Ever wonder where those handsome, yellow, and black signs at left-wing protests emblazoned with the cause du jour come from? Who paid for them? Who printed them?
I can assure you that the cash didn’t come from “Socialist Women For Palestine” bake sales or “Hands off Venezuela” walk-a-thons.
It’s amazing how similar the anti-ICE, pro-Palestine, pro-Maduro, anti-Iran War, and anti-Trump protests appear. It shouldn’t really surprise us because one left-wing umbrella organization is responsible for coordinating most of them.
Organizing a protest beyond some neighbors turning out to demonstrate when ICE arrests someone is an expensive proposition that demands the time and dedication of dozens of committed activists.
A vast network of activist groups with shadowy connections among themselves and to foreign actors is responsible for mobilizing these protesters. Astroturfing demonstrations are not against the law, although failing to disclose foreign funding is close to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
The ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) coordinates most protests, including several demonstrations that have become violent.
“A close look at ANSWER’s operations reveals a demonstration-industrial complex—a coordinated ecosystem in which organizations lean in to their respective strengths and complement others’ infrastructure, messaging, or reach,” write Stu Smith and Tal Fortgang in The Free Press. “These organizations are, in turn, closely linked with hostile foreign actors, raising questions not only about their propriety, but their legality.”
ANSWER is a mobilization hub that links multiple activist groups, media platforms, and protest infrastructures. When a polarizing event erupts, ANSWER often coordinates the protests: setting times and location, promoting the gatherings through affiliated media outlets and social media channels, producing the customary black and yellow placards carried by demonstrators, and coordinating the messaging that makes fringe leftist positions appear mainstream.
ANSWER’s activities can and sometimes do turn from peaceful protest into civil terrorism—the strategic use of lawbreaking to effect political change through intimidation or coercion. ANSWER has been at the center of coordinated actions that seem to meet this definition.
In July 2024, for example, ANSWER led a protest that devolved into a riot in Washington, D.C. During the event, demonstrators blocked intersections, stole and burned American flags belonging to the federal government, defaced the American Legion Freedom Bell outside Union Station, and spray-painted graffiti on a public fountain with the words “Hamas is coming.” The National Park Service, which had granted ANSWER a protest permit, revoked it after “the ANSWER Coalition violated—and encouraged others to violate—nearly every permit provision.”
The old saw, “Follow the money,” is appropriate advice, but it’s easier said than done. The gimlet-eyed radicals at ANSWER make the CIA circa 1972 look like amateurs. Front organizations, interlocking donors, and shared bank accounts are all used to shield (hide) the vast network of connections that make up the infrastructure of the demonstration-industrial complex. Fortunately, writers like Stu Smith are familiar with working the byzantine pathways that connect the groups and unlocking some of the doors that obscure these connections.
ANSWER’s protest activity is the product of a rapidly growing network of affiliates. The primary coalition partners that endorsed the March 7 National Day of Action to “Stop the War on Iran” included American Muslims for Palestine, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), National Iranian American Council, The People’s Forum, Code Pink, Palestinian Youth Movement, Black Alliance for Peace, and 50501. Some of these groups are becoming more radical as they grow closer to ANSWER. Since the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January, DSA has increasingly co-organized with ANSWER, even calling them a partner. That’s despite DSA’s ostensibly mainstream reputation, in sharp contrast to ANSWER’s association with hard-left organizations.
By contrast, some affiliates look more like the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a socialist political party that pursues the “revolutionary overturn” of the capitalist system. The PSL has many endorsed candidates running in this election cycle and was even able to get its presidential ticket on the ballot in 19 states in 2024. The PSL is closely linked with ANSWER not only by its affiliation but also through Brian Becker, the director of ANSWER “and a co-founder of the PSL.
“Last month, the State Department sent a report to Congress detailing how Code Pink and The People’s Forum are linked to ‘Chinese influence operations,'” according to Smith and Fortgang. Code Pink co-founder, Jodie Evans, is married to one of the primary sources of funding for all these networks, Neville Roy Singham, an American-born entrepreneur with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Singham sold his company in 2017 and is using the proceeds to develop what’s become known as the Singham Network. “Through entities such as the United Community Fund and the Justice and Education Fund, Singham has directed money to a network of nonprofits aligned with his political outlook,” explains The Free Press. The groups in the Singham Network “regularly amplify one another’s activities by promoting events, featuring each other’s leadership, and coordinating messaging across platforms.”
All of this takes cash — a lot of it. Chinese Communist operatives have been busy in the U.S. these last few years, undermining democracy, exploiting our divisions, and pitting factions against each other.
It’s a symbiotic relationship; the Chinese want to create division and chaos to weaken the U.S. as a world power. The left-wing radicals want to create division and chaos to incite a crackdown that they can turn to their advantage in the streets.
Two groups are looking to bring the United States to its knees. The government can handle the Chinese. We must expose these groups for the cynical hypocrites they truly are and unmask their funding sources to give everyone the full story behind their activism.
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