America's puppet master? Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Vanity Fair.
The venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is one of the most forthright individuals in Silicon Valley. Yet even this billionaire maintains that his fellow elites have been muzzled. Interviewed by Joe Rogan last November, Marc Andreessen said that many of his fellow tech entrepreneurs had been debanked by the Biden administration. The Obama administration, he said, had taken such action against marijuana businesses, escorts and gun shops; Bidenâs, he said, pursued tech founders, preventing them from receiving payments, making them, or buying insurance. âThis is one of the reasons why we ended up supporting Trump,â he told Rogan.
Debanking is when a bank closes an account in order to censor or punish the customer for political or religious views. The banks, in these cases, are typically responding to ideological pressure or to perceived reputational risk. As you might imagine, anger over debanking rapidly merged with concerns shared by crypto companies, which have also contended with access issues to traditional banking. One CEO shared a letter in which the bank Chase said it was closing his companyâs account.
The complaints about debanking were echoed and amplified by Donald Trump. His wife, Melania, claims that she herself was debanked. More broadly, the MAGA movement has ample experience of being booted off social media platforms. The matter of tech debanking, therefore, has been rolled into existing MAGA complaints. By this account, the US government has restricted freedom of expression via several coercive means.
In keeping with this view, Trumpâs allies have called for a dismantling of financial watchdogs such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CPFB). âDelete CFPBâ, wrote Musk, echoing Andreessen, who blamed debanking woes on the agency. Examine the policy upheavals of the past two months, though, and you will note that such measures will not have the intended effect.
Far from protecting freedom of speech, the new administration has made it easier for financial platforms to kick users off for political expression. Among the red tape it has slashed were some CFPB rules that were designed to protect, of all things, free speech. This should all work out well for Andreessen, who is one of Silicon Valleyâs biggest investors in crypto â the sector that, more than almost any other, yearns for looser regulation.
Just as the casual observer loses sight of the magicianâs card, many observers missed Andreessenâs sleight of hand. His remarks on the Rogan show convinced those enraged about censorship to support a niche campaign to unwind protections against crypto fraud.
In this way, Andreessen conflated two unrelated issues for his own financial benefit. In a worrying global trend, a wide array of people â Canadian truckers, Brexit supporters and Palestinian activists â have been removed from financial platforms without due process. Unrelatedly, regulators concerned with keeping crypto startups in compliance with banking rules have taken steps to crack down. Some executives involved in the crypto trade have said they have had difficulty using traditional bank accounts simply because they were flagged by the system. The truckers were debanked; the crypto executives were not.
Consider the viewpoint of regulators. On several occasions in recent years, crypto brokerages and emerging cryptocurrencies have imploded overnight and left ordinary customers with nothing. Regulators have also repeatedly accused crypto startups â including those backed by Andreessen â of a variety of alleged financial crimes. These offences have included the undermining of rules on money laundering, and the violation of sanctions on terrorist groups. It’s not entirely surprising that those entrusted with safeguarding the financial system view these schemes with extreme suspicion.
As free speech has become a battleground for everyday Americans â waged on college campuses, over political correctness in the workplace, and on social media platforms â a simultaneous legal revolution has taken shape. Corporate actors seeking to eviscerate rules and restrictions on business conduct have attempted to conflate commercial action with free expression. In other words, the business elite is piggybacking off the free speech debate for its own ends.
This piggybacking has been taking place for decades. Lawyers have poked and prodded, attempting to find new legal manoeuvres to classify business behaviour as protected speech. In this vein, Southwest and Spirit Airlines have repeatedly litigated to block a regulation that required airlines to display the full price of tickets. Another example comes via the private rating agencies that were responsible for falsely certifying the safety of risky mortgage-backed securities in the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis. In court, the agencies argued that they were simply expressing First Amendment-protected speech, and were thus exempt from fraud lawsuits.
These efforts largely failed in court, but other, similar arguments have begun to prevail increasingly often. In the Supreme Court ruling Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., Justice Anthony Kennedy struck down laws against health care firms mining and selling patient data to pharmaceutical companies. The patient data laws, Kennedy wrote, violated commercial speech laws and âburdened a form of protected expression.â In similar fashion, Kennedy and his Supreme Court colleagues cited the First Amendment when ruling in 2018 that the imposition of union fees on non-union public sector employees was unconstitutional. The imposition of fees, they said, amounted to coerced financial speech.
Most famously, Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Citizens United, the 2010 decision that allowed unlimited corporate and independent spending in elections. The court ruling ushered in our current era of engorged Super PACs and dark money spending, all in the name of the First Amendment. The rules that had governed the financing of political campaigns, Kennedy wrote, had unduly restricted âcorporate political speechâ.
The flood of challenges continues. The First Amendment is being used to attack corporate regulations, ethics laws and consumer safety rules. Corporate attorneys are attempting to overturn the few existing laws restricting robo-calls and automated texts; interest groups funded by Google and Facebook have claimed that antitrust enforcement would increase censorship and stifle free speech; and state bans on lobbyist gifts to legislators are continually under threat. Lawyers have argued that such gifts are not bribery, but an example of free expression.
The new administration might find that this legal trend threatens some of its most consumer-friendly reforms. Processed food industry lobbyists have threatened to use First Amendment lawsuits to strike down the Food and Drug Administrationâs new updated guidelines on what foods can be labeled as âhealthyâ â a cause that has been championed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trumpâs new health secretary. Trump has also promised to minimise pharmaceutical advertisements on television, but this endeavour, too, is likely to face challenge in the courts on the grounds of freedom of expression.
All of this is taking place without society having made much progress on what we should consider genuine freedom of expression. Banks are still free to arbitrarily remove customers, college students continue to face coercion over free speech, and social media platforms retain near-untrammelled power to censor their users.
Corporations, then, have taken an expansive view of the First Amendment in order to remove constraints on their power. But ordinary Americans have been left on the sidelines, as vulnerable as they ever were to government and corporate censorship.
Lee Fang is an investigative journalist and Contributing Editor at UnHerd. Read his Substack here.
lhfang 
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeI can see where you’re going with this Lee but some anecdotal evidence of the specific speech or transactions you’re referencing would be helpful. I specifically recall the Canadian Truckers being debanked. Nigel Farage was famously debanked. I don’t know anything about Palestinian protesters being debanked.
The absurdity of the Canadian Truckers getting debanked was because of the double standard. The same government previously allowed economic sabotage from the Left only months prior and cheered it on. Farage was obviously singled out and is a more glaring example of targeted overreach. I would assume…and I’m not just saying this because the Palestinian protesters were on the Left that a more universal standard was applied to them. The same standard used against Trump supporters.
That to me is the issue, the rules can’t be arbitrary and applied to one set of views. If the rules at least attempt to be neutral there is less of a problem because the State has an interest in balancing free speech with the real threat of economic sabotage.
The crypto situation is over my head. There’s too much going on there to figure that out. I personally view Crypto as a ponzi scheme and the losers have only themselves to blame.
Citizens United is a bit different. If citizen speech is not suppressed than total spending on political campaigns is less of a problem. In fact, you could argue billionaire and corporate contributions actually hurt the Harris campaign in a Populist environment because the population in the 2024 election was able to point it out without being suppressed. When one Party is whining about Oligarchy despite having significantly more billionaire support than a rational informed public kind of cancels out the hypocrisy.
A critical mass of the American populace is now awake to the dirty use of power by the elite Left in and out of government. Democrats are totally in denial as to how exposed they are and how culpable they appear. The suspicions were growing prior to the election but now DOGE et al are flipping on the lights in the dark corners of government and Americans are seeing roaches scurrying for cover everywhere.
Democrats relentlessly demonized Trump for eight years in the media, impeached him in Congress, dragged him through the courts and convicted him. How did the people respond to this orchestrated character assassination? They elected him to the presidency. What about this stunning sequence of events is so difficult for Democrats to appreciate? Americans are so outraged by the Left’s feckless abuse of power that they simply don’t care what Democrats say about Trump. Still, the Left doubles down on Trump-bashing because they have nothing else to offer.
This author is another of that crew that believes that the more big words you use, the cleverer you sound. Unfortunately, ’tis a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. No points, soldier.
Again with the complaints about âbig wordsâ Sam? Might be time to download a dictionary app? Then the chip might feel a little lighter on that shoulder. Try it.
I don’t mind big words, Martin. They are sometimes necessary. But they are also used at times to obscure the author’s lack of intelligence or knowledge. Such as in this case ….
I get what you’re saying. You’re saying there’s a lot of abstract code-speak and jargon.
I cut him some slack because he’s trying to fit a ton of information into a small window of space. My assumption is that he respects his audience and doesn’t want to talk down to them.
I’m open to the idea that he’s right about plenty, he just needs a longer article to fill in the specifics.
it was fine, well written and clear
I think the author should go and check out the other recent Andreessen media appearances: Lex Fridman and Ross Douthat.
From them you get the feeling that the tech bros just can’t take the Dem regulation and interference and stupidity any more.
Lee “crypto sector yearns for looser regulation” is wrong and quantifiably so. Hundreds of start ups have wasted time, money and energy taliking with the SEC in an attempt to clarify their business propositions.
Chokepoint 2.0 has ruined many bright prospects and forced entrepreneurs overseas.
The industry craves sensible regulation
It’s worth remembering that the early drafts of the Declaration of Independence spoke of “…life, liberty and the pursuit of property…” instead of “happiness”. Most of the delegates objected, in an early sign of populism even in the upper classes, and the wording was changed. Thank God.
But that avaricious attitude is still alive and well in the minds of some Americans. They’re usually referred to as ‘conservatives’. Until recently most corporations and business-people were staunch conservatives.
Our present Supreme Court line-up is not a good place to look for happiness.
Looking on from a distance, I had the impression that the Democrats were now the party of the rich (and the other side was the deplorables, bitter clingers, etc) and that becoming a Democrat politician was a fast track to becoming rich.
The good news is that Elon Musk now has access to, and a copy of, the federal governmentâs data from the past couple of decades. Which includes dubious agency links to progressive NGOs and to companies that didnât have the integrity to do the right thing when feeling pressure from these agencies and NGOs to destroy people based on progressive cult ideology.
So we’ll all find out soon enough about the companies that were being un-American by debanking, firing employees, etc, without due process and based on specious progressive ideology.
Democracy dies in darkness. And light, transparency and truth are the best disinfectants that build trust in society.
Elon is the right man at the post to get this all done.
Fangâs âworrying trendâ has existed at least since the Lochner case in 1905. One Americanâs protection is another Americanâs involuntary restriction. When thereâs a high degree of âpre-politicalâ (ie, cultural) uniformity, or at least similarity, liberalism stands a chance of squaring the circle. But after say two centuries of increasingly fractious individualism, our options have become tyranny and revolution. Unless Andreesen makes us all into virtual – and virtuous – Romans.
Being surprised that the U.S. sanctions countries and individuals it disagrees withâonly to now see it doing the same to its own citizensâreveals a staggering lack of critical thinking and a failure of the education system. What did people expect? That sanctions or debanking used abroad wouldnât eventually be used at home? Just laughable!
As free speech has become a battleground for everyday Americans
Which American had this on their Bingo card? Free speech is one of those things we are accustomed to taking for granted, like water coming from the tap when the handle is turned. But in Europe, free expression is under open attack and don’t think for a second people in the US are not salivating to do the same thing. They have been doing it, as this piece points out, and they will continue unless stopped.
“Corporations are people, my friend.” –Mitt Romney, 11-Aug-2011
The majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in Stromberg v. California accepted Brandeis’s ideas on free speech.
This is false:
” … crypto â the sector that, more than almost any other, yearns for looser regulation.”
For the past decade the crypto industry has been bending over backwards asking for clear regulation, on every possible front. The absence of which gave carte blanche for tradfi propagandists and unwitting propaganda parrotsâauthor Lee Fang apparently includedâto whine about the crypto baddies and their made-up demands for less regulationâor their inability to follow rules that Literally could not be followed, by design.
The reality is 180 degrees the opposite of Feng’s portrait, as anyone who has done any actual research is aware. Fang’s article isn’t Unherd, but arch Herd.
Fang’s argument would be more persuasive if one could credibly believe that CFPB was and will be impartial in applying its rules. That is not the case. It was and remains fully a creation of the Democratic Party, and was part of the “weaponization of government” we witnessed over the last decade.
Anyway, the fundamental problem is much deeper, going back to legislation and rules that empower the federal government to oversee and direct how banks conduct business, not with the purpose of preventing fraud but to use banks as tools to attack disfavored entities without going to the trouble of developing and presenting criminal cases. It started with drugs, prostitutes, terrorists, and illegal guns, which most saw as worthy goals.
But, as we should all have learned long ago, such power, once granted to the government, is NEVER limited to the original purpose or scale. Any promises to the contrary are always hollow and ultimately disproven, and often surprisingly quickly.