I’ve written a comment piece for the Telegraph about PayPay’s decision to close the Daily Sceptic’s account, the Free Speech Union’s account and my personal account. Here’s an extract:
I appealed the decision in all three cases, but was unsuccessful. I wrote to the CEO of PayPal UK – Vincent Belloc – and got no reply. I contacted the Corporate Affairs Department, asking for some kind of explanation, and heard nothing.
Then, on Monday, I got a message on my Daily Sceptic PayPal account from someone in ‘Executive Escalations’ saying my ‘complaint’ – I hadn’t actually complained — had not been accepted. He didn’t say what I’d done wrong, but included this sentence, implying this was the rule I’d broken: “PayPal’s policy is not to allow our services to be used for activities that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance.”
I’m at a loss as to what the Daily Sceptic has ever published that could possibly fall into those categories, but I know from defending feminists at the FSU that ‘hate’ is often used to mean ‘a point of view I disagree with’.
For instance, last year we went in to bat for the women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen after she had a petition removed from Change.org. Her petition, which had several thousand signatures, asked the Oxford English Dictionary not to change the definition of woman from ‘adult human female’ to something else. Change.org removed it on the grounds that defining a woman that way was ‘hate speech’.
The view that sex, like gender, is a social construct and therefore not binary and immutable, is one of five sacred nostrums that you’re no longer allowed to challenge on most mainstream forums, particularly those owned by tech companies in Silicon Valley.
The others are: the lockdown policy and associated Covid restrictions were a prudent response to the pandemic; the mRNA vaccines are safe and efficacious; we’re in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’ and the only solution is to achieve ‘net zero’ by 2050 (preferably earlier); and the West should continue to supply arms and aid to Ukraine.
If you express scepticism about any of these holy precepts, you can expect to find yourself in trouble, whether it’s being kicked off social media platforms, no-platformed from university campuses, or being placed under investigation at work. Often, the people targeted for cancellation in this way are told it’s because they’re guilty of spreading ‘misinformation’ – another synonym for ‘a point of view I disagree with’, and, incidentally, a breach of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy.
The Daily Sceptic frequently publishes dissenting opinions about all five shibboleths, and I’ve expressed scepticism about the first four, so I suspect that’s why we’ve been demonetised by PayPal.
But why close the FSU’s account as well? The FSU is a non-partisan organisation and doesn’t have an opinion on any these issues, just defends the right of those who do to express them freely. For a big tech company to deplatform an individual for saying something politically contentious has become fairly commonplace over the last two or three years – even the president of the United States isn’t immune. But to demonetise an organisation merely for defending the right to free speech? That’s a new low.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Danny Kruger MP asked a question about PayPal’s closure of my accounts, as well as UsForThem’s account, in the House of Commons earlier today. You can see him asking it, and the response from the Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt, here.
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Good to see this issue getting some mainstream attention
The question from the MP is very well put, and Mordaunt’s answer completely misses the point in an astonishingly obtuse fashion – deliberate no doubt
Yes to consider it a failure of customer service rather than a contravention of a critical and fundamental principle of civilised democracy shows a) she’s utterly incapable of critical thinking or analysis b) unwilling to address the real issue, so is an enemy of freedom and the common man. This issue is that serious it is one or the other.
That’s because she and her stable mates are the cause not the solution.
But did you notice he openly stated that we’re moving towards a “cashless economy”?
I was one of the very few on this website, under my old pseudonym (J4mes) roughly two years ago, who warned that this was part of their agenda (for which I was tarred and feathered). I said that we will soon lose cash and the government, via banks and giant corporations, would monitor our behaviour and punish us monetarily if we step out of line.
It then it became clear that the social credit system being used by communist China was a global goal. We’re already moving into that phase of their revolution.
Like it or not, we are moving towards a cashless society. I like it not!!
Part of it is inflation: a weekly shop in a supermarket for three of us in our house is now over £100. I don’t carry that sort of money around in my wallet routinely. I like to use cash, but all too often, I find I don’t have enough in my wallet or I need to keep some back for something else. Certain people, such as our window cleaner and our hairdresser’s salon, I always pay cash.
Another issue is that people are shopping online much of the time. I could waste an hour walking around Tesco’s looking for yet another product that has been moved, or I could put in a click and collect order and dash up to the superstore and back in 15 minutes. I love reading, but many of the books I like aren’t on the shelves or shops in town (Hard Case Crime for example!) So I buy from Blackwell’s, Waterstones or Amazon. The secondhand book shops have all disappeared from town, so I buy via AbeBooks (owned by Amazon!) It gives book shops some money, but Amazon takes a cut and I obviously make an electronic transaction.
What I don’t understand is the need to abolish cash altogether. I can’t understand why we can’t continue to have both cash and ‘card’, unless it’s about being able to control us by being able to seize and lock down our assets at will.
Please use Hive for buying books online…it’s hive dot co dot uk. They support independent bookshops and you can get any books through the website and pick them up from your nominated bookshop. We need these bookshops more than ever now. We don’t need Amazon!
Yes, telling that Mordaunt seems to turn into an indistinct vapour when confronted by this question..
Her answer was waffly and far from confident – bit of a giveaway.
I think it’s a case of ‘put it on the list to debate and go away while the Opposition digs some dirt to defame the people whose free speech is being blocked!’
Mordaunt is a Gates shill. He wrote an introduction to a book she published recently.
Not surprising about Mordaunt and confirmation that we dodged a bullet when she failed in the Conservative Party leadership election.
Its also noteworthy that she gave no undertaking to actually do anything about this, could it be because of her own issues about Toby?
It is Governments – the politicians in them – in so-called ‘free’ democracies who have enabled, encouraged, supported this behaviour by tech companies and others. They have been speaking about ‘misinformation’ which challenges Government policy and ‘The Science’ and the possibility of legislation to stop it, and that the only source of ‘truth’ is Government. The US Government has even contacted tech companies telling them what they should be censoring. Governments are desperate to censor internet content.
Already we have seen Government’s seize private property from those organising or supporting opposition to Government edicts, and Russian citizens who have not been convicted of any crime, and forced banks to freeze or close accounts of those Governments don’t like.
And yes, the slippery slope argument applies. How soon before water, gas, electric, phone services will be denied organisations or individuals who are not ‘right thinking’?
The start point is not the tech companies, but our politicians.
I remember the inspired thinking of Mr Michael Howerd in the mid 1990s when he changed his name by deed poll to “Yorkshire Bank Are Fascist Bastards” over a disputed £20 charge. (https://www.marketingweek.com/yorkshire-bank-loses-its-good-name/). What fun it would be if “Paypal Are Fascist Bastards” were to take Paypal to court. The case would certainly reach a wider audience.
Look at the top ten US companies by market cap. Majority are the big tech players. None of whom existed >40 years ago.
All wield far greater power, reach and influence than any state or MSM broadcaster could have ever dreamed of back in the good ole days.
When each of those tech firms are >20% owned and controlled by the same ‘passive’ investment funds (Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street, Berkshire Hathaway) who incidentally all share the same neo-Marxist, globalist ESG worldview, we can rightly expect the direction of travel of these tech firms to become more paternalistic, censorious and intolerant of diverse opinions. There is no longer a public square.
The irony is that I am still banned by the Daily Telegraph from commenting BTL on this very article by Toby that they have published on their site.
Apparently I was posting Covid ‘conspiracy theories’.
I got blocked one time for posting ‘COVID disinformation’ there. My ‘crime’ was that in a discussion about unvaccinated people being allowed on aeroplanes, I jokingly responded to a fanatical jab advocate that if he had enough jabs, he would might mutate and grow wings, and thus no longer need to worry about unvaccinated people on aircraft. Clearly the moderator had no sense of humour!!
They wouldn’t be able to publish Rod Liddle either if they don’t get humour.
PHE must have been banned too then, with that rubbish they were publishing implying anyone who had ever tested positive for “covid” was a “covid death”
I closed my Paypal account today.
I’m not helping to fund a company which is trying to destroy free speech.
I note the MP’s assumption that we are moving towards a cashless society. It is up to all of us to obstruct their plans.
Use cash …. or you’ll lose it and any privacy along with it.
Exactly right. We need a movement that will stand candidates who oppose measures that give the state the power to control how we spend our money and compel us to ration what we buy based on the fraud of personal carbon allowances.
I didn’t take it as an assumption, rather an admission that this is their mission. They’re also coming in to take down crypto currency. They’re preparing us for the social credit system.
Conveniently, inflation means that we either have to carry more cash than we’re comfortable with or use digital transactions.
Saw some thoughts about the influence of the World Economic Forum that might be relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUrMQE2tu5w It’s Bob Moriarty talking from a financial point of view but is very long and the sound isn’t great.
I’m getting worried economically and I’m probably making poor decisions. But you’ll not make people want to become slaves if you allow them to communicate with each other or let them see any non-approved information.
The paypal ban is just another crackdown. The legal but harmful thing in the online safety bill will be one after that. Lockdowns were just an experiment to see what they need to fix before they have the next crisis.
Thanks Toby and everyone else on here for your work. We’ll support you. I don’t always agree with everything on here just because nothing is ever black and white. But it’s really important to be able to see both sides.
Well, Truss is another WEF graduate…
I just cancelled my PayPal account, with this message:
My cancellation is in direct response to your decision to suspend the account of The Daily Sceptic. As that site is best known for publishing viewpoints that are skeptical of progressive orthodoxy, yours is surely a politically motivated decision. And I will not do business with any company that so limits its services.
You have become an enemy of free thought and open debate.
History will judge you harshly.
Excellent.
I think the big issue here is the question of whether and when private companies in general can do almost whatever they want to do.
Conservatives have for a long time argued that way, not withstanding the fact that in reality this isn’t really the case, as anti-discrimination laws have been made valid for them as well.
I personally see no difference between discriminating and preventing access against a gay or black person and against an unvaxxed/vaxxed, unmasked with exemption/masked or anti-gendering/gendering person, but sadly, erroneously, illegitimately and illegally many governments, businesses, police forces and judges now do.
The real leader of the Free World and the Free People, Ron DeSantis, fully grasps this, acted and acts this way and him becoming POTUS and his assessment then spreading globally is probably our best hope.
https://americanmind.org/salvo/florida-versus-davos/
Possibly aided and abetted by that ruling and the SCOTUS one to come, which whilst it concerns media platforms in the first instance, its reasoning extends directly to other businesses like banks, card cos and PayPal.
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/twitter-and-facebook-and-youtube?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Fingers xd.
Another one:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/government-privatized-censorship-regime
and:
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2022/september/22/masters-of-deceit-the-government-s-propaganda-of-fear-mind-control-brain-warfare/
“This is a government that lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn; treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to be bought, sold, bartered, traded, and tracked; and wages wars for profit, jails its own people for profit, and has no qualms about spreading its reign of terror abroad.
Worse, this is a government that has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.
With every passing day, it becomes painfully clear that this is not a government that can be trusted with your life, your loved ones, your livelihood or your freedoms.”
And sadly, that now extends to most of the judiciary and all of the mainstream media and that globally in the former Free World.
Defining “woman” as “adult human female” is ‘hate-speech’? That’s genius. If it was a court case, I’d say “I rest my case”!
I think that Toby should have noted in the Telegraph article that Paypal’s share price has dropped by 67% over the past 12 months. Their own investors have lost confidence in the management and as more and more competitors emerge in the payments space, Paypal will, hopefully, cease to exist.
That’s good to know. They do not deserve to be in business. I know a lot of decent people and organisations depend on them but I am sure there are other means of payment available.
I absolutely agree and support Toby, we have to vote with our feet. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube( apart from the latter the two former I have never used), all started and operated by faceless super wealthy people, Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg admitted a few weeks ago he takes his orders from the FBI, and presumably the CCP, likewise Twitter. Paypal seems to follow the same narrow set of Government and Oligarch spouted dogma, likewise organisations such as Gofund me, when they colluded with Justin Trudeau over the Truckers protest.
These are deeply immoral and unethical beings and entities, who have zero concern for people including children as exemplified in the cancelling of Us for Them, their true and only goal is power and the accrued benefits that go with it. They preach a religion which they have constructed, which they hold the rules for, and which they will force on to us and control us with, they tried it with fear, through Covid, and the devices of Lockdown and isolation, they like Cromwell and Henry the V111, introduced the new religion, this time one of the vaccine and mandates, and as with those times all refuseniks of the new religion are to be treated as heretics and removed from society. Now they seek to double down with the removal of cash.
How many places do you visit now which will not accept cash? Thus placing us and the businesses who trustingly follow into the hands of the Merchants who can at will refuse our cards, and raise the transaction fee on the vendor,
Likewise with bank accounts, now to even access your own account on line, you need a phone, a card reader, and a code from the bank or the credit card company to have access to your own money, and if you pay a bill they ask who and what is it for. Who voted for this?, Bank buildings with people are closing down as you may have noticed so are cash machines thus reducing the opportunity to access it.
A cashless society, is a society that has allowed the likes of those who run Twitter, Facebook and Paypal to decide if you are a true believer in their God like status to tell you how to think, what to say, what to write and how to behave. These people are deranged and deluded by their vast sums of money, time to let them know they are anything but God like.
P.S. I hope in weeks to come Toby confirms that as a result of Pay pals decision more people have put money behind his operations.
Terrific post.
I cancelled my PayPal account today. Solidarity brother!