Opinion
Featured Image
 shutterstock.com

Big Tech is censoring us. Subscribe to our email list and bookmark LifeSiteNews.com to continue getting our news.  Subscribe now.

March 2, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – As most of our readers are aware, LifeSiteNews was recently de-platformed by YouTube, which is owned by Google. Our main YouTube channel had been growing so fast that we were about to surpass the number of subscribers to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Canada's version of PBS). The long-touted democratization of the internet was paying off for LifeSite, as hundreds of thousands of pro-life Christians migrated away from the anti-Christian news content that mainstream news corporations produce, to the news as we cover it, from a Christian worldview.

Needless to say, Big Tech, like all totalitarian institutions, is not committed to the marketplace of ideas that is so necessary to a functioning democracy, so when LifeSiteNews started winning adherents in the public square, Big Tech simply labeled LifeSiteNews as dangerous “misinformation” and attempted to crush us under the heel of their Silicon Valley rainbow-colored boots.

The persecution of LifeSiteNews as a dangerous organization makes as much sense as did the Obama administration's war against the Little Sisters of the Poor. But make no mistake, Big Tech wants to censor LifeSite because we refuse to bend the knee to their anti-Christian ideologies.

Without even specifying our supposed offense, YouTube’s anti-free speech censorship-obsessed oligarchs erased over 1,500 videos we had poured our labor into over nearly 10 years. They also abruptly prevented us from communicating with over 315,000 people who voluntarily subscribed to our channel. Most drastically, they blocked our access to our own video content altogether. When our attorneys politely reached out to YouTube's legal department, they refused to look at our claims, and instead – in a robotic fashion reminiscent of Star Trek's Borg – repeatedly stated that our account didn’t exist. Clearly, they were mocking us, since they themselves had erased our account.

But in 2021 censorship does not only come from Big Tech. The Marxist Left's long march through America's institutions is complete, and now corporate America has been taken over by the Marxist woke brigade. Cancel culture is now in vogue with America's suit and tie financiers, just as much as with the crazy-haired college professors and California tech billionaires.

As Donald Trump himself experienced, banks and payment processors are getting in on the totalitarian anti-American censorship game, and have begun canceling the bank accounts of organizations (almost all conservative) that they consider are not woke enough for their standards of leftist political correctness.

If credit card payment processors and banks decide not to service your accounts, how do you accept donations? How do you pay the staff so they can provide for their families?

To justify the growing tide of “progressive” Big Tech censorship, the talking heads in the media have begun parroting the clever couplet that “freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of reach.” They say: if you want to spread your vile ideas, go ahead and create your own platform. But they don't tell you that if you do build your own platform, like LifeSiteNews has (or like Parler and Gab did), then they will go after your servers, and your internet service providers, and your banks; and if you try to defend yourself in court, they'll pressure any law-firm that dares to defend you. Yes, the progressives have for all intents and purposes put out the “Christians Not Welcome” sign, all in the name of purported inclusiveness.

At LifeSite, we saw all of this coming. In fact, it is one of the main areas of focus for our reporters and our executives. During all of 2020, as basic constitutional freedoms seemed to be dying before our very eyes, we were preparing contingency plans for all of our infrastructure.

Today, we are pleased to announce that LifeSiteNews will be able to accept tax-deductible donations on our very own Bitcoin server. No bank and no woke Silicon Valley corporation will be able to stand between your ability to support LifeSite’s mission to bring you the best reporting on the right to life, the family, and our culture from a Christian perspective.

Image
At give.lifesitenews.com, first click the 'donate monthly' or 'donate once' button to begin your Bitcoin donation
Image
At give.lifesitenews.com, simply select the option to pay via Bitcoin
Image
The final step of donating to LifeSite via our secure Bitcoin server

Bitcoin 101

Many of you may have heard of Bitcoin as a speculative digital currency that is now worth over 25 times the price of an ounce of gold. But while the price of something may be what initially gets our attention, it is the inherent qualities of the thing itself that make it useful to LifeSiteNews and to many others in the long term.

Bitcoin started in 2009 by cryptographers (mathematicians and computer scientists) who wanted to create a form of digital cash that would be secure and independent of corporate and central banks. After the financial crash, and the ensuing Wall Street bailouts, it was clear that governments and banks could not be trusted. But if you can't trust the government and the banks, who can you trust to store the fruits of your labor and securely transfer funds when needed? You certainly cannot simply stack dollars under the mattress for a rainy day or send little chunks of gold in the mail as payment. Whether it was the financial crisis bailouts, or paying for wars, or attempts to socialize medicine, or the COVID checks, the reality is that the government has been on a money-printing binge that will not end well for the value of the dollar. To those who see the impending failure of the dollar, Bitcoin presents itself as a potential hedge.

Did you realize that more than 90% of all dollars only exist on digital account books, not in physical form?  The key feature that makes Bitcoin different from any other digital form of cash is that Bitcoin is decentralized. There is no governing authority, no government or central bank, but instead a set of rules that all Bitcoin participants have to follow. Also, extremely important to the value of Bitcoin is that the supply of Bitcoin (as opposed to U.S. dollars or Euros) is strictly limited by a mathematical formula that cannot be manipulated by financial elites. Lastly, Bitcoin is impossible to seize from the owner without first obtaining their cryptographic key.

For these technical reasons, Bitcoin is synonymous with individual financial sovereignty. But there are also fundamental philosophical reasons for adopting Bitcoin.

For those familiar with the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, it is clear that allowing individuals to transact freely with each other without involving big banks or big government is extremely important for a free society. The Acton Institute explains it in the following way: The principle of subsidiarity “holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.”

Bitcoin will give LifeSiteNews the ability to accept donations directly from our donors without having to rely on Big Tech, big banks, or any other intermediary payment processor. With Bitcoin, anyone in the world will be able to donate to LifeSiteNews instantly and with minimal transaction fees.

It is no surprise that big name globalists like Bill Gates and Janet Yellen continue to attack Bitcoin and sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about it. They have government power and the legacy banking system in their pockets. Why would they want individuals to be free from them? Bitcoin is currently banned by the governments of Iran, China, Russia, Bolivia, and Venezuela. By extrapolation one can see that financial and political tyrants on all levels of the political spectrum do not mix well with Bitcoin. After all, if the individual is sovereign over his wealth, then the state and big business isn't. It's that simple.

We realize that LifeSite will be accepting Bitcoin donations before most people are comfortable with the technology. But just like email and online credit card payments were adopted in the early days of the internet, we believe Bitcoin will be as well. If you want to learn more about Bitcoin, we recommend starting with some of the many tutorials offered by people like Bitcoin expert Andreas Antonopolous.

As of the launch of our Bitcoin payment processing, LifeSite has not been un-banked, but judging by what transpired in 2020, we would not be surprised if 2021 forced us to find alternatives solutions to continue to pay our staff and pay for our necessary services. Bitcoin is just one tool, but we believe it is an important one to protect our freedom of speech and nurture our independent reporting. We hope some of our loyal readers who have Bitcoin will consider donating to LifeSiteNews.