Faith Goldy, a former mayoral candidate in Toronto who campaigned against immigration, owes Bell Media $43,117.90. In the past several hours, multiple supporters have sent her $268.19 in bitcoin to help cover the cost, in anywhere from $5 to $50 increments.
Goldy believes in #CanadaFirst and has been called a “poster girl for white nationalism.” She participated in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, she’s appeared on a podcast for the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, and she posts Islamophobic messages on Twitter. She’s also a former journalist (and ultimately came in third in the Toronto 2018 mayoral election).
Goldy’s trouble with Bell Media started after the Canadian telecom refused to air her mayoral campaign advertisements because they included racist hate speech. Goldy sued Bell, saying the company infringed on her free speech, but the suit was thrown out in October. Now, a judge has ordered Goldy to compensate Bell for what the company spent in legal fees fighting her suit.
So like any self-respecting white supremacist, Goldy proffered her bitcoin wallet address to raise funds. “Our enemies are EVIL,” she wrote on Twitter on December 17. “The sick campaign to shut even my fundraising efforts has commenced. Thank God for crypto.”
That tweet was sent at 12:58 p.m. The bitcoin payments started rolling in around 4:30 p.m., according to cybersecurity expert John Bambenek’s Neo-Nazi BTC Tracker Twitter bot.
Modest donations have been rolling in steadily since. Goldy’s gotten $19.95 worth of bitcoin here, another $5.05 there, leading to her current total nearing $300.
Goldy is seeking bitcoin donations for the same reason many other white supremacists do: She’s been deplatformed by more mainstream funding mechanisms. GoFundMe removed her account from its platform, she tweeted late last night, citing a violation of its terms and services. Though the crowdfunding site didn’t get any more specific than that in its letter to Goldy, its terms include a section of prohibited campaigns on the site. One specifies “campaigns we deem, in our sole discretion, to be in support of, or for the legal defense of alleged crimes associated with hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorism, or intolerance of any kind relating to race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation…”
White supremacists have been using bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) to seek donations for some time—the Southern Poverty Law Center has been tracking their wallets. Cryptocurrency payment options are becoming the predictable place for hate groups and individuals to turn when centralized platforms refuse to support them. While personal bitcoin wallets do offer a reliably decentralized payment method to the hateful deplatformed, their transactions are transparent, meaning it’s possible to track where they come from.