5 ms·

It’s true that large leftist groups fund protests. 100% true. Here’s a recent ABC News report on the No Kings protests https://abc6onyourside.com/news/nation-wo

It’s true that large leftist groups fund protests. 100% true. Here’s a recent ABC News report on the No Kings protests https://abc6onyourside.com/news/nation-world/no-kings-protests-being-funded-by-foundations-run-by-george-soros-report-chuck-schumer-aclu https://abc6onyourside.com/news/nation-world/no-kings-protes... Also they completely stopped once the new anti-ICE thing became popular. Where are all the new organic No Kings protests? Everyone wrote about it in all the major publications and now we forgot(?) and the Tesla dealership protests? No normal person engages in this stuff, it’s hyper activists part of organized groups with real financing

estebank 9mo ago
> No normal person engages in this stuff, it’s hyper activists part of organized groups with real financing I guess I'm not a normal person then. I didn't realize that I was a hyper activist because I drew on some cardboard and that my group of friends was being financed. I better go demand for my Soros-check from them.
- monero-xmr 9mo ago
  Are you planning on going to a Tesla dealership again to protest? This was top of my Reddit algorithm for several months, no one even mentions it anymore
  - coryrc 9mo ago
    Because they won? Have you seen Tesla's sales numbers and market share?
    - noxer 9mo ago
      They didn't care about Tesla they wanted to "hurt" Musk Musks net worth is about $270 billion more today compared to when the protests began. Does this look like winning?
      - goatlover 9mo ago
        Conveniently you left out Musk's DOGE effort to take a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy that people were protesting. And those protest did have the effect of making Elon unpopular enough that the administration didn't want to keep him around.
        noxer 9mo ago
        I didn't leave it out, it doesn't matter to my point. I refute the part about "winning" because clearly the protest did nothing to Musk it only had severe negative effects on thousands of other people. He left his position as planned from the beginning, the protest had zero effect on what he did trough DOGE.
        goatlover 9mo ago
        That's not true. DOGE did not achieve it's goals of massive cuts. Unless the real goal was stealing information. The negative effects were on all the people fired, thus why Virginia swung massively toward the Democrats in the 2025 elections.
        noxer 9mo ago
        You are moving the goal post. I never said DOGE did achieve anything. You said the protest lead to him no longer be part of the administration which is factually incorrect. His position was limited from the start and he left as planned.
        47282847 9mo ago
        It is accurate to state that we don’t know if the protests had any influence on how things went down with DOGE. It is equally accurate to state that we don’t know if they didn’t have any influence on it. It is not accurate to state that he left as planned since the announcements of the USG change by the minute and don’t mean a thing.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
  - runako 9mo ago
    Over that timeframe, did anything change about the relationship of the CEO of Tesla and the US government?
    - monero-xmr 9mo ago
      Doesn’t Musk own the “Nazi social media” website now? Shocking that people literally destroyed Tesla dealerships out of anger and now no one even bothers to show up anymore
      - runako 9mo ago
        Is it possible that you did not fully understand the reasons people were protesting at Tesla dealerships? Perhaps the protests were less about Twitter than you may be assuming, and more about something else that happened much later than the Twitter acquisition?
        noxer 9mo ago
        They protested un-elected president Musk who will stay in power forever. Then he left his position exactly like communicated from the very start and people now think that they won, even tho they only annoyed tesla dealership employees and tesla owners.
        lostlogin 9mo ago
        You don’t think it got under Musks skin? That was the point.
        noxer 9mo ago
        Many things do, mostly people on Twitter seem to get under his skin quite a lot lol. If the goal was to "trigger" him I don't think the protests succeed in any meaningful way. Innocent Tesla owner where the primary victims followed by share holder, (damaged) property owners and people affected by insurances premiums due to the vandalism. And then of course there are still a handful of people in jail for crimes committed in relation to the Tesla protest. Arguably not victims but still a negative effects that clear outweigh any perceived positive effect it all had on Musk.
  - philk10 9mo ago
    yes, there's a group still goes once a week on Monday and I go when I can. There's also one on Wednesday at the main Social Security office Totally normal people there, not being paid a dime
coryrc 9mo ago
> Where are all the new organic No Kings protests? I see them regularly just driving around.
pousada 9mo ago
Many years of taking care in protests against rightwing politics and I haven’t received a single penny; meanwhile everyone else is getting paid, I really fucked up I guess…
- noxer 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - pousada 9mo ago
    Who are “they”? Of course people organise, that is the whole point of politics. Making it out that George Soros or Bilderberg or some shadow cabal is running the show was a meme already 30 years ago when I went to my first public protest (Not from the us btw)
    - noxer 9mo ago
      Everyone who has money to spend to influencing politics this way. I personally don't think its some kind of shadow cabal. Its many people/groups/organizations with aligned interests doing these things. Organization isn't the issue that is of course perfectly normal. But stuff like handing out printed signs, protestors posing for photos in a way that makes it look like the crowd is much larger than it actually is. These kind of things aren't necessary if there is a real significant % of people unhappy enough to go protests. There are also faces known that travel from protest to protest. It's of course their right to do so but it seem strange nonetheless. Maybe they are just filthy rich and have no hobbies or maybe they do in fact get paid and are part of an organization that lets them jet around for free to be a protest groupie.
goatlover 9mo ago
I've never been paid to attend a protest nor has anyone I've talked to at those protests. Most people make their own signs. No Kings was a bunch of regular citizens expressing their concern for the state of US Democracy. Why is that so hard to understand?
xmprt 9mo ago
> No normal person engages in this stuff On top of being false, that's kind of a non-statement. You probably don't see average people around you protesting because if the average person was engaging in this then that'd imply close to half the country protesting. But they're definitely out there even if a small minority. The average person doesn't have the time to protest (because how do you protest when you need to go to a job to put food on the table and keep health insurance). Or they're doing fine with the current state of affairs even if they don't like what's happening. Protesting is naturally always going to be a fringe thing and you better hope for everyone's sake that it stays that way or else you end up with a coup or revolution like in less developed nations.
- monero-xmr 9mo ago
  Well at least be honest that these things are organized professionally and funded with tens of millions of dollars. When major news sources easily refute statements like “the right believes it’s all funded and fake” and then literally they are funded it’s not a small step to believing it’s fake
  - parpfish 9mo ago
    who cares if there are professional organizers? the accusations of fake/paid protests are about the crowds and participants, not the people that paid to print the posters and get some permits. both sides have paid activists because it's a full time job. but those paid activists aren't the crowd.
  - gmd63 9mo ago
    As someone who really hates what this unlawful administration is doing, I went to my local progressive club meeting for the first time expecting at least a fraction of what MAGA folks fantasize about - elite schemers developing an actual strategy to fight back. Instead what I found were a bunch of kind mostly elderly people sharing news that I had read online a week before, and some folks gathering signatures for positions running for office. You are doing a huge disservice to yourself by staying indoors and making assumptions about stuff that you aren't investigating in person.
cowsandmilk 9mo ago
I wasn’t aware that “ managing data and communications with participants” is considered to be funding the protests.
jrmg 9mo ago
I think you are making assumptions that are not correct. And as a ‘normal person’ surrounded by ‘normal people’ at the last No Kings protest, I very much object to your framing. There’s a big difference between funding organizing groups like Indivisible (which, yes, foundations linked to Soros do - although I suspect not at the magnitude you’re imagining), and directly paying protestors (which doesn’t happen to any notable degree) Want to understand this? Go to a local Indivisible or Democratic Party meetup and you will see the normal people with your own eyes. Go to a big protest like ‘No Kings’, or a rally during campaign season and you’ll be surrounded by ‘normal people’. I’d personally be fine with restrictions on where funding for political organizations comes from (although I’m not sure how you make that compatible with the 1st amendment) - but what you’re saying is ridiculous, and it’s a worrying symptom of our current political climate that people can be so out of touch as to believe it.
- SturgeonsLaw 9mo ago
  >I’d personally be fine with restrictions on where funding for political organizations comes from (although I’m not sure how you make that compatible with the 1st amendment) Despite what the proponents of Citizen's United might have us believe, money != speech, and adding restrictions to political donations is perfectly compatible with the first amendment. Would-be donors are allowed to advocate for political positions just the same as anybody else. Nobody is stopping them. That would still be the case with donation limits. They can still get on TV and argue their case. There is already a precedent for limiting donations. Try donating money to ISIS or Hezbollah and see if the government considers that an exercise of your first amendment rights.
dahinds 9mo ago
What does it mean to "fund protests"? I'm also a "normal" person who has been to a couple No Kings protests, and no one paid me. Someone spent some money on fliers, I suppose. The major No Kings events were in June and October last year. January is not a great time for outdoors protests in much of the country. Does it somehow make the protests inauthentic if focus has now shifted towards ICE?
throw0101a 9mo ago
> No normal person […] A form of: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman ?
ajjahs 9mo ago
[dead]
datsci_est_2015 9mo ago
Incredible bait job lol. Lots of engagement.
adrianmonk 9mo ago
No really, I'm a normal person, and I went to the most recent No Kings protest. I've never protested anything before in my life, but now I've gone to two protests against Trump because he's just that bad and dangerous and my country is important to me. I wasn't paid anything. I rode the bus downtown, thinking it'd be easier than driving / parking, which wasn't quite the brilliant strategy I thought it'd be. I marched down the street with literally tens of thousands of people. There were definitely some people there who seemed to be the activist type (who find something to protest every weekend), but it was mostly normal people. I saw at least three people I know. I saw regular-looking men in cargo shorts and women in straw hats. It was during the football game, and I saw many people wearing team colors and one sign that said, "It's gotten so bad I'm missing football to protest." One guy was wearing a "Jesus is King" t-shirt. A woman was carrying a "Hicks Against Facism" sign. Another guy was carrying his vinyl copy of Rush's "A Farewell to Kings" as a protest sign. So, not paid protesters carrying boilerplate signs supplied to them by some organization. Just regular people who are not OK with what's going on.

estebank 9mo ago

> No normal person engages in this stuff, it’s hyper activists part of organized groups with real financing I guess I'm not a normal person then. I didn't realize that I was a hyper activist because I drew on some cardboard and that my group of friends was being financed. I better go demand for my Soros-check from them.

monero-xmr 9mo ago
Are you planning on going to a Tesla dealership again to protest? This was top of my Reddit algorithm for several months, no one even mentions it anymore
- coryrc 9mo ago
  Because they won? Have you seen Tesla's sales numbers and market share?
  - noxer 9mo ago
    They didn't care about Tesla they wanted to "hurt" Musk Musks net worth is about $270 billion more today compared to when the protests began. Does this look like winning?
    - goatlover 9mo ago
      Conveniently you left out Musk's DOGE effort to take a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy that people were protesting. And those protest did have the effect of making Elon unpopular enough that the administration didn't want to keep him around.
      - noxer 9mo ago
        I didn't leave it out, it doesn't matter to my point. I refute the part about "winning" because clearly the protest did nothing to Musk it only had severe negative effects on thousands of other people. He left his position as planned from the beginning, the protest had zero effect on what he did trough DOGE.
        goatlover 9mo ago
        That's not true. DOGE did not achieve it's goals of massive cuts. Unless the real goal was stealing information. The negative effects were on all the people fired, thus why Virginia swung massively toward the Democrats in the 2025 elections.
        noxer 9mo ago
        You are moving the goal post. I never said DOGE did achieve anything. You said the protest lead to him no longer be part of the administration which is factually incorrect. His position was limited from the start and he left as planned.
        47282847 9mo ago
        It is accurate to state that we don’t know if the protests had any influence on how things went down with DOGE. It is equally accurate to state that we don’t know if they didn’t have any influence on it. It is not accurate to state that he left as planned since the announcements of the USG change by the minute and don’t mean a thing.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
- runako 9mo ago
  Over that timeframe, did anything change about the relationship of the CEO of Tesla and the US government?
  - monero-xmr 9mo ago
    Doesn’t Musk own the “Nazi social media” website now? Shocking that people literally destroyed Tesla dealerships out of anger and now no one even bothers to show up anymore
    - runako 9mo ago
      Is it possible that you did not fully understand the reasons people were protesting at Tesla dealerships? Perhaps the protests were less about Twitter than you may be assuming, and more about something else that happened much later than the Twitter acquisition?
      - noxer 9mo ago
        They protested un-elected president Musk who will stay in power forever. Then he left his position exactly like communicated from the very start and people now think that they won, even tho they only annoyed tesla dealership employees and tesla owners.
        lostlogin 9mo ago
        You don’t think it got under Musks skin? That was the point.
        noxer 9mo ago
        Many things do, mostly people on Twitter seem to get under his skin quite a lot lol. If the goal was to "trigger" him I don't think the protests succeed in any meaningful way. Innocent Tesla owner where the primary victims followed by share holder, (damaged) property owners and people affected by insurances premiums due to the vandalism. And then of course there are still a handful of people in jail for crimes committed in relation to the Tesla protest. Arguably not victims but still a negative effects that clear outweigh any perceived positive effect it all had on Musk.
- philk10 9mo ago
  yes, there's a group still goes once a week on Monday and I go when I can. There's also one on Wednesday at the main Social Security office Totally normal people there, not being paid a dime

coryrc 9mo ago

> Where are all the new organic No Kings protests? I see them regularly just driving around.

pousada 9mo ago

Many years of taking care in protests against rightwing politics and I haven’t received a single penny; meanwhile everyone else is getting paid, I really fucked up I guess…

noxer 9mo ago
[flagged]
- pousada 9mo ago
  Who are “they”? Of course people organise, that is the whole point of politics. Making it out that George Soros or Bilderberg or some shadow cabal is running the show was a meme already 30 years ago when I went to my first public protest (Not from the us btw)
  - noxer 9mo ago
    Everyone who has money to spend to influencing politics this way. I personally don't think its some kind of shadow cabal. Its many people/groups/organizations with aligned interests doing these things. Organization isn't the issue that is of course perfectly normal. But stuff like handing out printed signs, protestors posing for photos in a way that makes it look like the crowd is much larger than it actually is. These kind of things aren't necessary if there is a real significant % of people unhappy enough to go protests. There are also faces known that travel from protest to protest. It's of course their right to do so but it seem strange nonetheless. Maybe they are just filthy rich and have no hobbies or maybe they do in fact get paid and are part of an organization that lets them jet around for free to be a protest groupie.

goatlover 9mo ago

I've never been paid to attend a protest nor has anyone I've talked to at those protests. Most people make their own signs. No Kings was a bunch of regular citizens expressing their concern for the state of US Democracy. Why is that so hard to understand?

xmprt 9mo ago

> No normal person engages in this stuff On top of being false, that's kind of a non-statement. You probably don't see average people around you protesting because if the average person was engaging in this then that'd imply close to half the country protesting. But they're definitely out there even if a small minority. The average person doesn't have the time to protest (because how do you protest when you need to go to a job to put food on the table and keep health insurance). Or they're doing fine with the current state of affairs even if they don't like what's happening. Protesting is naturally always going to be a fringe thing and you better hope for everyone's sake that it stays that way or else you end up with a coup or revolution like in less developed nations.

monero-xmr 9mo ago
Well at least be honest that these things are organized professionally and funded with tens of millions of dollars. When major news sources easily refute statements like “the right believes it’s all funded and fake” and then literally they are funded it’s not a small step to believing it’s fake
- parpfish 9mo ago
  who cares if there are professional organizers? the accusations of fake/paid protests are about the crowds and participants, not the people that paid to print the posters and get some permits. both sides have paid activists because it's a full time job. but those paid activists aren't the crowd.
- gmd63 9mo ago
  As someone who really hates what this unlawful administration is doing, I went to my local progressive club meeting for the first time expecting at least a fraction of what MAGA folks fantasize about - elite schemers developing an actual strategy to fight back. Instead what I found were a bunch of kind mostly elderly people sharing news that I had read online a week before, and some folks gathering signatures for positions running for office. You are doing a huge disservice to yourself by staying indoors and making assumptions about stuff that you aren't investigating in person.

cowsandmilk 9mo ago

I wasn’t aware that “ managing data and communications with participants” is considered to be funding the protests.

jrmg 9mo ago

I think you are making assumptions that are not correct. And as a ‘normal person’ surrounded by ‘normal people’ at the last No Kings protest, I very much object to your framing. There’s a big difference between funding organizing groups like Indivisible (which, yes, foundations linked to Soros do - although I suspect not at the magnitude you’re imagining), and directly paying protestors (which doesn’t happen to any notable degree) Want to understand this? Go to a local Indivisible or Democratic Party meetup and you will see the normal people with your own eyes. Go to a big protest like ‘No Kings’, or a rally during campaign season and you’ll be surrounded by ‘normal people’. I’d personally be fine with restrictions on where funding for political organizations comes from (although I’m not sure how you make that compatible with the 1st amendment) - but what you’re saying is ridiculous, and it’s a worrying symptom of our current political climate that people can be so out of touch as to believe it.

SturgeonsLaw 9mo ago
>I’d personally be fine with restrictions on where funding for political organizations comes from (although I’m not sure how you make that compatible with the 1st amendment) Despite what the proponents of Citizen's United might have us believe, money != speech, and adding restrictions to political donations is perfectly compatible with the first amendment. Would-be donors are allowed to advocate for political positions just the same as anybody else. Nobody is stopping them. That would still be the case with donation limits. They can still get on TV and argue their case. There is already a precedent for limiting donations. Try donating money to ISIS or Hezbollah and see if the government considers that an exercise of your first amendment rights.

dahinds 9mo ago

What does it mean to "fund protests"? I'm also a "normal" person who has been to a couple No Kings protests, and no one paid me. Someone spent some money on fliers, I suppose. The major No Kings events were in June and October last year. January is not a great time for outdoors protests in much of the country. Does it somehow make the protests inauthentic if focus has now shifted towards ICE?

throw0101a 9mo ago

> No normal person […] A form of: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman ?

ajjahs 9mo ago

[dead]

datsci_est_2015 9mo ago

Incredible bait job lol. Lots of engagement.

adrianmonk 9mo ago

No really, I'm a normal person, and I went to the most recent No Kings protest. I've never protested anything before in my life, but now I've gone to two protests against Trump because he's just that bad and dangerous and my country is important to me. I wasn't paid anything. I rode the bus downtown, thinking it'd be easier than driving / parking, which wasn't quite the brilliant strategy I thought it'd be. I marched down the street with literally tens of thousands of people. There were definitely some people there who seemed to be the activist type (who find something to protest every weekend), but it was mostly normal people. I saw at least three people I know. I saw regular-looking men in cargo shorts and women in straw hats. It was during the football game, and I saw many people wearing team colors and one sign that said, "It's gotten so bad I'm missing football to protest." One guy was wearing a "Jesus is King" t-shirt. A woman was carrying a "Hicks Against Facism" sign. Another guy was carrying his vinyl copy of Rush's "A Farewell to Kings" as a protest sign. So, not paid protesters carrying boilerplate signs supplied to them by some organization. Just regular people who are not OK with what's going on.