Naomi Bethune investigates how crowdfunding platforms monetize hate, detailing Shiloh Hendrix's $1 million raise for racially harassing a Black boy and Jonathan Ross's $500,000 following a murder. The discussion reveals an ecosystem where extremists like Daniel Penny receive financial emboldenment while victims face silence, with anonymous donations from white supremacists fueling this trend. Ultimately, this analysis exposes how digital fundraising transforms bigotry into profit, challenging societal norms that once shamed such acts and now reward them through community support. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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The Far Right Cash Machine00:03:47
What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming?
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic, hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything, Instead of go go boots, the seductive Actress Green Eminem will now wear sneakers.
Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke.
I'm Thomas.
That over there is Lydia.
How are you doing?
Hello, I'm doing pretty well.
Excited for this one.
How are you?
Good.
I'm always excited to see the Wokies.
I know.
Wokies.
Some of our favorite people.
Yeah.
Speaking of favorite people, we've got a really cool interview today.
Oh, yeah, we sure do.
We are going to be talking to Naomi Bethune.
She is a writer with the American Prospect.
And she wrote this great piece that actually you came across and said, We got to talk to her.
I reached out and she was so gracious and came on called The Far Right Cash Machine.
Yeah.
And it's not exactly what you'd think.
You might think that's like buying elections or something.
But no, it's actually kind of our podcast, the article in a way.
Yeah.
Because it's about how there is no cancel culture.
That's all pretend.
And what there really is, is a funnel of money, a spigot of money that can get turned on for anyone who does something horrible.
You know, usually to like people of color or whatever.
Yep.
Anyone who takes part in the culture wars on the side of the right wing, there's just a funnel of money.
And some of the stories that she goes through in the article are just so horrifying.
We'll let her tell them.
But this is, man, it's not a fun topic, but important work.
Right.
And a really cool interview.
So let's talk to Naomi about this pipeline, this normal person to, Culture warrior, MAGA darlings, yeah, horrible, yeah, person, you know, it's MAGA, it's also like deeply white supremacist.
Oh, yeah, totally, yeah.
Meanwhile, if you'd like to support the show, go to patreon.comslash where there's woke because we don't have a big spigot of white supremacist money coming our way.
We don't have a big spigot of any kind of supremacist money coming our way.
Oh, I did want to shout out to Wokies.
I just put out some SIOs about the really stupid conspiracy theories about Trump assassinations.
And so I thought it's a debunk.
It's debunks that I didn't know I needed to do.
And I know this show's crowd probably likes a good debunk or two.
You couldn't go on with life until you got this out of your system.
It was on life.
You really did.
Believe it.
So if you're someone who also can't believe that we're making up conspiracy theories about these Trump assassination attempts, or if you're somebody who believes those conspiracy theories, maybe give that a listen over on Serious Inquiries Only.
All right, let's take our break and then we'll get to the interview.
Naomi, thanks so much for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
Absolutely.
Really enjoyed the article, The Far Right Cash Machine, which is how we got kind of turned on to this.
But I want to ask you, how'd you get on this topic?
Like, what's your story of how you caught on to this?
The origin story.
What's going on here?
That is a great question.
The way I kind of was introduced to it is I saw that really horrible video that went viral of Shiloh Hendrix racially harassing a young Black boy.
I responded in a very visceral way.
It was really disturbing as a Black person and, you know, as anyone should feel.
When Shame Becomes Profit00:15:46
Yeah.
That was a horrible thing.
And I just was wondering, like, how do you recover from that in the world that we live in?
It made me think, I'm like, we live in this kind of world that's becoming increasingly defined by like right wing authoritarianism, anti black racism, everything's just like on steroids right now.
And I look back to like, say, like 2020, I was like, that should get you canceled.
Yeah.
Do you want to quickly, for the listeners, just give a little bit more of the full story so they know what you're talking about?
Yeah.
It was a year ago, and this was in Rochester, Minnesota.
The video came out of this white woman named Shiloh Hendrix, in which she was accused by a black man.
Of calling a young black boy the N word.
And she said it was because he had been, quote unquote, digging through her diaper bag.
So she called the little boy, we don't know how many times, but then she called the black man behind the camera at least three times and then doubled down by saying, if the little boy was going to act like that, that's what she's going to call him.
That is insane.
Yeah.
It was horrible.
What happens to a person like that in the world we live in?
So, I did a little research into it just because it was really frustrating and terrible to see.
Like, thinking about how traumatizing that is for everyone involved who were hurt by her words, I saw that she had a give, send, go.
And give, send, go is like this strange cousin of like GoFundMe.
It's the racist uncle they have to see at the holidays.
Yeah, it is.
Yeah, it is.
Exactly.
GoFundMe is like, oh, goddammit.
Give, send, go is going to be at the fucking Thanksgiving.
I don't know.
We'll even talk about it.
Yeah, I would say that.
Just for people who don't know, it's this crowdfunding site.
It's labeled as like a Christian crowdfunding site.
And it has like very little restrictions on like what you can fundraise around.
So on GoFundMe, for example, like you cannot raise money to cover anything related to a violent crime, any racist incidents, et cetera.
But Give, Send, Go has like three guidelines.
And one of them is you can't raise money to support an abortion.
And the other one is you can't raise money.
To support gender transition and gender affirming care.
Absolutely incredible.
But people like Silo Hendrix and Jonathan Ross and Kyle Rittenhouse can go on there and raise money for whatever they say they need it for.
She set up a fundraising page, and I talked about this a bit in my story, like how it kind of all came together.
And she pretty much said, I need you to help me protect my family.
I'm being threatened.
My life is upside down because of what happened.
And people really responded to that.
The page is still up now, a year later.
Wow.
She set her fundraising goal for a million dollars.
A million dollars.
And she's pretty close to it.
Jesus.
So crazy to me.
Like, I need to protect my family from what happened.
Oh, you mean from the actions that you took and the words that you made?
And this is an environment of your own making.
The gumption to then turn around and fundraise off of it is just another level of despicable.
Yeah.
One thing I get into is that.
She had incredible support from white supremacists in doing this.
Those are the people who really pushed the fundraiser out into the world, who garnered support for it, who gave substantial amounts of money.
Obviously, I can't say who exactly was donating because there's really no way to know.
Yeah, you can type whatever name.
Yeah, it could have been anyone from someone who's super into free speech to a neo Nazi.
She herself, I cannot exactly define her.
Political leanings, or like I could take a guess based off of you know what I saw, which is her coordinated effort to reach out to accounts on X or Twitter, yeah, that perpetuate eugenicist, white supremacist, xenophobic views, and her doing like going out of her way to do that, having them where they asked her to prove an account asked her to prove that it was really her.
This account's called Anglo Saxon Girl, and they said, If you want me to help you raise money, you have to show to me that you're actually Shiloh Hendrix.
She said the way to do that is send me a picture of your username and please write the n word underneath it.
Oh my God.
She sent the picture, and that's picture stolen X. Are you kidding?
Wow.
Yeah.
That's how it started for her.
She reached out looking for support and someone to be in community with during this time.
And a lot of people wanted to participate in that and support her.
Well, to your point, it's like who knows to do that?
That's not like a household thing.
I don't, I hope.
Like you have to already kind of be in with that to know that that even exists, I would think.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, I agree.
It is kind of interesting how, for a very long time, at least I saw crowdfunding attempts or platforms like GoFundMe as this kind of way where the left would support each other, where people who were disenfranchised were struggling with their healthcare.
I was going to say, I see it as just the American healthcare system, but yeah, sure.
Exactly.
Yeah, like any of those causes where you just feel so moved to help them because you know we live in a world where most Americans can't afford healthcare or some don't have insurance.
And it's like, I need to give to that because.
It's wrong that anyone would have to live that way.
The right has started to notice that they can use that to raise money for themselves and to raise money to support people that they themselves victimize.
So Hendrix was victimized in this.
She made herself the victim.
She victimized herself in a way that totally dismisses people who actually could be considered victims, people who genuinely are going through a horrible period in their lives or really need help with their medical bills, for example.
And the people who surrounded her aligned like her struggle with that.
That's really what I think got people interested in supporting her because she kind of martyred herself and made herself out to be the person who's really struggling and people wanted to help her.
Yeah, we were a little confused because I think in the article it talks about like, oh, what the left has done, you know, like there's somebody who quoted, I think, that was like, well, if the left is going to do this, they're the ones making.
I was wondering, what did the left do?
Like, did that is?
I mean, maybe I'm missing the facts, but was there something that happened to her that as a result of this, you know, was she attacked or something, or what do they claim?
Yeah, I think she was doxxed.
That happens, I guess, in like these super viral moments.
You mean before she put the N word under her photo?
Yes.
Before that?
This was during a very difficult time for her, obviously.
She was doxxed.
She said she'd face harassment in person.
And then that's what kind of triggered the whole I need to support my family.
I need to protect my family thing.
She saw some repercussions for what she did.
And then that was kind of used as like a jumping off point to create her give, send, go, and to find people who are going to support her.
Do we know much about that?
Or did she lose a job or anything?
Or is it just like I was attacked online or something?
Yeah.
We only know what she says.
And what she said is that her information was leaked or doxed and her family was experiencing harassment.
She was experiencing harassment.
She said something about where she goes to the gym.
That information was leaked.
And I guess she felt unsafe.
Okay.
Like I said, it's really up to what she's put out there.
There's really no other way, I guess, to know.
I think what really scares me about this, and what is just, I hate to be a bummer, but back in my day, you know, I've been covering stuff like this for at least, I don't know, 12 years.
And it used to be that this kind of person was somebody who was plausibly subject to a misunderstanding.
Like it used to be, oh, well, they were just doing whatever.
And the, you know, this person of color probably flipped out, misunderstood it, you know, took it the wrong way.
Like, It used to be, I didn't really buy it.
Sometimes there was genuine misunderstanding, and there's people who, you know, people obviously online fly off the handle, and, you know, there's always going to be cases of people being too horrific to people who don't deserve it online.
But for the most part, it was like, you know, it'd be something that was plausibly a misunderstanding.
It's, you know, it made it made for a really good white victim where it's like, oh, this, you know, this nice white person was just doing whatever.
You remember that San Francisco one, hon, where the guy, oh, yeah, yeah, there was, yeah, he said, like, why are you here?
Black Lives Matter, maybe?
Yeah.
And it was on his own property.
Exactly.
And they were like, you know, prove that you live here.
Like, you're not from here.
I'm going to talk to the person who owns this house.
And the white couple harasses him and is like, oh, we know who owns this house.
And it turned out it was him and they were just lying.
That kind of thing.
But where they could still at least plausibly say, like, look, we were just trying to protect our community, blah, But this one, it scares me so much because this is just, oh, no, I was being a racist and doing horrible racism.
I did that.
I said that.
I said my racism.
Like, that's what.
Does that come across to you the same way as kind of a maybe a bit of a change, you know, that doesn't portend well?
Yeah.
She's just one of many examples, unfortunately, that have kind of sprung up in the past couple of years where it's just really explicit.
There's no room for misunderstanding because we see it, we've seen it.
And then a lot of times people like double down and they show that doubling down through crowdfunding.
Yeah.
Because they go out there and they say, I did this, but I don't deserve what happened to me.
Give me money.
I can think of several other examples where maybe the campaigns didn't do as well as Hendrix's.
There was a woman who worked at a Cinnabon, and there's a video of her like, Yelling at two Somali customers, saying some horrible things to them.
She raised some money.
Don't really know how much she made.
The page got taken down, like as I was doing my research.
And then I think recently in Texas, a woman was caught yelling at some Black kids who were playing in her yard or playing nearby.
And I think she called them the N word.
And she raised a bit of money too.
It's been happening a lot.
The goals that are set may vary, the ways that people circulate them may vary.
I don't think anyone goes out of their way to do this, to get caught doing it so they can make money.
Sure.
But it's kind of like a perk.
You think that would, I don't want to say ruin their lives, but completely like alter how they live and really change things and they'd see repercussions for it.
But instead, they're really being rewarded.
Yeah, I was going to ask along those lines too, because we've talked a lot about in the last few years a productive role that shame can actually play potentially, you know, like calling out bad behavior, calling out when people are being.
Beyond unkind, they're being, you know, disgusting and racist and everything.
And that shame can be an effective tool in that way.
But it feels like I don't know if it can be if the next step is that whatever proportion of folks, maybe not everybody that experiences it, but some amount of them will just sit in it and say yes and claim it as them and make money off of it.
What are we left with then?
Like, what kind of tools do you think we can come up with to kind of push back on this stuff if shame's actually not going to be effective?
Yeah, I don't really know if I could say.
It's really the world we're living in right now.
It just doesn't work the way it used to.
And I think it's because we have very powerful people who are unashamed of their bigotry.
So, like, why shouldn't the regular person not feel that way?
Especially if they vote for someone, feel connected to their political beliefs or their kind of social perspectives.
I think that maybe in the past, shame was a good motivator to change yourself, to change your view.
Or, like, it can have the opposite effect where it's like, I want to double down.
I don't want to accept it, I don't want it to change me.
A lot of it has to do with the political climate we're living in.
And I can't say like all of these crowdfunding attempts have happened under Trump 2.0.
Some of them happened under Biden.
For example, Daniel Penny, the white man who killed Jordan Neely, a black houseless man on the New York subway, he raised, I think, over a million dollars for his legal campaign.
And as you guys know, he was acquitted.
And that was, I believe, under Biden.
Yeah.
That just might reflect like a pattern or like a trend that's kind of been changing over the past two years, regardless of.
Who's like holding political power?
But I don't know.
Maybe just humans are moving away from like shame being a good catalyst for change.
Maybe it's just shame doesn't work that way anymore.
So I can't really speak to what would be an alternative to that.
We have our views and our theories.
Like I think that victimhood culture has been just weaponized.
You talk about the difference between maybe someone more left or mainstream fundraising, where it's like, oh, someone needs a kidney, someone needs a whatever.
Right.
Or even someone's a victim of something.
An attack, or whatever.
I think this is that for them.
They view these people as the genuine victims of this mythological thing they've created, where there's this massively powerful DEI machine, you know, or whatever.
Like it's just this whole story after story for them is what we cover these made up or overblown stories about how repressive, I don't know, diversity is or something like this, this unnamed kind of group of people that's always somehow in control and always in power, despite Republicans controlling literally every single.
Aspect of government, and so it's a victimhood thing.
I think what is has been very effective, and I guess in a way is kind of the best case you'd hope for is hopefully people have just gotten so lost in wanting to quote trigger the libs or whatever you know, like that they've lost track of that.
That's like the best case.
I, you know, maybe there's some of those people, but otherwise, I think it's been a pretty concerted effort to take people from oh, um, this is we're just doing it to own the libs.
To where they've lost track of what that even is.
And now they're just doing racism.
Like they're just plain old doing racism.
Yes, that triggers the libs, but it also should just be offensive to any decent person.
You know, they've lost that.
Yeah.
Even like in some circles on the right, you know, maybe more center right people, you know, should feel offended by that and feel like that, you know, goes against their personal convictions.
But I think one thing I've been noticing under the second Trump administration is a lot of people who think or politicians that you think are more moderate.
They do lean more conservative, but maybe you're more rational about their politics.
They've stayed silent in cases like this.
They haven't shown up and held other people on the right accountable.
Maybe that's because being a Republican or being anywhere on the right side of the political spectrum, that identity is just completely splintered right now.
And we have this massive growing camp of people who are extremists.
This group of people or people who identify With some of the worst and most devastating and hurtful kind of views of the world and views of people in the world.
They live in this ecosystem where they can just kind of feed off of each other.
And I think that's what the big thing about Hendrix's campaign.
Autism and Viral Controversy00:03:58
It just, for the most part, existed amongst far right extremists.
Yeah.
There's enough of those people that you can raise thousands of dollars.
It can stay insular, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, it can.
Absolutely.
They've got their own version of everything now.
They got the MAGA dating, they got the MAGA pay apps, they've created enough of their own separate world that it can kind of.
Function.
It didn't used to be able to function independently.
And now it kind of can.
It's scary.
I agree.
It's self sustaining.
The more that we kind of slide into an authoritarian state in a politics become redefined by Trump and his administration, I think that group of people are just going to become more powerful and emboldened and just kind of isolate themselves even more from like the general population, from people who are more moderate people on the left, because they can take care of themselves.
And it's really clear through these crowdfunding campaigns if you do something, Objectively wrong and cruel and bigoted, racist, etc.
You will have people there to support you.
I don't think there's an intentionality about going viral for calling a child the N word, but you're okay in the end because there's people who will back you up, people who will get you to like a better place in life than you were before you did what you did.
Yeah, you'll be on Fox News sometimes.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It's either that or if you get fifth place in a swimming competition, you're set, you know, for life.
Absolutely set.
Something that's especially disturbing about this incident is I've come to expect that adults can be completely evil to each other and say horrific things to each other.
But the fact that this woman said something like that to a five year old is just beyond comprehension for me.
And the fact that people are willing to rally behind that, it wasn't that she said, you know, that she grabbed him by the wrist and said, What do you think you're doing?
You know, you're not allowed to do that.
I would still have a problem with that, but that's in a completely different league than using a racial slur against.
An innocent kid, especially when you think about the right and this idea that we need to protect children.
We need to keep them from the evils of X, Y, and Z, unless they're a black kid, I guess.
And then we can just treat them however we feel like.
And it's just, that's one of the saddest things to me from that story in particular.
I don't know how you feel about that, like from your experience as being a black person and kind of what that meant for you.
It's always just terrible to see black people in this country kind of know that as our reality.
And it has always been that way.
I think in this kind of I don't want to say it's like brazen, but maybe it got more attention simply because more people are able to see it because it went viral.
Yeah.
One thing I've noticed is I just like, like, waded through far right Twitter.
Oh, God.
People like genuinely did not see the little boy as a child.
Yeah.
Wow.
There was a lot of people who were speculating and they're like, he doesn't look like he's five.
No five year old's that tall.
Wow.
Are you kidding me?
Oh, he has autism too.
Oh, God.
I didn't even know.
Oh, he doesn't have autism.
The parents are lying about it.
Wow.
There's just so many ways to rationalize what she did.
And it's like, it doesn't matter if he's five or eight, if he's neurotypical or neurodivergent, like you never call a child a racial slur.
That is traumatizing.
It is cruel.
And no one should ever have to go through that, regardless of what they do as a child.
If he's five years old and he's going through your diaper bag, you know, she has kids.
She knows that at that age, kids' brains aren't developed to the point where they're able to make the best decisions or even think about the decisions that they're making.
And then add to that, that he's on the spectrum.
It just makes it even worse.
Now, I can't say she knew about him being autistic when it happened, but all she saw was a black child.
And her response wasn't, don't touch my stuff.
It was, you are the N word.
No Plausible Deniability00:15:40
You are acting like the N word.
Yeah.
To my point earlier, there's no plausible deniability in this whatsoever.
There's the opposite of that.
Not only that, it's proudly what it is.
In the same way that I kind of miss corporate pride now that it's gone, it's like, it was kind of bullshit, but now that we have actively discrimination instead of corporate pride, you're like, boy.
Sure, could use a meaningless rainbow on something.
Take whatever we can get at this point.
In the same way, it's a real mask off moment.
And it's like, man, maybe it was better with a mask on.
Well, okay, it's not better with a mask on, but it was a better indicator of society that people felt a need to have their mask on about this kind of stuff.
All those facts you brought up, I can't even imagine why they're remotely relevant.
There's no connection to any of that to making a slur, okay?
The fact that that could even be part of the conversation worries me a lot that that's how these people are thinking.
that that would justify it.
It's like, no, at best, I thought the same with the Rittenhouse thing where it's like, okay, if, if you wanted to defend him, which I don't understand, but if you did, I still don't understand why that would change you from maybe being like, oh, he, he shouldn't be punished by the law to, oh, I'm actively going to hero worship him.
Like that's just a different thing.
That means you are hero worshiping the killing of black people.
Like if you wanted to say, maybe he shouldn't be punished by the law and you have some sympathy for that, which I don't agree with, but if you wanted to say that, That's one thing.
It's entirely another thing to want to give money to these people and hold them up as heroes.
It's really disturbing.
And it just like, so I was so shocked by this.
And, you know, it's just not a good sign.
I just really worried.
I don't know if there's anything else in the article you want to talk about along those lines, any other fundraisers or anything else you came across.
But this is just disturbing.
I think the next best one or the most like fruitful fundraiser would be the ones that were set up for Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent.
That murdered Renee Good a couple months ago.
This was a coordinated fundraising campaign.
There was a GoFundMe.
Sorry, I'm blanking on like how much they raised, but it was over $500,000.
And it was set up by like a friend of the family.
Or no, it was set up by just like a random guy.
Yeah, there's some guy that I think you said just like does this.
He's just like this random guy who was.
This is different from that guy.
Oh, okay.
He was pretty much like, he shouldn't have gotten in trouble.
Let's raise money for his family.
And people were like, yep, yep.
And they started donating.
And then we have a more extremist person.
Who calls himself Tom Hennessy.
And I still wish I could figure out who this person actually is, but he set up a give, send, go, and the caption was just awful.
It was riddled with anti Semitism, clearly like white supremacist kind of way of supporting Ross.
And then I guess they both coordinated together, the people who set up both the fundraisers, and they were able to get all that money to his family.
It appears that Ross was okay with that, with the money coming from a fundraiser where the description.
Was incredibly problematic.
Yeah.
Once again, you want some plausible deniability, you wouldn't do that.
You know, like if you were just a good guy, you would be like, well, okay, I don't support this.
Like, well, I'm not going to take that money.
Right.
Yeah.
Like you should question it.
So I guess the first one on GoFundMe was explicit and it's bigotry.
It was like, he shouldn't get in trouble for what he did.
Help me support his family.
And then you have another one.
It's like, we need to fight back against like the liberal politics and the Jewish mayor of Minneapolis.
I could see why he might pull from the first one because it's like it's just support him.
But the other one is it's just so clear who they're trying to get to donate.
If you read that description and you're like, Yup, what does that say about you?
What does it say about the donors to that campaign specifically?
They're more than just people who support ICE or support police officers, et cetera.
They are extremists who want to channel all that rage and all of that sympathy for someone into supporting them financially.
That was really interesting.
And as of right now, I haven't seen how those campaigns are going.
They might be closed and they might be open.
I would be curious to see, since I wrote the story, How much money has been raised since then?
The rate of return for those different campaigns.
Yeah, exactly.
Oh, boy.
I just wish we had some idea.
And I don't know if this is anything that you'd have an opinion about based on this reporting, but I just wish I knew how much of this was people always thought these things and just were afraid to say it versus people actually being radicalized.
Because, like I said, I don't know how long you've been doing this, but I've been doing this.
At least through the 2010s, and it was different.
It was bad, but it was different.
There was always a story.
There was always a story about, oh no, you don't understand this.
It was a misunderstanding.
They didn't even know that this was blah blah blah, blah.
Like there's all this plausible deniability and I just wonder, when it comes to now, I just I just wonder how much of that was it always?
I I thought it was always in terms of the personalities that were making those arguments online, but I wasn't sure about, like regular people.
Like, how much do regular people buy into these ideas versus?
Are they being radicalized or is this how they've always Thought and they just were afraid to say it?
Because I sort of feel like, if this is how they always believed, I mean, I would have.
Rather we knew, you know, like I guess it's just I'm not sure if you have any thoughts on that.
Apologies, it's a poorly framed question, but yeah, if you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.
It's a very good question.
I think unfortunately, we'd never know, yeah, you know, we're never gonna know.
One thing that stood out to me when I was listening to you is that social media is playing a huge role in the success of crowdfunding campaigns, and I think the thing is, like, there's people from varying, um.
Levels of radicalization on the right who supported Hendrix's campaign.
There's people who are just like, free speech to people who are like, let me comment, let me send you $10,000.
And every time I do it, I'm going to comment a letter of the N word.
There's just like such a range of people.
I'm assuming, and I obviously can't speak to it, but some people might feel this is great.
Like someone did what I want to do or did something the way I think, and they shouldn't be punished.
Because if I was in that position, I wouldn't want to be punished.
I want to support people who think the same way I do.
And I think there's also people like they donate $5 and they're like, you shouldn't have been treated like this.
You should be able to say what you want.
So it's just like really hard to know.
And when it gets so much attention on like platforms like X, which we know now, it's just like a really right coded site.
Yeah.
We can figure that most people are on that side of the spectrum, but there very well could be some people who are more moderate and are just passionate about things like the First Amendment.
But don't you think if they saw that description, they would maybe that's, I was going to say, is like, okay, it's one thing if you thought, oh, this person got railroaded by, I don't know, cancel culture that doesn't actually exist.
But then you read that description.
How could anyone in good conscience donate to that?
I hope they're not reading.
That's my best case.
Yeah.
Like maybe they're not big readers.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I wish I knew.
It's like I think any good person would look at that and be like, oh my God, this is horrible.
You're right.
Maybe they aren't reading.
There's definitely a possibility of that.
Or maybe they're hearing a version of the story that isn't as bad as it was.
Like there's just really no way to know.
But, you know, the weird thing about it is that even people who seem Closer to the center of the political spectrum, found the fundraiser or were shown the fundraiser and then gave money to it.
It makes you wonder like, what is the reach that these organizers have?
Who picks it up?
Who shares it?
What are the big voices giving attention to it?
Hendrix started with a very modest goal, probably like a couple thousand dollars.
But she saw, and the people who were helping her saw, there was like an overwhelming amount of support.
So they're like, why not keep increasing it, keep increasing it?
There's like people who want to do it.
So why not set the goal higher?
And people met that goal.
They are trying actually.
There's people today, a year later, still giving money.
What in the world?
There's a lot of people out there who want to be anonymous in their support.
Who wants to show their support through donating money.
And it's really great.
Like crowdfunding platforms are like the perfect place to do it because your name doesn't have to show up.
Most of these people are anonymous.
So you do not know who they are.
Some of them out themselves as being like a white supremacist and like, you know, the message that they send or like what name they decide to use.
But a lot of people, it's like five bucks and it's anonymous donor.
We don't know who they are, but we do know that they were able to come across a fundraiser like that.
There's like systematic attempts and ways to have your fundraiser get circulated.
It's really scary.
You can get so rich.
You can just make so much money.
And that's what floored me about it.
I was like, she's going to make a million dollars and she gets all that money.
What she puts it towards is a different thing, but she made a million dollars off of calling a Black autistic child the N word.
Do we know if all of these donations are coming from America or do you think that there's potential foreign?
Money involvement.
Can this hopefully just be like one super racist with a bot farm?
Like, please.
That would be like the best case.
Unfortunately, no.
Probably not.
It was worth a shot.
I believe Give Send Go is a Canadian company.
Okay.
Or owned by Canadians.
I know they made a lot of fundraisers existed on there for the truckers convoy.
Right.
That was like 2020.
There was like a very fruitful fundraisers on there.
I do not know if you need to be like located in the US or in North America to donate.
There's a possibility that people overseas are helping out.
I would say, though, it's probably most likely that they're Americans.
I'm not quite sure.
I actually don't think I ever found that out when I was doing my reporting.
Yeah.
Was any of this on like mainstream, like Fox News channels or anything?
Like, I know the subway car murder one.
That got a ton of mainstream coverage.
I would hope that this.
Woman calling a child the N word wasn't like a big mainstream cause celeb, but am I wrong?
Did you trace any of that?
I don't think it was.
And that's because it's kind of just repulsive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In the case of Daniel Penny killing Jordan Lenealy, there was a lot of conversation there.
Like he was being violent, like he needed to be subdued.
Black people were violent.
This guy, the white savior, you know, yeah.
A white savior.
He was in the army, or I think he was in the military, you know, he did what he had to do to protect everyone.
New York City is riddled with crime and.
People with untreated mental illness.
And there was just a lot there to go off of.
But in this case, it's like black and white.
Yeah.
There's a video of a woman calling a man behind the camera the N word and then admitting to calling a black child the N word.
And honestly, I saw a couple outlets pick it up.
I don't think Fox News did it, or maybe not like kind of blasting the coverage, but like they were like, I almost wonder if they're like, we can't even spin this.
Like, we're not going to touch it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that honestly, I agree.
Like, you can't.
It's just so clear.
The New York Post, which Often, like, aligns with kind of right or like conservative views.
They even said, This is messed up.
Wow.
You shouldn't be doing that.
And they're reporting of it.
Wow.
That's why I'm thinking it was mostly circulating amongst like personalities online, groups online that were more aligned with or accepting of this really blatant racism.
I don't think Nick Fuentes was linking the Give, Send, Go page, but he was definitely saying, like, this happens.
Like, I support it.
I think once you make it into like a free speech thing, then a lot of people come out of the word work to defend it.
They very well could be of any, I guess, political leaning.
But they feel passionate about the First Amendment.
As long as they don't read that freaking description.
Otherwise, then I'm going to go ahead and say you're of a particular meaning.
Well, I have her fundraiser up right now.
And like, if the only thing you consume is this has been shared with you, is this fundraiser and not the actual video, it just says, I recently had a kid steal from my 18 month old son's diaper bag at a park.
I called the kid out for what he was.
For what he was.
That's all she says.
God.
So if that's all you're consuming, I could see.
It's misleading.
Yeah, a free speech person.
If that's all you've seen of this, being like, oh, yeah, that's not okay.
Yeah.
Maybe.
I don't know.
I mean, maybe.
I'm trying to find any way that could work, but yeah.
Jeez.
Yeah.
If you read the updates, you'd see a couple dog whistles.
Yeah.
Dog whistles to put like.
Move somewhere with like amazing demographics.
Oh, my God.
Really?
You know, it's, yeah.
She said that.
I'm sure if you look, you'll see it.
And then if you went a little deeper, like I did, and you found the video, you found her up.
She posted an update video online.
She's in a clan hood.
She was very happy.
She said, I got all my money.
She said, I'm grateful to all of these white supremacists to help me.
I reached out to them.
I'm really happy we're tribing up.
This is what happens.
Like, we can fight back.
You know what I mean?
We shouldn't be scared.
And then she's not saying it, but she's saying it.
Yeah.
And that was for a lot of people very exciting.
Here's an example.
I just found one of those updates.
Per your recommendation, their father is teaching them how to be strong men, and we are both teaching them the importance.
The importance of preserving our existence.
Yeah.
What?
So that's a little, that's a sign.
Yeah.
And if you read just the basic description, you're like, you're right.
You could just be like, oh, free speech.
Like, she shouldn't be getting in trouble for exercising her First Amendment rights.
But you read a little deeper, and I just don't know how many people are doing it or if they don't care.
Yeah.
It's a lot worse than that.
I think the tough part about it is that the repercussions for this, she's seen, I guess, some, like with the doxing.
I guess her information being leaked and her feeling unsafe, but she's saying now that she's moved, her location is private.
I talked to her lawyer because she was charged with, I think, three counts of disorderly conduct.
That's what it said in the article disorderly conduct.
And then everything the lawyer said sounded to me like it didn't apply to disorderly conduct.
It sounded like he was trying to defend like a defamation or like an inciting violence thing, but it seemed fishy to me.
I don't know.
When I talked to him, he was pretty much like, this literally never happens.
Like no one gets.
Prosecuted for saying a slur, you should be able to do that.
Like, we, this is a country where there's free speech.
And he explained to me, he said, you know, there's very few situations in which, like, you can get in trouble, I guess, legally for saying something, like the fighting words doctrine, for example.
He believes, and I think Hendrix knows because she's obviously still in touch with him and has been showing up to like her court appearances.
He believes it's just, it should not be a case at all because emotional harm to someone or like trauma isn't enough.
To charge someone with a crime.
The last motion he filed was to dismiss the charges and get them thrown out.
So, I don't really know what's happening, but when I spoke to him, he seemed very convinced that this case was going to die.
Trauma vs Criminal Charges00:04:35
And then once that happens, it's really like over for her.
And she's getting off scot free if that's like the outcome.
And interestingly enough, I think a lot of people in her position would grift a little bit more beyond like the money they would, like Kyle Rittenhouse, for example.
Like media appearances.
Yeah, media appearances, books, getting into politics themselves, like Riley Gaines, for example.
She's like becoming like a political powerhouse in like the past couple of years.
But he told me the lawyer's like, she doesn't want that.
And she herself said, I'm not interested in that.
And that's that.
You know, there's, I think there's people out there who they do the bad thing, they collect the money, and then that's it.
I think if she ever wanted to kind of come out with her story and start making media appearances, I think she'd get a lot of support.
But I guess it's not on everyone's radar.
Like, not everyone has that hope and goal in mind after getting that much attention.
Yeah, I'm just curious about the, yeah, if it's disorderly conduct.
I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but we do have a, you know, legal show and a lot of legal coverage.
It's just something about it seemed weird the way he was framing.
I know, like we have a lot of experience with these bullshit stories and often they frame it.
One of their best tricks is, yeah, she's just getting in trouble for this.
And then it turns out they're actually getting in trouble for a totally different thing.
Now, I'm not saying that's happening here, but it just seemed weird.
Like the way he was defending it, disorderly conduct, it wouldn't really be dependent on the victim's like emotional thing, you know, because it's not, it's not a civil case.
It's not a.
You know, like disorderly conduct is more criminal.
They were disorderly in public, and it's, you know, like it doesn't really matter the effect on the person.
I don't know.
We'll see.
Maybe we'll keep an eye on what goes on there.
Maybe there's, maybe I'm wrong, but it just seemed something about it seemed off to me.
But who knows?
It's a little complex because under Minnesota state law, the parameters around free speech and what can be considered disorderly conduct are a little stricter.
If you say something that could be damaging to someone or cause distress, like you can charge them with disorderly conduct.
Right.
Well, I mean, typical disorderly conduct could just be wandering around drunk yelling.
Free speech doesn't come into it or something.
You know, you're never like, that's why I'm just wondering.
Maybe, yeah, you're probably right.
There's something in the details that I haven't gotten to.
I'm curious about it because you could be yelling totally innocuous stuff, but you're yelling and causing a scene.
It's disorderly.
It's not, I don't think the First Amendment comes into that calculation all the time.
So who knows?
Yeah.
Oof, boy.
Well, and then I think you also said, now, was it this case or a different one where the actual victims tried to raise money?
Was it this one or am I mixing up another one?
Yes, in this case, the family of the boy and then the local chapter of the NAACP did set up.
I think it was GoFundMe's, but they closed those fundraisers after they hit their goals.
Didn't they have a hard time?
I mean, just comparatively, there wasn't much public support, was there?
Yeah.
And I think it's because perhaps it didn't circulate the way Hendrix's fundraiser did, but people did support it.
Sure, sure.
And it's like, Ross's fundraiser versus that of Renee Goods.
They both did well.
They hit their goals, maybe even more.
But the difference, I think, is that they closed it out.
You know what I mean?
They didn't keep it open.
One is for the family of a child who is now emotionally traumatized and scarred.
And then one is for a woman who is unashamed in her racism.
Exactly.
I think they both did well and people wanted to support the boy's family and they did.
But it wasn't like an ongoing thing.
Like the fundraiser is not up now, it's done.
It was done a long time ago and they both saw support.
I think you said it was like 9,000, which is way different than a million freaking dollars.
Yeah.
But I guess because the undouble ACP, it seems like they were helping based on your article that they did get quite a bit of money through that.
But I guess it just goes to show the difference in priority.
Renee Good, I think, is a tough example because that is a national story.
I think that's going to be perhaps a little different.
But when it comes, it's such a bummer, too, when you look at the people who are utilizing GoFundMe for its intended thing, which is being American healthcare.
You'll have someone who needs an operation to live and they can't raise money.
Calls someone a slur, calls a child a racial slur, and they're rich now.
Pretty, pretty disturbing.
Yeah.
Well, what's next on the horizon for you?
I mean, you have so much good reporting.
I was going back through your work.
Did anything result from this that you're following up on?
Are you on to a news story?
Supporting Healthcare Prospects00:02:28
What are you working on?
I have a piece coming out soon about the shooting of Stephenson King Jr., a black man who was killed by a white police officer last month in Boston.
Oh.
And it's mostly stayed like in the local news.
Yeah.
Ideally, I'll get a little more national attention to it.
It's a pretty big story.
The family, Ben Crump, is representing the family, and he represented the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor.
Oh, wow.
Very notable victims of police brutality.
And then the police officer is being represented by the lawyer who defended Karen Reed, a woman who was accused of killing her boyfriend, who was a police officer, and she was acquitted.
So we have some big players in that, but still, it's just kind of existing in the Boston reporting ecosystem.
I have a piece coming out about that.
And then besides that, I have been doing some additional reporting on conservative influencers and their impact online.
So that's what's up.
Looking forward to it.
Yeah, looking forward to all of that stuff.
Sounds great.
Yeah.
Well, thanks so much for joining us.
We really appreciate you taking the time.
It's a great article.
Keep up the great work and hopefully we can stay in touch.
This is good stuff.
Thank you both so much for having me on.
Absolutely.
And do you want to point our listeners anywhere?
I mean, American Prospect, is there anywhere else you want to point listeners personally for you or anything?
The Prospect.
All right.
We are a wonderful newsroom.
We actually very recently stopped having ads on our site.
Oh, wow.
It's just very big for a publication in general that, like, it's free to access.
So now we have, like, a completely different site experience.
It's just been really amazing to work for an organization that, like, really prioritizes its readers.
No kidding.
And prioritizes amazing, like, independent reporting.
So you're telling me I can open this on my phone and be able to see the site?
Exactly.
Yeah.
And that's, like, really big, right?
It is.
I don't know.
It totally is.
Yeah, there's a million ads because no paywall means you have to find the money somewhere else.
But we don't have a paywall and now we don't have ads.
Wow.
Fantastic.
And it's amazing.
Yeah.
So I recommend checking out the site, checking out the reporting that my amazing colleagues have done, supporting the prospects like big, especially right now.
We're doing work that is becoming increasingly hard to do.
And that's why I just, I'm very grateful and proud to work for an organization like that.