Dispatches from Chicago: How the Media Misreports the Malign Intent of ‘Pro-Palestinian Protestors’

To view previous dispatches, click here.

CHICAGO – Using a pseudonym for the day, Ray Maas, 21, left his home in Madison, Wisc. in his 2003 Honda Civic around 4 a.m. on Monday morning with a friend for the trek here to Union Park to join fellow “comrades,” as he calls them, protesting the first day of the Democratic National Committee. He wasn’t subtle about his allegiances. 

In the middle of the park, resembling a young Vladamir Lenin with a mariner’s cap, he unfurled a red banner with a golden star emblazoned on it with a hammer and sickle. He explained proudly that his organization is the U.S. “section” of “Communist International,” a self-described “Stalinist Hoxhaist” movement named for 20th century Soviet communist leader Joseph Stalin and Albanian communist leader Enver Hoxha. 

On the west side of the park, in a row of organizations “tabling,” the “Revolutionary Communists of America” sold pamphlets like, “A Manifesto for America’s Communist Generations,” for $5 with a convenient way to pay through Venmo, a unit of PayPal Holdings Inc., traded on the New York Stock Exchange as PYPL with annual revenues just posted of $31 billion. 

Josh, who just gave his first name, arrived from St. Louis, and the team handed out fliers: “Neither Party Represents the Working Class,” with a QR “quick response” barcode on the back to its website, communistusa.org, and the message: If you’re tired of trying to decide which party is the ‘lesser evil,’ then join the fight for CLASS WAR 2024.”

While many of the revolutionaries used pseudonyms, first names only and face masks on Monday, cameras on them all day, they didn’t hide their beliefs in socialism, communism, Marxism and Leninism – and their participation in fomenting this year’s campus protests.

In 9,530 steps – or a few circles around Union Park, the size of about 10 football fields, and one march of about one mile with the activists – I could confirm through congenial, open-ended interviews, a collection of their literature and protest signs and a study of their chants, what a new data investigation I just completed reveals: these anti-DNC protestors who coined the hashtag #KillerKamala, are not just “pro-Palestinian,” “left-wing” “progressive” Democrats with “liberal causes,” as the media has been reporting. Instead they have deep malign intent that has brought on the scrutiny of U.S law enforcement and federal agencies monitoring possible foreign influence of the U.S presidential elections (yes, again) from Iran, China or Russia. 

As reported, to understand the money, power, and influence behind the wave of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel hate spreading across college campuses and in the streets, I analyzed 234 organizations listed as “members” and “supporters” of the March on the DNC 2024. It’s part of a new investigation that I am leading at the Pearl Project, a nonprofit journalism initiative named for my friend Daniel Pearl, murdered by militants in Pakistan in 2002 for being a Jewish grandson of Israel. I organized the analysis in a new Malign Foreign Influence Index, capturing a dynamic law enforcement officials recognize as a threat to U.S. national security. 

Recently, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said: “Iran is becoming increasingly aggressive in their foreign influence efforts, seeking to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” Last year, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division announced an indictment against leaders in one of the coalition members, “Hands Off Uhuru Fightback Coalition,” for allegedly working with Russian intelligence to interfere in U.S. elections and called the allegedly illegal activity “foreign malign influence.”

The turnout of maybe a few thousand – including “Fatties for a Free Palestine” – reveal that this movement is indeed the myth of the marching millions, outsizing their real presence with viral videos, hashtag campaigns and headline-grabbing activism. And their friendly and assiduous cultivation of visual imagery-hungry press has normalized these groups as well-intentioned, grass roots, exercising their well-earned right to protest  when some of their motivations include subverting democracy. 

But we must pay close attention to the details of the Chicago revolutionaries. They want “imperialism” and “capitalist bourgeoisie” systems, like the DNC and Republican National Committee, replaced with the socialism, communism and Marxism models promoted by China and Russia. And, with flags unfurled like a United Nations display of socialist regimes and movements, from Venezuela to Cuba, the Philippines, Palestine and Mexico, they told me they want this revolution to spread everywhere, including “from the river to the sea” in Israel.

After Monday’s reporting I have new organizations and designations to add, but of the 234 organizations in my initial analysis, 34 groups openly identify as some form of socialism, supporting the socialist governments in China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba and elsewhere. “ANSWER,” “Freedom Road Socialist Organization,” “Freedom Socialist Party,” “International League of People’s Struggles,” “World Workers Party” and “Denver Communists” all raised signs, stapled to wooden sticks, resembling yardsticks. I didn’t yet find activists from a coalition supporter, the Keweenaw Socialists from Michigan. 

In the database, another 165 groups are “socialist-adjacent” or pro-socialist, working closely with the openly socialist organizations and nations. Finally, 35 groups are Muslim, Palestinian or Arab, many with sympathies for Hamas, like American Muslims for Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights and the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, all of whom had their marchers on the Chicago streets.

The media, however, is engaging in a phenomenon we can call red washing: downplaying and obscuring the revolutionary and radical nature of socialist and communist organizations by portraying them as merely “liberal” or “progressive.” In coverage of Monday’s protests, the New York Times wrote the groups represent a “range of liberal causes,” Reuters described them as “advocating for a variety of causes from reproductive rights to racial justice,” with not a word about their socialist vision, and PBS remarked on their “progressive message.”

Media outlets and political commentators often use this tactic to sanitize the ideologies of these organizations, making them seem more palatable or mainstream. By masking the true nature of these movements, red washing dilutes their ideological realities and misleads the public about their real goals and motivations.

The young man from Wisconsin, Maas, told scores of journalists interviewed him throughout the day and hopes they don’t smear him as a “progressive.”

“I’m a ‘dirty communist swine!’” he said, laying claim to the caricature half in jest. “Don’t call me a ‘progressive!’”

Even the controversial protest organizer and spokesman, Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian American who has founded anti-Israel groups including American Muslims for Palestine, the Arab American Action Network and the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, told me he doesn’t balk at the “s” word, saying. “There is definitely socialists in the leadership of the coalition, and I think we are unabashedly revolutionary. We are unabashedly anti-imperialist.”

The notion of being “revolutionary” is of course one that many question. A leader in one of the coalition organizers said, “October 7th was heroic,” in a “Firebrands Communists” YouTube presentation, noting, “We support Palestinian liberation by any means necessary,” and the victims of the Hamas attacks were the “victims of Israeli zionism.”

Most of these protestors have no plans to vote for a Democrat, they told me. For example, the Muslim-led Abandon Harris organization, formerly known as Abandon Biden, laid out signs reading “Abandon Harris ‘24” on the grass for activists to pick up. A mob gathered nearby as I started to speak to the folks from the Revolutionary Communist Party USA @TheRevComs, which proudly displayed a banner, reading, “THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM’S GOT TO GO!”

“No Fascist Trump! No Cold-Blooded Kamala! No Genocide Joe!”

 “It’s Cornel West,” said a reporter, referring to the independent presidential candidate and a self-avowed socialist who has been a fiery speaker at student protests this year.

West’s participation reveals the real voting inclination for most of this crowd, if they even vote in 2024: voting for West, the Party of Socialism and Liberation’s ticket of Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia and the Green Ticket’s Jill Stein. On X, @VoteSocialist24 promoted a video of De la Cruz leading a chant, “SHUT IT DOWN,” keeping a beat to the music with a bottle of Costco’s signature Kirkland bottled water. 

In the park, West was like a congenial rock star, with a contingency from the “Abandon Harris” campaign beside him. He stopped to shake hands with just about anyone who caught his eye, including a man pushing a cart of cold Gatorade drinks. “Hello brother!” he declared. To a Baltimore-born woman with a broad smile, he laughed: “Your smile just lights up the whole cosmos. Isn’t that the truth?” She smiled more broadly. “Thank you.” 

In a scrum of fans and media, I asked West about the mainstream media red washing their politics of socialism. He smiled. “It’s not a dirty word at all,” he said, “but it’s just a misunderstood word. I’m not into -isms though. I’m just into truth, justice, love, fighting greed, fear and hatred. That’s all of what it comes down to. But Marxist analysis can help you understand political ruling capital.” 

On W. Lake Street, West slipped into a black Jeep Grand Cherokee sports utility vehicle with the Muslim leaders of the “Abandon Harris” campaign, hugging a local amateur photographer, thrilled by the embrace but lamenting he didn’t get a selfie.

Even though they don’t believe in the Democratic Party, the chants of these protestors echoed in the Democratic National Committee convention hall as many in the hoi pollois of the delegates –  and even President Joe Biden – earnestly elevated and amplified  the stated benign mission of these not-so-benign protestors.

When Biden took the microphone, hands grasping both sides of the lectern, he echoed the words of the protestors. “The civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY, deliver a ceasefire and,” hammering his fist on the lectern said, “END THIS WAR!” 

Biden paused as the crowd broke into cheers. 

He continued: “Those protestors out on the streets. They have a point. A lot of innocent people are being killed,” Biden said, pausing. “On both sides.”

In the media scrum in front of the speaker system leading the march, a very animated Jawahir Kamil, 51, waved a large Palestinian flag, losing her voice as she followed the chant. Photographers zeroed in on her, and she became an image from the protest. She joined the protest from Atlanta. 

To which group did she belong? 

“Party for Socialism and Liberation,” she said, matter of factly, as she returned to her chanting.

In the front row of the protestors, behind the banner, Moe Mawri, 39, from Detroit, released green smoke, his face covered in a party mask he had painted in the colors of the Palestinian flag with a red tear falling from the left eye. Geared in camouflage, he cast an intimidating image but earlier, speaking with me friendly and open, he said he joined the Detroit Anti-War Committee, inclined to socialism, because America’s two parties had failed the working class.  

The vivid images are catnip for the media who do not seem to have the time, energy and wherewithal to dive a little deeper into what’s really under the visual and verbal sleights of hand. 

In the crowd, a sister group, the Minnesota Anti-War Committee, carried signs with a headshot of Minnesota Governor TIm Walz with the message: “Minnesota Knows Your Crimes. We Won’t Vote for GENOCIDE.”

In the march, Okin Flores, 20, a young man from the South Side of Chicago and the son of immigrants from Belize, waved a red flag with the symbol of a fist clenched for the organization he established, Proletariat Representation USA. His father is proud of him, he said, and gave him a patch for his backpack: “DNC Shit Show 2024.” 

“We are a Gen Z Marxist-Leninist vanguard party,” Flores told me. “We are the creators of the alt-left ideology.”

I caught up with the controversial protest organizer and spokesman, Abudayyeh, during the tail end of the march.

He has been called everything from “extremist” to “terrorist,” his home raided by FBI agents in 2010 for alleged ties to terrorism groups. At the time, then-U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago was focusing on illegal support for terrorist organizations, including by “Freedom Road Socialist Organization,” one of the organizers of the #ShutDownDNC march and the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army, or Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo, known as FARC. Fitzgerald, who had filed a historic indictment in Federal District Court in New York City as far back as 1998 against Osama bin Laden for terrorist attacks, didn’t press charges against Abudayyeh as a result of the Chicago investigation. 

Abudayyeh was filmed earlier in the day by The Free Press, calling an Israeli supporter who came to Union Park part of a network of “pig, racist Zionists.” 

Sitting curbside, describing how the march leaders are “unabashedly revolutionary” and “unabashedly anti-imperialist,” he said, “I know the press is maybe not well-developed in their understanding of these analyses and, at the same time, they’ve got bosses who say, ‘You know, maybe don’t write about socialism in our papers. Don’t describe protestors as being socialist. Don’t make it seem as if we have that kind of political perspective and viewpoint in the United States.’ I think that’s probably true.”

He wondered aloud if it was his months of speaking with journalists that caused this red washing. “Maybe it’s because I established a decent relationship with these folks but, in the three or four months I’ve been doing this very intensely, I haven’t been shy about who I am and what my organization represents. I’ve been openly anti-imperialist and openly saying we don’t support either candidate. We don’t support either party. We never have, you know?”

On global politics, especially Israel, he said, the two parties are “lock-step.”

As the march neared, getting louder, he rose, moving slowly beside him, and said that he didn’t accept the question of undue foreign influence for the protests.

Abudayyeh said bluntly: “It’s a fucking lie.” 

Abudayyeh said he recently told a reporter: “Every ridiculous thing that every Zionist and every pig from the U.S. government is going to say, you are going to come back to me and say, ‘Are you funded by the Iranians?’ It’s ridiculous.” 

Behind him, a woman quietly slapped a sticker, “Free Palestine,” on a beam below the “L” line, as marchers shouted: “We don’t want no Jewish state. We want all of ‘48,” referring to the land before the state of Israel was created in 1948.

As the march ended, an activist for “Behind Enemy Lines” handed out fliers for the next planned “direct action” for the “revolutionaries”: a protest tonight at 7 p.m. at the Israeli Consulate at 500 W. Madison.

“MAKE IT GREAT LIKE ‘68! SHUT DOWN THE DNC FOR GAZA,” the flier read, in a reference to the violent 1968 riots during the DNC convention that summer.

The sponsors on the flier with their logos and QR code are “Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidary Network,” “Palestine Action US” and “Behind Enemy Lines,” which ABC-7 recently called a “militant group.” They are promoting the action on their Telegram instant messaging channels, @Samidoun and @Pal_ActionUS and their social media platforms.

“THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!” the back of the flier read. It continued: “Is it enough to yell at empty buildings and listen to police peace in hi-vis vests? Or are we going to take our place alongside the people of the world and send a message to the rulers of this country in the only language that they understand?”

Back at Union Park, small groups of “black box” activists from the Antifa movement wandered across the lawn, with a band of police in much more intense riot gear tracking them nearby. One of them, a young woman, came over to speak to Maas, the young man from Wisconsin who had left his home about 4 a.m. for the day’s march. Instead of heading home, she was going to stick around for the rest of the convention to agitate.

Standing with the steeple of the First Baptist Congregational Church behind him, still holding his red flag, Maas headed back to Wisconsin, the blaring sirens of Chicago police cars zipped north on  Ashland Avenue, and Union Park became a graveyard of sorts to the day’s protests, signs piled high, like “Globalize the Intifada,” by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, ready to be pulled out for the next protest. 

It’s tonight at the Israeli Consulate about a mile eastward toward Lake Michigan on W. Madison Street, with the rallying cry: “MAKE IT GREAT. LIKE ‘68!” 

Asra Q. Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and the author of a book, “Woke Army: The Red-Green Alliance That Is Undermining America’s Freedom.” She is a founder of the Pearl Project, a nonprofit journalism initiative that is building the Malign Foreign Influence Index, examining the groups fomenting anti-Semitism. She has an MA in international communications, with a speciality in the study of propaganda. She can be reached at asra@asranomani.com and @AsraNomani.