A major leader of the Brexit movement, Nigel Farage, has just had his decades-old bank accounts closed, allegedly for “commercial” reasons, while seven additional banks have apparently refused to have him as a customer. Until we have independent evidence of what is really going on with Farage’s accounts, we cannot definitively rule out the possibility that the bank has closed his accounts for legitimate commercial reasons. But even if this particular account closure had nothing to do with political prejudice, there is no denying that the past couple of years have produced more than one isolated incident of banking services penalising customers for political or ideological reasons.
For instance, in Canada, we saw banks instructed by the Trudeau administration to freeze the accounts of protesters against vax mandates. In the United States, we saw Paypal briefly introduce a policy authorising it to close the accounts of customers it found guilty of “misinformation.” Among the victims of their new policy was Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, who saw three of his Paypal accounts abruptly suspended in 2022. A church minister recently reported on GB News that his bank account had been suspended for objecting to the transgender ideology being propagated by his bank.
These worrying precedents suggest that some providers of commercial services like credit cards and loans seem to think it is their job to make sure their customers have the “right” opinions on transgender ideology, the politics of vax mandates, and God knows what else. Their role as mere providers of commercial services does not appear to be sufficient for them: they feel the need to withhold their services from individuals who espouse political or scientific opinions they happen to disapprove of. Perhaps they think they need to purge society of such opinions, or perhaps they think people with such opinions are simply not worthy of their services.
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Of course, you might say, “if you don’t like your bank, go find another one.” And if it were just one idiosyncratic bank that decided to target customers on political or ideological grounds, you would be right: in that case, it might not be such a big deal, because you could just go to another bank, and put the whole sorry episode behind you.
But when the talibanisation of banking starts to become a society-wide tendency, or the banks involved are so enormous that they exercise a major hold over global payment systems (e.g. Paypal) upon which customers’ livelihoods may depend, then a customer with the “wrong” political opinion may well end up having to either face a major business setback (say, the overnight loss of all of their Paypal customers), or be effectively driven into exile in another country, where life is more tolerable.
Imagine a society in which outspoken conservatives, or Brexiteers, or libertarians, or socialists, were systematically locked out of banking services: those dissenting openly from the political views of the banking establishment would be condemned to live as economic pariahs: no mortgage, no credit card, and no way to conduct a normal business. Citizens would effectively forfeit their right to buy and sell, or participate in a market economy in a normal way, just because they expressed opinions disapproved of by the banking establishment.
Banks would then become instruments of political persecution and totalitarian groupthink instead of institutions devoted to the provision of banking services to the citizenry at large. The price of political dissent would become far too high for many citizens. The public square would quickly degenerate into an echo-chamber of opinions approved by the banking establishment.
Since bankers are not infallible gods, the opinions they approve may be right, wrong, or plain crazy. Either way, under a talibanised banking system, such opinions would face little opposition. After all, most citizens, if forced to choose between expressing dissenting opinions, and surviving economically, would choose economic survival. And many who cannot bear losing their political voice would probably emigrate to a country where banks still provide their services to citizens without regard to their political opinions, leaving behind them a citizenry that is like putty in the hands of its banking masters.
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THis has been coming for a long time. For example I get a direct deposit of SSI. They don't want to mail me a check. I am going to try to get them to.
At anytime they can say I no longer exist. They have no record of my existence, etc. The banks can say I no longer exist. That the paper trail I provide is fraudulent as they have no record of my existence.
This can happen to little people. Because we have no power to compel them to go to court. Nor can we afford to take them to court.
Then I am on the street. It doesn't matter I have paid in to SSI for 40+ years. I don't exist. I have never had a SarCov2 Jab. No record. I am a non person. This nightmare is just around the corner. It isn't the Taliban it is the religious mafia. Same as in the middle ages.
With the recent Supreme Court decision allowing the Christian graphic artist to choose who they would do business with and who they would not, based on their personal beliefs. How then could this decision transfer to institutions like banks? I understand that the graphic artist in question here is a small business not publicly traded, and the banks are just the opposite, but it does not seem like much of a stretch to see the same rationale used for corporations. I remember signs in many places (small business') stating that they reserved the right to refuse to serve anyone for any reason. Thanks.