China’s propaganda machine went into overdrive as the first U.S. and Israeli missiles started hitting Iranian targets early Saturday. In fact, China’s foreign influence operators started organizing marches in U.S. cities 10 minutes before President Donald Trump announced the operation.
The reaction involved such interest groups with ties to China as the People’s Forum, the ANSWER Coalition, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, CodePink, and, yes, the Democratic Socialists of America (which has begun to co-brand with the PSL), to name only a few. All swung into organizing street mayhem or at least condemning the attacks.
These are the same groups that mounted protests against ICE, the arrest of Nicolas Maduro, Israel’s defensive war in Gaza, in support of Black Lives Matter, or any other cause that can be used to destabilize the U.S.
It’s easy to see why China feels it must use its internal assets to create opposition to Operation Epic Fury.
First, China is our No. 1 adversary. It will do anything to use our civil liberties, such as freedom of speech and the right to protest, to undermine U.S. society. This is an asymmetrical battle, however, since China lacks these civil liberties, so it is not as vulnerable to their abuse as open societies are.
China also benefits from buying the Islamic Republic’s sanctioned oil at distressed prices. With its other supplier of contraband oil, Venezuela, out of the way, the Iran operation may mean that communist China will soon have to start paying the world market price that everyone else pays.
Truly spontaneous marches did emerge at almost the same time, though. Only this time it was by elated Iranians in the diaspora who took to the streets in Washington, D.C.’s, Georgetown, in Los Angeles’s Wilshire Boulevard, even in London, to show support for Trump’s decision.
The legacy media had no choice but to report on these pro-Trump marches, even though they’re loath to show any support for Trump’s actions. Still, the lion’s share of the media attention always goes to the marches organized by China’s agitprop groups.
One by one, whether it was the Guardian, CBS News, or the Washington Post, legacy media ignored the ties that each group organizing the marches has to a multimillionaire who lives in Shanghai and who himself has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
The Guardian, for example, reported it in this fashion:
“As news circulated that Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had been killed in US and Israeli airstrikes on Tehran, anti-war protesters gathered across the United States, including outside the White House and in New York’s Times Square to voice opposition to US military involvement in the region.”
The left-wing British daily, widely read in the U.S., noted that there were protests across the country: in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, and Minneapolis.
It did not say that the protests were organized by the ANSWER Coalition, the National Iranian American Council, 50501, American Muslims for Palestine, the People’s Forum, Palestinian Youth Movement, CodePink, Black Alliance for Peace, and the Democratic Socialists of America.
It did not say that nearly all of these groups are funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American with widely known ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and who just happens to be married to CodePink founder Jodie Evans.
The Network Contagion Research Institute said in a 2024 report that Singham “shares premises with Shanghai Maku Cultural Communications Ltd., a Chinese propaganda firm focused on presenting a positive image of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the global south.”
Singham’s Tricontinental Institute, a sort of think tank, has close ties to the CCP, according to NCRI and others.
The State Department last month sent a report to Congress linking these groups to Chinese influence operations. It said that China “spreads propaganda through influence campaigns run by nonprofit organizations like Code Pink, the People’s Forum and groups linked with the notorious Singham network.”
None of this was mentioned by the mainstream press. The Washington Post was particularly egregious. Its report focused on one of the activists, Ermiya Fanaeian, who gathered with others in front of the White House on the day the raids began.
The Post did mention that Fanaeian is an organizer for the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a Marxist-Leninist party.
What it did not mention was that Fanaeian was trained in communist Cuba last year and proudly quoted the Cuban hosts as saying, “If we’re terrorists, we’re proud to be terrorists.” Fanaeian, in fact, works hand in hand with the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Nor did the Post mention that Fanaeian is the leader of Armed Queers Salt Lake City, a militant paramilitary group reportedly being investigated for links to the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Finally, the Post left out that Fanaeian is transgender. Referred to as “she” throughout the piece, Fanaeian is a man who appears to have undergone gender surgery and who wouldn’t have fared well in his native Iran.
OPERATION EPIC FURY IS PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH IN ACTION
Luckily, there is a new ecosystem of experts focusing on this problem. Fox News hired Asra Nomani to report exclusively on this intersection between protests and overseas communist support, and she broke the story that the Singham Network had become active before Trump announced the Iran attack. Stu Smith at the Manhattan Institute also does stellar work in this field, as does an X account that goes by the name of Data Republican.
The legacy media will not do its job. Citizen journalists have risen to fill the vacuum.
