https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-5-7-the-campus-kill-the-jews-riots-paid-professional-agitators-funded-by-democratic-big-wigs-or-well-meaning-kids
Several days ago, after the New York police broke up the kill-the-Jews occupations at Columbia, NYU and other universities, it emerged that close to half of the arrestees were not students or otherwise affiliated with the schools in question. At a news conference on April 30, Mayor Eric Adams adopted the term “professional outside agitators” to describe the main organizers of the protests (“What should have been a peaceful protest, it has basically been co-opted by professional outside agitators.”).
The protests certainly give an appearance of being well-organized and equally well funded. For example, large numbers of identical newly-ordered tents seem to spring up on almost no notice. Did hundreds of young people on shoestring budgets just happen on their own initiative to place orders from the same website at the same time and all pay with their own money? That seems implausible. But if there is professional organization, who are the organizers? And who is paying them? You would think that this is an issue where the public would have a huge interest in knowing the answer — particularly if the answer should turn out to be that the main sponsors of the protests are also big funders of one of the major political parties. But this is a subject where the sponsors have a strong interest in concealing their role as much as possible, and where uncovering and exposing that role takes some significant effort.
Several news organizations have been doing serious digging to get to the bottom of this. In this post I’ll highlight the work of three of them:
The New York Post, which has had a story on this subject nearly every day for the past week and more. Examples include a May 1 piece by Olivia Land (“Notorious anti-Israel protester Lisa Fithian, paid $300 a day to teach activists, spotted among Columbia rioters”); a May 2 piece by Joe Marino, Craig McCarthy and Emily Crane (“Nearly half of anti-Israel protesters arrested at Columbia, City College weren’t students: police”); and a May 5 piece by Chris Nesi (“Radical anti-Israel nonprofit urged rampaging Columbia occupiers to recreate BLM ‘summer of 2020’ riots”);
Tablet, with a piece by Park MacDougald on May 6 (“The People Setting America on Fire: An investigation into the witches’ brew of billionaires, Islamists, and leftists behind the campus protests”); and
Politico, with a piece by Shia Kapos on May 5 (“Pro-Palestinian protesters are backed by a surprising source: Biden’s biggest donors”).