UPDATE: Will Sommer replied with this: “Hey Robert, gonna have to take a pass on this, although rest assured I know you’re not the same person as Richard Spencer.” He left all the other questions unanswered. Leftist “journalists” don’t have to answer to their targets!
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Virtually nothing in this Daily Beast celebratory piece over Patreon dropping me is accurate, starting with the opening claim that I found out about the ban when I logged into Patreon “to see how much money [I] had raised.” In reality, I found out about the ban in an email from Patreon.
Remember: the Nazis operated in exactly this way, first barring those they hated from holding various professions and making it impossible for them to make a living. Sommer and his ilk are quintessential neo-fascists.
A little while ago I sent far-Left “journalist” Will Sommer these questions. I’ll let you know if he answers!
Hi Will. I’m doing a story about far-Left propagandists masquerading as “journalists,” and I have a few questions for you. Thanks in advance for your answers!
1. On what basis did you label me “far right” in your Daily Beast article? My work is dedicated to defending the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law. Do you regard defense of those principles to be “far-right”? Or do you regard opposition to jihad mass murder of innocent civilians and Sharia oppression of women, gays and others to be “far right”?
2. You quote Beirich of the SPLC rejoicing that money is not going to “neo-Nazis and white supremacists,” and in this incoherent sentence, you strongly imply that I myself am a white supremacist: “White supremacist groups have been financially under pressure online since the fatal 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia Spencer’s views, on the other hand, are relatively mainstream within the Republican Party and right-wing media, suggesting that a broader enforcement from the credit card companies could be ahead.” Certainly readers of your article will get the impression that I am indeed a neo-Nazi and white supremacist, especially since you have Beirich claiming that Color for Change pressured MasterCard to drop me, and that Color For Change works against white supremacists. On what aspects of my work do you base this false and libelous implication? Can you produce even one statement from me, from 18 books, thousands of articles, and 50,000 blog posts, that gives even a hint of support for white supremacy? Or are you just taking the SPLC’s word for it? Are you aware of the Maajid Nawaz case and of how thoroughly the SPLC has been discredited as an authority on what constitutes a “hate group”?
3. Are you aware that I am not Richard Spencer and had nothing to do with the Charlottesville rally? Or do you know that I am not Richard Spencer but don’t care, as you believe that wanting to establish a white ethnostate is the same thing as opposing jihad mass murder and wanting to defend free societies, and so are happy to mention Charlottesville so as to confuse people about who I actually am and what I stand for? Did you fill your article with references to alleged white supremacist groups because you actually believe that I am a white supremacist, or because you wanted to manipulate your readers into thinking so?
4. You claim I have made a number of “anti-Muslim statements.” Do you really think opposing jihad terror and Sharia oppression is “anti-Muslim”? Do you believe opposition to Nazism during World War II was “anti-German”?
5. You claim that in my “2017 memoir that [I’m] fine with being ‘the right kind of Islamophobe.’” Are you aware that the book in question was not actually a memoir? Are you aware of the context of the statement, which was that I noted that any opposition to jihad terror and Sharia oppression was labeled “Islamophobic,” and stated that everyone should actually oppose jihad terror, Islamic anti-Semitism, stonings, amputations, the brutalization of women, etc., and thus become that kind of “Islamophobe”? Surely you oppose such things yourself, don’t you? Have you actually read the book? Did you make any attempt to ascertain the context of my statement, or did you include it as you did only because you knew that it would make your readers regard me with distaste? Since the answer to the last question is obvious, it leads to a further question: do you really regard this kind of manipulation of your readers as “journalism,” or should it more properly be termed “propaganda”?
Thanks again. I look forward to seeing your “answers’!
Regards
Robert
“Far Right Fuming After Big Finance Chokes Off Money Flow,” by Will Sommer, Daily Beast, August 21, 2018:
Far-right blogger Robert Spencer logged into fundraising site Patreon last week expecting to see how much money he had raised in a new bid to build a studio for his YouTube videos. Instead, Spencer found out his nascent funding campaign was over about as soon as it had started: at Mastercard’s request, Patreon was kicking him off the platform.
“Mastercard has a stricter set of rules and regulations than Patreon, and they reserve the right to not offer their services to accounts of their choosing,” Patreon wrote in an email to Spencer, a leader in the “counter-jihad” movement. “This is in line with their terms of service, which means it’s something we have to comply by.”
Mastercard doesn’t own Patreon, and both companies were vague about what had prompted Mastercard to flag Patreon payments to Spencer.
In a statement on Spencer’s Patreon ban, Mastercard said it sometimes flags “questionable or illegal content.” Patreon, in a series of tweets, wrote that Mastercard “required us” to take down Spencer’s account.
That leaves Spencer, who received the couple of hundred dollars he had already raised on Patreon and said he doesn’t have a Mastercard himself, mulling a lawsuit.
Most of the conservative conversation about tech bias has focused on social media companies, with congressional Republicans holding hearings over what they say are unfair punishments from YouTube and purported “shadow-banning” on Twitter. But the next front in the clash between with Silicon Valley looks set to center instead on right-wing personalities’ pocketbooks, as fundraising platforms and payment processors crack down on the right.
White supremacist groups have been financially under pressure online since the fatal 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia Spencer’s views, on the other hand, are relatively mainstream within the Republican Party and right-wing media, suggesting that a broader enforcement from the credit card companies could be ahead.
While he’s made a number of anti-Muslim statements, including writing in his 2017 memoir that he’s fine with being “the right kind of Islamophobe,” he’s also regularly appeared on Fox News. Spencer told The Daily Beast that his ouster from Patreon is “obviously” the latest example of tech giants’ bias against conservatives.
Spencer blamed the Mastercard response on the Southern Poverty Law Center, the anti-racist group that has dubbed him an “extremist.” SPLC spokeswoman Heidi Beirich told The Daily Beast that Mastercard contacted the organization ahead of warning Patreon about Spencer’s account, although Beirich said the Mastercard response was prompted by a separate campaign from Color for Change, a group that has pressured financial companies to ban extremist figures.
In a press release last week, Color of Change said its members had pressed Mastercard to “take proactive steps to stop processing payments for white supremacist groups.”
“We want PayPal, we want Mastercard, we want all of them to stop servicing hate groups,” Beirich said….
Both Spencer and Johnson say they’re planning legal action over their payment issues. Like Spencer, Johnson blames the SPLC, claiming his site was targeted “because we allowed others to use our platforms to defend themselves against their lawfare.”
Asked about Johnson’s claim that the SPLC is behind Freestartr’s payment issue, Beirich said that much of the money that went through the site was sent to “bad guys.”
“We’re glad that money isn’t getting the hands of neo-Nazis and white supremacists,” Beirich said….