GoFundMe suspended pro-Trump personality Candace Owens from its fundraising platform on Sunday, after Owens raised more than $200,000 on the site for an Alabama cafe whose owner called George Floyd a “thug.”
Owens has become one of the right’s most prominent critics of Floyd and the protests held after his killing, with one video she made highlighting his criminal record going viral on Facebook. Those same remarks appear to have prompted GoFundMe to ban Owens. She later repeated the same attacks on Floyd during a chat with right-wing star Glenn Beck, and that video was then boosted by President Donald Trump.
In a statement, GoFundMe said that Owens, who is black, had spread “falsehoods against the black community.”
ADVERTISEMENT
“GoFundMe has suspended the account associated with Candace Owens and the GoFundMe campaign has been removed because of a repeated pattern of inflammatory statements that spread hate, discrimination, intolerance and falsehoods against the black community at a time of profound national crisis,” the fundraising platform said in a statement. “These actions violate our terms of service.”
Owens had been raising money for the Parkside Cafe in Birmingham, Alabama, which has been embroiled in social-media controversy after co-owner Michael Dykes called Floyd a “thug” and described protesters as “idiots” in a text message that was later posted online. In his text message, Dykes also discussed raising prices and charging a “protest tax.”
The cafe has since apologized for Dykes’s tweet. And in its statement, GoFundMe said it would transfer the money Owens raised to the cafe after ending the fundraising campaign.
Owens reacted to her GoFundMe suspension on Twitter, saying it was proof that conservatives live in a “a world that tells us that our very existence is unacceptable.”
