February 23, 2023 at 1:21 p.m.
Northwoods River News: Our View
Corporate America to all: Think right or go hungry
This past week was no exception. Out in Arizona, a 73-year-old rancher was jailed on a $1 million bond after being charged with murder for allegedly shooting and killing a migrant trespassing on his ranch.
For his part, George Alan Kelly maintains he was threatened first, with migrants pointing a weapon at his house and at him, and only fired warning shots above their heads. He also called the U.S. Border Patrol after the incident, and only discovered a body later in the day as he was checking the property.
The collapse - no, the deliberate dismantling - of our southern border, with all the wanton terror that goes with it, is surely a topic to be discussed, for what property owners on the border encounter today will likely be just around all our corners tomorrow.
It's a catastrophe but that's not the catastrophe we write about today. Neither are the murder charges Mr. Kelly is facing; a jury will sort it out. Rather, today we write about the growing and sinister excommunication from the financial system of American citizens who run afoul of the progressive narrative.
In this case, Mr. Kelly pleaded for a lower bond, explaining that his elderly wife was now home alone and could not care for the ranch, but was denied. At that point, Kelly's supporters set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for his bail.
And that's when the fascists stepped in. GoFundMe quickly removed the pages, saying its terms of service don't allow fundraising for the legal defense of those charged with committing a violent crime.
To which, we ask, why not? In our country, citizens are presumed innocent until found guilty, and as such it would seem only logical and honorable to allow those so charged to raise money for adequate representation when they have their day in court.
This is not the first time this has happened - GoFundMe did the same thing to Kyle Rittenhouse when he went to trial for the shooting in Kenosha, and, as we remember, Mr. Rittenhouse was found not guilty.
To be fair, GoFundMe yanked fundraising for the defendant in the Waukesha Christmas parade massacre, and the company is in fact entitled to ban such donations if they wish. But any objective analysis of GoFundMe's behavior shows a massive bias against those who run afoul of the proper narrative - self-defense of property is intolerable and racist, especially along the border - or who resist that narrative.
To wit, Mr. Kelly can't raise money for his defense but GoFundMe has left untouched Black Lives Matter and other left-wing violent campaigns, including a support effort for the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, when protesters seized a police building.
Indeed, GoFundMe itself donated $500 to Riot Kitchen, a group whose members were arrested by federal agents after filling up fuel cans with gasoline and driving into Kenosha. Yes, Kenosha.
GoFundMe also froze funds donated to support Canadian truckers, a day after Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pressured the firm to halt donations "used to promote hate." Note that protesting for freedom is seen as hateful to the government, and to corporations like GoFundMe.
The list goes on and on, but GoFundMe is not alone. PayPal has kicked those it disfavors off its platform, and has even used the left-wing Anti-Defamation League to help it curate its list of allowables and deplorables.
Even worse, back in 2019 PayPal admitted it worked with the extremist Southern Poverty Law Center to take down the haters - you know, such groups as Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom. But the Southern Poverty Law Center is so far out that even the FBI quit using them as a reliable resource on hate crime. When you're too left for the FBI, you're practically in another galaxy.
Now these businesses were founded as payment platforms not just for those in need, like raising money for a cause or a defense, but for small entrepreneurs who need a third-party platform to process payments their online customers make.
So when these small entrepreneurs made money, PayPal made money. It was a capitalist enterprise. But these firms are capitalist no more. They are fully woke. And that means they will sacrifice their profit - PayPal is indeed going broke, announcing massive layoffs last year - for social justice, even going so far as threatening to deduct $2,500 from users who engaged in "misinformation" or "hate," or anything else the company didn't like. They backed off that, but have still barred disfavored firms and groups from the platform.
Here's how PayPal's former president, David Marcus, put it: "It's hard for me to openly criticize a company I used to love and gave so much to. But PayPal's new [terms of service] goes against everything I believe in. A private company now gets to decide to take your money if you say something they disagree with. Insanity."
So rather than being a platform for entrepreneurs, PayPal is now a platform for woke entrepreneurs only. Like so much else on the progressive left, PayPal has become a gated community for the elite.
And it doesn't stop with payment platforms. When conservative members of Congress challenged Biden's election, woke corporate America rushed to threaten them. Among others, AT&T Inc, American Express, and Dow Inc. all said they would end campaign contributions to those who challenged the election, and they looked at other steps, too. Indeed, AT&T has censored conservatives from being able to advertise on the company's platforms.
Over in the bulk email platform world, Mailchimp deplatformed the Northern Virginia Tea Party, among others, and WordPress shut down The Conservative Treehouse, which had 500,000 users a day.
All of this is frightening. Corporate America can prevent most everybody from raising money, processing payments, and even using their bank accounts, and they are signaling that they are prepared to do just that if you don't agree with the globalist narrative. They have immense power to oppress and enslave the American people.
Cross them and you won't even be able to vacation. Just several weeks ago, Airbnb banned the parents of Lauren Southern, a conservative YouTuber, from staying in any of their properties because - wait for it - they were the parents of Lauren Southern.
Later, they said they made a mistake, but it was not ineptitude at work. It was deliberate, and they backed off only when the matter went viral.
Combine the control of people's finances with the corporate-government censorship apparatus and the ESG pressure to control financial investments, and we are on the edge of a dystopian world.
The only way to avoid being a character in an Ayn Rand novel is to stay vocal and refuse to do business with woke corporate America when possible. It's not always possible, for sure, but any day you can spend a dime with a patriot and not a corporatist, you have donated a dime to the cause of liberty, and that's a worthy investment.
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