eBay have joined the culture war ... on the side of anonymous hard-right Twitter trolls!

In case you've been living under a rock for the last 9 years, there's an ideological war going on in UK politics.

On the one side there are hard-right fanatics who believe in impoverishing the poor and ordinary (via ruinous austerity, unprecedented wage repression policies, devastating public service cuts, catastrophic infrastructure under-investment, and vandalism of the social safety net) in order to lavish handouts and tax cuts on corporations and the mega rich. These austerity-fetishists are backed up by the vast majority of the UK mainstream media, and by various corporate lobbying groups like the CBI and a network of shady secretively-funded hard-right think tanks (Policy Exchange, Adam Smith Institute, IEA, CPS, Taxpayers' Alliance ...).

On the other side are the people who oppose austerity-fanaticism on the grounds that "let's cut our way to growth" is absolutely nonsensical pseudo-economics that outright defies economic history, and that this pro-cuts narrative is simply being used as a smokescreen to hide the real agenda, which is a massive and unprecedented upwards redistribution of wealth, regardless of the cost to the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.

Arguing in favour of a pro-austerity position is increasingly unjustifiable for a number of compelling reasons.

The primary reason is that it's spectacularly failed in its own terms. Back in 2010 the Tories promised that austerity would lead to complete elimination of the budget deficit by early 2015. It's now 2019, and after 9 years of cratering living standards and soaring in-work poverty, the budget deficit is still not eliminated!

Another compelling reason is that even right-leaning international organisations like the IMF and OECD have openly admitted that austerity is an economically damaging ideology.

But such is the power of the mainstream media in the UK that the austerity fanatics are still routinely presented as occupiers of the "common sense" position, while it's up to a bunch of small independent media outfits, economics experts, and lone wolf bloggers like me to make the counter-argument that austerity is economically illiterate nonsense that crushed living standards, caused the wave of public anger that drove Brexit marginally over the winning line in 2016, and pushed tens of thousands of people into early graves.

But some people on the political right simply can't tolerate the fact that there's any opposition to austerity fanaticism and its dire consequences at all, hence a new anonymous hard-right propaganda campaign aimed at defunding left-leaning news sources like Evolve Politics and The Canary by pressuring advertisers into pulling their ads from these sites with false accusations that these Impress regulated sites are spreading "fake news".

They obviously think it's easier to simply get opponents of austerity dogma and the systematic persecution of disabled people shut down with accusations of spreading "fake news" and spurious allegations of anti-Semitism, than to actually argue in favour of the policies they support.

These anonymous pro-austerity Twitter trolls first dragged the cancer charity MacMillan into their culture war by getting them to pull ads off The Canary (which happens to be one of the most consistent champions of sick and disabled people's rights in the British media and exactly the kind of socially progressive site a cancer charity would benefit from advertising on).
 

EBay UK publicly announcing their collusion with
this hard-right censorship campaign

And now they've convinced eBay to pull their ads from the Canary too.

Now I'm strongly against people cancelling their donations to a cancer charity because they've been tricked by hard-right culture warriors, because they do great work helping cancer sufferers with issues like palliative care ... but fuck eBay right?

If eBay are going to pick sides in the culture war and come out batting for the anonymous hard-right smear-mongering austerity fanatics, then fuck them.

But there's no good in just swearing to yourself that you won't use their services, or bickering about their decision on social media.

Write to them and tell them that if they're going to collude with an anonymous hard-right censorship campaign to defund Impress regulated websites, then you're not going to use their services, and you're going to tell people how eBay is actively siding with the hard-right to repress and censor legitimate criticism of stuff like austerity, wage repression, public service cuts, UN-condemned government discrimination against disabled people, brutal social security cuts, and deliberate under-investment in the drivers of future economic growth like infrastructure, housing, and education.

Here are some ways of getting in touch with eBay:

Email their UK managing director: Rob Hattrell
Facebook: eBay UK
Twitter: eBay UK news
Instagram: eBay UK

And please remember these rules for effective communication

1. Be firm but polite (absolutely no swearing or abuse)
2. Tell them what they did wrong
3. Ask them what justification they had for what they did
4. Ask them to rectify their actions
5. Tell them you will be boycotting their services until they rectify

Here's a template email you can copy n' paste in case you don't have the time to compose your own

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Dear Rob Hattrell,

I'm writing to raise my concerns about eBay's decision to side with an anonymous right-wing campaign to smear the Impress regulated website The Canary as "fake news". As you will know, your company have publicly announced a decision to block adverts on their website as a direct result of this political censorship campaign.

I would like to know what investigations and considerations you undertook to justify this action.

• Did eBay contact the independent UK Press Regulator Impress to ascertain whether the accusation of "fake news" against the Canary is a fair one?

• Did eBay identify any examples of "fake news" at all on The Canary website and report them to the press regulator before the decision to blacklist was taken?

• Did eBay contact The Canary for comment before this action was undertaken?

• Or did eBay take a hard-right pressure group entirely at their word and block advertising on a left-leaning website without conducting any investigations to verify the accusations first?

• Did eBay consider the free speech ramifications of siding with an anonymous hard-right campaign to defund and silence left-leaning socially progressive political commentary?
  
  Did eBay consider the reputation damage that uncritically siding with an anonymous hard-right censorship campaign could do to the eBay brand?

I hope you understand that I will be boycotting eBay and advising my friends and family to do likewise until this situation is rectified.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards

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Aside from contacting eBay with your concerns, you can also help to support independent anti-austerity media with a small monthly donation, or just by sharing their articles, infographics, and videos.

The Canary
Evolve Politics
Novara Media
Another Angry Voice (me)