Bowman’s defeat is a rebuke of the Left’s radicalism

Maybe “Squad” Rep. Jamaal Bowman ’s (D-NY) defeat in Tuesday’s primaries signals the high-water mark for the antisemitic protests that have so bedeviled America since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel . The New York congressman had constantly amplified the insane rhetoric that supports fanatics and blames their victims. And he lost — by a lot.

Does his defeat mean the fever is breaking?

Polls show that the public supports Israel and rejects Hamas. According to Pew Research , almost 60% say Israel has a valid reason to fight the terrorist group. Only 22% think Hamas has valid reasons, and only 5% support its terrorist attack on Oct. 7.

As for the protests, half of people think they’re wrong, while 28% support them.

Imagine, then, how much more lopsided these numbers would be if they knew the information in a special report that Mary Mobley and I published at the Heritage Foundation this week. In it, we demonstrate that there is a revolutionary ecosystem that supports the protests, which are not spontaneous but AstroTurf agitprop led by radical leftists.

This ecosystem is in fact the same that has supported Black Lives Matter — that set of organizations set up by Marxists who explicitly said their intent was to dismantle American society — since its birth in 2013-14.

And enemy regimes in China, Cuba, and Venezuela are increasingly a part of this ecosystem. That is a no-brainer. The anti-Israel protests in the cities and the encampments at universities have weakened America — the protests have sometimes shut down critical infrastructure choke points, such as the Brooklyn Bridge.

As Mobley and I explain, the revolutionary infrastructure can be best understood if broken down into four interrelated components: (1) the activist organizations that plan and carry out the protests; (2) the fiscal sponsors that give these organizations legal coverage and afford them opaqueness; (3) the often deep-pocketed donors that fund the activist organizations through the fiscal sponsors; and (4) radical media groups that amplify the protests and promote them on social media, and also routinely air propaganda for U.S. adversaries such as China, Cuba, or Russia.

All the key members of these four components helped BLM coordinate protests, either in the formative riots that took place in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 after the police shooting of Michael Brown, or in the more than 600 riots that enveloped our cities after the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota in 2020. They are behind the recent anti-Israel protests as well.

Or, in the case of the other components, they have donated money to both causes and sponsored the organizations. And in the case of the radical media groups, they have amplified the message.

Take the attack on the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles Sunday night. It was a localized pogrom, really, as pro-Hamas protesters attacked Jewish worshippers as they were trying to enter their temple.

The attack was organized by Code Pink and the Palestinian Youth Movement — two of the activist groups that Mobley and I discuss in our special report. Both are fiscally sponsored or are funded by other parts of the ecosystem, and their message is spread by media platforms in the ecosystem.

Code Pink also goes to bat for BLM. It has an entire page on its website dedicated to BLM. This page includes links to books to read, places to donate, etc. Code Pink also took part in the Ferguson riots and calls for the defunding of police and the military, both BLM goals.

As for the Palestinian Youth Movement, it organized Palestinian delegations to the BLM 2020 protests and was a strong supporter of the Ferguson action.

The Palestinian Youth Movement is also bankrolled by the Solidaire Network, which also funds several BLM groups, as we explain in our report.

Code Pink, meanwhile, is funded by Neville Roy Singham, a multimillionaire with deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party who lives in Shanghai and is married to Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans.

Singham also funds another activist group, People’s Forum. On the night of April 30, at the group’s Manhattan headquarters, its executive director, Manolo De Los Santos, gave a fiery speech and trained in resistance about 100 activists who had come down from Columbia University. Three hours later, militants attacked and occupied the university’s Hamilton Hall.

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De Los Santos knew what he was doing, as he has been trained in Cuba over the years and takes BLM delegations there.

The voters in Bowman’s district defeated him soundly last Tuesday, even not knowing all of this. But it’s good to spread the message.

Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and the author of NextGen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It.