Go Fund Yourself

T he trucker convoy in Canada is the most dramatic, and most effective, protest against Covid-era overreach and vaccine mandates in North America. Since the movement began, Canada’s Conservative party has changed its leader because the former one insufficiently opposed lockdowns. The province of Quebec has abandoned its plan to tax the unvaccinated.

Why? Because truckers are essential workers and working-class, even those truckers who own their rigs. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is the son of power and privilege, a creature of the broader Left that has turned away from unions to the universities, from workers to wokesters. Trudeau has leaned into accusing the truckers of every manner of culture-war offense: antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-black racism, homophobia, and transphobia. I mean, have these truckers even read Judith Butler?

Supporters of the convoy have tried to counter those words.

The problem for the truckers, and for the Right more generally, is that culture war is not some TV-studio slap fight of words; it’s not just a meme war. It is an economic war. The truckers and their supporters witnessed the warning shot fired over their fleet this weekend.

Supporters of the trucker convoy were using the crowdfunding site GoFundMe as a vehicle for raising money to support the truckers. The campaign became one of the largest ever in the site’s history, having raised $7.9 million at the end of last week.

The first warning came when Buzzfeed put out a news story with the plain intention of pressuring GoFundMe to cease being a conduit of support for the truckers. Reporter Brianna Sacks’s article carried the headline that said it “sure seems like” the truckers had violated the site’s rules. She described the movement’s rallies as “much like the pro-Trump and ‘Stop the Steal’ gatherings.” This is like a flashing warning sign that they should be subjected to disruption by law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. She linked to an accusation that there had been a Nazi flag at the rally, which linked to a Jerusalem Post piece, which was illustrated with a photograph from a museum several thousand miles away from the protests. Other anti-trucker investigators were said to have found antisemitic literature at the Ottawa site, which turned out to be a photograph from Florida.

GoFundMe, now officially under pressure from the media, had subsequent conversations with law enforcement over the weekend and had concluded that the “previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation, with police reports of violence and other unlawful activity.” GoFundMe initially said it would seek “credible” charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy organizers as a destination for the millions donated. After backlash and some canny political maneuvering by conservatives in the United States (we’ll come back to that), GoFundMe relented and promised full refunds.

Progressives have a real strategy in this economic war: Make every dollar spent on conservatism less effective. Dissuade mainstream outlets from doing business with conservatives. Deny an ever-wider circle of conservatives from mainstream Silicon Valley–made platforms. Drive them to alternative platforms that they’ve built for themselves, where they can be fleeced by grifters in their own ranks and grouped with extremists by law enforcement. Finally subject them to the techniques of financial blockade that were developed in the War on Terror: Go after the Internet hosts, banks, and payment processors that are even less equipped than social-media companies to deal with public controversy.

Anyone with heterodox views and a significant platform is a legitimate target. Chick-fil-A’s owners have the wrong religious views; tell them they aren’t welcome in certain cities. Chip and Joanna Gaines are forming a successful lifestyle brand; tell the whole world they go to the wrong church. Joe Rogan has the wrong guests on his show; pressure Spotify into deleting more than 100 of his podcasts. All of these moves aren’t just punishing the people involved; they act as stern warnings to the holders of capital: Do not invest in content that wouldn’t get approval from the Buzzfeed reporters in Brooklyn.

This also shows why “build your own” is an inadequate argument for the times. Conservatives are not able to launch niche competitors to take on Mastercard. These institutions never would have risen to their prominence had they started out as enforcers of a left-wing political orthodoxy. They have been pirated by progressive activists, who act from within and without.

And even if conservatives could create such a financial institution, the battle could transfer immediately to another field. How would one go about building their own SWIFT international payment system? Russia has had trouble doing this, and it is a nation-state with an urgent need. The logical endpoint of the build-your-own argument is this: Build your own government.

This is why it was so canny for Florida governor Ron DeSantis to step in and say he would instruct his attorney general to look into GoFundMe’s deceptive practices. At one point, before he had descended into obsession with the 2020 election, Donald Trump would have spotted this opportunity, one that may have figured into GoFundMe’s decision to relent.

Even if GoFundMe returns the money, it still reaps the benefit of having collected the valuable user data from all the people donating to it. GoFundMe was, it seems, applying its own terms of service unfairly. GoFundMe not only hosted but promoted a fundraiser for Seattle’s occupied Capitol Hill in 2020, where four people were murdered and shopkeepers were being extorted.

Conservative donors and consumers absolutely need to get creative under this pressure. But if this fracas teaches us anything, it’s that even if you still live under the illusion that there is a marketplace of ideas, the state has a role in enforcing fraud and theft. And the state can do a lot to restore the norms of fairness and reciprocity. Conservative politicians just need to take their own side in the fight.