Editor's note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.
Three months before the 2020 election, I hosted a "Glenn TV" special in which I posed the question, “Are we in a color revolution?” There were political operatives holding secret war games on what to do if Donald Trump won the election. It included everything from mass civil unrest to secession.
Both the mainstream media and social media — network pundits and influencers alike — were moving in tandem to ensure that Trump would lose. I’d never seen anything like it — at least not domestically. This is something you would expect to see out of a banana republic, not the United States.
Should we be using US tax dollars to fund private NGOs that are waging color revolutions? Is that what America stands for?
Civil disobedience is rocking college campuses, and it appears to have backing from network media, social media, labor unions, and nonprofit organizations. It’s almost as if these activists and political operatives have a four-year hibernation cycle and they wake up just in time for a presidential election. We’re only in May. How bad will all this get the closer we get to November? How bad will it get if Donald Trump maintains a solid lead in the polls?
Blaze Media recently published a story about a new group called the Escalate Network. Its mission is to “bring the Intifada home,” and the organization wants to improve upon what began with the anti-Israel encampments on college and university campuses around the country this spring.
You can go to Escalate’s website and download material such as “The Do-It-Yourself Occupation Guide,” literature on how to set up “blockades,” “Anarchist Tactics at Standing Rock,” and “How to Build the End of the World: In Defense of the Chaotic Protestor.”
Imagine if this group’s motivation was pro-life or if it were run by former January 6ers. The FBI would be raiding their homes right now. There would be wall-to-wall media coverage. I think Blaze Media was the only outlet to even touch this story. Odd, isn’t it?
I’m seeing the same color revolution signs this year that I saw in 2020, and I believe we were on the edge of slipping into what happened in places like Eastern Europe and the Middle East. But as Time magazine reported, at the last minute, “The word went out: stand down.”
But what happens this time in 2024, and who are the architects?
Color revolution officially became an accepted U.S. foreign policy strategy after the Cold War. The CIA was manipulating elections and street movements all over the world. But the entire strategy changed in the late 1980s and early ’90s. The Washington Post published this shocking article in 1991 headlined, “Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups.”
The story by David Ignatius describes how a new era in regime change had been born. NGOs, labor unions, and media outlets could topple governments in ways the CIA could only dream of. Color revolution had now been “privatized.”
The story mentions that the CIA no longer had to spend the time developing “media assets” because now it has CNN. The cable network’s “omnipresent, real-time coverage of the news helps America’s interests more than all the besotted Third World ‘media assets’ of old could ever have imagined. And the bar bills are less.”
Ignatius also highlights the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S.-based NGO he called “the sugar daddy of overt operations.”
A lot of people have questioned some of the shady operations that the NED has conducted in foreign countries over the years, but if there is any question, look no further than the NED’s founder himself, who said, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."
The National Endowment for Democracy is funded by Congress. Should we be using U.S. tax dollars to fund private NGOs that are waging color revolutions? Is that what America stands for?
The article goes on to list some of the other people and organizations that are involved, including labor unions like the AFL-CIO and even George Soros. Color me shocked about that one!
The Washington Post showed more than 30 years ago how our government interferes in elections and topples nations. The CIA, the State Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development are often involved. Ultimately, these decisions reside with the man in the Oval Office.
The operation is then privatized to create separation from the government. This is where NGOs like the National Endowment for Democracy come in. The NED is composed of four entities: the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, and the Center for International Private Enterprise. The first two supposedly advocate either left- or right-wing agendas, giving the entire NGO a “bipartisan” designation, and the last two cover labor unions and private corporations.
Next, multibillion-dollar financiers and organizations partner in the entire operation. This is where people like George Soros, the Open Society Foundations, and the Tides Foundation come in.
Lastly, there are the people who spread the message, demonstrate in the street, and report the news to the masses.
This became the blueprint for privatizing regime change. It’s how public opinion is manipulated, mass media is harnessed, and youth movements are weaponized. This is how color revolutions are born.
The lessons learned from the Cold War were unleashed in the early and mid-2000s. Where did our little cast of color revolution characters turn their sights on next? Is it possible they began operating here at home? These revolutions seem to be on a four-year cycle, and the last one was in 2020. We must be vigilant for 2024.
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