Less than a day after the election of Donald Trump, the protests against candidate Trump turned into riots against President-elect Trump. The radical resistance against Trump — seen throughout his campaign — shifted into high gear. In cities all across America, from New York to Los Angeles and almost everywhere in between, angry, frightened young protesters — mostly minorities — could be seen in media coverage staging “spontaneous” demonstrations, chanting, “Not My President! Not My President!” as they illegally blocked highways and byways, threw Molotov cocktails, set fires, defaced public buildings and monuments, assaulted people they perceived as Trump supporters, and destroyed property. When confronted by police over these acts of wanton lawlessness, the crowds — on multiple occasions — turned their violence against the police, injuring officers.

In all of the protests, professionally made signs bearing the same images and slogans can be seen. The crowds are all shouting the same slogans. In some of the protests, participants can be seen carrying larger-than-life Donald Trump heads on large sticks.

Given that the crowds took to the streets less than a day after the election results were known, it seems odd that they already had signs and Trump heads all ready to go. Printing that many signs would be quite expensive. Having a rush job done to print them within hours would be even more expensive. It would also be a difficult order for almost any print company to fill on such short notice.

This demands the questions, “Are these protests really spontaneous?” and, “If not, who is behind them?” After all, somebody had to pay for those signs and Trump heads. Somebody had to rally the “troops” and organize when and where to meet. Somebody had to hand out the signs. Somebody had to inform the angry, frightened young people what they were to chant as they terrorized cities all across America. Perhaps the most germane question is, “Does anyone really believe that all of this is spontaneous?”

The answer to that question — based on sheer logic alone — would easily be that the protests and riots are likely not spontaneous, but instead are being funded, equipped, manned, and organized by the same deep-pocketed leftists who were behind the earlier protests against Trump during his candidacy and who also spawned other subversive movements and organizations, such as Black Lives Matter (BLM). As The New American reported in a previous online article on September 5, 2016, leftist organizations such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) and the Center for American Progress have already given BLM at least $33,000,000 with which to fund their subversive agenda. And that is not nearly the complete story. Encouraged by the “success” of BLM’s use of that funding, other leftist groups decided to chip in as well. As this writer said in that online article:

As bad as all of that would be on its own, even that $33,000,000 is — yet and still — just a drop in the bucket. The Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy have recently formed the Black-Led Movement Fund with a six-year commitment to a pooled donor campaign to the tune of $100,000,000. Race-hustling, it would appear, is a booming industry. After all, you can’t make omelets without breaking a few eggs and you can’t reconstruct a society until you first tear it down. And there is no tool better at tearing down a society than the proven method of divide-and-conquer. $133,000,000 will pay for a lot of #BLM #FTP t-shirts.

In a move that surely pleases its leftist elite patrons, one of the beneficiaries of that $133,000,000 — the Movement for Black Lives (MBL) — is using its portion of the ill-gotten gains to make outright communist demands. Besides reparations including free college and a minimum wage with no requirements for the one receiving the “wage” to perform any work in order to receive it, MBL also demands the retroactive legalization of drugs and prostitution (complete with — say it with me — reparations for those who have been jailed for these crimes), and “economic justice” to include “collective ownership [of businesses in black areas], not merely access.”

Besides funding groups that are under the subversive and violent BLM umbrella, the Left has been shown to have illegally funded and organized activities to skew the narrative against Trump and in favor of Clinton throughout the election. As The New American’s Selwyn Duke reported in an online article for October 24, 2016, Project Veritas exposed the “election rigging” actions of Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). In one hidden video released by Project Veritas, Democrat operative Bob Creamer admits that Hillary Clinton directed illegal coordinated campaign expenditures by paying to have activists in Donald Duck costumes holding signs demanding to see Donald Trump’s tax returns. Creamer can be seen saying, “In the end, it was the candidate, Hillary Clinton, the future president of the United States, who wanted ducks on the ground. So, by God, we would get ducks on the ground.” As he apparently realized how damning that admission was, he followed it by saying, “Don’t repeat that to anybody.” Project Veritas repeated it to anyone with both Internet access and the willingness to hear it. That video has over 2,000,000 views on YouTube and has been shared all over the Internet.

In an earlier Project Veritas hidden video, another DNC operative admits the Left paid for and organized violence to create a path to the White House for Clinton. As Selwyn Duke wrote in an online article for The New American for October 21, 2016:

Scott Foval … was the national field director for the left-wing group Americans United for Change until he made the mistake of getting caught campaign-ridin’ dirty. (He also previously worked for “People for the American Way,” a George Soros-funded organization, and has his own company, the Foval Group.) Captured on video by an undercover Project Veritas reporter posing as a Democrat donor, Foval is part of a web of leftist conspirators “led by Robert Creamer, a veteran Chicago activist and convicted felon who is thought to have planned Democrats’ political strategy during the push for Obamacare in 2009 and 2010,” reports Breitbart.

In the video, Foval admits to staging violent actions, which he calls “conflict engagement.” He brags of “conflict engagement in the lines at Trump rallies” and proudly says, “We have mentally ill people that we pay to do s**t, make no mistake. We’re starting anarchy here.”

After the election, some famous and well-connected leftists called for violence. Paul Schrader, who was involved in writing or directing such films as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Blue Collar, American Gigolo, and others, took to Facebook on November 11 to fan the flames of the violent protests. He wrote:

I have spent the last five days meditating on Trump’s election. Upon consideration, I believe this is a call to violence. I felt the call to violence in the 60’s and I feel it now again. This attack on liberty and tolerance will not be solved by appeasement. Obama tried that for eight years. We should finance those who support violen[t]  resistance. We should be willing to take arms. Like Old John Brown, I am willing to battle with my children. Alt right nut jobs swagger violence. It’s time to actualize that violence, Like [m]y Civil War Michigan predecessors I choose to stand with the black, the brown and the oppressed.

That post has since been removed, but it was replaced with a picture of the infamous John Brown, whose violent and murderous terrorist actions led to his execution in what is now Charles Town, West Virginia, on December 2, 1859. Schrader’s Facebook post accompanying the picture of Brown reads, “This will end badly. Badly for Trump. Badly for America. The question is how soon and how bad. We have sowed the wind.” Of course, Schra­der is used to playing the role of director. Rather than take part in any violence himself — which might get him hurt or killed and would almost certainly lead to his arrest — he is content to do what he does best: direct from a safe distance.

Schrader is not alone in calling for violence. Monisha Rajesh, who has written for both The Guardian and the Telegraph, woke up to the election news and appears to have at least temporarily lost her mind. She took to Twitter and in a string of angry tweets, she wrote, “Just woken up, checked Twitter, felt the swirling sickness of Brexit, but this is far worse. The whole world is f**ked.” She followed up with a tweet to photographer and travel writer Mark C. O’Flaherty, saying, “It’s about time for a presidential assassination.” O’Flaherty replied, “Haaaaa — that’s all we’ve talked about for the last hour.” Both accounts have since been deleted. Whether that is part of Twitter’s new policy, which also led to the deletion of thousands of accounts related to the Alt Right and racist groups using that designation, or whether both Rajesh and O’Flaherty just needed to retreat to their safe places is hard to say.

That the message of Schrader, Rajesh, and O’Flaherty — and others — has been heard is not in doubt. A man going by the name Charles Walz on Facebook wrote a post so vulgar and violent that his account was deleted. In that post, he wrote that any of his friends “that live in red voting states” need to move from those states within two months, saying that if they do not do so by the deadline, “do not consider us friends. I want you dead. I want your families dead. I want your wives, husbands, children and grandchildren dead. Not just dead but horrible painful deaths. Torturous cancers — bone, brain. Burning alive in a fire. Drowned.” He went on to say that the wives and daughters of those in red states “should be brutally raped” before being killed.

The Left is just filled with tolerance and love. You know, the kind of love that trumps hate.

So, it would be fair enough — based on logic alone — to suspect the Left of staging the riots across America in the wake of the election. After all, it is their standard operating procedure to pursue illegal and subversive means to further their agenda. But sheer logic aside, there is evidence that leftist elites are behind the protests and riots across the nation.

For instance, beginning in late October 2016, ads for paid protesters began appearing on Craigslist in Pittsburgh, Boston, Columbus, Denver, Philadelphia, and other cities. The ads, which were all carbon copies of each other, read:

STOP TRUMP — up to $1500/week

Hiring Immediately! Call Today Start Tomorrow!

$15 - $18 hourly rate + bonus + overtime! up to 77 hours per week!
Drivers Earn Gas Reimbursement!
Morning and Evening Shifts

No previous experience required
Full time and part time positions
Weekend positions available
No fundraising! No commission!

Each ad carried a phone number to call, which was answered by either a Google Voice messaging system or a voicemail belonging to the Community Outreach Group (COG), a for-profit organization formed by Planned Parenthood as “a vendor of large-scale advocacy,” according to a report by Fox News. While the ads were placed before the election, they are still active, indicating that the group is likely still funding protests.

According to Fox News, Planned Parenthood’s COG is not the only leftist group paying for protesters. MoveOn.org placed a Craigslist ad that said, in part, “We only want protesters under the age of 30.... We prefer minorities.” In other words, the optics are better if the streets are filled with black and brown young people carrying ready-made signs and chanting prepared slogans. Washington Community Action Network (Washington CAN) posted an ad on Craigslist offering $15 an hour. Some protesters later told Fox News that they were recruited by the ad. With Washington CAN apparently taking cues from the same playbook, the ad reads, in part, “Students, women, and minorities are urged to apply.”

It seems that since a sufficient degree of outrage — that which would lead those young minorities to take to the streets on their own — could not be drummed up, it had to be manufactured. And hired out. The leftist elites who practice the advice of Democrat Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to “never let a crisis go to waste” are willing — based on the evidence — to create a crisis if one cannot be found. In this case, the crisis is a series of riots manned by paid operatives whose job it is to terrorize cities all across America. And while these protests may appear to be the reaction of minorities who are fearful of the policies of Donald Trump, it must be remembered that the Craigslist job posts excluded anyone who did not meet age and race requirements to fit that manufactured perception.

To add to the body of evidence against the Left, a report from Zero Hedge from November 13 shows how the protesters were able to mobilize so efficiently. The report includes a video showing that in Chicago, buses — stretching five city blocks — were reportedly hired to bring in protesters. This brings up two important points. First, if the protesters had to be bussed in, they were certainly not locals who spontaneously reacted to the election. Second, given that they were bussed in from out of the area, many of these protesters were likely paid for their participation.

It appears that the economic hardships created by leftist policies have also created an environment where those unemployed or underemployed millennials who are also historically, economically, and politically ignorant are willing to sign on as the thugs-for-hire to protest for the continued propagation of those same leftist policies. Interestingly, other millennials — even those who may share in the economic hardships of their peers — who are not ignorant of the historic, economic, and political context, have not participated in taking to the streets to protest a fair election simply because they do not like the outcome.

As Frédéric Bastiat, a Frenchman who lived to see France begin adopting the mind-set of socialism in the mid-1850s, wrote in The Law, the “disseminators of subversive doctrines” — such as the social revolution these paid protests demonstrate — are “concocting the antidote and the poison in the same laboratory.” In this case, the Left has created the economic problems and is using them to create social chaos for the purpose of offering the antidote of more — and more powerful — government. That cure is at least as bad as the disease.

While it is certain that not all protesters were paid, it is also certain that many were. The material point is that without leftist elites paying protesters and providing the logistics to bring about the protests, there would not likely have been any protests. Drinking deeply from the poisoned well of the Left, paid, young, minority protesters (and those encouraged by them to join in) have helped create the social chaos which will — if successful — lead to even greater problems, economic and otherwise, for not only the protesters, but for all Americans. While political protest may have its place, this is not that. It would not be accurate to refer to paid operatives as protesters. If monetary recompense is their goal, they are not protesters; they are — as noted above — merely thugs-for-hire. Even those who joined the party once it was paid for and organized are not truly protesting, they are merely creating havoc.

Perhaps this can best be seen in contrast to what protests looked like eight years ago. In the wake of Obama’s election (and again after his reelection), Tea Party groups rented fields, fairgrounds, buildings, and other venues. They brought in speakers and musicians. They spoke against the policies and politics of the Left. They rented billboards and took out radio, television, and newspaper ads. They organ­ized to try to do something about what they saw as the problem. While many Tea Parties missed the mark by endorsing — time and again — establishment candidates, they missed the mark honestly. And honorably. And peacefully. They did not block traffic. They did not disrupt businesses and neighborhoods. They didn’t burn or smash anything. The protesters who have taken to the streets in the wake of Trump’s election have not even attempted to bring about their goals by positive, effective means, instead relying on all of the negative, subversive means social revolutionaries almost always do. Rather than build anything, they seek to tear down everything.

And even while Trump supporters and others on the Right have been accused of defacing buildings, these accusations have been proven — time and again — to be false and those crimes proven to have been committed by others. One well-known case involved the vandalism of a campus chapel at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. When swastikas and other symbols along with racist words and phrases and the word “Trump” were found painted on and in the chapel in March, it was assumed — by the media and the man on the street — that the vandalism was the act of Trump supporters. This episode — like so many others — turned out to be a false-flag operation. This particular false flag was flown by two liberal students, Anthony Morales, 19, and Matthew Kafker, 18, in an attempt to cast a negative and fearful light on Trump as the election approached.

Perhaps the biggest difference in the political activism of the Right (as seen in the Tea Parties) and the political activism of the Left (as seen in the recent riots) is that those on the Right who protested also voted. They participated in the electoral process as they sought to bring about change. In the recent anti-Trump riots in Portland, the local NBC affiliate reported that “at least seventy-nine demonstrators either didn’t turn in a ballot or weren’t registered to vote in the state.” That means that most of the 112 rioters arrested did not even bother to vote in the very election they were protesting. That is a special type of ignorance. The report says:

Following Tuesday’s presidential election of Donald Trump, thousands of people took to the streets in downtown Portland for five straight nights. The activity included at least one night that the police declared to be a riot, with more than $1 million in property damage. The bulk of the arrests happened on Friday and Saturday evenings as protesters faced off against police.

KGW compiled a list of the 112 people arrested by the Portland Police Bureau during recent protests. Those names and ages, provided by police, were then compared to state voter logs by Multnomah County Elections officials.

Records show 39 of the protesters arrested were registered in the state but didn’t return a ballot for the November 8 election. Thirty-five of the demonstrators taken into custody weren’t registered to vote in Oregon.

Taking the arrestees as a sampling, it appears that 70 percent of the protesters have no one but themselves to blame for being dissatisfied with the election results, since they did not participate in the basic function of citizenship by voting in the election. Of course, if they were among those who were being paid for their “participation,” their lack of an “I Voted” sticker makes much more sense. It was simply not a job requirement. If that is the case — and it is likely, given the facts — then their motivation to take to the streets with violence was at least as much monetary as it was anything else.

The money — coming from Planned Parenthood, George Soros’ MoveOn.org, Washington Community Action Network, and other leftist organizations — has helped create a false perception that these protests are the spontaneous actions of angry, scared, young voters who are pushing back against a system that they see as targeting them. In reality, it is the very leftist organizations behind these manufactured protests that are targeting the participants. Once arrested, they will have criminal records. The organizations behind the lawlessness will simply “move on” to the next event.

One such “next event” is Inauguration Day. Afraid to let the inauguration take place, the Left is arming those angry, scared, young, professional protesters to “shut it down.” With nearly two months left to fund and organize, the Left is planning something big. As of this writing, just one page on Facebook that is dedicated to the “Not My President” cause has more than 31,000 “interested” and more than 9,500 who say they are going. And that number is growing fast. The website of the Act Now to Stop War & End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition — which is behind the Facebook page — lists more than 15,800 RSVPs and is also gaining steam. The page says, “Real social change comes from the bottom, the mobilized grassroots, and not from the centers of institutional power, the professional politicians or the capitalist elites.” But that is not what is happening here. The estimated hundreds of thousands who will march on Washington to “shut down” the inauguration will not be “mobilized grassroots” activists; they will be manipulated cannon fodder in the service of the leftist elites.

And the “change” they hope to bring about will be nothing more than the same policies that have left them high and dry in the past. Of course, since many of them will likely be paid for their “protesting,” they aren’t due any change.

Photo: AP Images