Corporate Censorship Undermines Basic Rights

Congress should act soon to prohibit it

A first printing of the U.S. Constitution is displayed at Sotheby's auction house during a press preview in New York, on Nov. 5, 2021. Mary Altaffer/AP Photo

Commentary

When President Richard Nixon visited mainland China in February–March 1972, it was primarily to advance U.S. Cold War geopolitical interests by gaining leverage over what was then the Soviet Union, China’s traditional adversary. But it was also to ameliorate China’s objections to President Nixon’s hard line with North Vietnam so as to force the North’s communist leaders into serious negotiations. In May, President Nixon was able to approve Operation Pocket Money, the mining of Hai Phong Harbor, communist North Vietnam’s principal port, in order to stem the flow of ordnance and war materiel.

Chinese leader Mao Zedong (L) welcomes U.S. President Richard Nixon at his house in Beijing on Feb. 21, 1972. AFP via Getty Images

Seven years later, in 1979, President Jimmy Carter restored full diplomatic relations with China. Then, in 1999, China joined the World Trade Organization and, in the following year, President Bill Clinton, at the urging of U.S. business leaders, granted permanent normal trade status (formerly known as most favored nation [MFN] status) to China, notwithstanding popular opposition. (President Carter had given China renewable MFN status in 1979.)

President Bill Clinton smiles after signing the U.S.–China Trade Relations Act of 2000 during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Oct. 10, 2000. With him from L are: Sen. William Roth (R-Del.), U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, U.S. Trade Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (D-Ill.), and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.). Mario Tama/AFP via Getty Images

All of these efforts to improve U.S. geostrategic and commercial interests with China were made in pursuit of our ultimate grand strategy of making China more like us, as President Clinton’s sanguine prognostications about U.S.–China relations seemed to aver when he gave China permanent normal trade status. Commerce in China would cause greater desire for freedom and, hopefully, a democratic China as the country became more like us.

US Becoming More Like China

Except 30 years later, however, we haven’t converted China from an authoritarian state to a democracy. Instead, it seems that China has converted the United States into a more authoritarian state.

More and more, U.S. corporations and various state and local governments have begun adopting policies and procedures that mirror China’s social credit system—what the Chinese call chéng xìn, which roughly translates to trustworthiness or integrity. In most instances, “trustworthiness and integrity” means submission to the dictates issued by the Chinese Communist Party. 

Now, social credit, broadly defined, has existed for centuries. The Crusaders and Christian pilgrims, for example, relied on what might be called “social credit” to finance their trips to the Holy Land as early as the 10th century. An organization called the Temple Church would accept a pilgrim’s deposits in London that could be drawn upon when the pilgrim arrived in Jerusalem. It was the first known letter of credit, a form of social credit for transacting international trade that exists to this day. Today, your credit report is a form of “social credit,” allowing lenders and vendors to evaluate whether you’re sufficiently financially responsible to entrust with credit.

The ‘Social Credit’ Policies of the US Government

But China’s social credit is a sinister form. And now, some U.S. corporations are using it against U.S. citizens to deprive them of rights that they assume have been guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Regrettably, the Constitution offers only limited acknowledgment that rights can’t be denied by government. The Founders, and particularly the Constitution’s authors, never anticipated the rise of an American corporate class that could deny Americans the rights that our Founders cherished but that tyrants have despised throughout history.

First, every school child knows (or used to know) that people are, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.” Our Constitution only acknowledges rights; it doesn’t bestow them.

But a close reading of the Bill of Rights makes clear that only “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

There’s nothing in the Constitution that says corporations can’t interfere with your most sacred, God-given rights. Not a thing. And Americans are seeing those rights trampled quite often nowadays by local governments, states, and corporations.

One need only remember the policies of some states and cities during the COVID-19 pandemic to see how rights were usurped by states and localities. States banned the right to peaceable assembly and to practice one’s religion under the guise of a “pandemic emergency.” Some local governments imposed “vaccine mandates” that forced their workers to take the vaccine or be fired.

But those usurpations of what the English philosopher John Locke called “natural rights” were made by elected government officials in states and localities. They were in the nature of states’ police powers—that is, the long-acknowledged authority of the state to usurp individual rights in times of crisis. (Think the few times martial law has been declared in the United States or when President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, pursuant to Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution or the internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent in World War II.)

Corporate Social Credit Policies Are Far Worse

These days, it’s corporations that abrogate basic individual rights, often to support their DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) objectives as encouraged by private equity fund managers such as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and other leading figures in finance and business.

In 2021, for example, WePay, a unit of JPMorgan Chase, reportedly threw a fundraising event run by conservative political action committee (PAC) “Defense of Liberty” and featuring Donald Trump, Jr. into chaos by reneging on its agreement to process payments for the PAC. According to local reports:

“[In a] screenshot of an email provided by [one of the event hosts], WePay wrote that the PAC violated its terms of service against ‘hate, violence, racial intolerance, terrorism, the financial exploitation of a crime’ or encouraging that behavior.”

JPMorgan Chase reversed course after public outcry and pressure from the Missouri attorney general, but, in the words of the organizer, “the damage is done, no matter what happens moving forward.”

JPMorgan Chase was also allegedly front and center in another instance targeting religious conservatives.

In 2022, the National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF), a 501(c)(4) nonprofit social welfare organization permitted to engage in political activities that are headed by Sam Brownback, a former Kansas governor and U.S. senator, claims that it was “de-banked” by JPMorgan Chase without explanation. Then, Mr. Brownback alleged in an op-ed that the bank exacerbated matters:

“Chase eventually reached out to our executive director and informed him that it would be willing to reconsider doing business with the NCRF if we would provide our donor list, a list of political candidates we intended to support, and a full explanation of the criteria by which we would endorse and support those candidates.”

JPMorgan Chase denied the allegations. But Mr. Brownback said he had learned of similar “de-banking” incidents for other conservative and religious group. Indeed, matters with JPMorgan Chase had allegedly proliferated so frequently that 19 states’ attorneys general sent JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon a letter demanding an explanation. Mr. Brownback even sought to pass a shareholder resolution to ensure nonpartisan banking practices at the JPMorgan Chase shareholder meeting in May but was defeated.

Sam Brownback, U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, at the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom at the Department of State in Washington on July 16, 2019. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

Other banks have banned other, less-prominent, stakeholders as well. Several Twitter accounts have alleged that their bank accounts were frozen; these include the account of at least one medical practice, presumably because the principal physician had challenged the government’s narrative on COVID-19 and the vaccine.

Of course, that partisan censorship wasn’t coming only from the banking sector. Mike Lindell, the “My Pillow” guy, for example, claims that his products were banned from big-box stores such as Bed Bath & Beyond because of his work questioning the 2020 election results. He now sells entirely online from his own website.

A New Era of McCarthyism?

Attempts to make life difficult for those with a contrary view are nothing new in the United States.

In the 1950s, for example, anti-communism was at a fever pitch, and countless actors, writers, and others were blacklisted and couldn’t work. Dalton Trumbo, who wrote screenplays for iconic movie classics such as “Spartacus,” “Roman Holiday,” and “Exodus,” was blacklisted and had to work under a nom de plume, when he could work at all. Promising careers were ruined. There was a sense of “guilt by association”—that if you associated with anyone under the cloud of communist allegations, you, too, were a communist.

The McCarthy era—named for Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who alleged that communists were in the State Department and elsewhere—is today considered a shameful era when free speech and civil behavior were trampled. But today, we’re largely emulating it. While in the 1950s, McCarthy’s adversary was communism, in the second decade of the 21st century, this new era of McCarthyism targets conservatism.

What Can Be Done to Stop It?

Most people would agree that companies have a right to determine with whom they do business. One could easily imagine a bank refusing to do business with, say, the Ku Klux Klan or a prominent organized crime figure.

But denying banking services to a political organization? And with no right to appeal? What are the limits? If an airline takes exception to the political views of, say, a conservative commentator such as Marc Levin or Steve Bannon, should they be stuck riding a Greyhound bus to get to their events?

Congress needs to intervene and soon.

First, it should classify larger businesses doing an interstate business as something akin to “common carriers” in the transportation industry—that is, as businesses “open to all comers,” provided that the customers observe a taxonomy of standards that Congress can prescribe. A bank may not want to open the account of an enterprise that has convicted felons on its board, for example. A retailer might want to refuse to carry products from a company that doesn’t follow International Labor Organization prohibitions against child or slave labor.

Second, Congress should create an expedited federal court process by which everyday citizens can challenge a corporation that has decided to deny them service or sales.

Society, through Congress, can and should vehemently oppose directors in board rooms, CEOs, or investment fund managers who are enforcing their views across their customers or clientele, whether for ESG, DEI, or simple partisan politics. Such behavior deeply offends the very core of American principles and should never be tolerated, whether it be done by Hollywood in the 1950s or by a bank in the 2020s.

Correction: A previous version of this article gave an incorrect first name for Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The Epoch Times regrets the error.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.