This Crowdfunding Site Runs on Hate

Neo-Nazis are cowards. The occasional rally aside, most of the white supremacists who’ve been emboldened in the Trump era aren’t brazen enough to wave their flags publicly. Instead, they keep to online forums, where it’s a lot easier to talk tough beneath the blanket of anonymity. But while Twitter and Facebook rarely ban haters, crowdfunding and payment services including Kickstarter, Patreon, PayPal, and Stripe have taken a harder line, preventing avowed racists from using their services to give or collect money. That’s where Cody Wilson comes in.

Wilson is a rare kind of troll, one who senses market opportunities. The 29-year-old first gained notoriety in 2013, when he published an open source design for a plastic gun that passes unnoticed through metal detectors and can be made with an entry-level 3D printer. Now he’s trying to arm stated white supremacists with donations from fans—and taking a 5 percent cut for himself. In October, Wilson formally launched Hatreon, an unabashed Patreon for hate groups, after a couple of quiet months of operation. “I’m renting this infrastructure to these undesirables of the internet,” he says, “and it’s working.”