Restricting Commerce For Proper Ideology - Pathway To The System Of The Beast?

Conservatives have been battling with Facebook, Twitter and other social media for quite some time for the right to free speech.  From shadow banning to biased algorithms, to demonetizing of websites and outright bans on YouTube, conservatives have been forced to scramble as their audience is blocked and their methods of generating income are restricted.  

Such actions are not limited to the online world as Chick-fil-A discovered this week when it was banned from the San Antonio International Airport for it's pro-family beliefs.

So, what happens when financial services and credit card companies target people for their political views? The idea that citizens could be cut off from using certain financial services because of their political views is extremely dangerous but some Conservative activists are claiming this is already happening.  

Paypal has previously tried to cut off two anti-Jihadist organizations - Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch & Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative, both had accounts frozen for "hate speech" which means they spoke out against radical Islamist ideology.  Thanks to the uproar created by their followers their accounts were reactivated but the risk of "violating their terms of agreement" shows how at risk conservative viewpoints can be with liberal leaning monopolies.

The CEO of PayPal has revealed the multi-billion dollar service partners with the leftist organization Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to decide who should be blacklisted from their company. Using "company corporate values" as their defense, PayPal has taken intentional steps to deny access to conservatives.

It's all a big cause for concern for Christians because the SPLC has taken an anti-Christian slant in recent years, targeting mainstream groups just because they hold biblical views about sexuality and life. 

"There are currently 954 hate groups operating in the United States," SPLC's website states. "Hate group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meeting, leafleting or publishing." 

Those so-called hate groups have included mainstream Christian ministries, Christian legal groups, and other conservative organizations.

"All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics," it also states.

The SPLC lumps groups like the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Jihad Watch, Dennis Prager, the Family Research Council and many churches and religious groups in the same category of "hate" as groups like the KKK, Neo-Natzis, and Racist Skinheads.

It was due to pressure from the Southern Poverty Law Center that Visa and Mastercard had tried to block donations to the conservative think tank David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC) after it was labeled a hate group by the militantly left-leaning watchdog organization.

In an email to supporters under the subject "Transaction Denied," the DHFC announced that at the request of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the two credit card companies will no longer be allowing donations to DHFC.

"We're under attack by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)," the email begins. "For years, the SPLC has labeled the Freedom Center a hate group and tried to get organizations like Amazon, Facebook and Twitter to ban us and silence our message."

"Yesterday, SPLC finally convinced MasterCard and Visa to cut us off. Now we can't process donations from any major credit card companies."

"This blow could be the end of the Freedom Center," reads the email. "Decades of work, down the drain because the hateful Left wants to squash free speech and silence an organization that dares to question them."

In a statement to Breitbart News, David Horowitz said the move by Visa and Mastercard is nothing less than an assault on conservative voices from the "Soros funded Media Matters and Southern Poverty Law Center operation."

The reason Mastercard and Visa gave us for cutting us off and thus sabotaging our online fund-raising operation is that the SPLC told them that we were a hate group.

The fact that Mastercard and Visa are now part of this juggernaut indicates how dangerous this has become.  However other financial platforms that many conservatives use for fund raising have also put forward progressive policies that look unfavorably upon Christian & Conservative causes such as Paypal alternative Stripe, Patreon, Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, and GoFundMe.

While the Freedom Center was preparing for a legal battle with Mastercard and Worldpay, following coverage by Breitbart News, the Drudge Report, and other conservative outlets, WorldPay restored the Freedom Center’s ability to accept donations due to the tremendous publicity and pressure the case attracted.  The good news is your voice can still make a difference.

The enemies of free speech may have been rebuffed this time, but they feel that they have the winning hand and will continue to play it until America has become a one party state of the politically correct with conservative views ruthlessly suppressed. 

The censorship powers of Social Media are awesome and historically unprecedented. When they are amplified by the arbitrary financial power of corporations such as Paypal, Mastercard and Visa, the result is a leviathan willing and able to crush our basic freedoms and constitutional guarantees without a moment’s remorse.

The Bible warns that in the last days that no man will be able to buy or sell (conduct commerce) unless he has a mark, a mark of allegiance to a world leader and his ideology that would be linked to financial transactions (Rev 13).  One can see how the merging of authoritarian control over acceptable speech and beliefs in order to conduct commerce is already coming to pass.