Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps’ re-election campaign is using offensive comments made by online trolls to help spur campaign donations.

In what might be the first political fundraising appeal to carry an “appalling” language warning, Helps campaign fundraising director Sonia Theroux has sent out an email with examples of offensive and explicit trolling made in response to a photo of a sunset Helps posted on Instagram.

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“I am loathe [sic] to share this image, but it shows only a snapshot of what Lisa and our team face daily online and in media comments, and sometimes face to face, as volunteers did last week in the office,” Theroux says in the email calling for campaign donations.

Helps called the reaction to a sunset photo bizarre.

“It is the bizarreness of social media. Wherever there’s an opening or a crack, there’s room for this kind of hate speech to seep in. It’s insidious,” Helps said.

The negative comments were over council’s decision to remove the John A. Macdonald statue from in front of City Hall.

Extremely offensive language on a personal level was used with milder comments calling Helps an “idiot” and a “disgrace.”

Both Helps and Theroux note that public disagreement is healthy. “But when it spawns this kind of hatred, it isn't about ‘the engagement process’ anymore,” Theroux says.

With new provincial limits on campaign financing, grassroots support is crucial, she said.

“In an age rife with anger and misinformation, this time our unified voice must be stronger. We have a lot of work to do in a short time to reach Victoria voters with a hopeful vision for the future and the importance of working together,” she said in the appeal for campaign donations.

“This is cruel, oppressive hatred, and it's everything Lisa has always stood against,” the email said.

Helps said the email, sent two weeks ago, has been fairly successful.

“I think it did generate quite a bit of funds from people who, regardless of whether they like every decision we’ve made this term or not, don’t think that people should be treated that way.”

Meanwhile, Helps said, the case for civil public discourse isn’t helped when a politician such as B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver calls Victoria councillors boneheaded for removing the Macdonald statue as he did in an interview with CHEK television.

“Here’s the leader of the Green Party calling the mayor of the capital city a bonehead in public. That does not model good behaviour. It just doesn’t,” Helps said.

bcleverley@timescolonist.com