Wednesday, August 23, 2017



PayPal is now LeftPal

PayPal banned Jihad Watch and the American Freedom Defense Initiative from receiving online donations using their platform because of the site’s “activities” after being designated as “hate sites” by left-wing groups.

Jihad Watch was reportedly banned from PayPal on Saturday after ProPublica – a George Soros funded investigative group – targeted the site and its director Robert Spencer (not to be confused with white nationalist Richard Spencer) in a hit piece that claimed the site was guilty of “extreme hostility toward Muslims.”

The assault on Jihad Watch began on Friday when Spencer received an email that he described as a “threatening” from ProPublica journalist Lauren Kirchner.

The email informed Spencer that she was including his site among a list of hate sites identified as such by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) – both widely considered to be left-leaning organizations.

The purpose of the hit piece published by ProPublica was clear: put pressure on tech companies that offer their platforms to sites that it deems as “hate sites.”

ProPublica specifically called out Amazon, PayPal, and Newsmax for maintaining partnerships with Jihad Watch. Hours after the outlet published its hit piece, Spencer received the following email from PayPal:

RE: Notice of PayPal Account Limitation Dear Robert Spencer, We have recently reviewed your usage of PayPal’s services, as reflected in our records and on your website https://www.jihadwatch.org.

Due to the nature of your activities, we have chosen to discontinue service to you in accordance with PayPal’s User Agreement. As a result, we have placed a
permanent limitation on your account. We ask that you please remove all references to PayPal from your website.

PayPal notified Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) on Monday that it was banning her site from its platform in a nearly identical email like the one received by Jihad Watch.

Spencer told The Daily Caller in an email that these attacks stem from the violence in Charlottesville, and the Left sees the tragedy as an opportunity to pounce on sites that it finds offensive.

“The Left sees blood in the water after Charlottesville and is moving in for the kill, attempting to delegitimize, silence and destroy all dissent,” he wrote. “The freedom of speech, the foundation of a free society, is being eroded away under our very noses.”

It is worth noting that PayPal has also banned many accounts that are tied to the “alt-right” after the SPLC identified them as “hate sites” or “hate groups.”

A report by CNN Tech found that PayPal blocked payments to the majority of the accounts listed by the SPLC, including Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute, Identity Evropa, Radical Agenda, and the Revolutionary Conservative.

Jihad Watch describes its purpose as “attempt[ing] to raise awareness about the activities of the global jihadists,” while the AFDI describes its objective as “go[ing] on the offensive when legal, academic, legislative, cultural, sociological, and political actions are taken to dismantle our basic freedoms and values.”

Robert Spencer called for people to boycott PayPal in a post on Jihad Watch which led to the hashtag #BoycottPayPal appearing on Twitter’s trending now list:

SOURCE




5 comments:

Anonymous said...


It is now time for a number of groups who have been listed as "hate groups" by the SPLC to sue them into oblivion for slander. A group like the SPLC which touts itself as an arbiter of who is a hate group cannot be also be reckless and arbitrary and absolutely cannot use partisanship as a basis for their decisions and yet has demonstrated they are indeed being reckless, arbitrary and highly partisan.

Move this to a courthouse and make them prove they based their decisions on hard factual data and not on someone's political agenda, something I'm pretty sure they will not only be unable to do but will expose the vile hatred of their own staff.

Bird of Paradise said...

Paypal is no ones pal so lets just tell them to Go Away

Anonymous said...

PayPal has restored the service to JihadWatch.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267653/overreach-paypal-bans-jihad-watch-then-backs-down-robert-spencer

Anonymous said...

Paypal is a private entity.
I may disagree with their decision and deplore their reasoning, but I must also uphold their right as a private business to choose whom they offer their services to within the limits set by law.

Anonymous said...

I have always "boycotted" PayPal by not using them.