The War Continues

PayPal has banned and frozen the funds of the FLCCC alliance. A non-profit run by doctors fighting COVID19. As you might expect, I have thoughts.

Yesterday the FLCCC Alliance shared some pretty disturbing news with supporters. In addition to being banned by Teespring, LinkedIn and Vimeo; Facebook and PayPal are now also either outright banning activity or limiting the ability of the group to us the services those companies provide. PayPal's activity is probably the most egregious in my estimation because that company is straight up locking the FLCCC's funds for up to 6 months. FLCCC is the acronym for Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care. The group is a 501(c)(3) organization and is very clearly under attack by the corporate elites who really run this country. The FLCCC's sin? I can only guess it is under pressure because it promotes ivermectin as a COVID treatment.

The powerful forces of Big Tech, Big Pharma, government, health authorities, and mainstream media continue to suppress us. There is nothing false in anything that we post. This is an attack on our ability to fundraise, our free speech, and our efforts to share effective, safe COVID-19 prevention and treatment protocols to help people around the world stay out of the hospital -- and to save precious lives impacted by this dangerous virus.

via FLCCC

It's difficult for me to accurately describe how I feel about this. On one hand, I've never donated to the FLCCC. On the other, my kneejerk reaction was "fuck Teespring and PayPal." Those would be the only services mentioned in the FLCCC's newsletter that I still use. I dumped Facebook over a year ago. I got rid of my Google accounts, LinkedIn, and Vimeo a while back. But Teepsring and PayPal are services that I've used for my business. I don't like this. I don't like these companies refusing service to a health-focused non-profit because the establishment narrative says the organization is bad. There was a time when the establishment narrative said marijuana was bad but now that the healthcare/pharma industrial complex is in a position to benefit from legalization, marijuana is okay and legalization seems closer than ever. What is it going to take for us to have collectively seen enough?

What I'm doing

The war continues, it would seem. All of us should have seen this coming. I have been banging the table about censorship, demonetization, and owning your own platform since this cancel movement started to intensify back in January. I can't stress this enough, if you don't approve of this kind of action from these companies, I think you should probably start considering how far you're willing to go to let your displeasure with them be known. For me, that displeasure is strong enough that I'm willing cut ties. My Teespring store is now gone. I won't be doing business with that company anymore.

Anyone here who has purchased a premium membership directly from my website knows my payment processor has been PayPal. Starting today, that relationship is now over. I will no longer be using PayPal as a payment intermediary. Your memberships are still safe. You have nothing to worry about there. It just means when the time comes to renew we may have to manually transact between each other. Thank goodness for cryptocurrencies, amirite?

This is also why I value Substack's policy on freedom of speech to the degree that I do. You can subscribe to my site over there as well and get the same content if that's easier for you. Substack's payment processor is Stripe. My preference, obviously, is that we eliminate the middleman expense altogether and transact on a peer to peer basis for membership directly through the site. We have everything we need to do that.

I know my line

I will never support suppression of speech freedom. Companies that suppress freedom in this way will no longer have my business. And this is not just about the FLCCC. It's about anyone who is trying to share information that goes counter-narrative who is getting silenced. It could be me next. It could be you. Enough is enough.

For God's sake, the Taliban has a Twitter account but Alex Berenson doesn't. That seems very silly. What is the line for you? What do you have to see to stop giving these companies your business? Only you can answer that for yourself. But I know where I stand. I'm not using their platforms. I'm not giving them my money. I'm not giving them my time. We don't have to always agree. You may not even agree with the FLCCC or what they're doing. That's fine! But we need to protect each other's ability to have a voice whether we agree with what is being said or not. Encourage debate and conversation. We are the ones who have the power to stop this. It is labor and the people who are really driving the bus. It's time we let these tyrants know it.

This planet is filled with injustice

As Americans, we overlook a lot of suspect shit that happens in this world because we benefit from not thinking about it. The sneakers on my feet were probably made in a sweatshop. The big bag of candy we bought today for Halloween is almost certainly made with chocolate sourced from slave labor cocoa plantations. My point is at times I feel like a hypocrite because I care about freedom enough that I'll boycott a payment processor but not Mars, Incorporated. I struggle with this, truly.

Maybe you feel the same. I think we just have to accept that we can't fight absolutely every war at all times. I could be wrong, and you might disagree, but to me the freedom to speak on a public platform and the freedom to grow a non-profit that corporate elites might not like seems like a starting point that makes sense. We can't wage other meaningful wars on injustice if we don't win this one first.

How can LinkedIn ban the FLCCC for "misinformation" yet continue to allow Herbalife on the networking app? A company that is literally a scam health and wellness firm that was fined $123 million for fraud and criminal activity can be on LinkedIn but a non-profit that is run by real doctors treating COVID can't? PayPal won't allow the FLCCC to receive donations through its service but you can still use PayPal to donate to the Children's Wish Foundation International; a Make-a-Wish knockoff that is, at best, horrible at using funds for serving ill children and a total fraud at worst.

This isn't going to end

You might not believe I'm going to say this, but I actually believe these companies all have the right to ban or deny service to whoever they want. The fact that I believe they have the right to do it doesn't mean I think it's good corporate policy. I really don't care for the arbitrary nature with which these policies seem to have been applied. I don't like that Big Tech and Big Pharma always seem to come out ahead when these demonetizations occur. As I said earlier, only you can decide how far you're willing to go if you want to hold these corporate overlords accountable for this.

You have to decide if companies that behave this way are companies that you want to support. You have to decide if companies that coerce their employees into making health decisions they don't want to make on behalf of the state are companies that you want to support. Maybe you're fine with that. I'm not. If you're like me, here's the good news; this is why we have cryptocurrency. This is why we have Web3. I've never been as bullish crypto and Web3 implementation as I am right now. If we're not allowed to participate in society because we think a certain way, so be it. We'll build another option.