[Tech mogul Neville Singham’s vast dark money network has fueled
BreakThrough News and a raft of other online outlets pushing Moscow
and Beijing’s favorite narratives. ]
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“PEOPLE’S MEDIA” NETWORK, BUT PRO-RUSSIA AND PRO-CHINA  
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William Bredderman
May 29, 2023
The Daily Beast
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_ Tech mogul Neville Singham’s vast dark money network has fueled
BreakThrough News and a raft of other online outlets pushing Moscow
and Beijing’s favorite narratives. _

Newspapers B&W, by NS Newsflash (CC BY 2.0 license)

 

A slick online media machine has recruited a slew of characters from
Russian state-affiliated outlets—and joined a sprawling
multinational network of pro-Moscow, pro-Beijing content creators
backed by a U.S. businessman reportedly probed in India
[[link removed]] for
ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Since it started posting to Instagram and Youtube in early 2020,
nearly all BreakThrough News’ camera-facing personalities have been
veterans of Kremlin-backed outfits: former Radio Sputnik host Eugene
Puryear
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pundit Rania Khalek
[[link removed]] of
video generator ‘In the Now;’ Kei Pritsker
[[link removed]], Abby Martin
[[link removed]],
and Brian Becker
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defunct propaganda organ RT America
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BreakThrough’s earliest productions lambasted America’s
presidential system and persistent racial inequality, and attacked the
American and Brazilian responses to the COVID-19 outbreak while
praising policies in China.

But beginning in January 2022, amid the build-up to Russia’s
unprovoked assault on Ukraine, the channel began sharing videos with
titles like “Risking World War III with Russia: Why?” and
“​​If NATO Goes to War, U.S. & European Soldiers Will Be Called
On to Kill & Die.” More recent clips have carried such headlines as
“Leaked Pentagon Docs Show US Elites Want Never-Ending Ukraine
War” and “G7 Sends F-16 Jets to Ukraine: Flirting with Disaster,
Direct War on Russia.”

These themes are familiar to observers of a particular fringe
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Western political spectrum, where the U.S.’s domestic and
international abuses have kindled sympathy for hostile
autocracies—and have even tempted a few to accept paychecks and
platforms from their state media.

“It’s people who came of political age during the Bush years, and
for God knows how many reasons, were disgusted with American foreign
policy, and found bedfellows among authoritarian regimes that were
also critical of the United States,” says Casey Michel, who heads
the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation.
“Whether they believe all these things fully, or they are just
mercenaries, I can’t say.”

Neither BreakThrough News nor its hosts responded to calls or emails
from The Daily Beast.

But however typical BreakThrough’s characters and proclivities might
be, the lavishly funded network behind it awed Michel and the other
experts The Daily Beast consulted. Unlike the stations from which its
anchors hail, BreakThrough is not officially affiliated with any
foreign power—rather, it’s part of the “International People’s
Media Network”: a coalition of eight outlets targeting not just the
U.S. but Latin America, India, the Middle East, and parts of Africa.
BreakThrough and its seven associate channels claim to be “a network
of independent media projects from across the globe that collaborate,
working collectively to uplift people’s voices and stories.”

But even the International People’s Media Network’s webpage makes
it clear its members all work in conjunction with the Tricontinental
Institute for Social Research, a Massachusetts-based think tank whose
founder, controversial academic Dr. Vijay Prashad, is both
a vociferous defender
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China’s repressive policies
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its Uighur minority and a recurring guest on BreakThrough and its
international siblings. All Network members share the same
preoccupations, and even some of the same personnel—all unanimously
depicting the U.S. as oppressive and imperialistic, China as admirable
and benevolent, and Russia as blameless for its invasion of Ukraine.

And all the International People’s Media Network’s affiliates,
including Tricontinental, appear to drink from the same torrent of
dark money pouring out of the bank accounts and nonprofits of tech
mogul Neville “Roy” Singham. Efforts to reach Singham for this
piece, including through his partner Jodie Evans of the protest
group Code Pink
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fruitless.

A 2022 report
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the New Lines Institute for Policy and Strategy outlined how Singham
sold his multibillion-dollar
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company Thoughtworks five years prior and had since pumped money into
a labyrinth of nonprofit organizations—Tricontinental among them.
Prashad, for his part, has openly acknowledged
[[link removed]] Singham
as the source of his group’s endowment, which has climbed to more
than $14 million, mostly funneled through Goldman Sachs’ anonymized
philanthropy fund. The financial institution declined to comment on
its relationship with Singham, but insisted it abides by all relevant
regulations.

On Twitter, Prashad marveled at his fortune of finding a benefactor
with such stupendous wealth and such hardened leftist convictions.

“​​A Marxist with a massive software company! He sold that
company a few years ago and decided to give away all the money toward
political education for a new generation of radicals,” wrote
Prashad, the boarding school-reared nephew of Indian Communist Party
politician Brinda Karat
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The scholar and his organization did not respond to repeated outreach
by The Daily Beast. The very name Tricontinental hints at ambitions of
global reach, argued Cuban-American historian Andres Pertierra. In
1966, Havana hosted delegations from Africa, Asia, and Latin America
for the Tricontinental Conference, an effort to unite anti-colonial
and anti-U.S. movements from across the planet. The event became the
seed of a communications project that lasted more than half a century.

“The Tricontinental Project was a multimedia empir​​e funded by
the Cuban state that varied from its flagship publication
Tricontinental Magazine to radio programs and the arts,” recalled
Pertierra, who hosts ‘Orígenes,’ a podcast on the island’s
history. “The original Tricontinental was Cuba’s attempt to
leverage its symbolic importance on the global stage into meaningful
political leadership of the Third World.”

In 2021, Indian newspapers reported
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the country’s Enforcement Directorate were investigating Singham in
an inquiry into a potential money-laundering scheme involving
Tricontinental, the website Newsclick, and Chinese authorities.
Several outlets cited sources from the agency who linked the American
magnate to the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda arm. At the
time, the raids and interrogations New Delhi conducted on Newsclick
attracted considerable criticism from human rights and press advocacy
organizations.

But until now no publication has revealed the scale of Singham’s
global media apparatus.

Filings submitted to the Internal Revenue Service and the New York
State Charities Bureau show BreakThrough News is a nonprofit that has
drawn the bulk of its funding from the Justice and Education Fund, an
entity both the New Lines Institute and Indian outlets highlighted as
funded by Singham.

These same documents show that the Justice and Education Fund also
sends millions of dollars each year to Newsclick—and that it
operates out of the same Harlem UPS Store box as Newsclick’s sister
website, Peoples Dispatch
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Peoples Dispatch is another member of the International People’s
Media Network, and one of the earliest videos BreakThrough posted to
its Instagram page was a Peoples Dispatch/Newsclick production titled
"ruling class collusion to crush Sander’s insurgency _[sic]_.”

Further, Tricontinental and the Justice and Education Fund are so
entwined that a template grant letter agreement the Fund submitted to
the IRS in its application for tax-exempt status bears
Tricontinental’s name in the signature field. The Fund’s attorney
did not respond to questions about this apparent slip, or to queries
about the group’s leadership and its relationship with Singham or
its partner organizations.

BreakThrough’s filings, meanwhile, show it operates out of the
People’s Forum in Manhattan, another organization that has
acknowledged receiving dark money donations from Singham—whom the
group praised on Twitter
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“a Marxist comrade who sold his company & donated most of his wealth
to nonprofits that focus on political education, culture &
internationalism.” To date, Singham-linked groups have donated
almost $20 million to the People’s Forum.

Sitting on the People’s Forum’s board is Claudia De La Cruz, who
pulls triple duty as BreakThrough’s secretary and as a
“co-coordinator/educator” for the Justice and Education Fund. An
auditor’s report filed in New York shows that more of Singham’s
money trickled down to BreakThrough from the Forum in the form of
$80,575 in donated rent in 2021, the most recent year for which
filings are available.

But when The Daily Beast visited the People’s Forum address, it
found a bookstore hawking tomes by Prashad and titles from his
Leftword imprint, as well as a coffee shop and an event space—but no
evidence of a studio. What’s more, none of BreakThrough’s hosts
appear among the staff listed in the outlet’s filings. Rather, the
underlying nonprofit’s leadership consists of figures like De La
Cruz who donate an hour a week to the organization, and who like De La
Cruz are affiliated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation
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a small far-left sect
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does not appear to receive substantial donations from Singham or from
anybody else. The PSL does, however, appear as an allied group to the
International People’s Media Network on its webpage. Puryear and
Becker, two of the BreakThrough anchors, are co-founders of the party.

The auditor’s report further shows that BreakThrough received
half-a-million dollars in donated payroll since its founding. The
exact source of these funds is not clear.

Across the International People’s Media Network, a similar pattern
of overlapping personnel —and links to Singham—emerges. For
instance, the chair of the Justice and Education Forum in 2019 was
Tings Chak, a Beijing-based “researcher” and art director for
Tricontinental. Chak is a regular guest on BreakThrough, where she
effuses over Chinese President Xi Jinping’s policies on everything
from COVID-19 to tech regulation to international relations. She did
not respond to repeated queries at the email address listed on her
website.

Chak is also the co-founder, along with another China-based
Tricontinental researcher, of International People’s Media Network
member Dongsheng News, which produces videos in multiple languages
promoting China’s diplomatic and scientific successes. Yet another
Tricontinental researcher hosts Dongsheng’s podcast ‘The Crane,
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which promotes China as a natural and generous partner for developing
African nations.

Similarly, two additional International People’s Media Network
members, Brasil de Fato and ARGMedios—covering Brazil and Argentina,
respectively—are affiliates of the Sao Paulo-based Centro Popular de
Midias, which has received funding from yet another Singham-tied
nonprofit. Tricontinental’s website reveals that the communications
director in the think-tank’s Brazil office served as associate
editor of Brasil de Fato, and provided “coordination and political
guidance” to the Centro Popular. Both Brasil de Fato and ARGMedios
have jointly produced and posted content with Tricontinental,
BreakThrough, Peoples Dispatch, and other International People’s
Media Network members. None of the outlets replied to questions from
The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty

BreakThrough News, Dongsheng, Brasil de Fato, and ARGMedios all boast
relatively high production values and strong social media presence.
Not so of two other International People’s Media Network affiliates,
the Arabic-language Madaar—which largely publishes translated
reports from Tricontinental, often by Prashad himself—and
Ghana-based Pan African Television, which runs a YouTube channel that
regularly shares Peoples Dispatch-branded videos, many featuring
BreakThrough’s Puryear and Khalek, along with a show called China
Now. Madaar in particular has not posted new material in months, and a
request for comment The Daily Beast sent to an email address listed on
its website immediately bounced back.

What BreakThrough’s international partners have in common are their
targets—what Dr. Ho-fung Hung of John Hopkins University called the
“heavyweights in the Global South,” a scholarly term for the
developing world. Every country in which the International People’s
Media Network has established a foothold is a country crucial to
Beijing’s geopolitical goals.

"It coincides with Beijing's interest in enlarging its following in
the Global South,” argued Hung, an expert on political economy. "It
is completely consistent with Xi Jinping's rhetoric about a new world
order, and the end of US dominance.”

The vodka-stained résumés of BreakThrough’s anchors
notwithstanding, the Singham network is most closely tied to China.
The New Lines Institute report noted that the anti-capitalist
entrepreneur had advised Chinese tech behemoth Huawei, while his
beneficiary Prashad serves as a senior fellow at the Chongyang
Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing.
Prashad has also repeatedly lauded the mass internment
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camps
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which China has imprisoned well over a million Uighurs as a
“people’s project
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to dismantle archaic cultural practices.

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty

What’s more, Prashad and representatives from BreakThrough, Peoples
Dispatch, Dongsheng, Brasil de Fato, Madaar, ARGMedios, and Pan
African Television attended a summit in Shanghai earlier this month
that East China Normal University convened for the inauguration of its
new International Communication Research Institute. Addressing a
roomful of Chinese, Russia, Iranian, and Venezuelan state media
organizations, the Singham acolytes revisited a common theme: the
necessity of a “progressive media” complex that can challenge the
predominance of U.S., Japanese, and European outlets.

It is unclear who covered the Network affiliates' travel costs for the
conference, or whether Prashad or Chak—who addressed the
gathering—received any payment or honorarium, since none responded
to questions on the subject.

But perhaps most revealing is the fate of the last, lost member of the
International People’s Media Network, New Frame. Based in South
Africa, another area of vital Chinese interest, this Singham-backed
outlet shuttered in 2022, just four years after its launch. Like its
peers, the site published columns by Prashad and collaborated on
projects with other Network organizations. But a report by
the AmaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism
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New Frame’s abrupt and unexpected closure to Singham’s efforts to
enforce a pro-China editorial line.

Even Singham’s funding of a “Real Path to Peace in Ukraine”
event last fall, as reported by _Intelligence Online_
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event that featured figures from BreakThrough News and his assorted
nonprofit organizations—mirrors what Hung described as China’s
desire for a settlement favoring Russia.

Hung asserted that establishing a loyal communications infrastructure
and fostering a sympathetic audience in the United States and
strategically important countries is key to Chinese economic
aspirations and military ambitions. Whether Singham and his associates
are acting under Beijing’s influence, or simply out of “political
naivete,” the Hong Kong-born sociologist warned the International
People’s Media Network would assist in this endeavor.

“They are thinking that if a war breaks out between the U.S. and
China, that an anti-war movement breaks out around the world,
spontaneously—or appearing spontaneous—that can restrain the U.S.
And that includes in the United States itself,” said Hung.
“​​There is a coincidence of interest between Beijing and these
people trying to bring down so-called ‘U.S. domination of the
world.’”

But Pertierra, the historian of Cuba, was skeptical that the new
Tricontinental and its partner organizations could attain the
influence of the original, as their Cold War-era worldview ill fits
contemporary geopolitical realities.

“The new Tricontinental seems stuck in time even if they use 21st
century technology to spread their message,” he wrote to The Daily
Beast. “Their only option will be to ‘hide the ball’ by not
being totally forthright about their views, or alternatively slowly
sinking into obscurity, no matter how shiny their website looks.”

_William Bredderman is Senior Researcher
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Daily Beast. @WillBredderman
[[link removed]] [email protected]
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