What appeared to be organic protests in the United States during the summer of 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s death were actually in many cases organized by members of little-known radical organizations linked to China, according to a new book by Breitbart News Senior Contributor Peter Schweizer.
The book, Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans, details how a number of seemingly spontaneous violent protests and riots by far-left activists against police brutality over the past decade in American were organized by groups backed and funded by Beijing.
One of those groups is the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), a secretive pro-Beijing organization.
A screen grab of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) website taken on March 4, 2024.
Protests and rioting erupted after a series of high-profile cases including the deaths of black teens Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012 and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. One of the key organizers of protests in Ferguson was Montague Simmons, who was the leader of the Organization for Black Struggle (OBS) in St. Louis. He would later divulge during a presentation that he had brought some 10,000 out-of-state activists to participate in the protest.
Simmons was also reportedly a member of Liberation Road, an offshoot of FRSO. Left-wing author Max Elbaum wrote the definitive history of the radical movement, in which he said FRSO has a long history of taking “their cues from Beijing.”
Schweizer writes that beginning with Ferguson, FRSO activists played an important role in the next half decade in pushing protests toward violence.
When the Black Lives Matters (BLM) protests broke out in May 2020, FRSO members’ fingerprints were all over them.
Weeks after the BLM protests broke out in Minneapolis, FRSO political secretary Steff Yorek’s wife Jess Sundin bragged about organizing night rallies, emptying the police station, Target and other major stores, calling it “absolutely tied to, connected to, and part of the movement.”
“I can’t tell you the joy it brought all of us to see the Third Precinct destroyed,” she said.
Police and State Patrol officers block off a section of Lake Street near the Third Precinct on May 29, 2020, during the fourth day of protests over the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, Minneapolis. (Steel Brooks/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
BLM protesters throw objects into a fire outside a Target store near the Third Police Precinct on May 28, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during protests over the death of George Floyd. (KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images)
The Minneapolis Third Police Precinct is set on fire by BLM protesters after being evacuated on Thursday night, May 28, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune via Getty Images)
The Minneapolis Third Police Precinct is set on fire during a third night of protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 28, 2020. (Carlos Gonzalez/Getty Images)
BLM protesters gather near the Third Police Precinct building while it burns on May 28, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Neighbors fought with garden hoses and buckets to save homes after rioters set fire to a multi-story affordable housing complex under construction near the Third Police Precinct in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Wednesday, May 27, 2020. (Mark Vancleave/Star Tribune via Getty Images)
A BLM protestor stands on top of a broken fence while the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct burns behind him on Thursday, March 28, 2020, during the third day of protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. (Steel Brooks/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
FRSO member Michael Sampson organized a protest in Jacksonville, Florida; and in August 2020, FRSO was involved in rioting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where it has a chapter.
In 2022, FRSO would openly pledge its support for the Chinese Communist Party during its Twentieth National Congress in a message that read:
Dear Comrades,
Freedom Road Socialist Organization congratulates the leadership of the Communist Party of China, with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, for the great successes achieved at the 20th National Congress. . . . Socialist China is an example to oppressed people everywhere who yearn for a better future. Again, congratulations on a successful 20th Congress. The CPC is truly a great political party that has proven its ability to do great things. Long live the Communist Party of China! Long live the unity between the people of China and the people of the U.S.!
With fraternal greetings.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is another secretive Beijing-tied group that has fanned the flames of social disunity in the U.S. since Ferguson.
Brian Becker, national director of the ANSWER Coalition and a member of PSL, cast the Ferguson protests as a “rebellion.” PSL distributed flyers in Ferguson that proclaimed, “There can be no peace with this system! . . . The Party for Socialism and Liberation stands with those in the streets—they have every right to rebel. . . . the system is criminal . . . The cops are the real gangs.”
Screen grab of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) website taken on March 4, 2024.
Becker had in the past said it was the “responsibility of all revolutionaries and progressive people to resist the imperialist offensive and offer militant political defense of the Chinese government.” While Becker has condemned police brutality in the U.S., he has defended the Communist Chinese government for the Tiananmen Square Massacre, calling it “the massacre that wasn’t.”
China’s state media outlet, the Global Times, has even interviewed Becker for a piece headlined “China’s Socialist Goals a Source of Inspiration to Those Who Seek a Humanist Alternative: AntiWar Socialist.” Becker has also appeared on Chinese state-owned media criticizing the United States and defending the Chinese regime.
Another PSL leader named Eugene Puryear from Washington, DC, was actively involved in George Floyd protests in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and D.C. He has also praised China, and hosted a podcast episode called, “Why China Will Win: Capitalism Inherently Collapses.” He has also argued that criticism of China’s human rights record is “warmongering propaganda.”
Eugene Puryear speaks as people gather at Times Square to protest the death of Tyre Nichols on January 27, 2023, in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
PSL also organized a protest in Denver in July 2020, where a mob of 600 people surrounded the Aurora Police Department’s District 1 station and barricaded it for more than seven hours. Four PSL members were arrested and charged with inciting and engaging a riot.
PSL also organized some of the largest demonstrations in Philadelphia, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The paper “failed to inform its readers about PSL’s close ties to Beijing or the organization’s defense of more extensive and widespread police brutality in China,” Schweizer writes.
PSL leaders were present in Boston to protest the death of a woman at the hands of the police, leading hundreds in chanting, “No good cop in a racist system.”
In Madison, Wisconsin, PSL leaders called for the release of all inmates from Dane County Jail and organized “phone and email campaigns to pressure local officials.”
Even in tiny Westville, Indiana, with population just over 5,000, PSL was among the groups who organized a protest demanding the release of all inmates from the Westville Correctional Facility, Schweizer writes.
In Atlanta, PSL leaders “guided” protestors downtown, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
PSL also organized protests in New York City, New Haven, Detroit, Austin, Anchorage, San Francisco, San Diego, Asheville, Chicago, and Rhode Island, according to Schweizer.
Funding some of these groups is an American billionaire in Beijing, who made a fortune after an investment firm partly owned by the Chinese government’s sovereign wealth fund bought his software company. The mysterious billionaire’s “ties to the regime are so substantial that he was reportedly invited to attend the Chinese Communist Party Congress,” writes Schweizer. In India, the government’s Director of Enforcement alleges that the billionaire “is associated with the propaganda arm of the Communist Party of China.” (He denies it.) The billionaire, Neville Roy Singham, has in turn poured more than $100 million into radical leftist groups in the U.S., such as CODEPINK (which was co-founded by Singham’s wife, Jodie Evans) and the People’s Forum — whose co-executives are PSL members, Schweizer writes.
CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans (left) and ThoughtWorks founder Neville Roy Singham attend the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival on April 16, 2016 in New York City. (Jim Spellman/WireImage)
The People’s Forum serves as a platform for both BLM and radical so-called antifascists, and its members have been part of numerous anti-police protests across the U.S., he writes.
Schweizer details how before these protests, a contingent of Chinese intelligence professionals from the Second Department of the People’s Liberation Army, a Chinese military intelligence unit, landed at the Chinese Consulate in Houston, Texas, sometime in the first half of 2020, posing as academics under so-called J-1 research visas and not disclosing their affiliation with the Chinese military.
Schweizer reveals that the intelligence officers, working with technicians from Huawei, a Chinese military–linked technology company, “were identifying and targeting Americans they hoped would get involved with at least the peaceful protests, if not the violent riots.” They also posted “customized” videos to TikTok instructing Americans how to organize protests and riots, according to Schweizer.
In July 2020, the U.S. government demanded that China’s Houston consulate be closed, which prompted the burning of documents in the courtyard of the consulate. Schweizer writes that the consulate had been involved in stealing American technology and spying, but officials were largely silent about the role the Chinese intelligence officers were playing in steering protests to foment violence.
The flag of the People’s Republic of China waves over the Consulate General of China building in Houston, Texas, on Thursday, July 23, 2020, in Houston. On Tuesday night, Houston police and fire officials responded to reports that materials were being burned in the courtyard of the consulate, after the United States ordered China to close the consulate in what it called a provocation that violates international law. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
A delivery driver carries a box from the Consulate General of China on Thursday, July 23, 2020, in Houston, after the U.S. has ordered the consulate to close. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
Items are removed from the Consulate General of China in Houston, Texas, on Friday, July 24, 2020, after the U.S. government ordered China to close it. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
“Why the silence? Is it because the George Floyd protests were considered sacrosanct by the political and media class?” Schweizer asks. “That made them a perfect target for exploitation by China. If the PLA unit had gone undetected, how effective could it have been in stirring up further division in the United States? Were—and are—there other similar units operating undetected elsewhere in the United States?”
Schweizer also reveals that PSL and FRSO organizers are also involved in anti-Israel protests after Hamas terrorists launched an attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, that killed 1,200.
At a D.C. rally in November, Eugene Puryear and Brian Becker of PSL spoke, as did Vijay Prashad and Layan Fuleihan from the People’s Forum. The crowd chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a call for the complete geographical elimination of Israel. PSL also organized protests in New York City, Anaheim, and Boston, according to Schweizer.
FRSO is also involved in the anti-Israel protests. FRSO leadership held an event in Minneapolis to celebrate the anniversary of the Chinese revolution, where they praised “Palestinian freedom fighters.”
Schweizer writes: “It was a remarkable replay of the violent and disruptive days of 2020 when the cause had been different—but the end results are the same: tumult, social divisiveness, and chaos. It was like fanning a small flame, and then watching the fire burn from across the river.”
“The United States has its dividing issues and problems—but China is happy to fan the flames. Much of that work is being done by groups that meet with CCP officials, are tracked by Chinese Communist intelligence, and receive funding from China,” he concludes. “Our leaders are silent and absent.”
Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans is out now and available in hardcover, ebook, and audio book.
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