Far-left group with foreign ties undermining US under guise of protest, report warns

Late last month, after the killing of local Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti by federal agents working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, MS NOW interviewed a protester identified as "Andrew" who said he flew in from Colorado to help drive the feds out of the city.

Hours later, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) framed the killing as a "murder," identified "Andrew" as "DSA National Political Committee member Andrew, protest the murder of Alex Pretti. ‘We are going to beat the Trump administration.’"

Soon after, in a rhetorical stab at law enforcement officials, the local chapter Los Angeles Unified School District, the Los Angeles DSA chapter organizations funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American-born tech tycoon and self-styled Marxist-Leninist, living in Shanghai. Singham has funded nonprofit groups, including the People’s Forum, CodePink, BreakThrough BT Media, the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which have worked closely with Democratic Socialists of America in dispatching socialist, Marxist-Leninist and communist foot soldiers into the streets to disrupt federal immigration law enforcement agents and stoke chaos.

According to the Network Contagion Research Institute’s new report, "Democratic Socialists of America: Policy, Advocacy and Narrative Convergence with Hostile Foreign States," the organization has been engaging in a dynamic called "narrative convergence," advancing narratives that stoke domestic unrest and delegitimize state institutions while advancing talking points aligned with "hostile foreign governments."

One of the messages it regularly puts on posters equates the Trump administration to "fascism," declaring, "Socialism Beats Fascism."

For example, this network coordinated last month to demand a Venezuela, Cuba and China since 2021, involving official invitations, government-linked hosts, luxury accommodations, transportation and meetings with senior regime officials, including Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel. 

The report said that after the trips, the DSA engaged in "coordinated, time-locked advocacy and messaging that directly advanced foreign regime priorities, including anti-sanctions campaigns and electoral defenses."

After a trip to China, the report documented, the Democratic Socialists of America’s "International Committee" hosted an event in late 2021, headlined, "NO COLD WAR: OPPOSING…US ESCALATION ON CHINA." After a trip to Cuba, the report noted, the organization hosted an event to stop the U.S. economic blockade on Cuba, titled, "How to break the Blockade."

After the U.S. extradited Maduro to the U.S. in early June, DSA joined other groups in the socialist network with protests against the "kidnapping."

Over months of reporting, Fox News Digital has documented how far-left socialist, Marxist and communist networks, aligned with foreign interests, have funded, organized and stage-managed street protests, using carefully coordinated messaging, social media amplification and nonprofit funding streams to allegedly launder ideological narratives into mainstream media coverage as if they are "grassroots" and "organic."

The DSA and allied groups, including the People’s Forum and other groups in the Singham network, have acted as logistical chiefs, field marshals, amplifiers and message disciplinarians, busing members to protests, creating digital tool kits and mass-producing pre-printed signs they hand out to demonstrators, shaping protest narratives for the cause célèbre of the day, according to reporting.

From Israel to Tesla, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), ICE, police, Venezuela or other headlines, researchers say these street protests and propaganda cast the U.S. as "terrorists," "genocide" enablers, the "Gestapo," "Nazi" and other smears that echo language used by anti-U.S. authoritarian regimes abroad to delegitimize the U.S. as "imperialist" "colonizers" that must be dismantled through a "resistance."

To assess whether this overlap was incidental, analysts at the Network Contagion Research Institute conducted a large-scale analysis of DSA communications using classifications based on "large language model." 

The institute coded domestic anti-ICE activism and foreign-policy advocacy to assess "blame attribution," "legitimacy framing" and policy prescriptions, finding a "consistent pattern of blame convergence on U.S. institutions across all contexts." 

It described it as evidence of a "shared narrative structure rather than issue-specific framing."

In its assessment, that convergence carries broader implications. 

The report concludes that "the anti-ICE movement, much of it under DSA direction, serves as a domestic front in a global conflict between states," and that the organization promotes a narrative vision that "absolutely converges with the interests of Venezuela, Cuba and China."

The Network Contagion Research Institute emphasized that its findings don’t allege criminal wrongdoing but state that the pattern of conduct, narrative alignment and foreign engagement "warrants further scrutiny," particularly as protests continue, and congressional investigators investigate a phenomenon known as "malign foreign influence" operating inside the United States.

The Tuesday hearing will feature testimony from multiple experts focused on malign foreign influence and nonprofit transparency. 

With a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives, Republican lawmakers have five witnesses: Sohn; Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center; Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust; and Bruce Dubinsky, founder of Dubinsky Consulting. Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, is scheduled to speak as a witness on behalf of Democratic lawmakers.

Illustrating its synchronicity with foreign adversaries questioning the legitimacy of the U.S. government, the DSA's local chapter in Minneapolis bragged in a new Facebook post on Sunday that "ICE’s legitimacy is dwindling" but cautioned "their terror continues."

It’s promoting a digital toolkit among members with pre-scripted messages, signs and "community letter" for another anti-ICE action on Feb. 11 against the "violent federal immigration enforcement surge" that has been "destabilizing communities, and is violating our freedom across the country." 

The DSA's target: more Target stores.

Fox News Digital's Brooke Curto contributed to this report.