The demands of the George Soros-backed groups, including SumOfUs and Sleeping Giants were displayed on a mobile billboard which circled the event: “Putting hate groups out of business? #Priceless.”
According to a press release published by the two organisations, Sleeping Giants co-founder Nandini Jammi also said in a speech that they would be “addressing the need for Mastercard to take swift action by cutting off its services to these hate groups”.
SumOfUs had proposed earlier that Mastercard’s shareholders establish a “human rights committee” that would monitor payments to the “far right”. The protest at the shareholder’s meeting was thus aimed at pressuring Mastercard to accept the demand.
The group accused the company of processing payments for “far-right” organisations such as American Border Patrol, League of the South and the Proud Boys.
Jammi from Sleeping Giants, spoke to shareholders at the AGM meeting on June 25 to accuse the company and its financial partners such as Square and PayPal of doing “business with criminals”.
“The white nationalist movement has gone global and it’s time for you investigate who has been let into the Mastercard network,” she said. “You need to ask now to take back control of your financial network.”
SumOfUs alleges to be a “human rights” activist group campaigning for financial sanctions against those who do not agree with their leftwing political bias. Its website lists a number of powerful left-wing foundations among its partners, including George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Tides Foundation, the Media Democracy Fund, and the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation.
Eoin Dubsky, campaign manager at SumOfUs, said after the meeting: “We welcome Mastercard’s commitment to embedding human rights in its ways of doing business. But talk is cheap, so we’re waiting to see if these words lead to action. We know that the company currently accepts credit card payments to dangerous hate groups and extremists, proving that its existing set-up isn’t fit for purpose.”
Sleeping Giants focuses on smearing political adversaries. The group’s founders have avoided accountability for the organisation’s actions through anonymity. But the identity of one founder, a former advertising professional Matt Rivitz, was revealed last year.
Sleeping Giants was set up in 2016 by far-left political activists with the sole stated purpose of defunding Breitbart .
Breitbart reported that the groups had called for the creation of a “human rights committee” at Mastercard’s AGM. But the Soros-backed groups could not sway shareholders, who voted against the measure.
Even though Mastercard maintains that it remains committed to “all lawful purchases,” online payments platform Patreon revealed that Mastercard demanded the withdrawal of service from an Islam critic in August 2018.
The financial blacklisting has been criticised by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). They warned that banks, credit card companies and payment processors are becoming “de facto internet censors”.
A spokesperson told Breitbart: “EFF is deeply concerned that payment processors are making choices about which websites can and can’t accept payments or process donations.”
