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No Cash For Hate, Say Mainstream Crowdfunding Firms (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Online fund-raising sites are turning their backs on activists looking to offer financial support for James Fields, the man accused of driving his car into counter-protesters at a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday. GoFundMe, Kickstarter and other mainstream crowdfunding firms have policies that prohibit hate speech or abuse, the latest example of technology firms making it harder for far-right groups to organize online. Fields is accused of killing one woman and injuring 19 others on Saturday after the rally in Charlottesville turned violent. Supporters of Fields, who was denied bail at a court hearing in Virginia on Monday, have turned to the internet to raise money for his legal defense. GoFundMe, one of the two leading crowdfunding firms, said on Monday it has removed multiple fundraising campaigns for Fields, because the company prohibits the promotion of hate speech and violence.
Because pointing out the greater likelihood of being shot by police if you're black than if you're white is clearly hate speech...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Some day an innocent man is going to set up a crowdfunding campaign for his defence and is going to get it shut down because he's been pre-emptively judged guilty. It's that old "first they came for the (x)" story, except this time they came for the Nazis, and it's all that more seductive because the Nazis deserve it.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
So now it's up to crowdfunding sites to decide who can and who cannot get good legal representation?
This isn't about supporting hate speech - it's about giving a guy a proper lawyer so the courts can do what they're supposed to do.
The courts can do exactly what they're supposed to do... appoint a lawyer if the defendant can't afford it. Show me a law that says this is Kickstarter's responsibility.
And on the third hand, you might alienate the few remaining Americans who believe that everyone accused of a crime is entitled to a fair trial.
For some reason this group seems very small recently.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I think it's pretty hard to target the Black Lives Matter group because its not really a group as a whole, but a collective of smaller groups that have almost no connection other than they operate under the same banner. It's very similar to the group Anonymous in that there really isn't any central command and anyone at all can decide that they want to operate under the banner.
When you have a structure like that, it's really hard to treat them as a monolith. For example, one city's BLM decided to have a cookout with their local police to try to have a friendly dialog and voice their concerns. Even if you're generally against the movement as a whole, it's pretty hard to condemn trying to come together on good terms and build understanding. On the other hand it's hard to support the BLM member who has allegedly defrauded the University of Toronto for almost $300,000 dollars even if you generally support the movement as a whole.
In general, most things are a mixed bag, but typically you're dealing with an entity that is ultimately answerable to a single person or a small group of individuals so you can still form a cohesive opinion of the whole, but I don't know if that's really possible with BLM since it's completely decentralized. I suppose it's possible to argue that the "good" parts of BLM should rebrand or distance themselves from the "bad" parts, but as a brand BLM is attractive under the idea that there's no such thing as bad publicity. Even if you are one of those "good" parts of the movement, you can use the negative publicity as a foil to highlight the positive of your own particular subgroup within the movement.
Such a simplistic approach to the problem.
There are many times that white people have contact with the Police when they are doing something wrong, and normally they will just get a talking to and move along. A minority has a higher chance on getting arrested for the same problem.
Being in a culture where the law enforcement will not treat you justly means the local communities will put the law into their own hands, with often poor results. Thus escalating the minor offence to a bigger one.
In short growing up white you are allowed to make mistakes, if you are black the same mistake will affect you all your life. The ones who make it, normally have to live their life in full consciousnesses that they can't do anything wrong. While for the someone who is white, then most of it will fall under kids will be kids.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Show me the law that says hiring a lawyer amounts to hate speech....
He was seen marching with a white supremacist group (Vanguard America) and was seen wearing one of their shields early in the protest. Couple that with statements by others who knew him that he espoused white supremacist views, I don't think you need to be Sherlock Holmes to draw the line, unless you're intentionally trying to make a group like Vanguard look less loathsome than they are by making the absurd claim that he had nothing to do with them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
He's being charged with the crime of driving a car into a group of people. Nazi or not that's still a crime. If he's guilty of killing someone, it doesn't matter much what his beliefs are.
Sent from my TARDIS
And what actions are those? The leaders of the movement have been quick to condemn any violence done in BLM's name. You are literally just making shit up to try to create a false equivalency.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
BLM doesn't advocate violence in pursuit of their objectives. In fact, they don't even have any objectives. Many activists don't understand that to be effective, you need to have clear actionable goals. As an example of this, look at the two movements that arose in reaction to the 2008 financial bailout: Occupy Wall Street, and the Tea Party. One had clear goals, the other did not. Occupy Wall Street accomplished nothing, and has mostly faded away. Meanwhile, the Tea Party is running the country.
Black Lives Matter is not a hate group with a mission of violence. I have nothing good to say about any religion, but there' also nothing inherently violent about the Nation of Islam. There's no reason whatsoever to compare any of the things you mention to neo-nazis, unless we accept the tacit assumptions of your poisonous mentality.
In fact, any political movement is almost certainly fine SO LONG AS THEY AREN'T OPENLY ADVOCATING VIOLENCE. Like, seriously, do you REALLY not even see the fucking difference? Seriously? Scary fucking times.