Eventbrite Allows White Nationalist Group To Sell Tickets

Update, November 2017: Eventbrite’s Trust & Safety team regularly monitors and reviews certain content that could be in violation of our Terms of Service. A review of the events surrounding and within the NPI Annual Conference last year led to a determination that Richard Spencer violated these Terms.  As a result he was removed from Eventbrite in November 2016 and he is no longer permitted to benefit directly from the platform’s services. ​

The National Policy Institute (NPI), a leading white nationalist “think tank” that is particularly popular among younger racists, has been cleared under the company’s Terms of Service by a member of the Eventbrite Trust and Safety team.

After being contacted by Hatewatch about the organization’s usage of the platform to promote its semi-annual events at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., Eventbrite responded with the following statement:

“After careful review, we feel that this event that was published on Eventbrite is not in violation of our Terms of Service. Eventbrite seeks to bring people together through live experiences. We strive to allow organizers of all walks of life to create and host events, as long as they are not in violation of our Terms of Service and the information provided on the Eventbrite platform for this event abides by our community guidelines.”

That is to say, Eventbrite is happy to help promote and sell tickets to an event that is aimed at indoctrinating millennials into an ideology that seeks to create a white ethnostate and openly promotes lies about minority groups, so long as they aren’t openly advertising their beliefs in the event description. Per the organization’s terms of service agreement, Eventbrite will only take action should any racially or ethnically objectionable content is “uploaded, posted, emailed, transmitted, or otherwise made available” through their platform. Apparently linking to the NPI site is well within the bounds of acceptable behavior.

When asked about whether Eventbrite would take a similar stance if the Ku Klux Klan or a neo-Nazi organization were using their services in a similar fashion, a representative from the press team declined to comment and instead reiterated that NPI was within the bounds of Eventbrite’s terms of service.

NPI currently has two events listed on the Eventbrite platform. One event in late February features notable white nationalist and xenophobe Peter Brimelow, editor of VDARE, an immigrant bashing online publication named for the first white child born in the British colonies, Virginia Dare, and Jared Taylor, the founder and editor of American Renaissance, a white nationalist web publication dedicated to “academic racism” that spans topics like eugenics and “black-on-white crime.”

Another event in March features disgraced academic Dr. Kevin MacDonald, a hero of the neo-Nazi movement, who edits the virulently anti-Semitic publication the Occidental Observer, as well as the white nationalist YouTube personality Paul Ray Ramsey, known as RamZPaul online.

At NPI’s last event in October, also promoted through Eventbrite, anti-Semitism took a front seat, a new development. Materials from anti-Semitic outlets such as the American Free Press, The Realist Report, and the Barnes Review were all being openly distributing. Speakers like Sam Dickson told the press during the event that African-Americans could be “given Manhattan” while describing the balkanization of American in the recognition of a white ethnostate. The event’s organizer, Richard Spencer, wasn’t any more subdued, telling reporters that, “The Jews exists precisely because they were apart, precisely because they had, maybe you could say, a bit of paranoia about trying to stay away – please don’t quote paranoia.”

NPI’s usage of Eventbrite as a platform for its events is hardly surprising given their target audience – millennials. However, they aren’t the only hate group using the service. In November, Frank Gaffney the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, a “think tank” devoted to pushing islamophobia, organized his National Security Action Summit in Nevada through the platform.

The grand irony of Eventbrite’s terms of service enforcement is that despite purporting to seek to “bring the world together through live experiences,” hate groups that actively seek to separate the world according to race and ethnicity are being allowed to organize with ease through the platform.