Powerline found an interesting job advertisement in Craigslist:
Under the job category “new york craigslist > brooklyn > jobs > government jobsâ€, people looking for a government job are invited to: “ FIGHT TO HOLD WALL STREET ACCOUNTABLE NOW! MAKE A DIFFERENCE! GET PAID!â€
I knew they were getting paid to protest, but until now there was some deniability – students were being turned out to protest by their professors, employees of government unions were being turned out to protest by their union bosses, ngo employees were being turned out by ngo bosses, rather than a flat out overt offer to get paid to show up and protest.
The also now have a “general fund” and tax exempt status set up by a 501c3 that used to have something to do with Nicaragua and is now the “Alliance for Global Justice”. There is even a finance committee. My question is, how much of this organizational network is directly descended from the popular front days. My guess is a quite a bit of it.
Less than you would think. It used to be that a cadre of Leninists, in the direct employ of the Soviet Union ran most of this stuff, but during the late seventies and the eighties, the Soviet Union, always notoriously tight fisted, became even more tight fisted, so increasingly the left came to rely on US government grants, a lot of them directly from the CIA. The communists genuinely hated the CIA not because it was funding the right, but because it was funding a different brand of the left. There was real, and sometimes lethal, disagreement between those hired by the one employer, and those hired by the other.
But, facing unemployment, a horde of Soviet agents saw the light on the road to Damascus.
Observe that Obama’s father and paternal grandfather were CIA funded, but on the white side his grandparents were Soviet funded, while his mother was CIA funded. Soviet spy falls in love with CIA spy, gets pregnant, gets a new job, with substantially better pay and conditions.
Analogously Shia terrorists are pretty good at killing Sunni terrorists, and our best forces against Al Quaeda are the sons of Iraq, former Al Quaeda terrorists who took a new employer’s salt. Our troops hang out with the Sons of Iraq, drink beer with them, and swap war stories about the days when they were trying to kill each other.
Obama and his parents and the people who funded his parents to engage in political activity are not supporters of Soviet style socialism, nor Al Qaeda style Islam. They support Swedish style socialism, and Raol style Islam.
“My question is, how much of this organizational network is directly descended from the popular front days. My guess is a quite a bit of it.”
My guess would be damned near all of it…
Clearly you’re wrong about this.
From their ad:
“”We’re organizing in communities around New York State — but we don’t hire people to Occupy Wall Street. Then again, if you believe the laughable conspiracy theories from Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, this is probably the wrong job for you anyway.” ”
(double quotes in original)
So yeah, they’re not paying you to OWS.
I would describe that as a considerably smaller fig leaf than we are accustomed to seeing. This is typical NGO astroturf. As in any NGO astroturfing, their employees are theoretically not paid to show up at protests, they are theoretically paid for for something else, but if you want the job, you are going to spending time occupying wall street.
See also Michelle Malkin on some Mexicans paid to hold signs.