De-banking – the practice of banks closing accounts, or denying services, on the basis of political belief – seems set to become one of the major battlegrounds of the ‘culture war’. And its salience tells us a great deal about what is at stake in that wider struggle, and its intellectual origins. Sadly, however, this has been obscured by a lot of muddy thinking, which it will take some time to clear up.
Let’s begin with the question: is ‘de-banking’ justified in a free society, or not? This issue is raised, with customary contrarianism, by Matthew Parris in the Spectator this week. Although he doesn’t put the point in quite this way, he reminds us that the problem with de-banking is that it really puts two freedoms in opposition to one another. On the one hand, our instincts tell us that it is wrong for a bank to close somebody’s account – knowing the baleful consequences this will wreak in a heavily financialised society like our own – on the basis of that person having expressed views which the owners of the bank dislike. But on the other, it is distasteful in a free society that the operators of a business should be forced to trade with anybody; the whole point of a free market is that it enshrines freedom of choice.
On the face of it, these two freedoms are not readily reconciled. And here the issue should also call to mind one of the other intractable problems of our current moment – the extent to which privately owned social media companies should be free to censor and/or ban users on their platforms based on the views that they express. There, like here, the question is which freedom we prefer: that to express one’s views, or that to associate freely?
What we are talking about, then, is really a recurrent problem within societies that purport to be liberal, i.e., what happens when freedoms conflict. Leaving aside the obvious truth that proponents of de-banking (and censorship of speech on social media, for that matter) are often disingenuous and only seem to discover a faith in liberal values when it suits them to do so, this should serve to remind us that the culture war between progressives and conservatives is for the most part really a division within liberalism as to which types of freedom are preferred, and in what contexts. Broadly speaking, progressives prioritise the freedom to choose or express – it isn’t always clear which – one’s identity, sexuality, etc., as well as other related freedoms (such as reproductive freedom, the freedom to cross borders, and so on). Conservatives or ‘classical liberals’, meanwhile, tend to prioritise freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom from state interference, and so on. There is more going on in the ‘culture war’ than this, but reflecting on this basic observation should at least help us to dismiss the argument that this is a conflict between liberals and Marxists: it largely is not. The fundamental division is between two types of liberal, if we define liberalism as the doctrine that the role of the state is to promote freedom.
So how do we decide which freedom ‘wins’, in any given context? It is here that critics of liberalism – Carl Schmitt and Stanley Fish being two prominent examples – site their most pointed and acute attack. For such critics, liberalism gives us no principled basis for such a decision. Ultimately, what it comes down to is power. The loudest voices get to decide which freedom matters. Whether de-banking or social media censorship is allowed to proliferate, in what circumstances, and in respect of which views, will just depend on whoever is holding the levers of power.
This makes liberalism itself a big lie, according to these crities: it is not a political system that promotes freedom, but an unstable and vicious struggle between competing preferences and interest groups, to which the victor go the spoils and the losers, nothing. In this perspective, what we are currently witnessing, and what we describe as a ‘culture war’, is simply a playing out of the inherent self-defeating properties of liberalism across the cultural landscape. Whether or not the ‘woke progressive left’, or whatever you wish to call them, will get to impose their vision upon the world is simply a matter of domination versus submission and nothing more.
This leads us back to Matthew Parris. Parris, in trying to make the claim that what is at stake is merely a matter of principle (freedom of association in a free market), is in one sense simply being a useful idiot, pretending to be a good, neutral liberal but really just furthering the aims of one side in the broader power struggle. Lacking any principled basis for preferring freedom of association to freedom of expression in this particular context, he ends up simply ratifying the power play of one side over the other, and unwittingly therefore is just participating in the process whereby purported arguments of ‘principle’ are deployed to beat the other side over the head.
Is this, then, all that we are doing – simply engaging in a glorified shouting match? It can often seem that way. But here it is useful to step back for a moment and reflect on what it is that we think that the law ought to be doing if we value living in a stable, pluralistic society. This will vary. It is undoubtedly true that generally speaking it is preferable if business owners are free to make contracts with those who they wish to, and this is indeed a very old feature of English law (though a complicated one for reasons that I will have to go into elsewhere). But it is also the case that we make many exceptions to that rule – most notably when a business owner is making his or her choice on discriminatory grounds, such as on the basis of race or sex. In those circumstances, we say that the overarching value of pluralism has to win out, and that freedom of association has to give way to the extent that we would like to protect that overarching value. The alternative is that portions of society will be left out, and that resentments – and instability – will brew as a consequence.
In the case of de-banking the same reasoning surely plays out. Thinking of the subject as a war between two freedoms, association versus expression, gets us nowhere. But thinking about it in terms of the vision of society which we wish to secure helps cut through. Do we want to live in a society in which people can be denied access to so basic a utility as banking based on the views they express, however prominent their profile? It takes a special kind of blinkeredness of vision to fail to see that such a practice cannot be consonant with life in a stable, pluralistic democracy – one cannot indeed have a stable polity in which large swathes of the population could at any moment lose access to finance simply on the basis of what they say. Yes, there might be edge cases about which reasonable people can disagree, but the basic position must surely be that banks – like certain other types of actor, such as utility companies – occupy so fundamental and privileged a position in society that the normal rules of freedom of association can’t be allowed to apply. The alternative is simply too potentially destabilising to contemplate.
In debating this issue, in other words, it is helpful if we try to look beyond soundbites and get at the underlying values – the ‘incompletely theorised agreement’ that we all can share. We might not agree on the details, but we can at least agree that it is better to live in a society which is stable, in which a plurality of views are accepted, and in which people are therefore not subject to arbitrary displays of power. From there, it is not difficult to reason our way to the position that de-banking ought not to be permissable except in defined, and limited, exceptional cases.
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. This article first appeared on his Substack. You can subscribe here.
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Not a bad article and it is relatively easily summarised.
A number of wholly spurious “world” organisations have decided to take over the running of our world, organisations such as the WHO and the World Bank. These outfits are peopled largely by nefarious persons who have largely surrendered any allegiances they might have had to their mother countries and now draw incomes from the taxes paid by the people of the world.
Nominally these “world” organisations are funded by grants from national governments and “donations” from wealthy donors such as Bill and Melinda Gates. However, as we all know, governments don’t have any money except that which they filch off their citizens via taxation and the large “donors” make their money from dubious products.
Bill Gates, increasingly tied to the world chemistry industry profits from the sale of dangerous drugs which are invariably paid for by national governments on behalf of their citizens via, yep – taxes. The other large donors, the Big Pharma companies similarly generate their incomes from selling a huge and increasingly dangerous product range in to the nation’s of the world where they receive generous promotion from governments.
The “world” organisations, peopled by wholly unelected and faceless bureaucrats spend their time promoting and dreaming up useless health programmes designed solely to cream a huge and increasing revenue fund from governments, which will so impoverish nation states as to ensure that the population’s of said nation states will be in a consistent state of ill health.
In order to maintain the illusion of care the “world” organisations have bought up all the Main Stream Media outlets who have been given the job of stoking a constant fear of ill health across the world and which can only be assuaged by constant use of the Big Pharma products which will be constantly tinkered with in order to deal with an increasingly poorly world population.
Nation states will be ground out of existence except where they perform a window-dressing function until we arrive at a de facto one world government where effectively ‘we own nothing but are happy.’
As I have commented previously, pandemics are a once in 500 years event and not a once or twice a decade occurrence. Unfortunately, the author of the article appears to swallow the lie that the world must constantly live on tenterhooks for the next “pandemic.” This has to be immediately and firmly put to bed.
In short, unless nation states reassert their sovereignty the end result will be a severely diminished world population, as a result of the uptake of each successive wonder drug, working solely to provide wealth for the elites of Big Pharma and the self-proclaimed “world” organisations.
This is coming at us like a WWII Blitzkrieg and our chances of escape are looking increasingly French like.
The picture isn’t pretty.
I wonder, is it true that people will be able to receive these drugs through the exhalations of other people (among other horrors)? Is there to be no escape?
How would the elites police that?
They can’t. Two ways of mitigation for them.
1) Prophylaxis as detailed above in my reply to Hugh
2) Spike protein least effects anyone with a K26R ACE2 receptor. The spike has been designed to not or only attach with difficulty to the ACE2 receptors of this cohort. The families who are leading all of this have this K26R receptor.
The puppets don’t & they will be discarded once they have served their usefulness.
The toxic spike protein is a racially specific bioweapon designed to kill off the majority of the European population, which is spread throughout Europe, US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand. Asian, African, South American genotypes are also effected but to a lesser degree.
The Military medic who passed on this information stated that interestingly the Finns are one European population who are likely to be less effected. Think back to the 1930s ideal of the perfect Aryan & you have an indication of how far back this has been planned.
Hugh, shedding of the toxic spike protein is already happening. This is all planned. There is no respect for bodily sovereignty.
This is why so many enlightened medics are advocating a prophylaxis of VitD3+K2, Vit C, zinc, a zinc ionophere ie quercetin & ivermectin or black seed oil with N-acetylcysteine thrown in to help with mitrochondrial repair & to degrade any graphene oxide which has made it into your system.
The thinking in these circles is that the bioweapon was seeded in the 2019 flu jabs to then get the bioweapon injection into as many arms as possible through fear. The data hidden in the Pfizer document dump warns against skin to skin contact if pregnant or planning a pregnancy for about 1 month after injection. Why??
We’re at war with these hidden & not so hidden actors who are pushing for a One World Government, the bioweapons for which have long been in the planning.
Thanks for the summary, HP. A bleak outlook indeed. I can’t think of an obvious answer to the increasing madness. I’m not too worried about myself, I’m fairly resilient in myself but I am worried for the youth of today.
I am terrified for the youth.
“Increased surveillance” would expand the market for the proponents, but at the expense of diverting worthwhile resources for normal people, perhaps. Appropriately elected politicians, and the associated governments, need to remember who they are supposed to serve, not the other way round, and put global organisations back in their place.
“Public health”
Has been turned into an oxymoron
I think we’d be better off without it
Going for a walk in the fresh air and sunshine is one of the healthiest things you can do, especially if you take a dog which ensures that you get to chat to other dog owners you meet.
Public health guidelines in Spring 2020 recommended minimising that activity.
Every single NPI introduced under Covid1984 measures was intended to seriously undermine public health.
Every Single One.
I agree with you.
Every single one was experimental as a medical intervention, therefore every single one was unlawful if one consented to not participate in a medical experiment.
Spot on. I have come to know quite a few people via their dogs; they are naturally sociable animals.
Public health is an oxymoron (the Latin contradictio in adiecto describes this even better). Health is necessarily always a property of individuals, at least insofar the kind of health supposed to be maintained with the help of the health system is concerned.
Bill Gates still thinks that viruses can be eliminated by the application of money, c.f. the early viruses that affected his software and the ‘patches’ that were provided. He is so far up his own anus that he cannot tell the differences between humans and machines. His sycophantic operatives were Farrer and Fauci.
Simple answer is to not get involved with anything he funds.
Great quote by Dr Mike Yeadon regarding Covid
‘’I tried to follow the science, but it was simply not there – I then followed the money, that’s where I found the science.’’ Dr Mike Yeadon
That’s a great remark hadn’t heard it before. Thank God for people like Mike Yeadon.
Seconded
Message to the WEF : Don’t worry the people will do it for you.
I recall that some time time back, possibly around about when the development of the first Covid 19 Vaccines were announced, Bojo claimed that the UK would become a world leading vaccine manufacturer (or something of that nature). The MHRA has now evolved from a regulator to an ‘enabler’ for the Pharmaceutical Industry and recently was the first to authorise the new bivalent vaccine. It seems that the UK may well have a prebooked first class ticket on the PPR gravy train?
The City of London is the Banker for the World…. It is at the centre of all of this.
Trying to be optimistic, whilst I have very little trust in Truss, she will be challenged to be even worse than Bunter.
By similar thought process, other than following Pol Pot’s process, it will be challenging to devise a worse approach to public health and wellbeing, than the ludicrous and frankly evil policies of the last two and a half years.
For a start, WEF, World Bank, WHO, Bill and Melinda, CEIF and all the rest should accurately be described as terrorist organisations and banned.
The likes of Whitty, Vallance, Ferguson, Michie, Hunt and Farrar should be arrested and charged for the crimes they committed.
I’m not holding my breath. But anything much less will fail to stop the rot
It seems to me we need to reconstitute a new very competently scientific based government advisory body to replace the majority of clowns in the SAGE committe that contributed to so much damage over Covid. They should have top knowledge and experience in the field they are advising on with members aware of all aspects of the effects of advice they give.They should use not only their own resources but be able to properly investigate alternative advice and be inteligent enough to establish a correct and balanced view of the advice they give. Something that was missing from the last shambles. To output responsibility to external groups like WHO or the new entities being setup to control what governments can do should not be in control of what our government can do, as they all will have bias in one form or another particularly from those who are financing them.
SAGE was the acting government of England and the supposedly elected government just a bit of traditional red tape sometimes stopping it from directly issueing orders to the civil service (optimistic perspective). And the known figureheads were just the tip of the fatberg. In principle, everybody with the right academic titles willing to support its general policy was entitled to contribute to its ‘advice’. This model of government can’t be fixed. It has to be abolished forever.
Those that stated that the whole covid reaction by governments, including throwing out the existing pandemic response plans and the one solution of Vax only while outlawing early treatments, were all painted as conspiracy theory nuts! So Bill Gates traveling the world before the lockdowns, getting private meetings with Prime Ministers was entirely innocent! These are very powerful and well funded entities that see a huge cash cow in rich countries treasuries. Need a cash flow? Create a virus! They certainly have the ability. Our elected hapless politicians are no match for these organizations. The “Deep State” is alive and well and getting larger by the minute.