Follow the Money: Protest Movements, Influence, and the Politics of Chaos, By Chris Knight (Florida)

There's a familiar refrain in political commentary: that some unseen hand is pulling the strings behind every protest, rally, or outrage. The latest iteration of this narrative centres on one controversial figure — Neville Roy Singham — a tech billionaire whose life journey took him from Chicago to Shanghai after cashing out his software company. Today, his name features prominently in congressional investigations into foreign influence, fundraising networks, and political activism.

Singham's story fits neatly into two competing narratives. In one, he is a generous funder of progressive causes, a believer in social justice who uses his wealth to support movements that challenge the status quo. In another — the more sensational version circulating in paid newsletters and social feeds — he is a shadowy puppet master whose funding has allegedly fuelled protests, riots, and public disorder across the United States.

What's important to grasp is the difference between money and motive, and between association and orchestration.

Investigations have shown that Singham uses a complex network of nonprofits — some with little public footprint — to channel funds to organisations that align with his worldview. These include activists focused on racial justice, anti‑war causes, and geopolitical critique. Some of these organisations have participated in high‑profile demonstrations in major U.S. cities. Lawmakers worry that Singham's network could be acting as a sort of "dark money" conduit for foreign influence — potentially requiring registration under foreign influence law — but the scope and intent of that influence are still being examined.

What the evidence does not show is that a foreign government is directing these movements like a chess master at a distance, nor that protests on issues like immigration enforcement reflect a single centralised agenda. Social movements are messy, distributed, and driven by millions of individual grievances, not just a billionaire backer's bank balance.

Yet in the echo chambers of political media, complexity is often replaced by conspiracy. A network of funding becomes a "plot." A financier's ideological leanings become proof of foreign hand‑puppetry. This framing, while rhetorically powerful, glosses over the messy reality: that civil society groups receive money from wealthy donors for a wide range of causes, that activists organise at the grassroots for reasons that predate any donation, and that geopolitical influence is rarely as monolithic as simplistic narratives suggest.

In other words: money can influence movements, but it does not single‑handedly create them.

The real story isn't a secret CCP plot; although there are other CCP plots, no doubt. It's about how money flows through nonprofit networks, how ideological affinities connect donors with activists, and how political actors on all sides use these narratives to amplify fear, distrust, and division.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/europe/neville-roy-singham-china-propaganda.html