so-called “bathroom bill.” Whatever problems anyone might have with the North Carolina law, the boycott of the state was led by transgender activists promoting a very dangerous ideology, so that Schulman and his company have made themselves de facto ideological enforcers. Y’know, Hollywood produces a lot of entertainment I deplore and employs a lot of people whose opinions I despise, but I don’t go around organizing boycotts, nor do I demand government intervention to suppress bad movies, or wage campaigns to destroy the careers of people in show business, because I sincerely believe what Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty:

“Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself . . . [Truth] is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”

This is the purest possible expression of a profoundly American principle we usually call “the marketplace of ideas,” and as many injuries as I have suffered in the fight for freedom, I count them as nothing compared to the value of what I seek to preserve. There are perhaps many reasons to criticize what Roosh or Tommy Robinson have said, and people are “permitted freely to contradict them.” Yet it would seem that the Left is unwilling to extend the same liberty to its opponents, and by labeling opposition “hate speech” have succeeded in convincing companies like PayPal to deprive the Left’s opponents of economic support.

One of the great ironies of my career is that I have been criticized for quoting my enemies, in effect publicizing their opinions. Because of the “hive mind” effect in online discourse, where people wall themselves off in cliques and cults and echo-chambers of like-minded lunatics, the kook fringe are not accustomed to having their opinions brought to the attention of people who disagree with them. So when I call attention to, for example, a deranged “queer feminist” Tumblrina, this is often perceived by them as “harassment.” But the person to whom I am calling attention is getting free publicity, and if their ideas were persuasive, my readers might choose to become “queer feminists” themselves. The fact that the Left wishes to silence its critics — that they try to get conservatives banned from social media, and engage in financial blacklisting of antagonists — tells you that the Left understands that its opponents would win in a truly free “marketplace of ideas.”

Well, so long as I maintain my liberty, I’ll continue telling you that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Thanks for your continuing support. If I ever get a chance to speak to Dan Schulman, I’ll try to make him see the light.







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