Just three days after Elon Musk reinstated Alex Jones on X, his reboot of Twitter, the bigot and conspiracy propagandist has gained over 800,000 followers.
Just three days after Elon Musk reinstated Alex Jones on X, his reboot of Twitter, the bigot and conspiracy propagandist has gained over 800,000 followers.
Extremists Get Boost From Donor-Advised Funds, Bitcoin
An unidentified source sent Epik, a web services company that caters to a far-right customer base, nearly $3 million worth of bitcoin one day after hackers announced that they had broken into the company’s servers, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Data Lab found.
A single benefactor made cryptocurrency donations worth more than $216,000 to extremists and hate groups between September 2021 and April 2022, according to an analysis provided to Hatewatch by the SPLC’s Data Lab.
An analysis provided to Hatewatch by SPLC’s Data Lab shows that white nationalist fugitive Robert Warren “Azzmador” Ray has raked in thousands of dollars a month in donations and memberships in 2023 from livestreams on low-moderation “alt-tech” video platform Odysee, using Stripe as a payment processor.
Despite volatility in cryptocurrency’s exchange rates, far-right extremists and hate groups continue to turn to digital currencies to raise funds. In the first quarter of this year, several high-profile extremists accepted donations and made business transactions using cryptocurrency.
Jury selection started today in the trial of 33-year-old Douglass Mackey, a man who prolifically spread hate and politically charged disinformation under the pseudonym “Ricky Vaughn” during Donald Trump’s political rise.
Kanye West – now known as Ye – unleashed a hateful rant last Thursday during a bizarre appearance on Alex Jones’ Infowars. Encompassing Holocaust denial, praise for Adolf Hitler and a request that people “stop dissing the Nazis,” the diatribe was the culmination of months of explicitly antisemitic rhetoric from the musician.
Dozens of extremists on Twitter now sport the “blue check” once reserved for verified accounts, after signing up for the paid Twitter Blue service under policies instituted by the platform’s new proprietor, Elon Musk.