Visa and Mastercard have blocked donations to a conservative think tank–after a far-left organization declared it a “hate group.”
In an email to supporters, the David Horowitz Freedom Center announced that they had been blocked by the two credit card giants after the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center put them on their list of hate groups, along with a number of other conservative groups.
“We’re under attack by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC),” the email 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,” the email continued. “Now we can’t process donations from any major credit card companies.”
“This blow could be the end of the Freedom Center,” they added. “Decades of work, down the drain because the hateful Left wants to squash free speech and silence an organization that dares to question them.”
In a statement to Breitbart News, Horowitz claimed that this was a corporate attack on conservative voices:
“It’s cynical, calculated and supported by the Democratic Party,” Horowitz said. “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.”
“It is wrong to focus on the Tech heads as the culprits because as businessmen they have a vested interest in keeping their platforms politically neutral,” he added. “They have been threatened by Senator Mark Warner [(D-Va.)] and other Democrats if they don’t censor conservatives. The fact that Mastercard and Visa are now part of this juggernaut indicates how dangerous this has become.”
Neither Visa nor Mastercard has commented on the accusation.
