Last week, radical Marxist protesters at the University of California, Berkeley managed to shut down a scheduled speech by right-wing gay provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Reports now indicate that the protests were funded by leftist billionaire globalist George Soros, the city of Tucson, several large corporations, and a major labor union.
Protesters at Berkeley “broke windows, set off fireworks, and threw smoke bombs and flares, creating a dangerous environment for students and the public” in anticipation of Yiannopoulos’ speech on February 1. They wore masks and started a large fire just outside of the building where Yiannopoulos was supposed to speak, and set off fireworks and hurled rocks at police officers. At least six people were injured in the violence as Trump supporters were assaulted by the protesters.
The Daily Caller reports that Refuse Fascism, a communist group that encouraged the shutdown of the Yiannopoulos event, was behind the protests that turned violent. On February 2, the group released a statement on its site in which it called the shutdown “righteous” and encouraged similar protests to continue to take place:
What happened at UC Berkeley is part of the kind of broad, powerful and meaningful protest which needs to continue on an unprecedented scale to OUST this regime from power. These protests should be supported and defended by all those who value critical thought, the ability to pursue and debate what is actually true, science and scientific thinking, the space to dissent — and all who oppose this whole fascist direction and reordering of the world with its unparalleled threats to all humanity and the planet itself.
The group also posted a defense of its violent actions at the protests by claiming that they were in fact “not violent.”
“Dismantling police fences is not violent. And to compare preventing someone like that from speaking to the real-world violence that they perpetuate everyday is ludicrous,” reads one post on the group’s Facebook page.
The problem with this mentality is that groups like Refuse Fascism attempt to justify their violence by claiming that their targets are deserving of the violence because they are “fascists” or “Nazis” or whatever label that they decide is worthy of a violent response.
Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, whose scheduled speech at Cal State-Los Angeles was also shut down last year as a result of campus protests, summed it up perfectly when he said that campuses are encouraging the mentality that speech that you don’t like is a “microaggression” that can be responded to with a “macroaggression.” He also notes that the mentality is not an uncommon one. “I’ve had riots against me at Cal State-Los Angeles. We had a near riot at Penn State last year,” Shapiro said. “It’s becoming a lot less uncommon than you would hope it would be, certainly.”
Shapiro also told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum that part of the problem is that college administrations do not allow campus police the ability to shut down violent protests like the one at Berkeley. In fact, reports from the protest indicate that the police were rather impotent while the violence went on.
UFC veteran and professional MMA fighter Jake Shields told Breitbart News that he was present at the event and was compelled to rescue a man who was being attacked by the protesters after police allegedly refused to intervene. “Like fifteen people were trying to attack him and others were cheering them on,” explained Shields. “No one helped, no one had the balls to step in, so my reaction was to run in and start picking people off.”
“More chaos started happening, so I went up to the police and tried bringing them back, but they were just like ‘we’re not really going over there. You should just stay away.’” he continued. “I don’t know if they were taking orders from someone or if they were just being lazy. I don’t know what the situation was, but it was pathetic to watch. Our police, who are supposed to defend the citizens of Berkeley. It’s a sad scene that they would allow that.”
But chaos plays right into the agenda of the Marxists. Therefore, it should come as no surprise who is behind these protests. According to the Daily Caller, Refuse Fascism is funded by the Alliance for Global Justice. One of the AfGJ’s biggest donors is the Tides Foundation, a non-profit funded by George Soros.
Soros has been behind the majority of, if not all of, the riots and protests across the country in recent years. The New American’s William Jasper wrote of Soros’ powerful influence behind the anti-Trump, Black Lives Matter movement:
Over the past several years, American cities have been plunged into racial and civil turmoil at a level we have not experienced since the 1960s and 1970s. The anti-police riots in Ferguson, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and elsewhere have morphed into anti-Trump riots across the country, with many of the same organizations and individuals serving as instigators: Black Lives Matter, MoveOn.org, International Action Center, ANSWER Coalition, and other far-left, fake “grassroots” groups. They reliably perform on cue because they are lavishly funded by the Soros Open Society Foundations (OSF), the other big tax-exempt foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, et al.), and activist “pass through” organizations, such as the Tides Foundation, that bundle and launder hundreds of millions of dollars in “dark money” to the street revolutionaries.
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Not only were well-known Soros-funded organizations such as Black Lives Matter and MoveOn.org prominently involved, but Soros-funded groups such as Washington Community Action Network (Washington CAN) ran advertisements on Craigslist and in newspapers for “full-time organizers” to “Fight the Trump Agenda!” at $15/hour, plus paid vacation and benefits.
Other donors to the AfGJ behind the Berkeley protests include the city of Tucson and the United Steel Workers. Outdoor apparel and equipment company Patagonia.org, the Ben & Jerry Foundation, and Lush Cosmetic are also major donors to the organization.
AfGJ coordinator Chuck Kaufman purports to not have been aware that Refuse Fascism was behind the shutdown of Yiannopoulos’ speech, but defended the shutdown nonetheless. “I wasn’t aware that Refuse Fascism was involved, but probably they were one of a whole lot of groups calling to shut down Milo Yiannopoulos’ hate speech,” he told The Daily Caller.
“AfGJ acts as fiscal sponsor for Refuse Fascism which means we process tax-deductible donations for them. As long as their use of the money falls into areas permitted for tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations, we don’t involve ourselves one way or the other in their program work.”
Soros and his cohorts have been fiercely fighting President Trump, as he poses a major obstacle to the influence that Soros has enjoyed for so long. If Trump is successful in his plans to remove foreign influences from American policies and elections, Soros has a lot to lose. Therefore, he will continue to use his immense wealth to fight vehemently against Trump and his supporters through funded riots and protests such as the one at Berkeley.
