Centrist financial attack on SKWAWKBOX fails hilariously – with a serious lesson

On Friday afternoon at around 4pm, a mysterious and unusual flurry of donations hit the SKWAWKBOX’s PayPal account.

All of them were for exactly £0.01 – a penny – each.

The cause of this flurry was unknown – and as other things were going on this evening, they were not investigated further at the time and they soon stopped. But a little later someone flagged up a message by Twitter user @Lafargue:

And so it turned out to be. A group of so-called ‘centrists’ had persuaded themselves that PayPal transaction charges would cost this blog money if the donated sum was tiny.

The original tweet was deleted once the fallacy of the idea was pointed out, but enough tweets remain to show that the attack was suggested by one of the more ugly Twitter accounts @freddybinyusuf and coordinated by @twlldun:

While neutral or left observers were amused, various centrists were disappointed at the failure of their ‘jape’ – some even aghast at the thought that they might have donated a penny:

Would-be coordinator ‘Twlldun’, to be fair, owned her failure – even when Waterson and others indulged in some humour at her expense:

But ‘freddybinyusuf’ appeared intent on finding an alternative way to damage yours-truly:

Sadly, Guardian media editor Jim Waterson’s ‘great headline’ can’t be used. While the centrists ‘self-owned’, the net effect of the ‘donations’ was exactly zero – PayPal’s transaction charge cancels out such small donations. But the public ‘self-own’ by this blog’s enemies – they must surely merit that description – was certainly enjoyable.

But the incident has a serious side. The SKWAWKBOX clearly inconveniences supposed ‘centrists’ so much that some of them are prepared to go to significant effort to try to find ways to damage it – and would gleefully do so if they could.

That’s fine. This blog is meant to inconvenience the faux-Labour right almost as much as the Tories – and routinely does so by exposing the tricks and underhand practices right-wingers attempt in order to undermine Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the success of the left ‘project’.

This scrutiny is self-evidently unwelcome to those behind those tricks and manoeuvres – they work a lot better if kept hidden.

If this blog upsets such ‘centrists’ enough that they try not only to smear and libel it but to damage it financially, it’s a sign that it’s doing its job effectively.

But it underlines the importance of the left supporting its independent media.

The centrists were incorrectly horrified at the thought that they had contributed even a little to supporting the SKWAWKBOX – so if you really want to upset a centrist, there’s an option below to make a donation to ensure that their ‘jape’ ended up doing just that.

But if you’re a centrist reading this, please note that this blog has to pay a transaction charge of 120% on every donation of £100 or more, so if you really want to damage the SKWAWKBOX you just need to think bigger…

The SKWAWKBOX needs your support. This blog is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal. Thanks for your solidarity so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.

If you wish to reblog this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.