The new Mafia: Trump, civil RICO and the global intifada

After the panic attacks successful Israel connected Oct. 7, 2023, I watched successful disbelief arsenic the satellite elevated the perpetrators and ignored the victims. Overnight, coercion became thing to excuse alternatively than condemn. The motivation protections we assumed were universal, nary longer applied to Jews.

Outside my New York City home, protests erupted with vandalism, violence, threats and intimidation. Demonstrators acted with striking confidence, arsenic if a caller support operation had been activated successful which boundaries nary longer existed.

During that time, I helped exposure assemblage prof Amin Husain who said that Hamas was not a violent radical and that reports of Oct. 7 atrocities were "not true." He boasted openly astir his estimation arsenic an antisemite and his students laughed. In that moment, it became wide to maine that idiosyncratic was rewiring however a procreation perceives morality, struggle and identity, shaping belief, weaponizing connection and re-engineering society.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL - NOVEMBER 11: Family and friends of hostage Yarden Roman-Gat locomotion barefoot and gully chalk feet outlines during a march done Tel Avivi successful solidarity aft she was kidnapped barefoot from a kibbutz during Hamas's Oct. 7 attacks. November 11, 2023 successful Tel Aviv, Israel. A period aft Hamas's Oct. 7 attacks, the country's subject has continued its sustained bombardment of the Gaza Strip and launched a crushed penetration to vanquish the militant radical that governs the Palestinian territory.  (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Driven to recognize who was down it and however they did it, I embarked connected a two-year travel mapping networks shaping civic and world spaces. The grounds shows semipermanent coordination successful messaging, radicalizing students and opaque fiscal flows, operating transnationally similar a coordinated ideological mafia.

ANTISEMITISM: FACE IT. FIGHT IT. FINISH IT

The New Mafia of Influence

This is not a mafia of bullets but of ideas: an organized ideological web operating done nonprofits, advocacy groups, institutions and governmental alliances. Left unchecked, it threatens civic bid and ideology itself. When President Donald Trump suggested applying national racketeering laws to these ideological networks, critics dismissed it arsenic "bluster." But the thought deserves superior consideration.

Georgia’s Stop Cop City lawsuit is instructive. Racketeering charges against activists allegedly coordinating vandalism and intimidation against a planned constabulary installation were dismissed owed to procedural mishandling, not deficiency of merit, showing however adjacent we are to proving systemic coordination. Some of the 61 defendants inactive look home coercion charges.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), passed successful 1970, was designed to prosecute organized crime. Less well-known is "civil RICO," which allows backstage citizens and the authorities to clasp enterprises accountable for repeated wrongdoing. It targets not conscionable mobsters but patterns of coordination, harassment, spot demolition and fiscal misconduct, each of which person go features of ideological networks.

From Big Tobacco to Big Deception

PROTESTERS ATTEMPT TO JUSTIFY HAMAS ATTACK ON ISRAEL WITH 'COLUMBIA INTIFADA' NEWSPAPER ON OCT. 7 ANNIVERSARY

When U.S. v. Philip Morris exposed Big Tobacco decades of deception, it revealed however an full manufacture misled the public, suppressed science, targeted younker and funded beforehand groups. Big Tobacco sold nicotine. Today’s dealers merchantability narratives.

Modern movements are tally similar merchandise campaigns for Coca-Cola oregon Nike: cautiously packaged, polished and presented to look appealing and mainstream. But dissimilar user brands, these campaigns are driven by radicalized actors, often connected society’s fringe, motivated by idiosyncratic oregon governmental grievances, and utilizing branding and messaging to summation influence. Individuals and groups infiltrate colleges and taste spaces, blending their docket with connection of mainstream progressive movements and exploiting trust.

These networks manipulate hunt motor optimization to elevate obscure contented to look alongside reputable outlets, creating the illusion of mainstream validation. Their "independent" newspapers, blogs, deliberation tanks and nonprofits punctuation 1 another, creating a self-reinforcing feedback loop. What appears to beryllium wide speech oregon extracurricular position is the aforesaid web amplifying itself, until repetition makes names look authoritative and visibility mistaken for truth. These narratives past saturate culture, masking coordination and backing and convincing nine they emerged organically.

George Soros, Founder and Chairman of the Open Society Foundations arrives for a gathering successful Brussels, Belgium, connected April 27, 2017.  (Olivier Hoslet/AFP via Getty Images)

Ryan Mauro, an investigative researcher astatine the Capital Research Center and a subordinate of the Clarity Coalition, a radical challenging this extremist network, precocious released a study examining billionaire George Soros’s backing networks. He told me, "This antisemitic, anti-American, seditious question is much than a escaped radical of agitators. It is simply a well-funded ecosystem of hate. Many self-styled enemies of capitalism are, successful truth, the precise capitalists they denounce."

Hidden Networks and Campus Activism

IRAN'S PROXY WAR ON JEWS IS AN ALL-OUT ATTACK ON WESTERN CIVILIZATION. AUSTRALIA GETS IT

American activistic Rachel Corrie is remembered arsenic a tragic awesome of non-violent absorption successful Gaza and a leader of the Free Palestine Movement. Her decease inspired her parents to make the Rachel Corrie Foundation. Her communicative is harrowing but the web surrounding her reveals overmuch more. In 2002, the International Solidarity Movement, which collaborates with "National and Islamic forces," including Islamic Jihad, had embedded itself astatine her schoolhouse done a programme called "Sesame astatine Evergreen State," a twelvemonth earlier Corrie joined them. According to reports, the programme recruits students and trains them to enactment arsenic quality shields. Today, the Corrie Foundation’s assets database includes respective books sympathetic to Hamas, reflecting however narratives are curated and perpetuated.

While reviewing the Rachel Corrie Foundation’s IRS 990 filings, I discovered a specified $150 disbursement for the Sesame programme astatine Evergreen State, but a hunt for the tract led to an wholly antithetic URL, CampusActivism.org, a sprawling online level which has functioned for astir 3 decades arsenic a recruitment hub for precocious schoolhouse and assemblage pupil activists. It offers "disorientation guides," strategical toolkits, messaging guidance and instructions for coordinated activism.

These are not isolated idealists. They are systematically trained recruits, groomed successful ideology, messaging and coordination, successful a larger power instrumentality designed to signifier the adjacent procreation of voters, leaders and taste gatekeepers.

The Smoking Gun Toolkit

A societal media linktree labeled "Funds for Gaza" caught my attraction erstwhile it appeared successful the profiles of a New Orleans Students for a Democratic Society organizer and the Instagram leafage of Alana Hadid ("lanzybear"), Hollywood world prima Mohamed Hadid’s daughter. Donors were told they are helping families successful Gaza, but contributions were scattered crossed thousands of opaque and untraceable drives, immoderate pages seeking anyplace from $5,000 to $450,000.

ISRAEL’S COVERT CAMPAIGN TARGETS HAMAS TERRORISTS BEHIND OCT 7 MASSACRE

Documented coordination appeared successful a December 2023 organizing "toolkit" by Palestine Solidarity Working Group. In a candid interview, Maurice Isserman, a Democratic Socialists of America founding member, said the toolkit originated from DSA Seattle. The toolkit instructed activists to "get their information" from Hamas’ authoritative Telegram transmission ("Resistance Network") and Samidoun, present designated a "sham charity" for violent enactment by the U.S. and Canada. In addition, the toolkit told activists explicitly not to "center DSA astatine this moment" with their branding oregon logos, efficaciously concealing their affiliation. A tiny enactment nether "key resources," saying "let’s speech Palestine," linked to a station titled "understanding equipped resistance," hosted by the "Let’s Talk Palestine" Instagram page. Its Linktree societal networking relationship linked to the aforesaid opaque "Funds for Gaza" channel.

This is textbook coordinated enterprise: concealment, operational guidance and ideological grooming. DSA’s Seattle chapter, portion of mainstream American politics, was distributing materials tied to terrorist-linked networks. Isserman resigned successful protestation aft Oct. 7, calling the organization’s effect "politically and morally bankrupt."

New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani takes questions from the property astatine a Queens canvass motorboat connected Monday, Nov. 3, 2025, up of Election Day.  (Fox News Digital/Deirdre Heavey)

Sure enough, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who donated a full of $33,000 from his run funds to the DSA, said helium doesn’t person an sentiment astir disarming Hamas. A socialist who ran connected a Democratic summons promoted galore policies successful stark absorption to the Democratic Party’s halfway positions, including his views connected terrorism.

George Soros: Power is Funded

Soros has provided backing to galore groups successful this web done foundations, universities and grants, with the infrastructure helium supports grooming activists, backing curricula and influencing policy. Funded by Soros, Central European University, based successful Europe, holds a unsocial New York State charter granting U.S. recognized degrees and a level for planetary influence. Soros’s initiatives and backing person been capable to displacement civilization and law, from marijuana legalization to attempts to normalize and legalize prostitution.

AMICHAI CHIKLI — ISRAEL’S MINISTER FOR COMBATING ANTISEMITISM WARNS MAMDANI WIN A WAKE-UP CALL FOR JEWS

Soros's Open Society Institute provided $620,000 to the Mackerere Institute for Social Research, led by Mamdani’s father, Columbia University prof Mahmood Mamdani, including $450,000 for probe connected the "decolonization" of knowledge. Back successful 2004, Open Society Institute besides funded a movie laboratory successful Uganda, led by Zohran’s mother, filmmaker Mira Nair.

Meeting the Civil RICO Threshold

Civil RICO requires a signifier of activity, astatine slightest 2 predicate acts demonstrating continuity and a transportation betwixt the signifier and the resulting harm, whether political, ideological oregon financial.

As Paul Batista, writer of the starring treatise connected the national racketeering statute, "Civil RICO Practice Manual," explains, "Since 1985, successful its seminal determination successful the Sedima litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently expanded the scope of the civilian uses of RICO and mandated that RICO is to beryllium broadly interpreted and applied. While RICO litigation involves galore method issues, the wide thrust and intent of the statute and the Supreme Court’s mentation of it underscore the chiseled viability of pursuing RICO successful this context." His investigation highlights however coordinated activity, agelong hidden from view, could conscionable RICO’s civilian standards.

Reclaiming Truth and Integrity

For decades, these ideological networks person convinced millions they were advancing noble causes. But erstwhile harassment, spot demolition and ideological manipulation recur nether 1 umbrella, advocacy crosses into perchance unlawful activity. Civil RICO tin dismantle enterprises that look abstracted yet run arsenic one.

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Critics reason Trump’s RICO speech threatens escaped speech, but civilian RICO was designed to clasp almighty networks accountable. Whether participants deterioration pinstripes oregon protestation t-shirts oregon fell down boardroom doors oregon schoolroom walls, it’s clip to assistance the disguise and clasp syndicates accountable.

The Democratic Socialists of America are increasing bolder. Candidates similar Mamdani are mainstreaming platforms tied to extremist networks. It’s clip for a reckoning. Are we prepared to investigate, face the information and guarantee we bash not proceed to betray our ain values, oregon person we softly abandoned them altogether? The existent question is not who governs, but whether we inactive admit the values that defined us.