In Front Page Magazine’s extensive series on the leftist organizations that the IRS has allowed to keep their tax deductible status, we have covered Chinese Communist front groups, art vandals, domestic terrorists, pedophiles, illegal alien smugglers and the enablers of murderers.
Every time we dive deeper into these investigations, someone asks if there’s anywhere that the IRS will draw the line. A few weeks ago, someone suggested pirates. Surely there couldn’t be nonprofit pirates with tax deductible donations that the IRS has decided is a legitimate charity.
Not only is there a pirate nonprofit, but it’s been denounced by the court, described as eco-terrorists by the FBI, and has shown up on Interpol’s Red Notice while being the subject of international incidents without ever persuading the IRS to drop its 501(c)(3) status.
A decade ago, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling stated that, “you don’t need a peg leg or an eye patch. When you ram ships; hurl glass containers of acid; drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders; launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate.”
The group in question was Sea Shepherd: a trendy anti-fishing organization whose celebrity supporters included Pamela Anderson, Martin Sheen and Sean Penn. And a decade after the Court of Appeals stated that Sea Shepherd’s alleged acts were “clear instances of violent acts for private ends, the very embodiment of piracy”, Sea Shepherd maintains a presence on Facebook, Amazon, YouTube and other Big Tech platforms that purged conservations for “extremism”,where it sells merchandise featuring its version of the skull and bones pirate flag.
And it has retained its status with the IRS as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charity for over 40 years.
read more:
https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-court-says-theyre-pirates-the-irs-says-theyre-a-nonprofit/
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