“March for Our Lives” Rallies Were AstroTurf, Based on Lies

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Despite the dishonest impression created by the establishment media, the so-called “March for Our Lives” demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and beyond on March 24 were the very definition of AstroTurf — and the entire foundation underpinning the establishment-created “movement” is based on easily debunked lies. Ironically, polls taken after the Parkland shooting show even most U.S. students between 13 and 17 do not believe that more gun-control would prevent mass shootings.

According to the national press, which was masterfully managed by high-priced public-relations firms bankrolled by globalist billionaires on behalf of the “children,” “hundreds of thousands” of people marched on March 24 in “hundreds” of cities. What they 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.

Despite phony initial reports claiming 800,000, 600,000 and then 500,000 people attended, the real number was closer to 200,000, far less than expected and touted by organizers. Critics and historians said the march reminded them of National Socialist Adolf Hitler’s “Youth Parades,” a favorite propaganda gimmick of the murderous anti-gun tyrant.

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Still, counter-protests also emerged across America, with pro-gun young Americans making themselves heard loud and clear despite the media blackout. And the facts about the AstroTurf nature of the movement are becoming more widely known. Indeed, parents across America are increasingly waking up to the ongoing indoctrination of their children and recognizing the threat it poses not just to gun rights, but to all freedoms.

One of the AstroTurf leaders paraded all over America’s TV screens was David Hogg, whose father is a former official with the FBI and whose mother is a far-left activist. “Today we are going to start a revolution,” Hogg claimed on TV, obviously reading from a script. “Today is the beginning of that revolution.” Speaking to the marchers in D.C., he added: “If you listen real close, you can hear the people in power shaking.”

Of course, in the real world, “those in power” are the very people exploiting, funding, and manipulating traumatized children to advance their dangerous civilian disarmament agenda. As documented extensively in this magazine and other outlets, the march was organized and planned by the so-called “Women’s March,” an AstroTurf outfit powered by baby butchers at Planned Parenthood, the Communist Party USA, and dozens of organizations funded by establishment billionaire George Soros.

The murderous regime ruling mainland China has also been a vociferous critic of gun rights in America, especially after Parkland. And billionaire globalist Soros, among the leading financiers of the groups running the “student” movement despite his easily discredited denials parroted by the press, has argued that Communist China’s government, which has murdered more than 60 million disarmed victims, functions better than the U.S. government. He also says the savage regime in Beijing should “own” what he calls the “New World Order,” something that would be very difficult as long as there are hundreds of millions of guns in civilian hands in America.

A representative of the establishment-funded anti-gun Giffords Foundation that played a key role in organizing the “March for our Lives” marches was even caught on tape at a government school in Broward County, Florida, coaching the “student leaders” of the march on their “talking points.” She also let them know that airfare 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 traumatized children were being exploited as window dressing to conceal the truth about the real forces behind the scenes. Indeed, the representative told the media to “pretend like you’re not hearing this,” a request they were more than happy to comply with.

Meanwhile, the paper trail is clear also. The “March for Our Lives” permit application for D.C. was actually filed by Deena Katz, a professional AstroTurf leader and the co-executive director of the Women’s March Los Angeles Foundation. The application even identifies her as the “person in charge” of the event. The fringe activist, who works alongside Islamist Sharia law advocate Linda Sarsour, is also listed as the president of the “March for Our Lives Fund.”

Other documents shed further light on the farce that “student survivors” from Parkland were “leading” and “organizing” the march. For instance, the media contacts are being overseen by 42 West, a high-profile public-relations agency operating out of New York and Los Angeles. A number of expensive PR firms have worked on creating the movement, as media reports revealed early on. Anti-gun publications that have become willing partners with the anti-gun globalists that hired the PR firms, such as the Washington Post, have even tried to malign everyone who notices the man behind the curtain as “far right.”

But the facts speak for themselves. The board of the “March for Our Lives Action Fund,” according to public records filed in Florida, lists Katz as president, as well as Vernette Walker with BoardSource, and Jeri Rhodes with the far-left Friends Committee on National Legislation, a former top executive at the ultra-far-left Greenpeace. Other directors include fringe 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. And most of its leaders are from Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

Despite all of that, the establishment press — practically every major outlet in America, in fact — continued to parrot the objectively false assertion that this was a “student-led” operation. The far-left Washington Post called it an “anti-gun-violence rally organized by students.” ABC news lied to viewers when it claimed the march was “spearheaded by the survivors.” The L.A. Times lied to readers when it claimed the “student-led” march wanted to stop gun violence. In reality, the students were exploited as props, and those media outlets knew the truth all along. The leaked audio from the Giffords Foundation has been available online for days.

Ironically, these same shadowy groups using dark money that they do not have to disclose have the nerve to accuse the National Rifle Association of being a “lobbying group” for the “gun industry.” In reality, the NRA has millions of grassroots members — numbers that dwarf the supposed “hundreds of thousands” of agitators organized by Soros-funded MoveOn.org, the “Everytown for Gun Safety” funded by totalitarian-minded billionaire Michael Bloomberg, and other fringe leftist and globalist AstroTurf organizations. And millions more gun owners refuse to join the NRA because it often compromises on gun rights.

Hogg, the high-profile anti-gun activist promoted by the media as the face of the gun-control movement, went on to threaten politicians who do not bow down to his demands. “We’re trying to make sure that these politicians know that their actions can and will have consequences if they don’t listen to their constituents and their future constituents — which are us — because right now they’re not doing a good job of keeping us alive,” he said. “We’re going to change history with or without them, and if they choose to be on the wrong side of history that’s fine, because we’re going to write the history books.”

Ironically, that is the opposite of reality, too. While the establishment media continues parroting bogus threats about the “children” becoming voters and how that means politicians better get on board with gun control, even the media’s own polling data shows the narrative to be bogus. A USA TODAY/Ipsos poll taken after the Parkland shooting, for example, found that less than half of students 13 to 17 believe stricter gun control or background checks would help prevent mass shootings. And as they get older and wiser, it is certain that even many of the misguided children who naively believe mass murderers will obey gun regulations will wise up and recognize reality.

But despite being ignored by the press, many young Americans proudly and openly rejected the gun-control narrative. Even siblings of some of the victims in Parkland spoke out. “Hey @Emma4Change please stop using my sister’s name to push your agenda, she DID NOT and WOULD NOT support it,” wrote Patrick Petty about his sister, who died in the shooting. A number of Parkland students have been trying their best to make clear that the anti-gun extremists paraded around D.C. by globalist front groups do not represent anyone but themselves, but the press has done its best to ignore and silence those voices.

Either way, when it comes to adults, the news is even worse for the gun grabbers and their phony narrative. As The New American‘s Bob Adelmann reported on March 25, American adults now overwhelmingly recognize the fact that widespread gun ownership enhances public safety. The trends are pointing toward increasingly broad support for gun rights, too. Polls also show that Americans tend to be even more hostile toward gun control when it is promoted by out-of-touch Hollywood celebrities surrounded by armed bodyguards — and said celebrities were key in promoting and funding the March 24 marches.

Today, almost half of Americans say they live in household with guns — a number that is growing and that probably underestimates the prevalence of gun ownership in America, because many gun owners are unlikely to tell a random pollster over the phone that they have guns in their home. In short, the anti-gun Democrats and the children they are exploiting to advance gun control are on the fringe of American politics, despite dishonest attempts by the media to paint their antics and agenda as mainstream.

Aside from the anti-gun marches, there were also counter demonstrations that received far less attention — if they were covered at all. March for Our Guns rallies took place across America. In Montana, high-school students spoke out on the importance of gun rights. “I believe that self-defense is a God-given right,” 18-year-old speaker Joey Chester was quoted as saying at the capitol in Helena. “I don’t want to see that infringed upon for law-abiding citizens.” Lawmakers at the rally joined in too, promoting gun rights for teachers and ridiculing the idea that disarming citizens would somehow make schools safer.

Another student, 16-year-old Austyn Brown, expressed pity for his classmates who chose to attend the nearby anti-gun rally. “They need to get educated about guns,” he said. “Media has been shoved in their head that guns will kill them, that guns are evil, and only bad people carry guns. That’s so untrue.” One youngster seen in photos of the event carried a sign with rubber duckies in a target reading: “Kids in gun-free zones are like sitting ducks.” At government schools across America, despite overwhelming pressure from anti-gun faculty, pro-gun students have been standing firm, too — even if it means being assaulted or punished.

In a series of viral tweets, 15-year-old sophomore C.J. Pearson also ridiculed the notion pushed by “the Left and folks like George Soros” that Hogg was the voice of the upcoming generation. “Today hundreds of thousands of young people are going to take to the streets to march for gun control because they have been fed this false narrative that the Second Amendment is discardable, the constitution is obsolete and that guns are inherently bad,” he added in a video that has been seen almost 200,000 times. “That argument, that narrative — is B.S.”

Finally, another silver-lining is the growing awareness among Americans that government schools are indoctrinating children into believing dangerous absurdities. U.S. Parents Involved in Education (USPIE), a grassroots group working to shut down the U.S. Department of Education and end federal involvement in school, suggested that manipulation of children by government schools explains part of what Americans witnessed in the media this weekend.

“USPIE believes students, staff, and the public are being emotionally manipulated into supporting gun control as the solution to the problem raised by the massacre in Parkland, Florida,” the organization said in a statement, highlighting Common Core-aligned “social studies” standards that urge children to take political action. “Administrators and teachers encourage students to express themselves through political activism. Those in support of the gun control agenda assert the ‘action’ we need is simply restrictions on gun ownership.”

Government K-12 schools, the group continued, are teaching “politically biased social justice values.” “Students are taught the faults of America, Christianity, Western Civilization and white men,” USPIE said. “Sadly, children are not being taught accurate history of the United States and the reasons for American exceptionalism. They are not being taught the historic facts about hundreds of millions of unarmed people of all races murdered by their own governments in the 20th century. Lack of historical context leads students to believe the only way they can be safe in school is to further restrict and/or take guns away from law abiding Americans. Children deserve better.”

Highlighting the role of “a well-financed, highly organized movement” behind the “student-led” movement, the education-oriented group blasted the plot to restrict the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. Instead, the organization called for ending “gun-free” zones, arming trained staff members, and having a proper investigation to understand how the local, state, and federal governments failed so catastrophically. The organization also recommended potential charges against officials who did not fulfill their responsibilities.

While the media painted the AstroTurf marches as the beginning of the end for the Second Amendment, the reality is not nearly so bleak. In fact, taken together, it seems likely that the truth will continue to be heard, support for gun rights will continue to surge, and well-deserved suspicion of the government’s indoctrination programs masquerading as “education” will spread even further. All of that is bad news for the globalist establishment seeking to disarm America. This is, at its core, a fight for truth and freedom. And if the American people hope to succeed, they must get involved to prevail over the shadowy and subversive forces working to disarm them.

Photo: AP Images

Alex Newman is a contributor to The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook.