Last Updated on May 25, 2024
Only two weeks after Lucas Gage spoke to National File about the “counter cancel culture industry,” WordPress zipped his wallet, not allowing him to process payments for his bookstore via Automattic’s WooPayments.
The veteran, commentator and author took to X to state to his followers:
And there is it.
Finally, the Jews have shut down my book store.
They talk about “freedom of speech” and “equality” but a war veteran like me, who served his country (actually wars for Israel) is not even “allowed” to sell books lol.
Just showing the world who they really are.
He immediately contacted his tech-savvy friend, Khaled Soliman, for answers to this mysterious problem.
Soliman told Gage, “Never. I [had] seen people have their Stripe, and PayPal shut down, but that was usually for suspicious activity and sometimes nefarious reasons — but since 2008 in the time I’ve been doing this, I have NEVER seen Automattic cancel any services for anyone.”
Automattic deploys the open-source WordPress where any developers around the world can improve it and build on it. They’re all about being open-source and giving people the freedom to self-manage their own stories.
He continued:
I’ve been a part of FaceBook groups exclusively about WordPress and WooCommerce with thousands of people in it and no one has ever reported anything like this [and] also [with] the hundreds of clients I had with WooCommerce. This just doesn’t happen.
Even a user report shouldn’t have done this. They would at least investigate.
WordPress did not explicitly say what violation was broken but that it had the right to turn business away to anyone for any reason. Gage told National File that it was on purpose to allow WordPress to terminate anyone they want:
I think that’s for like the ADL and friends to do exactly that option to terminate people who they just choose to based on political bias … There’s nothing that I violated — I was selling books … So that’s what they do. They have the terms of service that’s open and can be interpreted however they want.
Gage also said to the outlet earlier this month that he had been banned from Buy Me a Coffee, Ko-Fi, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, Wize, Stripe, LinkeTree, FaceBook and recently, Instagram.
I’ve grown so quickly and I’m an influential person and that threatens their narratives. So they want to shut me down and make me shut up, and make me obedient … I obviously dont care about the money so I won’t stop.
Gage believes much of this is done through “lists” that are curated by the Ukrainian “disinformation” watchdog, the North Atlantic Fella Organization (NAFO). He said that the group took responsibility for taking him down:
They attack Keith Woods, they make lists, and they harass and they try to find loopholes in terms of service.
Gage said the group sometimes claims responsibility for shutting down an individual, but he isn’t entirely sure. It may be true since it was done manually and not through automated AI.
It said they manually reviewed it and they made a decision. So it was specifically targeted toward me. And it was no question political bias because I didn’t violate [the terms and] I haven’t gotten a response as to why I was suspended for services.
Gage’s bookstore is now up and running as of Saturday. He is banned from using any plugins or widgets owned by Automattic, which WooCommerce stores run on.
Lucas Gage: Look Toward Counter Cancel Culture Industry
I think they’re going to probably ban my next [payment] processor … They could do all these things … You could do worse to me and I’m prepared for that, but I don’t think they’ll do that. They’re just going to harass me by removing processors.
