If all you watched was CNN or one of the other left-wing “news” outlets, it would be easy to believe that a spontaneous uprising of courageous children all across America was starting a revolution to protect life from evil gun lobbyists determined to see kids slaughtered. It also would be easy to believe that America has reached a “turning point” on guns and that the Second Amendment will soon be history.

But as usual, the reality is far different than the picture painted by propagandists in the so-called mainstream media. In fact, the “March for Our Lives” movement was the very definition of a phony grassroots operation — often ridiculed as AstroTurf, a term that refers to the artificial grass surfaces found at sporting complexes. The movement was based on a foundation of lies. On the bright side, though, thanks to the Internet and the alternative media, it seems that most Americans are seeing through the fraud.   

In the month of March, following the massacre of 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, there were two high-profile events targeting the Second Amendment. The first, a “National School Walkout” that took place on March 14, involved students walking out of class at schools across America. The second, dubbed “March for Our Lives,” featured marches in Washington, D.C., and hundreds of other cities.    

In both cases, the media presented the protests as “student-led” operations. And in both cases, the media lied. In reality, the events were carefully created and choreographed by powerful front groups for left-wing and globalist billionaires and a battery of activist organizations pushing to “fundamentally transform” America. And in both cases, the media ignored student survivors and family members of victims opposed to gun control. Deception was the common thread running through it all.

National School Walkout

Consider the National School Walkout on March 14. Often encouraged (or even forced) to participate by school officials and teachers, at 10 a.m. local time, students in cities across America got up and walked out of their classrooms. While the true number of participants remains unknown, much of the establishment media could barely contain its glee amid reports of “thousands” or “tens of thousands” of students marching out of their classrooms to protest guns.

“Hey hey, ho ho, gun violence has got to go,” many of the students chanted, with the implication being that the right to keep and bear arms somehow causes “gun violence.” Endless footage was broadcast by the press of children holding up signs demanding that their constitutionally protected rights be further curtailed.

What the media was less anxious to report was that many of the students and their parents were duped into participating in what they believed was an event to honor the victims of the Parkland shooting — not a protest to exploit their tragic deaths to push civilian disarmament. In Appleton, Wisconsin’s public-school system, the school superintendent sent out an e-mail saying that students had the opportunity to join a rally against “school violence,” as if anyone is for school violence. And at least one Appleton middle school held a fire drill to get students to participate. Numerous reports of such trickery emerged across America.

Eagle Forum was one of the high-profile organizations sounding the alarm. “This walkout is about passing more gun control measures; but sadly organizers are trying to mislead students and families to think that this event is simply a time to honor victims,” Eagle Forum President Eunie Smith said in an e-mail to group members. “This walkout is being presented to many Student Government Association leaders and administrators as a 17 minute memorial to the 17 Parkland students who were killed while they were defenseless in their public school.”

But obviously, that is not how the establishment media portrayed it on the day of the events. In fact, more than a few in the left-wing press could barely contain their excitement as they hyped the walkouts supposedly favoring gun control. Some especially outrageous outlets openly supported the walkouts. Media conglomerate Viacom, which owns dozens of TV networks, even paused programming for the 17 minutes of the walkout on all of its networks, including MTV and BET. Other media giants kept the walkout at the top of the headlines all day.

March for Our Lives

Ten days after the national walkout, “March for Our Lives” rallies took place in Washington, D.C., and cities around America and the world, following weeks of promotion in the media. According to the national press, which was masterfully managed by high-priced public-relations firms on behalf of the “children,” “hundreds of thousands” of people supposedly marched on March 24 in “hundreds” of cities. What the press paid less attention to was the fact that some of those marches were held in nations ruled by mass-murdering communist dictatorships that literally massacred their subjects after disarming them.

Phony initial reports at first claimed that some 800,000 people marched in D.C., leading USA Today to speculate that it could be “the biggest single-day protest in D.C.’s history.” Then, the estimated number was reduced to 600,000. Then 500,000. And then, the truth came out. It turns out that the real number of attendees, even at the peak, was no more than about 200,000, according to best estimates cited by CBS News — a number that, knowing CBS, is probably still grossly inflated. And many “protesters” were bused in by billionaire donors.

And even if 200,000 did attend, that was less than half the number expected and touted by organizers and their media allies before the march. And it was less than half the number who came to protest Trump at his inauguration. It was far less than the number who attended Trump’s inauguration to support the president. It was not immediately clear how many might have participated in the small marches held in other cities. What was clear: Massive amounts of trash and filth were left by the marchers across D.C. and beyond. Also clear: Hundreds of armed police officers protected the marchers, in another example of supreme irony.    

Not surprisingly, the media painted a picture of heroic young children “marching for their lives,” pretending that this was a “student-led” event. Critics and historians, though, said publicly that the march was reminiscent of National Socialist (Nazi) Adolf Hitler’s “Youth Parades,” a favorite propaganda gimmick of the murderous anti-gun tyrant who used gun registration records to disarm the public before beginning his mass slaughter.

Making of AstroTurf

What almost all of the media failed to mention in the “reporting” on both events was the metaphorical “man behind the curtain” — or perhaps the 800-pound screaming gorilla that was not even bothering to conceal itself. In fact, at every step of the way, the events were guided by some of America’s most well-funded, powerful organizations, many funded by radical billionaires such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. These groups provided money, organization, logistics, public relations, transportation, and much more. Far-left groups such as MoveOn, funded by globalist and self-styled “god” Soros, were even boasting publicly that they were “leading” some of these efforts.

Both the National Walkout and the March for Our Lives were organized largely by the “Women’s March Youth Empower,” part of the extremist “Women’s March” that organized the highly vulgar anti-Trump protests in D.C. last year. Indeed, the group offered a “Toolkit” on how to “Organize Your Walkout.” It provided a map to keep track of the events, a list of “demands” for the “students” to make (including a ban on America’s most popular rifles), sample letters to school officials, access to legal support, PR services to get the events promoted in the press, and much more.  

“Women’s March Youth Empower is calling for a National School Walkout to protest Congress’ refusal to take action on the gun violence epidemic plaguing our schools and neighborhoods,” the far-left outfit said on its website. “Our elected officials must do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to this violence.... By choosing to organize an event with Women’s March Youth Empower, you are committing to acting nonviolently, working to de-escalate confrontations with others, and following the instructions of authorized event marshals.”

How firmly the Women’s March controlled the “student” movement was also made clear in official documents ignored by the press. The March for Our Lives permit application for the D.C. protest, for example, was filed by Deena Katz, a professional AstroTurf leader and the co-executive director of the Women’s March. The application even identifies her as the “person in charge” of the event. The fringe activist, who works alongside Islamic Sharia law advocate and fellow Women’s March co-leader Linda Sarsour, is also listed as the president of the “March for Our Lives Fund” in incorporation documents.

Other board members of the AstroTurf “March for Our Lives Action Fund,” according to public records filed in Florida, include Vernette Walker, who is with an outfit known as Board Source that helps “increase the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations.” Another is Jeri Rhodes with the far-left Friends Committee on National Legislation, who was also a former top executive at the ultra-far-left Greenpeace. Other directors include well-connected left-wing political operatives from California, such as Aileen Adams and attorney George Kieffer, chair of UCLA’s Board of Regents. The outfit was incorporated in Delaware. Most of its leaders are from Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago. None are students.

Even a brief investigation of the Women’s March running the show would also have turned up more red flags than a Communist Party rally in Beijing. Consider, for instance, the network’s partners, which did much of the work to organ­ize and execute the “student” marches. Among them: the Communist Party USA — long a tentacle of the regime that enslaved the Soviet Union and was responsible for the slaughter of at least 100 million people worldwide. From promoting the marches through its members and publications, to providing know-how and organizers, the CPUSA’s influence was massive. The Democratic Socialists of America, the nation’s largest Marxist group, was also a partner.

Planned Parenthood, which butchered hundreds of thousands of pre-born children just last year, is one of only two “Premier Partners” and the only publicly listed “Exclusive Premier Sponsor.” The precise nature of the relationship was not made clear by either the Women’s March or Planned Parenthood, but it seems that the tax-funded abortion giant is one of the lead financiers of the operation. The most recent omnibus passed by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Trump includes another $500 million for the abortion and lobbying group, indicating that taxpayers may have been forced to fund protests against their gun rights. Numerous other abortion and homosexual groups were also “partners.”

At least a half-dozen Islamic groups are listed as partners as well, including the Muslim Community Network, the Muslim Women’s Alliance, and the Muslim Women’s Organization. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood that was linked to terrorist group Hamas in court documents, was also a partner, along with some of its state and local affiliates. A broad range of other totalitarian, communist, extremist, and murderous organizations partner with the Women’s March network, too.

Also among the Women’s March partners are more than 100 organizations that, combined, have received more than a quarter of a billion dollars from globalist Soros and his Open Society Foundations. The list includes the Center for Reproductive Rights, MoveOn.org, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for American Progress, People for the American Way, the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and other far-left organizations. And yet, the media was nowhere to be found in exposing information that is publicly available on the Women’s March website. Instead, the Associated Press published a “fact check” ludicrously claiming Soros supports the marches but was not funding them — as if $250 million in 12 years for the groups behind it did not constitute funding. Other far-left “fact checkers” also sought to deny the obvious.    

Soros’ MoveOn.org even boasted on its website about its role: “MoveOn members are mobilizing for the March for Our Lives on March 24, in D.C. and around the country…. MoveOn members around the country will be joining the events, and we’ll be asking MoveOn members to step up and be among organizers for local marches and actions that are looking for leaders.” In other words, despite the “fake news” pushed by the establishment media, well-trained left-wing activists bankrolled by Soros were literally bragging that they — and not students — were leading the “student-led” marches. Somehow America’s self-proclaimed “fact checkers” managed to miss that.    

To understand the significance of the massive Soros funding and influence, it helps to know more about the billionaire often called “Dr. Evil.” Consider that Soros has said publicly that Communist China, which has murdered more people than any government in history, has a “better functioning government than the United States.” The radical billionaire, who said on national TV he felt no guilt for taking part in helping Nazis seize Jewish property as a youngster, has also argued publicly that the regime ruling China should “own” what he called the “New World Order.” And like the murderous Chinese regime, which used Parkland to openly advocate the disarmament of Americans under the guise of “human rights,” Soros is a leading supporter of more infringements on the right to keep and bear arms.  

The phoniness of the “student-led” narrative became especially clear in the days before the march. A representative of the establishment-funded anti-gun group known as the Giffords Foundation was actually caught on tape at a school in Broward County, Florida, coaching the “student leaders” of the march on their “talking points.” She also let them know that airfare to go to D.C. was donated by Southwest Airlines, that social-media accounts were being set up by professionals for the march, that professional PR services were working “media relations,” and more.

The anti-gun foundation “has not only arranged an unbelievable itinerary for us, but they’ve got medical support, there’s security, there’s counseling, there’s media relations, pretty much everything that they could think of, they have arranged for us,” the representative was caught saying. The leaked audio proved that not only was the rally not “student led,” but that the youth were being exploited as window dressing and props to conceal the truth about the real forces behind the scenes. Indeed, the representative told the media in attendance to “pretend like you’re not hearing this,” a request they were more than happy to comply with.     

Everytown for Gun Safety, the anti-gun front group for totalitarian-minded former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, supplied “operational and logistical resources” for rallies in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, New Orleans, and other major cities, the group admitted. The group paid to bus activists willing to oppose guns to D.C. from major cities across America. And it also provided $1 million worth of “grants” to over 200 “local organizers,” many of them seasoned communist and socialist activists. Through Craigslist, potential attendees were being offered money to cover meals and travel expenses.

Aside from Soros and Bloomberg, other establishment elitists also showered money on the scheme. Some of those known publicly — the “March for Our Lives Action Fund” is a 501(c)(4), meaning it does not have to disclose donors — include left-wing Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and crony capitalist Eli Broad, both of whom pledged $1 million. TV personality and globalist Oprah Winfrey gave half a million, as did movie producer Steven Spielberg, actor George Clooney, and author Stephen King, along with a barrage of other liberal Hollywood figures. Gucci, the fashion label that recently featured its models carrying severed heads down the runway, put up half a million, too. New England Patriots CEO Robert Kraft offered the team’s private jet to fly activists to Washington.

Photo: ozgurdonmaz/ iStock / Getty Images Plus

This article appears in the April 23, 2018, issue of The New American.