GoFundMe suspended conservative activist Candace Owens from its platform on Sunday after she raised more than $200,000 for an Alabama business whose co-owner called George Floyd a “thug.”
In a statement on Sunday, GoFundMe accused Owens of making “falsehoods against the black community,” according to The Daily Beast .
However, the more than $200,000 that was raised for the Parkside Cafe in Birmingham, Alabama, will still be transferred to the bar.
“GoFundMe has suspended the account associated with Candace Owens and the GoFundMe campaign has been removed because of a repeated pattern of inflammatory statements that spread hate, discrimination, intolerance and falsehoods against the black community at a time of profound national crisis. These actions violate our terms of service,” the company said in a statement.
Owens, who is black, responded to the campaign being canceled in a tweet , writing she is “angry that such a blatant form of discrimination is acceptable by GoFundMe.”
“There was NOTHING intolerant or violent about raising funds to help a conservative business owner,” Owens wrote.
The Parkside Cafe became the center of controversy last week when an employee shared a text sent by co-owner Michael Dykes, in which he threatened to hike up prices as part of a “protest tax,” according to AL.com .
“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. Mr. Floyd was a thug, didn’t deserve to die but honoring a thug is irresponsible.”
Dykes later apologized for his comments in an interview with AL.com, saying he “let everybody down” and “never intended any harm.”
Dykes said he wrote the text after watching one of Owens’ videos , published on Facebook last Wednesday, in which she detailed Floyd’s criminal history and argued that black Americans should not be holding him up as a martyr.
In the video, she said: “For whatever reason it has become fashionable over the last five or six years for us to turn criminals into heroes overnight. It is something I find despicable.”
“George Floyd was not an amazing person,” she added. “George Floyd is being upheld as an amazing human being.”
On Friday, Owens repeated her attack on Floyd’s character on conservative radio host Glenn Beck’s show, saying: “The fact that he has been held up as a martyr sickens me.”
Candace Owens
Floyd’s death on May 25 has prompted almost two weeks of anti-police brutality and Black Lives Matter protests around the nation. Floyd died after a white officer knelt on his next for more than eight minutes while he said repeatedly that he couldn’t breathe.
GoFundMe is not the first tech company to take a stand against Trump and his allies in recent weeks. Two weeks ago Twitter moderated one of Trump’s tweets about the protests over Floyd’s death, saying that it was “glorifying violence.”
Trump has since called for the repeal of a law that protects social media companies from being legally responsible for users’ posts.
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