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Everyone is talking about debanking after President Trump brought it out into the open.
“I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America,” President Trump warned Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan.
Bank of America claimed that “we welcome conservatives and have no political litmus test.”
The David Horowitz Freedom Center knows that’s not true because Bank of America, through its Merrill Lynch subsidiary, was one of the many financial institutions that ‘debanked’ us.
We led the battle against debanking, taking on financial titans worth over half a trillion dollars, bringing attention to the crisis across media outlets and emerging from it with a rare victory.
As a new White House and Congress prepare to tackle debanking, here are some of our experiences and the lessons we learned from taking on corporate political discrimination.
In the summer of 2018, MasterCard warned that it would no longer process payments to us because we had appeared on a list of hate groups published by Color of Change: a Southern Poverty Law Center front group with ties to former Obama administration officials.
MasterCard later told us that “the organization Color of Change has published an updated website named bloodmoney.org and within it has listed a number of merchants that purport to accept Mastercard and have content which is hateful in nature. .. [and] which may be advocating for violence. We have identified the sites below as belonging to your institution.”
Color of Change had led the ‘Bloodmoney’ campaign to ‘debank’ the Freedom Center and other conservative groups, and would brag that “over the past year, our pressure has helped push PayPal and MasterCard to remove their services from dozens of hate sites.”
After a legal and media pressure campaign, and fearing a response from the Trump administration and a Republican congress, MasterCard backed down. But after Biden took office and Democrats seized control of Congress, a new wave of corporate cancellations arrived.
In 2021, First Foundation Bank closed the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s bank account because of our “controversial positions on certain issues.” The financial services company conducted DEI struggle sessions where participants were “encouraged to reflect on implicit biases”. No word on whether those biases involved political biases against conservatives.
A few years after First Foundation Bank had debanked the David Horowitz Freedom Center because of our “controversial positions on certain issues”, its president editorialized against a Florida bill that banned banks from ‘debanking’ customers for their political beliefs, claiming that there was no such thing as debanking and that no banks would ever do such a thing.
“Banks are in the business of opening accounts, not closing them, and it is simply not in a bank’s vested interest to close an account without proper justification,” he claimed.
The David Horowitz Freedom Center being debanked because of our “controversial positions on certain issues” however proved why legislation like this is needed to end debanking abuses.
Florida had set out to protect both shareholders and customers from corporate leaders who put politics ahead of profits. Defenders of debanking claimed that the law threatened “free markets”, but the Freedom Center’s case shows that what really threatens free markets is the political persecution of customers.
That same year, the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, where the Freedom Center had held its annual Restoration Weekend for 19 out of 27 years, informed us that we were no longer welcome to come back because of our “controversial speakers”. Who they were, we were not told, but the speakers that weekend included former Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer, TPUSA leader Charlie Kirk, journalist Miranda Devine, Jihad expert Robert Spencer and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
The Breakers now prides itself on DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) rather than on hospitality and customer service. The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust, controlled by the Kenan family which owns the Breakers, had come to support BLM adjacent groups like Black Voices for Black Justice Fund and the National Black Justice Coalition, and it had provided $100,000 to Color of Change the same year as the hotel banished the Center.
The hotel that we and other conservative groups had held events at not only banished us, but was actively funding the radical leftist organization working to cancel and debank us.
Over the years, the David Horowitz Freedom Center was debanked over and over again.
After being debanked by First Foundation and MasterCard/Visa, we were also debanked by Merrill Lynch: GoFundMe and other crowdfunding services have also banned the Center.
But what is especially outrageous is that not only the financial institutions involved, like First Foundation, but even the leftist groups who organized debanking campaigns, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, have now taken to denying that conservative groups are being debanked.
After state legislation to stop debanking in Florida, Tennessee and other states, as well as congressional testimony by victims of debanking, the Southern Poverty Law Center denied it all.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has taken to claiming that debanking is a “conspiracy theory” and that victims were spreading the “false narrative that private sector banks have been dropping conservative religious clients since the Obama administration.”
The Color of Change campaign that targeted the David Horowitz Freedom Center was based on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s lists of ‘hate groups’. Color of Change and the SPLC were and are closely intertwined. James Rucker, the executive director and co-founder of Color of Change, was a board member of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Sakira Cook, the SPLC’s director of federal policy, was Color of Change’s foreign vice president of campaigns.
A Fast Company report described how debanking was “a tag-team effort between SPLC… and Color of Change” which “resulted in the Blood Money petition” Heidi Beirich, the SPLC’s former suppression guru, admitted to having “provided all our correspondence” to Color of Change while Color of Change’s leader credited the SPLC’s database of “hate groups” which included the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
In 2019, the SPLC’s Intelligence Report ran an editorial, ‘When Dollars Matter More Than Decency’, complaining that MasterCard, PayPal and other companies weren’t doing more debanking. In Congressional testimony in 2020, an SPLC official boasted of originating the campaign to force tech companies to push out ‘hate groups’, and claimed credit for the debanking of the Freedom Center, quoting, in its own words, “anti-Muslim hate leader David Horowitz” saying that “the reason Mastercard and Visa gave us for cutting us off and thus sabotaging our online fund-raising operation is that the SPLC told them that we were a hate group.”
Seven years after launching a campaign to debank political opponents, including the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the SPLC now accuses its victims of spreading a “conspiracy theory” and a “false narrative” for describing its own campaigns to cut off our financial lifelines.
‘Debanking’ was part of a larger campaign by the Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies to end the ability of its political opponents to sell tickets, rent spaces and use online services.
Amazon banned us from its ‘Smile’ program because the SPLC had smeared us as a “hate group”. Disqus, Front Page Magazine’s commenting platform, told us that we were nowbanned because we had been listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center on its ‘Hate Map’.
Bans from other providers and platforms, including YouTube and Vimeo, soon followed.
Today, the David Horowitz Freedom Center has survived all the debanking and deplatformings and is still here and still fighting. And the tide has turned so thoroughly that the Southern Poverty Law Center, the radical leftist group behind it all, is denying that it ever happened.
But the SPLC is not pausing in its efforts to smear us.
In 2024, the Voice of America, a federal funded media outlet, labeled the Center a “hate group” and “anti-Muslim group” because of our coverage of the Hamas attacks of Oct 7.
But despite everything, the David Horowitz Freedom Center is still here. After The Breakers found our speakers too controversial, we went on to convene our latest Restoration Weekend at a far superior Florida hotel with top speakers in attendance. We beat the SPLC effort to get MasterCard to cancel us and after YouTube and Vimeo canceled us, we switched to Rumble.
Every time the Freedom Center was canceled, we bounced back stronger than ever. And the Southern Poverty Law Center’s plot to debank us has backfired so badly, that the SPLC and some of the banks involved are running away from it.
It’s good that the Southern Poverty Law Center, Bank of America and other players in the debanking conspiracy are so afraid that they are denying their activities, but there needs to be real consequences and an accountable system of oversight to prevent it from happening again.
That’s why the David Horowitz Freedom Center is proposing that those financial institutions that engaged in debanking have to be investigated and have their communications subpoenaed to determine who within those institutions conspired to harm customers and defraud shareholders.
Compensation should be paid to victims of debanking and the organizations involved should sign consent decrees agreeing to accept a system of oversight to prevent future abuses.
Finally, there should be model statewide and federal legislation to end what has become the greatest civil rights crisis of our time. Politically motivated discrimination against consumers and businesses is finally being brought out into the light. Now it’s time to take action against it.
The experiences of the David Horowitz Freedom Center show that conservative organizations can survive financial political discrimination, but we should not have to do it alone.
Just as the David Horowitz Freedom Center led the way against debanking, we want to lead the fight to make sure that politically motivated debanking can never happen again.
“You’ve done a fantastic job,” Trump told Moynihan during a question and answer session, “but I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank – and that included a place called Bank of America… They don’t take conservative business.” “And I don’t know if the regulators mandated that because of Biden or what,” Trump continued, “But you and (JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon) and everybody – I hope you’re going to open your banks to conservatives, because what you’re doing is wrong.”
– President Trump to Bank of America CEO and arch scumbag Brian Moynihan at the World Economic Forum, January 23.
I saw that on TV. Real America’s Voice and Newsmax both played the clip quite a few times. Obviously he didn’t mean it when he said Moynihan had done a fantastic job. He compliments people he’s about to criticize on a regular basis. I’ve seen him say he wants banks to open their business to conservatives at least once from the Oval Office although if I remember correctly, he’s done it twice.
It looks like the Freedom Center and FPM have the most powerful man in the world on their side. I sure hope he continues to put the fear of Trump into that lowlife, Moynihan.
You’ll be glad to know I debanked BofA two years ago.
Had I known of this CEO prick at the time, I’d have added that fact to answering the guy handling my funds transfer to American National Bank of Texas.
He still got the overall message as the session ended & I joked to him “You’re fired.”
“Finally, there should be model statewide and federal legislation to end what has become the greatest civil rights crisis of our time.”
No! There’s certainly an existing law that deals with this. Your government has been making laws for more than 250 years you don’t need any more laws you need fewer laws.
This is a very sobering concept. It has needed a large voice for exposure and FP has now provided it. Good job! The other problem is…… they can easily do it to individuals during a “crisis”. Then your retirement savings and stocks etcetera will be frozen. The banks have a history of greed and incompetence. Remember 2008? That is the most recent example. Their government friends allowed them to use the FDIC fund not just for customers but for investors. This was not in the original law. We as a people have supported these institutions unknowingly many times. The babbling monkey said they were “too big to fail” I suspect a nice check went into his favorite charity along with all the DC crowd. I suggest a small state bank and gold or silver under your bed. Good luck!
Compensation plus PUNITIVE DAMAGES!
Yes, and the Trump Administration needs to classify the SPLC as a hate group. Give them a taste of their own medicine.
Wat be de prolim ?
If debank don want me, then I be using nother bank.
I den laugh my way to debank.
Debanking stops its victims from engaging in their normal activities. It is no walk in the park to another bank.
Where I be livn there be no park or bank. De bus riid to debank be liik thru a gauze astrip an it be a trip.
I be combinun cho to ride debus to de sto, debank, an DVD clinnk fo de sif. Make no miin wha debank.
It’s very fitting that the David Horowitz Freedom Center is named
after a man called David – as the Center battles and triumphs
against the banking Goliaths and their leftist allies.
I shudder to think of the sheer guts it takes to come up against
such powerful, wealthy institutions who have gone over to the
dark side – where the forces of darkness are capable of anything.
These forces throughout history have always gone after writers,
thinkers, scholars and journalists such as those at DHFC. IF
Kamala had won, it’s not hard to envision a future where they
would be rounded up and imprisoned or worse. Ordinary people
would eventually be debanked as well for “incorrect” associations
and views.
Even though a bank has no right to ask anyone or anything their
personal views about anything. It’s none of their business.
May God watch over and protect all those at the David Horowitz
Freedom Center ad keep them safe.
Southern Poverty Law Center has always been a Leftist scumbag smear agency.
The SPLC was honest for their first two years of operation, before they won that first case against the KKK in which they bankrupted those resurgent klansmen who hanged that man.
But then the courts granted the SPLC the right to collect against any innocent institution up front that it could name, shame and sue with any *plausibility* …..and the SPLC got greedy, from Morris Dees down through Chip Berlet to the bottom minions.
Meanwhile Judicial Watch is forcing the States to clean up their Voting Records and end voting by Illegal Aliens
I shared this far across my subdivisions. If you can’t speak without fear, you are not free.
Old Glory Bank!