Credit Card Companies Restore Donations to David Horowitz Group After Backlash

The liberal Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which maligns run-of-the-mill conservative groups as frequently as the sun comes up, erroneously labeled the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC) as a hate group.   Not surprising. Any organization that believes in traditional American values has been targeted and maligned by the SPLC… yet, the media continues to treat the SPLC as a legitimate source. They are — decidedly — not legitimate.

Just think about that for a moment.  This random and hateful — I’d dare say bigoted  — group, pretends to point out hate while actually doling out hate.  It defies logic.

Anyway, Visa and Mastercard — under political pressure from leftists — stopped receiving payments on behalf of the DHFC.

“We’re under attack by the SPLC,” the DHFC said. “For years, the SPLC has labeled the Freedom Center a hate group and tried to get organizations like Amazon, Facebook and Twitter to ban us and silence our message. Yesterday, SPLC finally convinced MasterCard and Visa to cut us off. Now we can’t process donations from any major credit card companies.”

The Daily Wire has more on the story:

The ban came immediately after Freedom Center employee Robert Spencer, editor-in-chief of Jihad Watch, had been kicked off the funding platform Patreon under pressure from Mastercard. Spencer has been in the SPLC’s crosshairs for years due to his strong criticism of radical Islam.

According to Breitbart News, an investigation into communications between Mastercard and payment processor Wordplay revealed the two outlets allegedly accusing the DHFC of “advocating for violence” while referencing the left-wing website bloodmoney.org. Before the DHFC could take retaliatory legal action, both Wordplay and Mastercard reversed the ban.

“Recently, we became aware of some merchants that had processing services inadvertently disabled without the proper internal reviews. Which was the case in this situation,” a Wordplay spokesman told Breitbart. “These merchants have had or are in the process of having their services re-enabled.”

Nothing like the fear of a lawsuit to clear the mind.  After intense public scrutiny, two credit card companies retracted their ban.

Good development, but it shouldn’t have to come to this.  America has always been a place that welcomes robust conversation from different viewpoints.  Kudos to David Horowitz for refusing the let the left push his organization to the outskirts of what is appropriate for our cultural conversation.

The conversation is more important now than ever.

Hat Tip: Daily Wire

Image Credit: Public Domain