PRIVATE FUNDING OF ELECTIONS: How Real American Grassroots Activism Is Being Attacked By Political Pit Bulls
5 min read
If you have noticed that American grassroots activism has become a frontline battle in politics, you may be a concerned citizen who has been attacked and pushed out of activism- by so-called ‘non profit’ grassroots groups. If you are the target of a smear campaign, fake news, misinformation, or lawfare and cancel culture- at the hands of an activist group- that pretends to care about the same issues you do- you may be over the target of a political pit bull protecting their fake grassroots group.
POLITICAL ACTIVISM MASKED AS PHILANTHROPY
KEY POINT: A new report identifies how to detect these groups saying, typically they emerge very suddenly in order to savage the political opposition on the policy or outrage of that particular day or week, then vanish just as quickly. The pop-ups do not file IRS disclosures or report their budgets, boards, or staff.
The Republican Party is somewhat new with grassroots activism compared to the left.
A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at the local, regional, national or international level, and is really the only way left for concerned citizens to participate in civics.
But what if grassroots activism has become just another way for foreign money, or for leftists to masquerade as MAGA, to get into our political process and turn the vote away from the America First movement?
With the corruption of both political parties- and our elections owned by corporations, and the loss of authentic American legislative actions- what do the people have left?
And if you noticed that both the Republican Party and the Democrat Party have partnered with very weird non profit activist groups, who seem to be working against the people, and have been very deceitful in their funding and in their legislative actions, and if they have caused massive infighting, you are not crazy- you may have found one of these groups.
The following article really exposes the left, but these tactics are being used on the right now as well, and if you query concerned Moms and Dads in any community and ask them who is causing the infighting in the community, you will find your answer to who is threatening activism in that state.
Consider this article from The Tablet Magazine that details the dark use of non profits to be political pitbulls:
Behind the closed doors of an unassuming philanthropic consultancy in Washington, D.C., is one of the most powerful lobbying forces in the United States. The Atlantic has called it “the massive progressive dark-money group you’ve never heard of” and “the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money.”
The Washington Post believes its potent lobbying arm is reason enough for Congress to enact forced donor disclosure laws, while Politico labeled it a “dark-money behemoth.” “The system of political financing, which often obscures the identities of donors, is known as dark money,” wrote The New York Times, “and Arabella’s network is a leading vehicle for it on the left.”
Meet Arabella Advisors, the brainchild of ex-Clinton administration staffer Eric Kessler and the favorite tool of anonymous, billionaire donors on the progressive left. Since 2006, the Arabella hub has overseen a growing network of nonprofits—call them the “spokes”—that collected $2.4 billion in the 2019-20 election cycle, nearly twice as much as the Republican and Democratic national committees combined.
These nonprofits in turn manage and supervise a vast array of “pop-up” groups—mainly political attack-dog websites, ad campaigns, and “spontaneous” demonstrations staffed by Arabella’s network of activist professionals who pose as members of independent activist organizations. These groups—such as Fix Our Senate, the Hub Project, and Floridians for a Fair Shake—typically emerge very suddenly in order to savage the political opposition on the policy or outrage of that particular day or week, then vanish just as quickly. The pop-ups do not file IRS disclosures or report their budgets, boards, or staff.
In most cases, their connection to Arabella goes unreported. Many of them have offered sympathetic ordinary voters the opportunity to donate to whatever the “grassroots” cause happens to be, when in fact the money feeds back into Arabella’s enormous dark-money network.
The relatively novel and innovative model of political activism perfected by Arabella, which was founded 2005, went more or less unnoticed until 2018, when I was reporting on the activist groups that attempted to prevent the Senate confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Among the sea of picket signs outside the court in July 2018 was the name of an unfamiliar group: Demand Justice. A search of the IRS nonprofit archives showed the name itself wasn’t listed. What did turn up in an online search was a downtown address on Connecticut Avenue shared by dozens of other organizations, including the Arabella “spoke” that appeared to be running Demand Justice, Sixteen Thirty Fund.
HIDING POLITICAL AGENDA BEHIND “FAKE NEWS SITES”
According to Influencial Watch, The nonprofit watchdog OpenSecrets (published by the Center for Responsive Politics) reported in May 2020 on Arabella’s involvement in numerous “fake news sites,” pouring millions of untraceable dollars into advertisements and other digital content “masquerading as news coverage to influence the 2020 election.”
OpenSecrets identified five Facebook pages (Colorado Chronicle, Daily CO, Nevada News Now, Silver State Sentinel, Verified Virginia) that “gave the impression of multiple free-standing local news outlets,” but are in fact “merely fictitious names used by the Sixteen Thirty Fund,” Arabella’s 501(c)(4) lobbying nonprofit. [64] These pages published Facebook political advertisements that favored Democrats and left-wing causes during the 2020 election. After the report was published a number of these pages were deleted.
States Newsroom, which runs another network of left-wing “fake news” websites, was originally created as “Newsroom Network,” a project of the Arabella-run 501(c)(3) Hopewell Fund. In June 2019, States Newsroom was spun off as an independent nonprofit with its own 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, but a number of its local affiliates are used by the Hopewell Fund as its own legal aliases. [65]
While States Newsroom does not disclose its donors (and is not required to by the IRS), [66]
IRS application records obtained by OpenSecrets show the States Newsroom was offered a $1 million donation from the Wyss Foundation, a private foundation primarily funded by Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, who made his fortune as CEO of a controversial medical device manufacturer called Synthes.
A financial statement in the IRS records obtained by OpenSecrets shows that the States Newsroom plans to bring in more than $27 million in contributions before the end of 2021.
Do any of these details sound like a brand new nonprofit in your area?
About Pete Santilli
