Express VPN
ExpressVPN is a provider of virtual private network (VPN) services, marketed as a secure and private way to browse the internet. ExpressVPN is owned by Kape Technologies PLC, which is an Israeli company originally founded in 2011 by an ex-Israeli intelligence officer in Unit 8200 in the IDF under the name Crossrider. The company became associated with ad injection and malware. Around 2017, it rebranded as Kape Technologies. Today, it offers products such as ExpressVPN and Private Internet Access.
Between Kape's Technologies history and its connection to the Israeli military, its CEO donating to the IDF, and its owned company ExpressVPN sponsoring the likes of Ben Shapiro, makes Kape Technology, including ExpressVPN and all other subsidiaries, an important target for the boycott.
Teddy Sagi's Taxis for Murderers
After October 7th, businessman Teddy Sagi, CEO of Kape Technologies and owner of ExpressVPN, took action to support Israeli soldiers. Sagi donated 1 million shekels to a project providing taxis for IOF soldiers on leave, helping them commute between their houses and deployment locations.
Sponsoring Ultranationalist Extremists
ExpressVPN has proudly sponsored extremist and right-wing political commentators from The Daily Wire. The Daily Wire is a prominent conservative news site that largely caters to far-right American politics. It features commentators such as Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Jordan Peterson, and previously Candace Owens. Each of these main commentators has made multiple racist and inflammatory statements against Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, women, Black people, and queer people.
Ben Shapiro is a political commentator and co-founded The Daily Wire in 2015. His ideology and opinions drive the essence of what The Daily Wire represents. He is a strong supporter of Israel, the building of illegal settlements, and the ethnic displacement and cleansing of Palestinians. In a now-deleted 2010 tweet, Shapiro wrote:
Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue.
He confirmed this view in another tweet, despite his attempts to portray a different stance in certain contexts to win arguments:
Apologies! You are correct re: slur about Arabs. Not all Arabs like open sewage and blowing things up. Just Pals [Palestinians] and their allies.
Shapiro has made racist and generalizing statements toward Arabs on multiple occasions. In 2003, he wrote:
The time for half measures has passed. Bulldozing houses of homicide bombers is useless. Instituting ongoing curfews in Arab-populated cities is useless. Roadblocks, touch fences, midnight negotiations and cease-fires are useless.
The Jews don't realize that expelling a hostile population is a commonly used and generally effective way of preventing violent entanglements. There are no gas chambers here. It's not genocide; it's transfer. It's not Hitler; it's Churchill.
The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership.
In 2007, Ben Shapiro wrote another racist and underwhelming opinion piece titled "The Radical Evil Of The Palestinian Arab Population":
The Palestinian people, who dress their toddlers in bomb belts and then take family snapshots. [...] The Palestinian Arab population is rotten to the core.
In 2008 article ,he stated:
Palestinian Arabs do not desire peace -- that they are, in fact, the world's most ardent supporters of anti-Western terrorism.
In the same article, he went on to equate the Saudis to Nazis:
The Israeli-Palestinian issue frustrates the Saudis in the same way the Jewish issue frustrated the Nazis.
In another article of the same year, Ben Shapiro equated all Arabs and Muslims as one, calling their worldview "fascism":
Israel shares Western values; its enemies share values with the mullahs. The Arab-Israeli conflict is a conflict between two contrasting worldviews: freedom and fascism.
In this piece, he echoed the sentiments of Benjamin Netanyahu, who expressed similar views after October 7th, referring to the Arab-Israeli conflict as a war between "the children of light and the children of darkness"
the Arab-Israeli conflict may be accurately described as a war between darkness and light. Those who argue against Israeli settlements -- outposts of light in a dark territory -- argue for the continued victory of night.
That same year, Shapiro continued to propagate his racist views:
Western civilization is at war with militant Islam, which dominates Muslim communities all over the world. Militant Islam isnt a tiny minority of otherwise goodhearted Muslims. Its a dominant strain of evil that runs rampant in a population of well over 1 billion.
In 2015, Shapiro published an article titled "No, It Is Not Un-American to Prefer Christian Refugees to Muslim Refugees." In a 2016 article on his own website, he further intensified his rhetoric by describing Muslims in Europe as a "disease" and Muslim men as "uncivilized."
Ben Shapiro has called women who have abortions “baby killers" and has downplayed the impact of climate change. He argues that homosexuality and being transgender are mental illnesses. He opposes the freedom marriage and denies any real discrimination against queer people.
All of The Daily Wire hosts, particularly Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh and Candace Owens, share similar inflammatory and racist views towards various minorities, including Muslims, Arabs, Latin Americans, migrants, queer people, Black Americans, and people from the Global South in general.
It's mind-boggling how ExpressVPN would sponsor such a platform without sharing, at the very least, similar views to those of The Daily Wire hosts. ExpressVPN affiliate sales program rewards creators with a commission (a percentage of each sale) for every signup. This implicates ExpressVPN in supporting far-right extremism, as well as pro-apartheid and ethnic cleansing views.
Recources:
- Express VPN Ben Shapiro
- Express VPN Matt Walsh
- Express VPN Candace Owens
- The Jerusalem Post Israeli businessman Teddy Sagi gifts NIS 1 M to fund taxis for soldiers
- Web Archive The Daily Wire: So, Here's A Giant List Of All The Dumb Stuff I've Ever Done
- Tweeter Ben Shapiro 2010
- Tweeter Ben Shapiro 2015
- Orlando Sentinal Transfer Is Not A Dirty Word
- Townhall No Jews for Oil
- Townhall The Case for Israeli Settlements
- Townhall Enough of Radical Islam
- Townhall No, It Is Not Un-American to Prefer Christian Refugees to Muslim Refugees
- Forward Why Doesn’t The New York Times Mention Ben Shapiro’s Islamophobia?
- Creators The Radical Evil Of The Palestinian Arab Population
- The Daily Wire Germany’s Telling Muslims Not To Grope Women At Swimming Pools
- GLAAD Ben Shapiro
- The Patriot Post Liberals Take Over Your Brain
- ABC News Outspoken conservative Ben Shapiro on whether free speech still has a place on college campuses
- Splcenter Breitbart Editor Ben Shapiro Says LGBT Community Does Not Really Face Discrimination