Silicon Valley Apartheid is real. FreeStartr cannot currently collect
funds because Silicon Valley Mafia blacklisted them!
I
thought I might share a few thoughts with you on what I regard as the
biggest issue of our time: tech apartheid.
Silicon
Valley wants you to believe that it is a force for good but the evidence
of its bias and fraudulent dealings couldn’t be more obvious even to a
fair, impartial observer.
Most
recently this duplicity concerns payment processing, namely the
fraudulent company Stripe which canceled FreeStartr’s account despite
record low chargebacks. FreeStartr wasn’t alone. All of those companies
who had their accounts suspended — Bitchute (a YouTube competitor),
MakerSupport (a Patreon competitor), and FreeStartr.com (a
Patreon, Kickstarter competitor)– were created by Trump supporters.
This
canceling of our business was done for political reasons by Edwin Wee, a
Democratic political operative turned Stripe employee, and it exposes
the libertarian lie that one can simply just go and create a competitor
if one dislikes Silicon Valley ventures. You can’t. We need to get over
that canard.
I’ll
delve into the parochial issues concerning FreeStartr’s banning from
Stripe later, but I am thoroughly convinced that if action isn’t taken
in the very near future, our politics will be permanently titled to the
far left for the foreseeable future. Ask your congressmen, your friends,
to speak out on this issue and take necessary corrections.
We’ve
had other discussions about the censorship and Google, Facebook, and
Twitter, and yes, those trends are extremely worrisome. But what I’m
talking about here as concerns Stripe and PayPal is far more dangerous
both for politics and for our society writ large.
Every
regime has scapegoats, and ours is no different. Whether you’ve
participated in a Twitter mob and/or been its target, you know its
power. Ours is a herd based species, and it is quite disturbing the
speed with which mores can shift. What was once commonplace — big game
hunting, smoking, corporal punishment, etc., — become frowned upon, then
the province of cranks, and ultimately unthinkable. There is
increasingly good social science evidence for how this process unfolds —
where a small minority changes the standards of behavior in a
population. Sometimes these changes are so abrupt as to be jarring and
yes, even violent. Twitter mobs force you off of their platforms and
begin the practice of targeting your employment, your spouse’s
employment, etc. until you are ruined. There is no due process here.
This
is not dissimilar from the ancient punishments of exile or death. To be
fired from your job for your politics constitutes a kind of death; it is
certainly a form of exile. This kind of tribalism terrorism will
undoubtedly increase precisely because it is so effective at cowing the
other side and the costs of the targeting are so cheap.
Stopping
this violence is very important, but I fear ultimately futile if we no
longer have standards.
So
let me be clear about mine. What FreeStartr.com stands
for is the culture that undergirds the U.S. Constitution, particularly
the Bill of Rights. That culture might be elusive to the Stripe
co-founders, Patrick and John
Collison, who were born in Ireland so permit me to America-splain.
The
First Amendment isn’t just for the loon on the street corner; it must
ultimately apply to the tech companies. The Second Amendment isn’t for
muskets; it must apply to AR-15s. The Fourth Amendment isn’t just for
papers but for electronic surveillance.
And
yes, the Sixth Amendment is useless if you don’t have the means of
paying for your defense, whether through patronage, piggy banks, or your
own fundraising. We Americans believe that everyone is entitled to his
day in court. Our history is replete with the good winning out in court
against all the odds.
Spending
your money as you want is as American as barbecue on Independence Day.
You have the right to do whatever you want with your consumerism or
generosity. We are a generous people. It is this insight on which I
built Freestartr with Stripe as a partner. I hid Stripe’s involvement
with our site because Stripe asked me to and together we have raised
millions for legal defenses for the marginalized. I kept quiet our
business relationship because I know Stripe is colonized by far left
liberals.
Stripe,
by barring FreeStartr.com, is denying all of the
people who have raised money and all of the people who might raise money
their day in court. It’s un-American. Even the Nazis got lawyers at
Nuremberg. And some of those lawyers were even Jews. But not in Silicon
Valley.
Stripe’s
action is likely illegal. Banks aren’t allowed to just bar customers,
especially after President Trump abolished Operation Chokepoint. Patrick
Collison, Stripe’s CEO, opposes Operation
Chokepoint.
Stripe
seems to be deliberately shutting down businesses whose politics it
doesn’t like. Political orientation is a protected category in
California. There have been cases brought against businesses that refuse
to serve conservatives or liberals. Why not Stripe?
If
Stripe’s move isn’t illegal, it is certainly fraudulent.
John
Collison, the co-founder of Stripe, personally assured me once on
the phone and once in the home of a Silicon Valley venture capitalist
that Stripe would allow FreeStartr to operate so long as we comply with
the law.
“The
tech industry has to be a place where anyone of any background can
thrive,” Patrick Collison, his brother, once claimed to Bloomberg on May
31st.
Not
if you are a white male conservative.
The
brothers Collison are frauds and liars.
Worse
yet, they seem to be attracting other frauds and perhaps criminals.
Stripe,
PayPal, and Square are working with the Southern Poverty Law Center, a
discredited linked to at least one terrorist organization.
The
way the Southern Poverty Law Center works is that they declare everyone
whose politics they don’t like to be Nazis or racists.
The
demand for Nazis or racists vastly exceeds their supply, so some people
are caught up in the crossfire, sometimes literally in the case of the
shooter who fired upon members of Congress and their staff playing
baseball.
Until
this group is investigated for the criminal fraud it has perpetrated on
donors it will continue to harm others.
~ Charles
C. Johnson, CEO FreeStartr