But seriously, we are talking about 50 domain names and cheap websites.
Like, I'm not involved, but if I decided that I thought it was important, I could personally create a protest website for each of the 50 states. $8/year per .com domain name, and $10/month for enough shared hosting for all 50 sites for now (or be fancy and spend $50/month for virtual private hosting and know you'll have room to grow). A few hundred bucks will buy you the stock images and other assets you need to have each site be real.
This doesn't require some big nefarious "elite evils" to fund. I mean, maybe some big right-wing group is sponsoring it, but at least so far we haven't seen more than literally a grand or so could buy you.
Plenty of folks could afford to donate that to make a cause they believe in be real.
Murphy says it cost him 4K, and he wants to recoup his costs.
"“I realized all these fringe guys are gonna get a hold of these websites, So I went out and bought ‘em up that night,” he told me. The financial burden of thwarting fringe-right groups? “It cost me about four grand,” Murphy said. “I don’t have the money quite frankly. I was just trying to do something good. I’m in massive credit debt to do this.”
The common infrastructure indicates that someone centralized is directing this and paying for it. One naturally wonders, Who?
Part of the power of grassroots protest is that it indicates that citizens are moved to act on their own. But if it’s paid for, that’s very different.