[Edit 6 Feb 2022: The pressure on GoFundMe was immediate and intense. I read this last night on The Epoch Times:
The GoFundMe fundraising platform said Feb. 5 it will automatically refund donations made to a trucker convoy in Canada protesting COVID-19 vaccine mandates after backlash.
GoFundMe said Friday it was preventing the funds from going to organizers of the Freedom Convoy and would instead send the money to “established charities verified by GoFundMe.”]
For that matter, what did you just do to humanity, GoFundMe? Whose interests do you serve?
If people not affiliated with the Trucker Protest in Ottawa engaged in criminality in that city, and the police, under pressure from their employers, used that to tar the Trucker Protest with one brush, what right do you have to go along with that tarring? Is the police’s evidence sufficient justification for your decision? Do you honestly believe the Trucker Protest been secretly violent all along? On the basis of the police’s obviously tawdry evidence, you are effectively stealing money from innocent donors and choosing for them without their consent what to do with it. Not a good optic. You are essentially saying that power must be obeyed no matter what. Not a good optic. People with legitimate grievances, in this case a very large percentage of Canadians – and that percentage would be far higher if the Trucker Protest received fair media coverage on all channels, if, say, Trudeau were to debate that protest’s leaders live – have an inalienable right to protest, without permission. I note support for the truckers in Canada, in an atmosphere of grossly one-sided reporting, is higher than that for the governing liberal party Trudeau leads. I repeat, this move is not a good look for you.
Surely your brand is in part about people power. Your decision here defiles your brand. Imagine that the people of East Germany had asked permission to protest against the Berlin Wall. I can assure you their protests were illegal in the eyes of the East German government (or should that be “regime”?). The West still celebrates images of East Germans destroying the Wall with sledge hammers. The East German police would have informed GoFundMe about violent activity and destruction of government property. And, on the evidence of your recent decision, you would have taken them at their word.
Are you for tyrannical power, GFM? If you believe the Trucker Protest is in favour of brute force and tyrannical power, or that its members drove thousands of miles to Ottawa in their tens of thousands – risking their livelihoods in the process – to do mindless violence and, as Trudeau tweeted, “hurl abuse at small business workers and steal food from the homeless”, you must be as wildly off target in your critical thinking as Trudeau. The government narrative makes no sense whatsoever. Your alignment with it will, I suspect, backfire in ways that will snuff you out.
But perhaps there’s still hope for you. Perhaps the last two letters in “Fund” could be changed to a “c” and a “k”. Here, I’ll spell it out for you: GoFuckMe. That’s a far more appropriate optic.
