Code Pink Has Become Mouthpiece For Chinese Regime Propaganda and Funding, NY Times Reveals

Code Pink Has Become Mouthpiece For Chinese Regime Propaganda and Funding, NY Times Reveals

We followed Code Pink’s ugly antics for years, but lost track of them, so we didn’t notice as the group became an outlet for Chinese government propaganda. A NY Times report reveals that after a well-connected Chinese businessman married a Code Pink co-founder, money poured in and propaganda poured out, including defense of Chinas actions against the Uyghurs.

It’s been a while since we’ve written about Code Pink.

Back in the day, we covered a lot of their vile antics against Israel and in support of Palestinian terrorists – in the name of “peace” of course.

In 2015, after a year of litigation with the Ithaca school district, I obtained a video showing Code Pink activist Ariel Gold (who became the National Director and about a year ago left the group) sneaking Bassem Tamimi, a Palestinian terror supporter and advocate of using children to provoke Israeli soldiers, into a third grade class to turn the children against Israel. See VIDEO: Activists manipulate third-graders into hating Israel and Revealed: Student “suffering from nightmares” after 3rd grade anti-Israel event.

Gold and another Code Pink activist even disrupted Jewish prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem – in the name of “peace” of course.

We also covered how Code Pink sucked up to and provided cover for the brutal Iranian Mullah regime – in the name of “peace” of course. See Code Pink sells out women and exploits Jews on propaganda tour of Iran.

There was so much more we covered about Code Pink, I can’t summarize it all here. But they were clownish, so people just shrugged. And we lost track of them.

So much so that I didn’t notice that Code Pink had turned into a mouthpiece for the Chinese regime, disrupting a congressional hearing about competition with China back in late February 2023. I may have seen something about it, but my attitude would have been, “there they go again.”

But when it comes to China, it was more than the usual antics. Code Pink became China apologists after one of the co-founders married a Chinese businessman with close government ties. A reader, knowing of our prior coverage of Code Pink, thankfully sent me the link to this August 5, 2023, article in the NY Times, A Global Web of Chinese Propaganda Leads to a U.S. Tech Mogul.

The Times article is about widespread Chinese government funding of leftist western activists. When the history of the climate and other ‘social justice’ activism meant to tear down and weaken western societies is truthfully written, I have little doubt that the Chinese government (and the Soviets, now Russians) are behind much of it. The Times piece provides important context:

In fact, a New York Times investigation found, it is part of a lavishly funded influence campaign that defends China and pushes its propaganda. At the center is a charismatic American millionaire, Neville Roy Singham, who is known as a socialist benefactor of far-left causes.

What is less known, and is hidden amid a tangle of nonprofit groups and shell companies, is that Mr. Singham works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide.

From a think tank in Massachusetts to an event space in Manhattan, from a political party in South Africa to news organizations in India and Brazil, The Times tracked hundreds of millions of dollars to groups linked to Mr. Singham that mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points.

There is nothing organic about the vast activist community. The Times article focused in on Code Pink:

Some, like No Cold War, popped up in recent years. Others, like the American antiwar group Code Pink, have morphed over time. Code Pink once criticized China’s rights record but now defends its internment of the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs, which human rights experts have labeled a crime against humanity.

These groups are funded through American nonprofits flush with at least $275 million in donations.

But Mr. Singham, 69, himself sits in Shanghai, where one outlet in his network is co-producing a YouTube show financed in part by the city’s propaganda department. Two others are working with a Chinese university to “spread China’s voice to the world.” And last month, Mr. Singham joined a Communist Party workshop about promoting the party internationally.

Mr. Singham says he does not work at the direction of the Chinese government. But the line between him and the propaganda apparatus is so blurry that he shares office space — and his groups share staff members — with a company whose goal is to educate foreigners about “the miracles that China has created on the world stage.”

How did the Chinese government manage to turn Code Pink around? It married into the group:

In 2017, Mr. Singham married Jodie Evans, a former Democratic political adviser and the co-founder of Code Pink. The wedding, in Jamaica, was a “Who’s Who” of progressivism. Photos from the event show Amy Goodman, host of “Democracy Now!”; Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream; and V, the playwright formerly known as Eve Ensler, who wrote “The Vagina Monologues.”

It was also a working event. The invitation described a panel discussion called “The Future of the Left.”

How romantic. Now Code Pink is a major beneficiary:

While other moguls slapped their names on foundations, Mr. Singham sent his money through a system that concealed his giving.

At its center were four new nonprofits with dust-dry names like “United Community Fund” and “Justice and Education Fund.” They have almost no real-world footprints, listing their addresses only as UPS store mailboxes in Illinois, Wisconsin and New York.

Because American nonprofit groups do not need to disclose individual donors, these four nonprofits worked like a financial geyser, throwing out a shower of money from an invisible source.

In their public filings, none list Mr. Singham as a board member or donor. “I do not control them,” he said in his statement, “although I have been known to share my opinions.”

In reality, Mr. Singham has close ties to all four.

The largest is run by Ms. Evans. The group’s founding bylaws say that Mr. Singham can fire her and the rest of the board. They also require that the group dissolve after Mr. Singham’s death….

Ms. Evans has organized around progressive causes like climate change, gender and racism. Until a few years ago, she readily criticized China’s authoritarian government.

“We demand China stop brutal repression of their women’s human rights defenders,” she wrote on Twitter in 2015. She later posted on Instagram a photo with the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei.

Since 2017, about a quarter of Code Pink’s donations — more than $1.4 million — have come from two groups linked to Mr. Singham, nonprofit records show. The first was one of the UPS store nonprofits. The second was a charity that Goldman Sachs offers as a conduit for clients’ giving, and that Mr. Singham has used in the past.

Ms. Evans now stridently supports China. She casts it as a defender of the oppressed and a model for economic growth without slavery or war. “If the U.S. crushes China,” she said in 2021, it “would cut off hope for the human race and life on Earth.”

She describes the Uyghurs as terrorists and defends their mass detention. “We have to do something,” she said in 2021. In a recent YouTube video chat, she was asked if she had anything negative to say about China.

“I can’t, for the life of me, think of anything,” Ms. Evans responded. She ultimately had one complaint: She had trouble using China’s phone-based payment apps.

So Code Pink sold out to the Chinese government interests. No surprise. While preaching peace Code Pink has embraced anti-western warmongers in all forms, from Palestinian terrorists to the Mullah regime and now the Chinese Communist Party.

Marco Rubio is calling for an investigation. Code Pink’s fellow travelers are upset with the exposure:

Code Pink has gained notoriety in Washington for its many interruptions of congressional hearings and think-tank events — these days, frequently those that have to do with China. One of its activists interrupted the first hearing, in March, of the new House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Speaking to the CCP’s Global Times outlet, Evans explained that Code Pink disrupted the committee’s hearing because “we knew they’d spread more hatred and fear about China.” …

In a statement responding to the story over the weekend, several of those groups, including a few in Singham’s network and the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition, rallied to the pro-Beijing activist network’s assistance, calling the Times’ reporting “the new McCarthyism.”

“Today, prominent organizations and individuals, including CODEPINK, The People’s Forum, and Tricontinental Institute have been targeted, with smears and accusations propagated by outlets like The New York Times,” the statement read, naming two other outfits connected to Singham’s dark-money network. The statement got a favorable write-up by China’s Xinhua news agency this week. A Code Pink spokesperson referred NR to that statement, as well as one that Evans delivered to the New York Times denying that she acts at the direction of Singham or any political party or government.

A lot of Code Pink’s activism now is devoted to defending the Chinese government:

Much like the soliarity trip to Iran, Code Pink has a trip to China planned for this fall:

It’s good that Code Pink has been revealed for the “peace” fraud it always has been. They are not for peace, and they never have been. Perhaps most important, it’s becoming even more clear how much of the western leftist activism is funded by and influenced by China to undermine our society.

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