Following The New York Times’s much-maligned profile on Tony Hovater, a white nationalist with the Traditionalist Worker Party, the number of critical responses was enough to prompt the Times to run an explainer on why they published the piece in the first place.
However, there was one other result of the piece’s publication.
According to a fundraising page set up this week, Hovater and his wife as “suddenly without an income and are going to have to leave their home.”
Like many of those identified following this summer’s Charlottesville march, Hovater, according to the fundraising page, lost his job following his newfound notoriety. Additionally, Hovater and his wife will “soon … be without a home,” apparently as a result of the lack of income.
Their appeal for funds is featured on a new, white nationalist fundraising platform called GoyFundMe, an anti-Semitic play on the more popular GoFundMe platform. While the site, which went up over the summer, claims only to be a platform “dedicated to the principles of liberty and freedom of speech,” its content – and the fact that it’s run by the Traditionalist Worker Party – betrays its actual aims. (The fundraising site didn’t respond to ThinkProgress’s questions.)
For instance, the vast majority of the fundraising campaigns on the page go to supporting white nationalist and white supremacist organizations. One, run by the site’s administrators, is attempting to raise money for the “Unite the Right Defense Fund,” claiming that backers are “supporting our men behind the wire” – including white nationalist groups like Vanguard America and one of Charlottesville’s primary organizers, Jason Kessler. Another campaign is run by white nationalist Brad Griffin, who says he turned to GoyFundMe because he had been “deplatformed” by organizations like GoFundMe, PayPal, and Patreon.
On Tuesday, the Traditional Worker Party Twitter feed said that Matthew Parrott, one of the leaders of the group, is running GoyFundMe. The Traditionalist Worker Party, which includes Matthew Heimbach at its head, is known for its rank anti-Semitism, conspiracy mongering, and desire to disintegrate the U.S. along racial lines. (Unlike Hovater, Heimbach has recently been living in a trailer.)
The site is copyrighted by J&K Business Solutions, LLC, a business based out of a house in St. Petersburg, Florida.
GoyFundMe often uses its Twitter account to plug the fundraising campaigns on its site. For instance, GoyFundMe took to Twitter to claim that Hovater and his wife have “run through the leftist gauntlet.”
GoyFundMe has also made multiple, unsuccessful attempts to get Ann Coulter to retweet the account, claiming its white nationalist patrons are “political dissident[s].”
@AnnCoulter Would you mind helping a fellow political dissident out by Retweeting?https://t.co/yNTdBqeQC0
— Goyfundme (@Goyfundme) November 29, 2017
Anyone know @AnnCoulter? A retweet from her would be 🔥. Let's make it happen.https://t.co/xukWRjmj2P
— Goyfundme (@Goyfundme) August 29, 2017
To collect the funds, GoyFundMe is using IgnitionDeck, which bills itself as a “powerful WordPress crowdfunding platform.” GoyFundMe says it is “Powered By IgnitionDeck” on all of its fundraisers. IgnitionDeck did not respond to ThinkProgress’s questions.
Almost all of the projects on GoyFundMe have failed to reach their fundraising goals. One, seeking to raise $250 for Pepe the Frog pins, has only managed to gain $8. (As the page reads, “Show your support by wearing one of these pins around town! Also comes with several stickers!”) And the aforementioned “Unite the Right Defense Fund” has only reached 1 percent of its fundraising goal.
However, one project, seeking to raise funds to publish the Italian fascist Julius Evola, has raised nearly $13,000. Those donating $15 can be called a “Mystic,” while those donating $170 can be called a “Man Among the Ruins.”
Hovater, meanwhile, has reached his fundraising goal, and then some. As of Wednesday morning, Hovater had raised over $5,000. Wrote GoyFundMe in response, “Our people are, without a doubt, the best.”