Category: China, Foreign Influence, Higher Education;
Reading Time: ~5 minutes
The term “useful idiot” is traditionally attributed to the Communist leader Vladimir Lenin. While the Soviet Union is long gone, Beijing continues the communist dream through its front organizations. These astroturfed “groups of concern” help America’s colleges and universities manufacture useful idiots at a massive scale. The People’s Forum (PF), a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) affiliated organization responsible for much of the anti-Semitic activism at Columbia University, is mobilizing its useful idiots to promote climate activism as a way of fighting capitalism. The garbled message of the PF’s climate anxiety “greenwashes” socialism and the nihilism behind it.
The PF’s Marxist orientation is not subtle. The PF describes “political education” as one of its missions, stating that “the majority of education we receive is created by the oppressors.” The group declares that “we mean education that is grounded in the history of working-class struggle and builds towards a working-class internationalist horizon.”
From 2017-2022, the PF received $20.4 million from the Marxist businessman Roy Neville Singham and his wife, Code Pink founder Jodie Evans. In 2021, the PF described Singham as “a Marxist comrade who sold his company & donated most of his wealth to non-profits that focus on political education, culture & internationalism.” Last August, the New York Times reported that Singham “works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide.”
With the anti-Semitism that the PF funds grabbing the flashy headlines, its climate activism is not only overshadowed, but also revelatory. The PF has held lectures and workshops on topics like “The End of Green Capitalism,” “Climate Change and Socialism,” and the “Growing Criminalization of Climate Activism in Western Democracies.” The descriptions of these events are more than civil protest—they outline a philosophy. Attributing the guilt of climate change to capitalism is a common thesis. The PF’s events do not leave much to subtlety or debate by asking loaded questions: “How do socialist systems help lessen the impact, avoid worsening it, bring about climate justice, and build a more ecologically sustainable future?”
The PF’s climate activism portrays a dark future for human civilization, and fields a host of activist-scholars who call for urgent action. In August 2022, the PF held a talk with Ajay Prashad and Andrew Hsiao that covered:
Movements from India, Kenya, Peru, Tunisia, and Argentina, as well as topics such as debt cancellation, a wealth tax, austerity, the pandemic, the arms industry, the climate crisis, and much more. He will be joined in conversation by Andrew Hsiao, editor-at-large of Verso Books, as they discuss the global and grassroots, and how we can learn from socialist movements to build a better world for everyone.
In March, the PF held an event for the “Latin America Front of the World’s Youth for Climate Justice” that called for “comprehensive climate reparations.” The philosophy is there, even if the central point is not. PF’s activism offers no practical solutions for a problem it views as existential to human survival—other than, of course, that socialism is the only correct political path forward.
For a philosophy that seemingly has no center and offers no solutions, the PF boasts a heavily credentialed list of speakers from think tanks and universities. An April 10 event titled “The End of Green Capitalism” included Ajay Singh Chaudhary, the “executive director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and a core faculty member specializing in social and political theory.” Barnard College Political Science Professor Alyssa Battistoni was also there, bringing her background that “explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature.” City University of New York Professor of Postcolonial Studies Ashley Dawson was also present due to her work as a “dedicated climate justice activist” and for her background in “grassroots activism and scholarly research.” Kai Bosworth, a Professor of International Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University was also included as a panelist for background in investigating “environmental struggles.”
Two of the signs that an activist or propagandist is masquerading as a scholar is the inability to offer wisdom about the world or practical solutions to a problem. The PF gives real academics a bad name. It shows its hand by holding workshops and lectures that only demonize the West and capitalism while carefully omitting climate damage caused by China. The CCP gets a pass despite surpassing the United States as an emitter of greenhouse gases in 2006.
The PF’s cadre of experts offers no technological solution to climate change, but the organization is happy to take money from the CCP and millionaires it supposedly should despise.
If the PF’s Beijing-funded Marxism makes little sense, that is because it’s not meant to. It is meant to elicit anger rather than thinking, and activism over practical action. How the greater wealth confiscation and distribution would lead to a cleaner planet is a question neither entertained nor welcomed.
The PF is part of an ongoing anti-Trump protest movement called “We Fight Back 2025” that is devoted to fighting war, racism, and poverty. The PF is listed alongside groups like “Dream Defenders,” Code Pink, the “Party for Socialism and Liberation,” the “United Educators of San Francisco,” the “Palestinian Feminist Collective,” and others to oppose what it calls Trump’s “billionaire agenda.” In the 1976 Six Pistols song“Anarchy in the UK,” the lyrics declare “I am an anarchist. Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it.” The PF’s money comes from China, but its ideas lead to nothingness.
Until next week.
Ian Oxnevad
Senior Fellow for Foreign Affairs and Security Studies
National Association of Scholars
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