Report: SPLC, ‘Color of Change’ Played Role in Mastercard Blacklisting Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer

The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and progressive nonprofit “Color of Change,” which was co-founded by CNN’s Van Jones, reportedly played a role in Mastercard’s financial blacklisting of Islam critic and Jihad Watch owner Robert Spencer.

Last week, Spencer had his account on fundraising platform Patreon shut down, after Mastercard pressured the company to blacklist him.

According to the Daily Beast, Mastercard reached out to the SPLC, who list Spencer as an “extremist” on their website, before they pressured Patreon into banning his account.

“We want PayPal, we want Mastercard, we want all of them to stop servicing hate groups,” declared SPLC spokesman Heidi Beirich, adding, however, that it was Color of Change who was the driving force behind Spencer’s blacklisting.

In a statement, Color of Change attempted to associate Spencer with white supremacists, declaring that they had pushed Mastercard to “take proactive steps to stop processing payments for white supremacist groups.”

In response to the Daily Beast article, which called Spencer “far-right” and featured the term “white supremacist(s)” three times despite the fact that Spencer is neither, Spencer accused the article’s author Will Sommer of doing a “victory dance” over his financial deplatforming.

“Virtually nothing in this Daily Beast celebratory piece over Patreon dropping me is accurate, starting with the opening claim that I found out about the ban when I logged into Patreon ‘to see how much money [I] had raised.’ In reality, I found out about the ban in an email from Patreon,” declared Spencer. “Remember: the Nazis operated in exactly this way, first barring those they hated from holding various professions and making it impossible for them to make a living. Sommer and his ilk are quintessential neo-fascists.”