A bizarre funding craze has taken over naive, liberal-hating Republican America

This model has produced some wonderful dadaist masterpieces, like Zack Brown, who turned $55,000 by asking for potato salad ingredients. But then you delve a little deeper and you find some concerning things

Your local crowdfunder needs you (EPA)

One hundred and twenty-one people have donated to Angel Fox's GoFundMe. Her promise? To fly to London and “stand watch” over the Ecuadorian Embassy, in which Australian national and noted Manafort liaison Julian Assange has been holed up in since 2012.

“I intend to stand watch [to make sure] Assange is safe during the night. In order to do this, I have to take a leave from my job and will be depending on donations for expenses during this time,” she wrote in the pitch. “The sooner I receive funds, the sooner I can fly from Michigan to London and start aiding in the protection of Julian Assange.”

Two months ago, she posted an update. There was Angel Fox, standing in a red winter parka and a beret, standing outside of what we're led to assume is the Ecuadorian stronghold and Assange's dwelling. Since starting the campaign last December, Fox has raised $3,267, a few hundred short of her $4,000 goal. The comments that dot the bottom of the page offer a mixed response. “Thank you for looking out for Julian's safety,” reads one. “SCAMMER!! SCAMMER!! YOUR ALL SUCKERS!!” reads another. It’s an issue which clearly elicits strong responses.

This isn't the only time Fox has run such campaigns. Go to her page, and you'll see that she has multiple campaigns to her name. This one, that reads simply, “Help support a journalist,” has made back $365, and this one, for expenses incurred at a #FreeAssange vigil, generated $680. You don't need me, or anyone else, to tell you that independently financing a lone watchman to guard over Assange's administrative tomb is a questionable thing to do with your money, but in 2019, it's clear that the political crowdfunding gambit knows no bounds or shame.

Angel Fox sits right alongside the legal defence funds for Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone (which has made more than $92,000), and anyone else who's been indicted in the Mueller probe. Or the random Trump fan accounts on Twitter who've turned to Patreon to power the continued owning of the ambiguous libs. Or the many, many border wall pledge drives that have popped up after Brian Kolfage's initial crusade went briefly viral late last year. (Today, those donors are receiving refunds.)

It was inevitable, really. Crowdfunding has already established an outsized influence on our politics. Not that that's a bad thing. Platforms like Crowdpac allow candidates to take grassroots approaches to campaign financing, essentially applying the Kickstarter logic to Washington as a whole. It meant that 2018's midterms were the most expensive ever, thanks in large part to small donations for candidates like Beto O'Rourke, who scooped a massive $38m in independent money from July to September. It gave him the most profitable quarter for any Senate candidate in U.S. history, and a model for any stumpers in his wake. Virality is your friend. In these stringent, politically isolating times, we love to work out our frustrations in small bounties. But does it mean anything, ultimately? Is this a genuine way to effect change?

The past three years has enshrined the modern MAGA base as some of the most gullible people on the planet. Writing a blank cheque for a hypothetical border wall, or dispatching an unknown agent to London might sound ridiculous on the surface, but after a presidential cycle founded on the fantasy of Mexico paying for 2,000 miles of fortifications, and subsequently bolstered by claims of “millions” of illegally-cast ballots and a debate about the size of an inauguration crowd that's somehow still rumbling, we've long left the outer-rim of logic behind. Currently, there are as many answers about the truth in our democracy as there are citizens in America. Trump was the catalyst to finally, definitively untether the necessity for facts in political protocol. So today, a baseline of hysterical grift seems like a natural accessory to the culture. Of course someone was going to try to turn a profit in the middle of the pandemonium.

You have to wonder what the endgame is here. People are drawn to crowdfunding because it's unregulated and sovereign from any overarching corporate interests. The model has produced some wonderful dadaist masterpieces, like Zack Brown, who famously turned $55,000 by asking for potato salad ingredients. But that laissez-faire attitude can be volatile in the wrong hands. Who knows if the people tossing cash at Angel Fox truly believe she's going to be there to stop an assassination attempt on Julian Assange? I'd reckon that it's more like a limp bit of curdled activism. What's $20, really? Surely, many of the weirdos funding the DIY border wall knew the campaign was doomed to disappoint, but when you start to view these pledges with a healthy dose of scepticism, they start to make a lot more sense. Maybe someday companies like GoFundMe and Patreon might start filtering out some of the more bizarre requests on their websites. But that'd be a betrayal of the core directive. Crowdfunding never tells you where to spend your money, only that you can.

It should be a lesson to anyone making spurious claims about how they can change the world if your naive Republican parents just reach into their pockets and commit a few pennies to the cause. Bernie Madoff is serving 150 years after ripping off some of the most powerful people on the planet. He aimed too high. It's far more feasible to promise to Save America at a small entry fee. The veracity, intelligence, or feasibility of your goals are completely irrelevant, and there's an entire presidential administration to prove it.

We spent years pointing and laughing at the soppy, hallucinogenic memes that the world's Facebook uncles shared with a frothy intensity. Now, those same memes have become sentient, and they're asking for the money upfront. Heaven help the pocketbooks of those who think they're a fundraiser away from making America great again.