Cash App facilitates donations for extremist groups |
At least four prominent extremist or white supremacy groups, including election influencer Turning Point USA (TPUSA), have used Cash App to attract donations — despite the payment platform’s anti-hate and bullying policies.
Cash App’s terms of service contain a specific clause prohibiting users to upload content that is “hateful or harmful to you, our customers or us.” However, it doesn’t specify what kind of groups would be prohibited from using Cash App services.
This may or may not be ambiguous on purpose — but it hints at how TPUSA and white supremacist groups Red Ice, Occidental Dissent, and Goyim Defence League (GDL) have been able to use Cash App to fund their activities.
Cash App crypto donations used by right-wing extremists Turning Point USA
Turning Point USA is a right-wing activist group co-founded by Charlie Kirk in 2012. It focuses on training and organizing students to promote conservative values. The group has played a pivotal role in Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns from 2016 to present.
Though Kirk maintains that TPUSA does not follow the tenets of white supremacy, its membership has been extended to an alarming amount of racists, anti-Muslims, and white supremacists.
To TPUSA’s credit, it has a history of banishing members caught making racist remarks — but the sheer number of these incidents speaks for itself.
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TPUSA does, however, openly advocate some extreme policies. It has actively promoted conspiracy theories about election fraud and COVID-19, as well as transphobia and Christian supremacy.
In the run-up to this year’s presidential elections, TPUSA has appeared to drum up significant support for Donald Trump among children and college students. According to political scientist Cas Mudde, it’s alarming groups like TPUSA that have allowed this generation to normalize the association of ‘Republicanism’ with ‘extremism.’
“In the past years, Kirk has not only fully embraced the authoritarian and nativist agenda of Trump, he and his organization have pivoted to full-on Christian nationalism,” Mudde noted in The Guardian after attending a TPUSA rally at the University of Georgia.
Thousands of dollars to anti-Semites, white supremacists via Cash App
Last year, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found at least six extremists using Cash App.
Anti-Semitic group Goyim Defence League (GDL) and its founder Jon Minadeo were at the top of the ADL’s list. The small organization’s main goal, according to the ADL, is to expel Jews from the US. It uses outrageous stunts to rile up communities and sells hundreds of t-shirts, mugs, and other merch with vitriolic anti-Semitic slogans and symbols.
According to the ADL, supporters of the GDL sent approximately $3,114.19 in bitcoin donations from Cash App in 2023. A total of $2,148.41 worth of bitcoin was sent from GDL to Cash App.
It’s unclear if the GDL continues to use Cash App, but it does encourage donors to purchase bitcoin using the platform at the top of its donations page. The GDL also accepts bitcoin, monero, ether, bitcoin cash, litecoin, doge, ripple, and… Amazon gift cards.
Read more: ‘YouTube alternative’ is paying terrorists and hate groups in crypto, report
Additionally, the ADL report highlights that Richard Houck, a white supremacist and anti-Semite who writes for Counter-Currents, received a donation of over $2,000 from a supporter that was acquired via Cash App, and he subsequently transferred those funds back to Cash App.
The white supremacist news outlet Red Ice TV also uses Cash App to fund its activities, openly promoting it as a donation method on its website. It promotes ideals of white nationalism, antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and believes in white genocide.
The outlet made headlines in 2016 when it covered a National Policy Institute conference, where 200 attendees Nazi saluted the institute’s founder, Richard Spencer. The group was celebrating the election of Donald Trump.
The head of the now-disbanded American Identity Movement, formerly known as Identity Evropa, used to appear on Red Ice as a host. These groups also used Cash App to solicit donations.
Protos was also able to verify that Cash App donations are welcomed by Occidental Dissent, a prominent white supremacy blog run by Brad Griffin, who’s credited by the Southern Poverty Law Center for being “both a gatekeeper for the racist ‘alt-right’ and the chief exporter of its most effective tactics to his ideological passion project — Southern nationalism.”
Why Cash App when other platforms stay away?
Red Ice TV was banned from YouTube and Facebook back in 2019, following investigations that showed the platforms were rife with hate speech. Jon Minadeo was similarly de-platformed in May 2020, leading him to launch GoyimTV… so why has Cash App continued to allow these extremist, white supremacist groups to use its services, effectively facilitating their funding?
Apart from its vague terms of service, the firm has a history of serving dodgy customers. It’s currently under investigation by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) after two whistleblowers alleged the app doesn’t perform adequate know-your-customer (KYC) checks — opening the door to money laundering, financing terrorism, and more criminal activity.
Protos has reached out to ask why Cash App continues to support these groups and will update this piece should we hear back.
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