Activist groups tied to a pro-China millionaire quickly took to the streets to foment resistance to President Donald Trump’s Saturday strikes against Iran’s nuclear program.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), the People’s Forum and the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition were involved in protests around the country, complete with signs and other equipment, within 24 hours after the U.S. military bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. The groups share overlapping leadership and are part of a political network centered around Neville Roy Singham, an American businessman funding propaganda efforts supportive of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), another U.S. adversary.
TODAY: Protesters at the White House chant, “Iran, we got your back!”@DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/LuxEXo5er6
— Hudson Crozier
(@Hudson_Crozier) June 22, 2025
(@Hudson_Crozier) These demonstrations, which legacy media outlets dubbed “anti-war,” are a coordinated effort by groups that have supported Iran-backed terrorism and seek to disrupt and undermine U.S. foreign policy, national security experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“These are not ‘anti-war’ protests, they are foreign-backed campaigns of subversion intended to create domestic instability and uncertainty to weaken the United States,” Kyle Shideler, senior analyst at the Center for Security Policy, told the DCNF.
“This is a pre-existing network with non-profits as its backbone that has been activated for Iran, just as it’s activated for every single enemy of the U.S.,” said Ryan Mauro, who studies extremism and terrorism for the Capital Research Center. “Their protests don’t reflect an objective opinion based on facts, they reflect an anti-American, anti-capitalist and usually anti-Semitic ideology.”
The PSL, People’s Forum and ANSWER Coalition did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment. Singham could not be reached for comment.
The three organizations are also organizing and promoting a “March on Washington” scheduled for Saturday to protest the “unprovoked and illegal war of aggression against Iran.” The march would continue the groups’ involvement in mass anti-Israel demonstrations in the U.S. since 2023. Trump announced a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Iran on Monday, putting the Middle East conflict on hold.
Reports by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and The New York Times found the PSL, People’s Forum, ANSWER and other groups to be part of an influence campaign centered around Singham, who reportedly lives in Shanghai. The Republican-led House Oversight Committee announced on June 13 that it was investigating Singham’s political advocacy for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Singham has poured millions of dollars into the People’s Forum, whose founder ran as the PSL’s presidential candidate in 2024. The ANSWER Coalition’s national coordinator is also “a founder of and a central organizer” for the PSL, according to a profile on the People’s Forum website. Additionally, a leader of ANSWER’s Los Angeles chapter was also a member of the PSL as of 2020, archived webpages show.
The overlap also extends to Breakthrough BT Media Inc, a Singham-funded outlet producing pro-CCP propaganda, the NCRI found. A founding member of PSL and two of its former political candidates have held leading positions at the media organization, tax filings show. The PSL and ANSWER even had offices with the same California address as of at least 2019, according to archived webpages.
Activists with the People’s Forum, the PSL and ANSWER have also promoted demonstrations against Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The PSL helped organize a June 6 anti-ICE protest in Los Angeles that eventually led to rioting and arrests, claiming that Trump “falsely labeled” protesters as rioters when the situation turned violent, the DCNF previously reported.
America’s future relations with Iran are uncertain, but the subversive goals of Singham-linked activists remain the same, analysts told the DCNF.
“It can seem like these protests pop up out of nowhere, but the truth is these groups specialize in these kinds of activities, and it’s a relatively simple matter for them to launch them on a moment’s notice … the fact that CCP-backed groups such as ANSWER and PSL have shifted effortlessly from anti-ICE to pro-Iran protests reflects that their true purpose is not opposition to any one policy, but rather to foment a revolutionary atmosphere and inject foreign propaganda themes into the U.S. policy debate,” Shideler told the DCNF.
The People’s Forum and the PSL were among the numerous activist groups that explicitly defended Iran-backed Hamas terrorists after they invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killed around 1,100 people, took hundreds of hostages and sparked an ongoing war.
“They are ‘anti-war,’ because they view anything the U.S. does as imperialistic ‘war’ and any violence by America’s enemies as ‘resistance’ rather than war,” Mauro told the DCNF. “You can recruit many gullible Americans to your cause by saying you are against nouns that make you feel bad and are for nouns that make you feel happy. That’s really all it takes.”
“These so-called ‘pro-peace’ groups are the biggest fans of war out there,” said Mauro.
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