Fundraiser for neo-Nazi site founder raises $150,000 after Jewish woman sues for harassment

JTA

(JTA) — A fundraiser for the founder of a neo-Nazi website who is being sued by a Jewish woman for launching a harassment campaign against her received over $150,000 in donations.

In April, a Montana Jewish woman, backed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, announced she was suing Andrew Anglin, the founder of the Daily Stormer. Tanya Gersh said she has lost income and suffered because of the attacks — including multiple death threats — unleashed on her and her family, after Anglin posted her personal information on his neo-Nazi website in December.

The online fundraiser features a photo of Anglin on a horse stabbing a dragon on which Gersh’s face is superimposed. It says it seeks to raise “piles of money” in order “to fight a federal civil case against a pack of Jew lawyers all the way through interlocutory appeal, trial, and post-trial appeal.

The money was raised through WeSearchr, a fundraising site popular with members of the alt-right, a loose far-right movement whose followers traffic variously in white nationalism, anti-immigration sentiment, anti-Semitism and a disdain for “political correctness.”

Anglin launched the campaign against Gersh after Sherry Spencer, the Whitefish, Montana-based mother of another white supremacist, Richard Spencer, posted an article on Medium accusing Gersh of threatening to harass her if she did not sell the commercial building she owns in the town. Richard Spencer spends time in Whitefish, and there was talk at the time of staging protests outside the building.

Gersh, a realtor, contends that Sherry Spencer initiated contact, seeking to sell her building to head off the protests and to calm the town roiled by the rising profile of her son, who garnered media attention for his support of the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump.