Go viral for racist behavior, receive $750,000: inside the new extremist crowdfunding campaigns
Shiloh Hendrix, a white woman based in Rochester, Minnesota, went viral after admitting in a video that she called a 5-year-old Black child the N-word while at a local park on 28 April.
Though Hendrix was met with widespread condemnation and denouncement after the incident, she also raised over $750,000 on the crowdfunding website GiveSendGo, commonly used by extremists to fundraise for far-right causes. Many contributors to Hendrix's campaign, which was created to 'protect [Hendrix's] family' after backlash, used racial slurs and Nazi symbols in their donation names. As of 1 June, over 30,000 people had donated to Hendrix's fundraiser. The support and funding Hendrix received for her racist actions raised alarm bells for many, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which flagged the fundraiser as being used to 'spread hateful talking points and legitimize their ideas'. Experts say the response to her campaign signals the rise of more overt, public support for racist actions, versus their condemnation.
Hendrix isn't the first white person to become infamous for racist behavior and receive financial support from members of the public. A legal defense fund for Daniel Penny, a white veteran who killed Jordan Neely, a Black unhoused man, on a New York City subway in 2023, raised over $3.3m on GiveSendGo. The fund was created by Penny's defense lawyers. A similar campaign was started for Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during a 2020 demonstration against the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man. That crowdfunding drive was started by Friends of Kyle Rittenhouse, a group based in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised more than $585,000. Several fundraisers for participants of the 2021 capital insurrection are currently hosted on the website.
But experts say that the grassroots nature of Hendrix's fundraiser is concerning. Compared to the success of fundraisers like Rittenhouse or Penny that were largely driven by media attention and conservative politicians, Hendrix's campaign is in support of her usage of a racial slur and was spread by white supremacist circles.
'This particular case stands out because of the horrifying, vile slur that is being defended,' said Brian Levin, the founding director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. He added: 'It's illustrative of something that we've seen with regard to online organizing with respect to 'dyed-in-the-wool' racists, as opposed to just more controversial political expression.'
Organizations and individuals explicitly supporting white supremacy, anti-LGBTQ+, and QAnon conspiracies raised over $6m on fundraising sites, including GiveSendGo, between 2016 and 2022, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism. GiveSendGo hosted the majority of fundraisers, about 86.5% of the money tracked by the ADL.
Other experts say that the Hendrix campaign demonstrates a shift in public opinion following Donald Trump's latest electoral victory, one where bigoted acts receive more open, tangible support than ever before. 'There's evidence that in the last few years, we've really seen a normalization of explicitly racialized politics,' said Jennifer Chudy, an assistant professor of political science at Wesleyan University. 'I think the person in the White House has emboldened people who may have felt silently sympathetic in the past towards this white woman, to now be more open about it, to not have any kind of sense of embarrassment or shame [since] this is a position that many in our upper echelons of power endorse and profess.'
In many ways, the success of Hendrix's crowdfunding campaign represents an 'anomaly', said Mark Dwyer, an extremism funding investigator with the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism. For one, a small group of users on X, known for spreading racist rhetoric online, claimed that they created the fundraiser on GiveSendGo and then reached out to Hendrix, offering her support, said Dwyer.
What's more, Hendrix's crowdfunding came after a viral fundraising campaign for Karmelo Anthony on the same platform. Anthony, a Black teenager from Frisco, Texas, allegedly stabbed and killed Austin Metcalf, a white teenager from a rival school, during a track meet. White supremacists encouraged people to donate to Hendrix's fund as a rebuttal to money raised for Anthony's legal defense fund, which Dwyer said likely boosted the campaign's success.
Hendrix's video also served as a form of recruitment and camaraderie for folks who may have bigoted views but are not white supremacists. '[Hendrix's video] got in front of millions and millions and millions of eyes. It drove donors that might not necessarily be the hardcore white supremacist, but in their eyes, they don't see what she did as a problem,' said Dwyer. He added: 'People are voting on their views with their dollar. [For] a lot of people, this might be their first action outside of posting on social media to push their views and making a donation.'
This latest incident represents a sharp contrast in how the public reacted to racist incidents just a few years ago. With the launch of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013, many white people began facing public outrage over problematic behavior, including their harassment of Black people in public spaces. Jennifer Schulte, nicknamed 'Barbecue Becky', was widely criticized in 2018 after calling 911 on a Black family who was barbecuing in an Oakland, California, park. Amy Cooper was fired from her job after a trending video proved that she falsely claimed that a Black birdwatcher threatened her and her dog. 'Karen' quickly became a moniker to describe an entitled, nosy white woman as racial justice protests spread across the globe in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd.
But Chudy said that high levels of support for the Black Lives Matter movement among white people was also due to a confluence of unusual forces, including the Covid-19 pandemic and viral video of Floyd's murder. She added: 'You had white people who were stuck at home, [with the] typical distractions of their daily life suspended and so they would watch their screens and they saw an unambiguous, violent, lethal interaction between a white police officer and a Black man. We were always going to kind of revert to the norm.'
Backlash to support of racial justice also came quickly, best illustrated by the political rise and election of Trump in 2016. 'Trump emerges on the national stage with an explicitly racial agenda of talking about Obama's birth certificate and where he's from,' said Chudy. 'Because Trump is so visible, because he's served in the highest political office in the land twice, that's just a lot of visibility to entrench new norms.'
Meanwhile, individuals who were previously sympathetic to racial justice causes largely reduced their support. 'White people might feel like, 'Oh, we already discussed those issues. We already read the books, did the marches. So why is there still something to be upset about?'', said Chudy.
In the midst of shifting support, platforms like GiveSendGo have been used as a fundraising tool by 'alt-right' extremists to fund causes. The website advertises itself as a free, philanthropic platform which emphasizes 'providing hope for people's spiritual needs', according to the group's website. 'The most valuable currency is God's love', the website reads, noting that GiveSendGo also partners with 'individuals and organizations dedicated to praying over our campaigns'.
In a statement to the Guardian, a GiveSendGo representative defended the platform's choice to house Hendrix's fundraiser. 'Even in situations where we do not personally agree with an individual's past actions or beliefs, we still believe in the importance of personal choice,' said Alex Shipley, the site's communications director. 'Those who agree with the campaign's purpose are free to give, and those who disagree are free not to participate. GiveSendGo is not a place of judgment but a place of generosity, where people can choose how they wish to respond.' Shipley added that the website has a 'terms of service' where content would be subject to moderation or removal.
But GiveSendGo has continually maintained a 'laissez-faire' attitude towards racist and bigoted campaigns on their platform, said Dwyer. 'They aren't going to de-platform people, no matter how reprehensible it is, until it reaches a bar of their choosing,' he said.
As other regressions in racial progress happen – rollbacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and racist language in politics – open support for folks like Hendrix might become commonplace. 'Based on social media chatter, this was an empowering moment [for white supremacists],' Dwyer said of the Hendrix fundraiser. 'It increases the likelihood of something like this happening again.'
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