Ezra Levant reveals PayPal’s sudden termination of Rebel News’ six-year account—worth $8M and 150K transactions, including half their staff payroll—via an unsigned Friday-night email, ignoring legal appeals. PayPal also canceled his personal account and the nonprofit For Canada, linked to conservative work, while YouTube demonetized them and Trudeau’s government pushes censorship. Levant plans a $150K lawsuit against PayPal and its alleged "woke" pressure groups to block arbitrary cancellations, warning this sets a dangerous precedent for financial censorship mirroring China’s social credit system, threatening Rebel News’ survival and free speech. [Automatically generated summary]
And we've been trying for a few days to get them on the phone, to get them to answer emails.
They've ghosted us.
We've been a customer of theirs for six years, done $8 million with them, 150,000 transactions.
We were a preferred customer and then on a Friday night at 6 p.m. They just cut us off.
What's going on there?
And what can we do about it?
I'll tell you the whole story next and my two-point plan to fight back.
I really need your help.
If you want to see the video version of this, go to rebelnews.com and click subscribe.
And if you want to see the documents that I refer to in the podcast, go to saverebelnews.com.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, PayPal has deplatformed us.
They're our credit card processor.
I have to tell you, I'm actually really worried about the company.
It's May 6th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
PayPal's Threat to Civil Liberties00:02:34
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government go why I publish is because it's my bloody right to do so.
PayPal, the online credit card processor, just cut off Rebel News.
I really need your help.
I hate to say it, but this could actually destroy us.
We use PayPal to process a million dollars a year.
That covers half our staff payroll.
This could force us to lay off staff, which obviously we must not do.
We just hired some great new reporters.
We're doing our most important work ever, both our journalism and our civil liberties work.
I'm not just worried about Rebel News.
We currently fundraise for civil liberties lawyers to help more than a thousand low-income people who have received lockdown tickets.
PayPal banning us would harm our ability to keep our promise to these people.
Why is PayPal doing that?
PayPal has been very strange lately.
We've had a six-year business relationship with them, processing more than 150,000 transactions, totaling more than $8 million.
We're a big client, but with no notice at all.
They just breached the contract.
They ambushed us.
They sent us a form letter by email after business hours on a Friday night before the weekend.
It wasn't even signed by anyone.
It had no contact info.
There was no way to appeal it, no explanation.
It just said we were canceled.
You can see that email for yourself at saverebelnews.com.
It's quite something.
Go there to see it.
They say we violated their terms of service, but they didn't say how or when or what section.
They didn't suggest how to fix whatever the problem might be.
I've read their terms of service carefully.
That's our contract with them.
It says we can't use PayPal to sell things like drugs or weapons or stolen property, things like that.
We don't do anything even close to that.
We're a news site and we work with a civil liberties charity.
We simply never broke PayPal's rules ever.
And they've never before said we have.
And then on a Friday night, they simply cut off our business immediately.
No explanation, nothing.
That's cancel culture.
And it's also an attack on thousands of our customers who are PayPal users and their rights too.
On Monday, we had our lawyer write a friendly letter to PayPal, assuming this was just a mistake, giving them the benefit of the doubt.
And I kept quiet about it publicly.
Look, mistakes do happen, but it seemed odd.
We're a preferred customer because we do so many transactions with them.
PayPal's Sudden Cancellation00:11:06
They give us favorable rates.
We've never had a problem in six years.
Our lawyers emailed PayPal's head office in the U.S. and also their Canadian branch several times.
I posted one of our lawyers' letters at saverebelnews.com.
You can read it for yourself there.
I encourage you to do so.
But it's been nearly a week and they haven't even acknowledged receipt of our letters.
Our lawyers have phoned and left messages, and they haven't got a call back.
Our accountant actually got through to a PayPal call center, and they just said we'd be receiving an explanation by email within 24 hours.
It's been days and it hasn't come.
Look, we're bleeding thousands of dollars a day because of this.
This is not a mistake.
It's a cancel culture attack on the largest independent news agency in Canada.
It's censorship.
A credit card processing company has decided to illegally and unethically breach its contract with us, leaving us high and dry on a Friday night because we're conservative.
And although PayPal was actually created by freedom-loving entrepreneurs like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, they don't run it anymore.
Its corporate culture has been colonized by woke political activists who believe in censorship and deplatforming.
I think it's part of a coordinated attack on our news company.
Remember, YouTube just demonetized us and suspended us for a week.
Now, this, just days later.
In both cases, we had a perfect track record, never a violation.
Is that a coincidence?
And it just happens to coincide with Justin Trudeau introducing censorship legislation in parliament targeting big tech companies that give platforms to Trudeau's political critics.
And remember, just last month, we showed you access to information documents proving that Trudeau's censorship minister, Stephen Gilbo, just gave $268,000 to a left-wing activist group specifically for them to lodge malicious complaints against Trudeau's enemies.
Were they behind this?
Who was?
PayPal won't even answer our calls.
The YouTube demonetization cost us $400,000.
But this is much more dangerous.
PayPal isn't in the content business.
They're the leading online credit card processor.
We have built so much of our business around them and we've encouraged thousands of people to sign up for PayPal just to do business with us.
We have many people who automatically give a monthly contribution to us through PayPal.
That's just been shut down.
It gets worse.
If you can believe it, at the same time, PayPal canceled my personal account.
I haven't really used it in years, so it's impossible that it could have violated any terms of service.
This is political targeting.
It's political punishment from a credit card processing company.
That's like China's social credit system, you know, where you can be banned from renting an apartment or buying a plane ticket if you criticize the Chinese Communist Party.
But this is Canada.
And if a credit card processor can do this to you, why couldn't your bank shut down your family savings account or your phone company just turn off your cell phone or anything like that?
I should tell you, PayPal also canceled a third account, the one for our nonprofit called For Canada.
That's the organization we use for charity projects, like when we raised money for the Red Cross after the Fort McMurray wildfires, or when we raised money for the son of Nathan Cirrillo, the Canadian soldier murdered at the National War Memorial in 2014 by a terrorist.
What possible reason would PayPal have to shut down that nonprofit other than it's associated with conservatives?
That's why I don't think this is a mistake.
They're trying to destroy us, and they don't have the courage to even tell us to our face.
We're bleeding heavily now, a million-dollar loss.
They want us to lay down and die.
Well, we're not going to.
We're going to fight back because they're wrong, legally and morally, and this just isn't fair.
I can think of two things to do if you want to help us live.
First, please share this video far and wide.
Forward it to your friends.
Let them know what's happening.
They might not even believe you when you tell them a credit card processor can do this to a person.
Yeah, it's happening.
And if they can do it to us, they can do it to you.
Please help ring the alarm.
Second, PayPal won't even give us the courtesy of a return phone call.
They're ghosting us.
All right, fine.
They'll find it harder to ghost a judge.
I have instructed a legal dream team to file a lawsuit against PayPal as soon as next week for breach of contract and for unlawful interference with economic relations.
I expect we'll sue the people who induced PayPal to breach their contract with us too.
But PayPal is one of the largest companies in the world.
They've gotten rich off the lockdowns just like Amazon has.
They're now worth $300 billion.
They probably have 100 lawyers working for them.
Fine.
I like David and Goliath battles.
And my guys aren't too shabby either.
We're using the same dream team that beat Justin Trudeau's lawyers at the Federal Court of Canada when he banned our reporters from attending the leaders' debates.
We won that cancel culture battle.
These lawyers of ours are becoming experts at fighting against canceled culture.
They're on the case.
PayPal didn't just harm us.
They violated consumer protection laws, not just for us as a merchant, but like I say, for the thousands of PayPal users who just had their relationship with us destroyed for no good reason.
That's the kind of thing that financial regulators look at in the public interest.
Our lawyers are reporting PayPal's misconduct to financial services regulators.
Again, they might think they can ignore us, but I don't think PayPal could ignore banking regulators.
Do you?
So the second thing I'd like, if you can help us, boy, I need your help.
That lawsuit against PayPal is going to cost us $150,000.
I'm sorry, it just will.
They're going to try to do everything they can to beat us because if we were to win, it wouldn't just be a win for us.
It would set a precedent that could stop PayPal and other credit card companies and other tech companies from canceling anyone.
And for some reason, they really want to cancel people.
So this is more than them just crushing rebel news.
They want to make sure they can continue to do this at will.
That's why we've got to win, not just for us, but to set a precedent for everybody else.
Can you please help me cover the $150,000 in legal fees?
I tell you, I've seen our dream team in court fighting twice now, and they absolutely stunned the David and Goliath.
They stunned Goliath both times.
If anyone can do what these guys can, please go to saverebelnews.com right now to chip in.
Fighting PayPal is going to take a long time, especially with the courts slowed down because of the pandemic.
And in the meantime, we've got a hole of almost a million dollars in the side of our boat.
I know I often ask for help to fundraise, but it's not usually for something like this.
You know, it's usually for a specific project, not today.
Today I'm asking you to help me save Rebel News, truly, because we just can't continue to operate as we have with a million dollar shortfall.
The math just doesn't add up.
PayPal wants to kill us.
That's the assumption I have to make, especially since they targeted me personally and our nonprofit group too, and they won't even pick up the phone.
We have to live.
I promise I will fight with every ounce of strength I have, and so will our entire team.
We'll fight like our freedom depends on it, and we'll fight like our jobs and our company depends on it, because it does.
If you have ever watched a Rebel News video, if you have ever felt like we stood up for you, like we stood up for you against the bullies, well, this is the time to help us in return.
Will you please help us against PayPal?
My friends, I ask you, if you want Rebel News to survive this canceled culture attack, please go to saverebelnews.com.
I need to plug a million-dollar hole in our company.
Just as important, we need to set a legal precedent that no tech company can simply decide to destroy your life one Friday night because they don't like your opinions.
This is a big one.
Please go to saverebelnews.com to see the PayPal ambush letter, to see our lawyers' reply, and to help us fund our lawsuit against PayPal.
And if you can, to help us make up the million-dollar shortfall so we can keep our full team of reporters.
Thank you very much.
What do you think of that, eh?
I did not expect it.
I mean, we'd be wrestling with YouTube for a couple of months, and to my delight, we found that there could be life after YouTube.
I don't want to be canceled on YouTube.
We have 1.45 million subscribers there.
I don't want to say goodbye to them.
I don't want to be cut off from them.
But there are other video players around.
Rumble.com is an interesting one.
SuperU.net is a new one.
Even more unusual sites like Odyssey.com.
So I'm no longer terrified that if YouTube kills us, we'll be dead.
I mean, I don't want them to, but I don't see it as an existential threat.
But if we can't process credit cards, we can't make payroll.
And we've got about 30 staff.
I mean, you only see the reporters on TV, but for every reporter, there's two people behind the scenes, an editor, someone doing the web.
There's other people here.
Right now, this PayPal loss is a million dollars.
But worse than that, it's a precedent that some foreign credit card processor can come in and punish a Canadian media company because we criticized Trudeau.
Or what is it?
I don't know.
They won't even tell us what we did.
I think we can win on the law.
I think it can win in the court of public opinion.
I think the real question is how stubborn is PayPal?
They really are one of the largest companies in the world.
I was shocked to learn they're worth $300 billion.
So that's a Goliath, if there ever was one.
But if you want to help us, in fact, one of our two lawyers is named David.
So I think that's fitting.
Please, if you can, go to saverebelnews.com.
That's the show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here to you at home, good night.