The Parkland massacre hasn’t faded from the news as previous school shootings had. This is mainly due to surviving students’ gun-control activism, but is this movement itself merely a result of manipulation by unseen, well-funded professional agitators?
Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. certainly suspects as much, tweeting today “that media appearances and an activism campaign from students of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School against gun violence had ‘George Soros’ fingerprints all over it,’” reports The Hill.
Soros, the far left-wing billionaire currency speculator, is well known for pumping millions of dollars into advancing liberal causes — mostly behind the scenes.
Clarke wasn’t the first to implicate the billionaire activist. Yesterday, GOP congressman Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) was interviewed by CNN and said “it is implausible that high school students who survived a brutal massacre last week were capable of organizing nationwide rallies for gun control on their own.” During the show, Kingston argued that the teenagers are being manipulated by left-wing anti-gun activists funded by Soros, Newsweek informs.
Unsurprisingly, Newsweek labeled such suspicions the work of “right-wing conspiracy theorists”; it also stated that CNN journalist Alisyn Camerota had “refuted” Kingston by talking to the students and finding them “wildly motivated.” This is fake news.
First, to “refute” is to disprove, which Camerota didn’t do — she merely made a claim to the contrary. Second, it has already been proven that the Left regularly practices astroturf activism: events orchestrated by furtive, powerful forces but made to appear as grassroots movements.
The most startling of such proof was provided by Project Veritas (PV) in a 2016 sting operation. In Rigging the Election — Video I, Democrat operatives were caught on hidden camera plotting to stage events and incite violence at Donald Trump rallies.
As I reported at the time, one of the main featured dirty tricks specialists is “Scott Foval, who was the national field director for the left-wing group Americans United for Change until he made the mistake of getting caught campaign-ridin’ dirty” (he was fired). Even more to the point, he also previously worked for People for the American Way, a George Soros-funded organization.
Boasting in the video (shown below), “We’re starting anarchy here,” “Foval said that at one event they would turn out ‘500 people in front of the Trump International in D.C.’ Then there’s another activist, Aaron Black, who called himself a ‘field general’ and said, ‘Nobody is really supposed to know about me.’ He admitted that the left-wing protests that morphed into the ultra-violent March melee outside a Chicago Trump event was DNC orchestrated, saying, ‘That was us,’” as I also related in 2016.
In fact, it may be hard to find any recent left-wing movement that isn’t astroturf activism to some degree. For example, consider what The New American reported in 2016:
While claiming to be a grassroots organization formed in response to the prevalence of police violence, Black Lives Matter (BLM) is actually 100-percent pure Astroturf. With coffers bulging with millions of dollars from George Soros, the Ford Foundation, and other deep-pocketed leftist individuals and groups, BLM is little more than a front organization for these leftists and their agenda to reshape the very fabric of American society, culture, and law.
… Ken Zimmerman, the director of U.S. programs at Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF), denied last year that Soros had funded BLM, saying it was just a rumor. That was before hackers with DCLeaks.com published OSF documents showing that the Soros group had already given at least $650,000 directly to BLM. Those same documents reveal the reason for OSF bankrolling BLM: the “dismantling” of America so that it can be recast according to the vision of Soros and his leftist cohorts.
So “conspiracy theory,” or conspiracy fact?
To be clear, we presently have no proof that Soros or any other powerful leftist entity is behind the current anti-Second Amendment protests. But not only is past behavior the best predictor of future (or current) behavior, it is wholly implausible that this “youth” movement is entirely organic.
Of course, Camerota is no doubt correct about the students exuding genuine passion. But passion, like fire, only burns what is desired, as hotly as desired, when stoked and directed where desired. As to this, Gateway Pundit reported this week that a witness observed a schoolteacher directing students to attend an anti-Second Amendment rally. Further, liberal actor George Clooney and his wife, Amal, anounced yesterday that they would be donating $500,000 to the students’ nationwide protests. But is that really the sum total of adult incitement here?
We probably will never see all the fingerprints on the current anti-gun effort unless there’s another DCLeaks.com-like hack or PV-like undercover operation. But Democrat insider and current Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel is (in)famous for have counseled fellow leftists to “never let a serious crisis go to waste.” If anyone believes they’re letting this one “go to waste,” well, I have a used Trump/Russia-collusion narrative to sell him.
Photo of Millbrook High School students in Frederick County, Virginia, demonstrating on February 21: AP Images
