At first blush, it may appear that war, riots, protests, and big events in the Middle East, Venezuela, China, and the United States are disconnected incidents inspired by different causes. But look deeper, and you will find disturbing links. Just ask Manolo De Los Santos, or better yet, his paymaster, Shanghai resident Roy Neville Singham.

Santos is the founder and executive director of The People’s Forum, a Marxist outfit headquartered in Midtown Manhattan that organizes protests and, between them, hosts talks and workshops for the far-left. TPF was one of the main organizers of the large demonstrations and riots that disrupted Washington, D.C., during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s congressional address last week.

Vandals lowered the American flags flying in front of the Capitol’s iconic Union Station, torched them in front of the cameras, and then replaced them with Palestinian flags. D.C. police did nothing, though the U.S. Park Police announced this week that it is asking the public to help identify the rioters who vandalized statues and monuments.

Santos’s outfit began organizing protests backing the terrorist group Hamas the day after the terrorist organization’s attack on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, making it clear that what it supported was the massacre. It was not, in other words, protesting the response in Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces, which had, after all, not yet begun.

>>> Revolutionary Ecosystem Report

TPF was also deeply involved in the riots that marred life at different American campuses this spring. TPF’s headquarters on West 37th Street was the site of a large rally on April 30, the night that protesters took over Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall. Santos himself addressed the Columbia protesters with a long, revolutionary-style speech in which he urged them to return to campus.

Santos is similarly involved in the chaos down in Venezuela. 

Following a ham-fisted attempt by the country’s dictator, Nicolas Maduro, to steal an election he clearly lost Sunday, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have been bravely taking to the streets of many cities to demand that Maduro step down and allow the winner, Edmundo Gonzalez, to take office. At least 16 Venezuelans have been killed as Maduro’s police and non-uniformed goons fire on the country’s people.

And guess who has rushed down to Caracas to join the fracas—this time on the government side. Yes, Santos. He can be seen in a post on X by Miami radio host Lourdes Ubieta, joining pro-Maduro goons in the streets of Caracas on Tuesday. This is hardly surprising since, after all, Venezuela keeps Cuba’s sclerotic communist dictatorship going, and Santos has been training with Cuban communists for years.

Santos had already taken to social media Monday, the day after the fraudulent elections, to gin up support for Maduro, spreading the message on both X and Instagram.

“URGENT: Coup Attempt underway in Venezuela by Far-Right opposition!”, he posted on X. “Far-right is mobilizing violent protests in an attempt to force violent overthrow of President Maduro, winner of yesterday’s elections. Similar to 2017 riots, they have U.S. fingerprints all over them.”

One only wishes that it were true, but the Biden-Harris administration has been woefully inadequate to the challenge presented by Maduro. The administration in 2023 eased sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump on Venezuela’s oil and gas sector in exchange for Maduro’s empty promises that he would hold free and fair elections. The idea was to increase gas supply in the U.S., which the administration refuses to allow domestic producers to do because of its environmental agenda.

The Biden-Harris administration reimposed those sanctions in April after it became clear that Maduro had no intention to uphold his end of the bargain. But it is now resisting Republican calls for “targeted sanctions on individuals responsible for subverting Venezuela’s once democratic” system.

>>> Bowman’s Defeat Is a Rebuke of the Left’s Radicalism

The administration is clearly reluctant to antagonize groups such as Santos’s and others, which have been amplifying the same pro-Maduro message on social media this week and also organized the ANSWER Coalition and the Palestinian Youth Movement riots in D.C., either on the Palestinian problem or on Venezuela.

The TPF and the ANSWER Coalition have something else in common: They are financed with money donated by Singham, an American millionaire with good connections to the Chinese Communist Party. The former consultant for China tech giant Huawei lives in Shanghai, is married to CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans, and uses the same offices as Maku Cultural Communications, which portrays China in a kind light around the world.

What is going on here? What is the link between all these problems?

The highly regarded Network Contagion Research Institute gave a pretty good answer in a report it issued in March.

“The People’s Forum, IPA [the International People’s Assembly], and ANSWER Coalition serve as the conduit through which CCP-affiliated entities have effectively co-opted pro-Palestinian activism in the U.S., advancing a broader anti-American, anti-democratic, and anti-capitalist agenda,” the report said.

That’s the bonding agent. These entities are not pro-Palestinian or pro-Maduro, per se. They are anti-capitalist and anti-democratic and are exploiting the power vacuum created by the inaction of the Biden-Harris team.

It’s Santos’s world, apparently. We’re just living in it.