Another Silicon Valley company is engaging in cancel culture against conservative voices. On Saturday, crowd-funding platform GoFundMe suspended a fundraising effort by black conservative activist Candace Owens.
Owens, the founder of the Blexit movement, which is encouraging blacks and Hispanics to rethink their historic support of the Democrat Party, started the fundraiser in support of Alabama bar owner Michael Dykes, who had the audacity to point out that George Floyd, the man who died in Minneapolis police custody two weeks ago, was not someone to be treated as a martyr.
Dykes, the co-owner of the Parkside Cafe in the Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham, wrote a controversial text to employees regarding the protests in his city and the curfew the city imposed because of them.
“We should go up one or two dollars on everything until June 10th. Call it a protest tax because all the idiots that went to the protests are responsible for us not being able to open normal hours,” Dykes wrote.
“Any employees that went or are going should resign,” Dykes continued. “Mr. Floyd was a thug, didn’t deserve to die but honoring a thug is irresponsible.”
The text prompted employee Lacey King to post a picture of it on Facebook and beg for a new job claiming that Dykes was “the most hateful person” and that he had a long history of “hateful” texts. Three employees, including King, took Dykes’ advice and resigned from the Parkside Cafe over the text.
Dykes may have been indelicate, but he wasn’t factually incorrect. Floyd was reportedly under the influence of fentanyl and methamphetamine at the time of his arrest. He served prison time in Texas for aggravated robbery prior to moving to Minneapolis. Floyd had a long criminal history, including drug abuse and violent trespassing.
Yet, he is the left’s new hero.
Owens became involved because, in an interview with AL.com, Dykes said that his text was partially inspired by a video that Owens posted on Facebook.
“I was inspired by a black woman, who is amazing, by the way,” Dykes said of Owens.
In that video, Owens said, “In my opinion, George Floyd was a criminal. Just because he was a criminal doesn’t mean he deserved to die at the knee of a police officer. But it does mean that I am not going to play a part of the broken black culture that always wants to martyr criminals.”
Owens learned of Dykes’ plight on Twitter on Saturday afternoon. Responding to a tweet, which trashed Dykes, who earlier profusely apologized for the text, Owens wrote: “Thank you for being a trash enough human being to let me know about the leftist mob attacking this business owner. I have now created a fundraiser for Michael Dykes.”
In just over four hours, Owens raised $205,000 before GoFundMe removed the account, saying that it ran afoul of company policy that prohibits “user content that we deem, in our sole discretion, to be in support of hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorism or intolerance of any kind.”
In a tweet, Owens reacted to GoFundMe’s decision to remove her campaign on Dykes’ behalf. “After raising $205,000 in a few hours @gofundme decided to halt my campaign for the Parkside Cafe in Alabama. At their discretion, they deemed that funds raised for a conservative business constitutes ‘intolerance.’ They WILL however give the funds raised thus far to the cafe.”
After raising $205,000 in a few hours @gofundme decided to halt my campaign for the Parkside Cafe in Alabama. At their discretion, they deemed that funds raised for a conservative business constitutes “intolerance”
They WILL however give the funds raised thus far to the cafe… pic.twitter.com/Mfw88iDKRi— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) June 7, 2020
It’s hardly the first time that Owens has butted heads with the Silicon Valley thought police. Last month she was suspended by Twitter over her criticism of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer’s authoritarian handling of the coronavirus in her state, and the previous May, she was briefly suspended by Facebook over posting statistics on the absence of fathers in black homes and claiming that “white supremacy is not a threat; liberal supremacy is.”
Owens is the worst nightmare of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists. She is an intelligent and articulate young black woman, who rightly points out the facts on these contentious race-based subjects, while the leftists in BLM rely purely on emotional outbursts to get their so-called points across. She clearly speaks out against the victimhood mentality that the activists of BLM and other leftist movements use to keep their various identity groups in line.
It’s no wonder that the leftists of Silicon Valley want to censor her.
Photo: AP Images
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects, with a primary focus on the ongoing anthropogenic climate-change hoax and cultural issues. He can be reached a [email protected]
