Counter-Currents Under Attack

Heidi Beirich wants to eat my lunch. [1]

Heidi Beirich wants to eat my lunch.

732 words

We must be doing something right. The Southern Poverty Law Center has targeted Counter-Currents for financial destruction. In an article [2] in their Spring 2014 Intelligence Report, the SPLC’s Heidi Beirich reveals that it is actively putting pressure on both Amazon.com, which accounts for a huge percentage of our bookstore sales, and PayPal, which processes a large percentage of our direct sales and donations, to stop doing business with us.

These efforts have been successful in the past: Stormfront and Vanguard News Network are no longer allowed to use PayPal.

As an illustration of metapolitics in action, the groundwork for such attacks was established long ago, no doubt by the SPLC itself or groups like it, which helped PayPal craft its terms of service:

PayPal says that its policy “regarding payments for goods and services that may promote hate, violence, or intolerance” considers the following factors: 1) The promotion or glorification of hate, violence or intolerance because of a person’s race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation; 2) any graphic portrayal of violence or victims of violence; and 3) previous activity associated with the account holder. It specifically bans the sale of “[i]tems containing Nazi, SS, or Ku Klux Klan symbols, including authentic German WWII memorabilia.”

As for Amazon.com, the SPLC article only mentions our Amazon.com Affiliates program, which allows our supporters to earmark a percentage of the money they spend at Amazon.com to Counter-Currents (at no additional cost to them), simply by using our Amazon.com referral link. (Read more about this program here [3].) They do not mention Amazon selling Counter-Currents books.

However, any argument against Counter-Currents having an Amazon Affiliate account could also be applied to us selling our own books there. But if the SPLC directly went after our book sales, it might raise the hackles of free speech advocates. So it is better for them to lay the groundwork with the Amazon Affiliates program (which most people find baffling anyway), then go after book distribution.

Suppressing book sales is clearly the SPLC’s main goal anyway, since (1) the SPLC is all about suppressing ideas, not insuring that we no longer get a 7% commission on vegan cookbooks, Bach CDs, and diaper purchases through Amazon, and (2) they telegraph their intentions by mentioning that Amazon does sell John Derbyshire’s Kindle From the Dissident Right.

According to the SPLC:

The Report contacted Amazon in September about the participation of hate groups and hate sites in Amazon programs that earn them commissions. Amazon said it would assign “appropriate teams to investigate, review applicable policies, and take appropriate action” but that it would not give out “information about any action taken.” Three months later, in early December, the Counter-Currents and VDARE hate sites were still earning commissions through Amazon.

There are, of course, other ways to sell books than Amazon. There are, of course, other ways to collect payments than PayPal. But Amazon and PayPal are the biggest and most convenient. If we lost their services, we could find other options. Indeed, we are exploring those options right now.

But losing Amazon and Paypal would cause significant downturns in our income. The losses would be temporary, of course. The danger, though, is that even a temporary downturn could prove disastrous, simply because, like many dissident operations, Counter-Currents has no reserves; we are always running on fumes. I have no savings and no retirement plan. I put everything I had into starting Counter-Currents.

The SPLC won’t stop Counter-Currents. I regard my work as a moral imperative, as an all-consuming quasi-religious duty. And I really don’t have any alternatives anyway. But the SPLC could definitely cripple Counter-Currents. They could bleed it of scarce time and money. They could slow its momentum. They could stunt its growth. They could reduce it to just another Right-wing hobby project. That’s what they do. And they have more than $245 million dollars in the bank [4] to show for it. But I’ll still be here, in one form or another, because it is the right thing to do.

If you have been thinking of using PayPal to buy a book or send a donation [5] to Counter-Currents, if you have been thinking of using Amazon.com to buy a Counter-Currents book or anything else through our affiliate link [3], do it now [5], while you still can.

Thank you for your loyal readership and support.

Greg Johnson
Editor-in-Chief