Vile crowdfunding takeoff helps white supremacists, ‘down for maintenance’

Neo-Nazi Tony Hovater was fired from his job and is getting support from ‘GoyFundMe,’ a new crowdfunding site that helps people just like him. Meanwhile, the site is “down for maintenance.”

By: Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A part-time cook, Tony Hovater was what The New York Times called a “committed foot soldier” and “organizer” in white supremacist groups in the United States. In 2015, he helped start the Traditionalist Worker Party, a neo-nazi group that participated in the now-infamous march in Charlottesville, Va., in August in which a white nationalist plowed his car into a group of left-wing protesters, killing one of them.

The 29-year-old’s profile was published on November 25, and four days later, the Times reported that Hovater, his wife Maria and her brother have been fired from their jobs at a restaurant near their home in New Carlisle, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton. The restaurant received angry, threatening phone calls and messages following the article, in which Hovater candidly admitted his repugnant, far-right views on Hitler (approval), Jews (controlling the media and financial world), and the deck stacked against white Americans in today’s world.

The Hovaters will also be moving from their home, ostensibly for safety and financial reasons. But white supremacist friends have come to their aid, launching a fundraising campaign on a crowdfunding site called GoyFundMe, whose name takes off on the popular GoFundMe site. The word ‘goy’ is Hebrew and Yiddish for ‘nation’ and refers to non-Jews, sometimes in a derogatory way.

This site bills itself as part of the “alt-tech” community, a group of social media sites for the alt-right that do not censor white supremacist content. And the Hovaters must be gratified to see that $8,000 has already been raised for them by like-minded travelers in their world.

NY Times: No intention to ‘normalize’ racists

Although the Times article clearly depicts Hovater as a racist who has detestable views on many subjects, many critics wrote in to the paper because they were horrified at the thought that the piece was normalizing neo-Nazi views.

In reaction, National Editor Marc Lacey responded in the Times’ online edition, writing, “The point of the story was not to normalize anything but to describe the degree to which hate and extremism have become far more normal in American life than many of us want to think.” Although he expressed the paper’s regret at how badly the piece offended so many readers, he stressed that the Times believes it is imperative to “shed more light, not less, on the most extreme corners of American life and the people who inhabit them.”

Meanwhile, the GoyFundMe site is currently “down for maintenance.” The administrators say it was not hacked, but “we have taken a hard look at our site and believe that there is room for improvement. We want to guarantee that our services are up-to-par when it comes to our users’ security.”