Oath Keepers, Anti-Democracy Activists, and Others on the Far Right Are Funding Canada's "Freedom Convoy" - 2022-02-17

Oath Keepers, Anti-Democracy Activists, and Others on the Far Right Are Funding Canada's "Freedom Convoy" February 17, 2022, Micah Lee, The Intercept

---

Like many other major websites used by the far right, the self-described Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, which was used by Canada's "Freedom Convoy" protest movement against public health measures to raise millions of dollars, has been hacked very badly, exposing a massive amount of data about the movement's donors. The data shows that this movement is supported by a broad-based international network of far-right activists, as well as wealthy donors, who are also involved in activism against Covid-19 vaccines, American democracy, and the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. On February 10, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ordered GiveSendGo to freeze access to the money raised in both of these campaigns. "Know this! Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo," the company tweeted in response. Shortly afterward, the hacker broke into the crowdfunding company's website and stole the donation records — and a whole lot more. Activists on the right are not happy about this.

Unsurprisingly, members of convoy groups on Telegram are displeased with the apparent GiveSendGo leak, calling for leftist "enemies" to be murdered – either by public hanging or shooting. One person includes their full name and address, telling liberals to "come get" them. pic.twitter.com/LylW5stjfO — Sara Aniano (@coolfacejane) February 14, 2022

The Intercept obtained the hacked donor data — including records of roughly 104,000 donors who gave $9.6 million to two separate GiveSendGo crowdfunding campaigns, "Freedom Convoy 2022" and "Adopt a Trucker" — from the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets, which is releasing it to journalists and researchers who request access. (For the record, I'm an adviser to DDoSecrets.) After analyzing the dataset, The Intercept discovered that the majority of donors to the "Freedom Convoy" included in the data are Americans, including U.S. billionaire Thomas Siebel, who is listed as donating $90,000, the largest individual donation. Hundreds of donors are members of the Oath Keepers, an American far-right paramilitary organization. Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers' founder, was the first January 6 insurrectionist to be charged with seditious conspiracy.

Wikipedia cite:

{{cite news | first = Micah | last = Lee | title = Oath Keepers, Anti-Democracy Activists, and Others on the Far Right Are Funding Canada's "Freedom Convoy" | url = https://theintercept.com/2022/02/17/freedom-convoy-givesendgo-canada-oath-keepers-funding/ | work = The Intercept | date = February 17, 2022 | accessdate = June 18, 2022 }}