The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Imagine starting a business, risking everything and deciding to give it a go on your own. That entrepreneurial spirit is what sets the United States apart from most of the rest of the world; the American Spirit. Now imagine, after all that hard work and risk, some leftist decides they don’t like you or what you’re doing and sets out to ruin what you’ve built, to destroy you.

It happens all the time, actually. The “cancel culture,” as it’s called, is just one of many tools in the progressive arsenal. And while stories like the attempted destruction of Gibson’s Bakery by radical Oberlin College students and administrators made national news after the Gibson family was awarded $44 million from the school, most stories don’t get that much attention. They simply don’t help the liberal narrative, so they’re ignored.

While protests and attempted boycotts get brainwashed drones to activate on social media (and the “news” stories driven by them), the left is employing other tactics to wipe out businesses they deem unacceptable, and those tactics don’t garner any attention at all.

One of the worst and most dangerous was an Obama administration initiative by the Justice Department to target firearms manufacturers called Operation Choke Point (OCP). The DOJ didn’t go directly after manufacturers, they applied pressure on banks doing business with them. Under the guise of being concerned with fraud and money laundering, Obama officials let it be known that banks doing business with legitimate companies engaging in legal commerce would face extra regulatory attention and harassment for doing so.

The Trump administration put an end to it in 2017. But progressive activists, with the encouragement and help of elected Democrats, have picked up where it left off.

Activists are pressuring banks to refuse business from the aforementioned industries as well as oil and gas companies, companies that do business with Israel, conservative-owned businesses, anything deemed insufficiently “woke” by the liberal mob.

And banks are starting to cave.

There’s a slight problem for the left, however; banks aren’t allowed to discriminate against legal industries. This was the central theme at a recent House Financial Services Committee hearing which sought to determine if the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is undermining the effectiveness of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which protects low- and moderate-income communities’ ability to secure loans.

In a letter to regulators before the hearing, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID) and his Republican colleagues warned, “We reject the notion that the New York values of a handful of banking executives and asset managers can hold our constituents hostage and force them to sacrifice their beliefs.”

Their GOP counterparts in the House further drove the concern home by explicitly pointing out the renaissance of OCP throughout the country. Unfortunately, OCC’s Comptroller’s response was weak, to say the least. “We believe the banking industry should serve all legal businesses in America. However, we do leave that up to the boards and management of those financial institutions to make those decisions,” Comptroller Joseph Otting said.

It’s important to mention that these bad banking practices are currently illegal under the official OCC policy which states, “The Agencies will not tolerate lending discrimination in any form.”

But left-wing activists aren’t about to let the law or decency stand in the way of their agenda. They’re working hard to circumvent any regulation or law in their way to implement OCP-like punishments to impose their will throughout the economy, particularly in rural communities where the “disfavored” businesses tend to thrive.

Democrat-controlled cities across the country are already moving to block contracts with any company that is involved with immigration enforcement, for example. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cheered the decision by Bank of America to stop doing business with private companies running prisons and illegal alien detention centers.

If they can’t win at the ballot box, the party that loves to chant “this is what democracy looks like” will use any anti-democratic tactic they can to impose their will.

The OCC wields enormous power over the banking industry. It’s time for them to use it to ensure American companies are free to engage in legal commerce and to not be discriminated against because the fascist “woke mob” is upset that they exist.

Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.