Are political conservatives now being targeted in the banking arena?
JPMorgan Chase is alleged to have shut down bank accounts belonging to customers in the conservative movement – and others on the right who are outraged are saying they plan to close their own accounts if the situation is not addressed to their satisfaction.
“If Jamie Dimon can’t absolutely guarantee that Chase Bank won’t ever discriminate against conservatives, conservatives should consider banking elsewhere,” warned David Almasi, vice president of the conservative-leaning National Center for Public Policy Research, referring to JPMorgan’s chairman and CEO,” the New York Post reported.
The controversy involving JPMorgan began when
activists Enrique Tarrio, Joe Biggs, Laura Loomer and Martina Markota – conservatives all — found that their Chase accounts had been shut down without a good explanation.
Of course, the primary arena in which bias against political conservatives has been playing out over the past couple of years has been in social media. The drama continued last week, with President Donald Trump instructing users of social media to let the White House know when they feel giant players such as Facebook and Twitter have acted unfairly because of their political viewpoint.
An online form available to approximately 18.5 million Twitter followers instructed Americans to “share your story” of political bias directly with the president. “SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS should advance FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Yet too many Americans have seen their accounts suspended, banned, or fraudulently reported for unclear ‘violations’ of user policies,” noted the website.
“The request comes as President Donald Trump and other Republicans ramp up allegations that social media networks discriminate against conservatives by disproportionately banning or limiting the visibility of right-leaning users and content,” reported Politico. “It’s a charge the companies deny, but that hasn’t tamped down conservatives’ embrace of the idea. Anti-conservative bias claims have been the subject of multiple congressional hearings and appeared to resonate with the GOP base in the midterm election cycle, all but guaranteeing they will feature in 2020 campaign-trail messaging from Trump and his surrogates and Capitol Hill allies.”
In April, Texas’ Republican Senator Ted Cruz convened a hearing focused on conservative bias on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. “Not only does Big Tech have the power to silence voices with which they disagree, but Big Tech likewise has the power to collate a person’s feed so they only receive the news that comports with their own political agenda,” Cruz said during the event.
“Cruz conceded that most of his party’s complaints were derived solely from personal stories,” noted theverge.com. “Much of the argument on this topic is anecdotal. It’s based on one example or another example,” Cruz said last month. “There’s a reason for that: because we have no data. There is no transparency. Nobody knows how many speakers Facebook is blocking, how many speakers Twitter is blocking. Nobody knows what the raw data is in terms of bias.”
