Fundraising site halts campaign for neo-nazi
Convicted after plotting murder of U.S. judge
A Canadian fundraising site has “paused” a two-year-old campaign for the former leader of one of the largest neo-nazi groups in the United States, who is in prison for soliciting the murder of a judge.
Calling Matt Hale a “hero” and a “political prisoner,” the campaign on Fundrazr raised US$2,535 from 37 donors over two years. Hale was convicted in 2004 after soliciting an undercover FBI agent to kill a U.S. federal judge who was presiding at a civil case against his white supremacist organization, the World Church of the Creator. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Hale wasn’t subtle in his racism and anti-semitism. He once declared: “It is time to fan the flames of anti-semitism far and wide. It is time to expose the Jews as being the evil incarnate of the world.”
He wrote two books, one titled Ending White Slavery.
The page was recently analyzed by the MEMRI White Supremacist Threat Monitor, which tracks the online activities of neo-nazi and white supremacist groups and supporters.
Fundrazr, based in Vancouver, is a crowdfunding site similar to Gofundme and Indiegogo, which host third-party funding campaigns.
Daryl Hatton, Fundrazr’s chief executive officer, said the company was unaware of the Hale campaign and halted it when told of it.
“We shut the campaign down because it violates the terms of service. It was there in the first place because it was inherited from a sister site that was running with our technology to do funding of legal defence campaigns,” he said.
“It was so small nobody looked at it and I didn’t know the name of this guy until everyone pointed out he was this neo-nazi,” Hatton said.
Fundrazr relies on users to report campaigns that appear to violate the terms of service, which prohibits “the legal defence of alleged crimes associated with hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorism, or intolerance of any kind.”
He said no complaint were made against the campaign, even though some comments on the campaign page accused it for supporting a neo-nazi.
It was paused when Global News asked the company about the page, Hatton said. On Thursday, however, the promotional Hale site was still publicly available, although with no ability to donate.
Hatton said he will delete it.
Before being stopped, the campaign attracted support from Canada, including two men listed as “leaders” in the effort and appear to be Canadian members of the Creativity Movement, according to a report on the campaign by MEMRI.
The money raised was for Hale’s legal defence and for his prison spending money, the Fundrazr page says.
In a 2017 letter to supporters, Hale said prison life was expensive because he has to pay to send email and to listen to music. He also wanted to return to his “raw foodist, fruitarian diet.” His mother also complained that healthy food was expensive in prison.
Rarely shy about his own attributes, Hale wrote of his adjustment to prison life: “I truly do not believe that any person in my shoes could have made the transition as smoothly as I have.
“I thank you for standing with me and my family as we continue to fight for justice and the future of our White Race.”
Hale was once a busy and influential figure in the U.S. white supremacist, neo-nazi universe. In 1996, he became Pontifex Maximus of the Church of the Creator, which he renamed World Church of the Creator, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a U.s.-based non-profit organization known for civil rights and public interest litigation and tracking rightwing extremists.
Hale got a law degree — but was denied a licence to practise law — and was an early adopter of the Internet’s power to spread fringe ideology and ideas. He frequently spoke to media and appeared on talk shows.
The New York Times once described him as “the face of hate” in the United States. It became one of the largest and most vocal white supremacist groups and his supporters were linked to a litany of violent crimes, including murder.
After Hale’s conviction in 2004, the group splintered and became the Creativity Movement, styled as a religion based on the creative superiority of white people.
Hale has been suing the U.S. Bureau of Prisons over privileges to allow him to practise his Creativity religion while incarcerated.
IT WAS SO SMALL ... I DIDN’T KNOW THE NAME OF THIS GUY UNTIL EVERYONE POINTED OUT HE WAS THIS NEO-NAZI.