Eradicate Hate follows the money of extremist groups
Pay to hateExtremist groups' financing continues to evolve

Eradicate Hate follows the money of extremist groups

Extremist groups embrace technological advances to fund their hate

The Eradicate Hate Global Summit took place Oct. 21-23. (Photo by David Rullo)
The Eradicate Hate Global Summit took place Oct. 21-23. (Photo by David Rullo)

Hate, it appears, is fed by money.

And, on Oct. 23, the final day of the Eradicate Hate Global Summit at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, the breakout session “Follow the Money: Disrupting Hate Financing” attempted to give a detailed understanding of who and how that hate is being funded.

Moderated by Laura Ellsworth, summit founder and board co-chair, the panel included Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director of the Counter Extremism Project; Mark Dwyer, extremism funding investigator at the Anti-Defamation League; and Alexander Ritzmann, senior advisor of the Counter Extremism Project.

While hate groups were once self-funded organizations where a few people fronted the costs of printing flyers, creating pamphlets or burning CDs — often through donations or ticket sales at white power concerts — that dynamic has shifted, professionalizing the finances of many hate groups that embrace the newest technological trends.

“Through the use of cryptocurrencies,” Schindler said, “we are already in the online sphere.”

In addition to virtual currency, he said, hate groups are generating income though music production, sales and management of bands, influencers on TikTok, combat sports and gym management, along with ticket sales, online T-shirt and ticket purchases, crowdfunding sites and even sales through Etsy.

Some have expanded into opportunities like buying real estate.

“In East Germany, there are villages where right-wing extremists are trying to buy every plot of land and every house to create a right-wing extremist community,” Schindler said.

These organizations work to stay one step ahead of regulations, constantly being updated by financial institutions and governments, moving from cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, which Schindler said is completely transparent, to more secure virtual currencies like Monero.

Some groups even began embracing nonfungible tokens — digital creations, often pictures — sold for cryptocurrency.
One of the issues facing groups attempting to combat hate financing is the lack of internal monitoring by many financial organizations.

As an example, Schindler said, Canada has required crowdfunding platforms to report financial crimes, terrorism financing, extremism fundraising and money laundering on their platforms.

“In the following year, zero reports were filed by Canadian crowdfunding platforms, which only leaves two conclusions: Every Canadian is a law-abiding citizen or these platforms don’t have internal monitoring mechanisms,” he said.

Another barrier, he said, relevant to the United States, is the legal definition of the word extremism. Some European countries, the United Kingdom and Germany, in particular, have a legal category for extremism, which brings with it the ability to prosecute financial institutions and companies that do business with hate groups.

“Here in the United States,” he said, “you can be a citizen, you can be a criminal, you can be a terrorist — primarily a foreign one, but you cannot be an extremist. There is no legal category. There is a strategy against extremism but there is no legal category.”

The ADL’s Dwyer said that white supremacists have raised nearly $9 million through 33,000 donations since January 2023 on the crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo.

Cash apps like Venmo continue to drive income streams, as well, he said, noting that the apps are used at white power music shows to buy and sell merchandise.

Sometimes, those apps can assist in shutting down those income streams, Dwyer said. For example, Stripe stopped doing business with a publisher that printed neo-Nazi books. Often, though, what the apps are being used to buy can be elusive if they are sold through individuals with no clear company behind them.

The end goal of extremist groups, Dwyer said, is to use credit and debit cards. The ability to set up an ongoing donation stream is attractive to these groups.

In addition, he said selling property has become a viable income stream. One group, Return of the Land, purchased 158 acres of property and sold it in 20-acre parcels.

“They raised at least $330,000 selling that property,” he said.

Although many of these groups are using legal means to raise money, Ritzmann said, many of the groups are connected to organized crime.

Money laundering, tax evasion and drugs are just some of the illegal enterprises in which these groups take part, which in theory leaves them open to criminal prosecution, including through the RICO act.

“When you break the law,” he said, “the government can go after you, and this is the idea. This is one of the tool kits that we have.” PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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