Jacob Rees-Mogg has warned the U.S. tech giant PayPal to stop “pushing” its “political opinions” on the British public. The Telegraph has more.
Mr. Rees-Mogg, the Business Secretary, has waded into a growing row over cancel culture following PayPal’s decision to shut down the account of the Free Speech Union (FSU).
PayPal, the digital payments firm, closed down all accounts linked to Toby Young, the FSU’s founder. The group defends gender-critical academics and people who have lost work for expressing opinions.
In an intervention that will be welcomed by free-speech campaigners, Mr Rees-Mogg said: “Corporations such as PayPal should not take part in cancel culture and push political opinions on the British public.
“It is particularly concerning that it appears to have censored the Free Speech Union. They need to justify their behaviour.”
PayPal has declined to tell Mr. Young why his accounts are being blocked. In an email to Mr Young last week, the company said: “PayPal’s policy is not to allow our services to be used for activities that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance.” But it did not give any specific examples of how Mr. Young had violated PayPal’s acceptable use policy.
Dozens of MPs – including former Conservative party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith and ex-cabinet ministers Michael Gove and David Davis – have written to Mr Rees-Mogg accusing PayPal of a “politically motivated move to silence critical or dissenting views”.
Mr Rees-Mogg’s backing will give impetus to backbench MPs to force through legal safeguards to prevent tech and financial services firms from blacklisting voices they don’t agree with. The MPs could seek an amendment to either the Online Safety Bill or Digital Markets Bill to prevent accounts being blocked for political or free-speech reasons.
PayPal’s chief executive Dan Schulman said as recently as last week that “major consumer brands” could no longer “avoid the cultural wars”, insisting that “the fight against any kind of discrimination” was a core value of the $100 billion tech company.
Mr. Schulman first rose to prominence in political circles when he announced that PayPal was withdrawing plans to build a global headquarters in North Carolina after the state passed a law that required people to use toilets or changing rooms that matched the gender on their birth certificate rather than the gender they identified with.
Mr. Young believes he is a victim of Mr Schulman’s new edict. Mr. Young said: “We did recently publish an article on the Free Speech Union website about the rights of individuals if an employer requests they declare their preferred gender pronouns and that might have attracted the attention of Dan Schulman or one of his trans-rights activist advisers.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Free Speech Union has created a template email that people can send to their MP asking him or her to raise PayPal’s censorious behaviour in the House of Commons and to ask the Chancellor and the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee to demand an explanation of PayPal and consider putting legal safeguards in place to stop this kind of thing happening again. Click here to send this email to your MP. Only takes two minutes.
Stop Press 2: Read an interview I’ve given to Disruption Banking about PayPal’s attempt to cancel me and what we can do to stop it cancelling others.
Stop Press 3: Freddie Attenborough, the Communications Officer of the Free Speech Union has written an excellent piece for the Critic about the PayPal affair.
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”chief executive Dan Schulman said as recently as last week that “major consumer brands” could no longer “avoid the cultural wars”, insisting that “the fight against any kind of discrimination”
So how about discrimination against the face covering exempt, the unvaccinated, people who value free speech, man made climate change ‘deniers’ – and on and on we go.
The left loves to corrupt the meanings of words so that the aggressor can present himself as a victim.
The way the left use the word discrimination it means that you are standing up to something they want to impose on you that you disagree with.
For example, you “discriminate” against the trans community by resisting their attempts to educate children into thinking that gender is not a binary thing and that children should be able to chose their gender and even define new genders.
They apply all manner of pressure and subversion to impose this monstrosity on us but if we try to stop them from doing so, according to them we are discriminating against them.
Self-victimisation is truly one of the most insidious forms of aggression one can encounter.
Yes indeed. And to hear that a leading member of the ‘Mermaids’ organisation took their 16 year child to Thailand for gender reassignment surgery suggests that the views of her organisation are not the most balanced and objective in the world. What sort of parent puts their child under the knife?
” PayPal’s chief executive Dan Schulman said as recently as last week that “major consumer brands” could no longer “avoid the cultural wars”, insisting that “the fight against any kind of discrimination” was a core value of the $100 billion tech company.”
But he’s happy to discriminate against people who, he believes, have a different opinion to him and believe they have the right to express it.
Oh the irony ….
I’ve discriminated against PayPal. I don’t help fund FASCIST organisation.
Toby has done a fantastic job in raising this issue and gaining so much publicity but we are in a truly lamentable state when nigh on 600 MP’s have still not raised their voices in support. These will be the same MP’s loudly touting “our democracy” when it is jobs on the line time ie elections – for all the bloody use they are.
How on earth can they continue in their jobs when they cannot be arsed to fight for the very thing they were elected to defend? Enormous pay packages to do FA is bloody insulting.
It has for many years been the case that these hologram MP’s are nothing but programmable caricatures but their deafening silence these last 2.5 years on all matters of concern, not just this, is now beyond the talents of even the best of our woke comedy class.
Almost 600 dumb as F. grifter MP’s and Lord ( 😀 ) knows how many somnolent pseudo corpses in the Upper House all with gobs firmly zipped shut.
I face a ban if I carry on. Disgusted and disgusting doesn’t come close.
I have had a bit of shopping to do lately, online, and the satisfaction in being able to ignore the PayPal option has been wonderful.
Major consumer brands can absolutely stay out of the culture wars, simply by doing the job they were created to do. It’s not for a bank, soda company or a manufacturer of batteries to tell people how to think. This is Klaus Schwab’s ‘stakeholder capitalism’ at play again. And our new PM is one of his WEF academy graduates, along with many other world leaders.
Don’t these people need a banking license to operate in the UK?
It should be denied them until they stop discriminating.
If a warning is all they’re going to get, then we’re screwed.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is how the government is going to play it. Make all the right noises to appear as defenders of free speech but actually do nothing because behind the scenes those who really call the shots won’t allow it.
I agree that PayPal deserves a boycott, but how do I boycott a government that has spent years spreading harmful misinformation and, as shown by Senator Rand Paul in the US spreading outright lies?
According to an email I got yesterday from Together (Home – Together Declaration) PayPal have reinstated UsForThem. FSU and DS not mentioned.
‘… insisting that “the fight against any kind of discrimination” was a core value of the $100 billion tech company.’
So not maximising shareholder value by meeting what consumer want, profitably?
I spy breach of fiduciary duty – call my lawyer.
I just wish the Government could really do a big fight back against the evil of woke. We stand by the road 3 times a week trying to fight the globalist evil.
If the world hates you, remember that it’s nothing personal.
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