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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   21206 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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Another case of culture war cancellation dropped, this time somewhat more important than the usual cases.

The case of Nicolas Guillou, French judge at the ICC, cancelled by Marco Rubio personally.

If your French is not sufficient, here is Xitter summary.

Guillou's daily existence has been transformed into a Kafkaesque nightmare. He cannot: open or maintain accounts with Google, Amazon, Apple, or any US company; make hotel reservations (Expedia canceled his booking in France hours after he made it); conduct online commerce, since he can't know if the packaging is American; use any major credit card (Visa, Mastercard, Amex are all American); access normal banking services, even with non-American banks, as banks worldwide close sanctioned accounts; conduct virtually any financial transaction.

He describes it as being "economically banned across most of the planet," including in his own country, France, and where he works, the Netherlands.

That's the real shocking aspect of this: the Americans are:

  • punishing a European citizen
  • for doing his job in Europe
  • applying laws Europe officially supports
  • at an institution based in Europe
  • that Europe helped create and fund

Can it happen to you?

Not in this way, not even the most IRL important mottizen is worthy of Marco's personal attention.

If it happens, it will happen because AI analyzed your online activity and decided it crossed a threshold of dangerous nihilist extremism (and you could do about it just as much as Nicolas Guillou, this means nothing at all.)

This is cancellation for power politics reason, not bc of culture war.

If it happens, it will happen because AI analyzed your online activity and decided it crossed a threshold of dangerous

In Europe, debanking etc isn't due to Americans. Nobody in US cares about random anti-immigration activists who are typical targets.

Which anti immigration activists have been debanked?

I believe dozens at least in Britain, possibly up to a hundred. Real stupid policy, they went after basically nobodies too. They also tried to debank Farage which backfired.

More locally, Martin Sellner said he ultimately had to go to .. Latvia, I think, to get a working bank account?. In this lawsuit against Erste Bank, he claims he made 400+ attempts to open an account, and when he succeeded, in 93 cases the account was terminated a few days after.

In the proceedings, Sellner and his attorney demonstrated that 394 banks had refused to open accounts for him upon request , and according to his own statements, he has had 93 accounts closed over the years, with nearly 400 account applications rejected.

Now he's suing Erste Bank in Austria. Mind you, his organisation was acquitted from the organisation charge and doesn't seem to have a criminal record except some self-defense in 2017. He got charged with that mostly on the basis of accepting a donation from Brenton Tarrant and swapping a few emails. That was the guy who made money in crypto and then committed a mass shooting.

Anyway, it seems a low-lvl court ruled in his favor, so I wonder how it'll go from there.

The Commercial Court in Vienna (Handelsgericht Wien) ruled partially in Sellner's favor, stating that bank accounts in Austria are subject to an obligation to contract, provided there are no objective grounds against a business relationship, and that political views or media assessments are not sufficient grounds for refusal

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