Show Notes
Pro-Hamas protests at universities around the country exposed the hidden organizers who are buying the tents, printing the signs, and in many cases, paying professional protesters to incite and radicalize students.
Various campus student groups and pro-Palestinian organizations receive funding from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which also pay for their students to attend American schools. But there are other, even more troubling funders of student activism and campus unrest. Most prominent among them? The Chinese Communist Party. The most recent episode of The Drill Down explores the hidden hand of Beijing in the campus upheavals.
Two of the most influential groups in the protest movement have been the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a communist organization that parrots the Beijing party line and is Maoist in its politics. PSL has pledged its loyalty to Beijing, openly and on many occasions.
“PSL serves as a proxy for China,” Schweizer says on the show.
And, as reported by Peter Schweizer in his new book, Blood Money, “an American Marxist now living in China, who made his wealth by selling his business to an investment firm partly owned by the Chinese government, is now connected to well-known efforts to support violent protestors and other radical groups in the United States.” (pp. 103-104)
That American, Neville Roy Singham, has been a doctrinaire Marxist for much of his life, despite making a fortune through capitalism, and now lives fulltime in Shanghai. He funds several left-wing organizations that are openly supportive of the Chinese regime. Singham has been featured on The Drill Down before.
Researchers at the Government Accountability Institute found a Chinese language article that appeared April 28 in a government-funded publication called “The Paper” that is targeted at Chinese students abroad. The article, written by a Chinese graduate of Columbia University, offers a glowing account of the protests at Columbia. He also warns Chinese students in the US. “It must be emphasized that this article does not intend to encourage any Chinese readers who are studying and living in the United States to directly participate in political movements.”
The article goes on to note, “It is difficult for students to act spontaneously; on the contrary, grassroots organizers have worked hard in the past ten years or even decades, and generations of students have turned themselves into batons, forming a mobilization network composed of various student organizations, large and small.” (auto-translated)
Several news outlets have reported on the dark money that has funded protests, including paying for the same models of tents. Tablet and Politico have reported on protest funding from left-wing foundations and big-money donors who have also contributed to the reelection campaign of President Joe Biden.
On the show, Peter and Eric also discussed the domestic funding of these protests, which has been reported by others as well. Large left-wing foundations including the Tides Foundation, George Soros’s various funding platforms, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Pritzker Foundation have funded groups that are facilitating the professional protestors that are whipping up the students on many campuses. As Eggers says on the show, “there’s a reason they all have the same tents.”
But why are the Chinese so involved in all of this? “Because it divides people in the United States and saps America of its strength,” says Peter Schweizer. “Blood Money” lists many incidents going back more than 10 years where PSL has been actively involved in fomenting disorder and riots in the US.
Nevertheless, Schweizer differs with some Democratic Party activists who believe the protests are going to hurt the Biden campaign, speculating that this is actually “false theater.” Schweizer believes this may all be a part of a larger plan to mobilize students into activity and will be followed later by a strong effort to move those students into full-throated support for his re-election.
“I’m not convinced this is some big vulnerability for Joe Biden,” Schweizer said.