You cannot subvert an enemy who does not want to be subverted. – Yuri Bezmenov
In Christopher Nolan’s 2010 thriller, Inception, a freelance corporate espionage team constructs dream narratives into which they slip unnoticed to manipulate the intentions of their target. In 2025, that seems less far-fetched, as more people spend their lives in a dream-world of social media. The constant inundation of deepfake videos, massive controlled “bot” swarms orchestrated by both domestic and foreign actors, and a growing marketplace of disingenuous paid influencers makes it increasingly difficult to determine what is real.
Much like a dream, one of the best ways to pierce the veil is to look to the edges of the narrative, where improbable and inexplicable things start to happen. Like in the dream where you show up to high school naked and all the co-workers from your present job are in the crowd laughing at you.
When individuals or groups that share no apparent common interests suddenly seem to be reading from the same script, it suggests there is some third unidentified actor that unites the two.
Or, like a nightmare when you open the creaking door to the basement, only to find yourself walking in a creepy forest, the sudden introduction of a narrative that has no relation to the existing media environment is a good indicator that all is not as it seems.
Oct. 7, 2023 opened just such a nightmare door.
Bloodcurdlingly pro-Hamas sentiment appeared to suddenly boil up from the bowels of America’s elite institutions. Coordinated demands for an immediate ceasefire were displayed on banners throughout the country, even while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were still beating back the last of the Hamas’ invasion force, as if the organizers of the protests knew about the attack before it happened.
Perhaps they did.
Former Israeli Hostages
Abdallah Aljamal, a Hamas activist and journalist for the US-based Palestine Chronicle and Qatari-based al-Jazeera network, held three Israeli hostages captive in Gaza. The trio was rescued last year after being held for eight months. During their time with Aljamal, who was killed in the IDF raid that freed the hostages, he reportedly told them the terror group was in close cooperation with its US-based allies, and that “Hamas was in contact and actively coordinating with its affiliates in the media and on college campuses,” according to a civil complaint filed against The Chronicle.
Indeed, evidence suggests that student protest organizations operating on college campuses from New York to California were tightly networked into actual terrorist organizations. Student protestors were, in some cases, provided with near real-time updates from Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) commanders regarding the status of the “resistance” during protest encampment events and “teach-ins.”
In one example, documented by the citizen journalist Stu Smith on X.com (formerly Twitter), UCLA Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) published updates from the media spokesman for Palestinian Islamic Jihad during a 2024 “People’s University for a Liberated Palestine summer school.” The ten-week program included everything from Communist Party propaganda produced by the Filipino Communist Party to anti-police protest training tactics straight out of the Antifa playbook.
Even more curiously, several of the major actors behind protests, including the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and the activist group CODE PINK, were already preparing to initiate a major ceasefire protest campaign even before the war started.
But not for Israel.
Rather, the campaign was intended to push for a ceasefire agreement in the Russia-Ukraine War, launched in Washington, DC at an event on Oct. 3, 2023, featuring then-presidential candidate Cornell West.
Five days later, these organizations shifted seamlessly to focusing a campaign against Israel, demanding a ceasefire even before the IDF had launched a counteroffensive and while Israeli soldiers were still pursuing Hamas terrorist cells in Israel proper.
The Role of China
The organizations behind this ceasefire campaign also have extensively documented links to the People’s Republic of China. According to an August 2023 New York Times investigative report, Shanghai-based tech millionaire Neville Roy Singham is a vital node in a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda apparatus that spans the globe. Singham’s outfit is closely linked to CODE PINK, whose co-founder, Jodie Evans, is his wife. Singham has also been identified as a massive financial contributor to the PSL, according to Republican members of the House Oversight Committee, which referred Singham to the US Attorney General Pam Bondi for further investigation. Indeed, China reportedly released a flood of pro-Hamas and increasingly antisemitic rhetoric on its social media app TikTok, according to an article by then Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), now secretary of state, published in The Washington Examiner.
That hate campaign is seeing tangible results. In May of this year, former PSL member Elias Rodriguez allegedly shot and killed two Israeli embassy staffers at a Jewish event in Washington, DC. He currently faces a federal trial on murder and hate crimes charges. Rodriguez’s attack was endorsed by Unity of Fields, a pro-terrorist propaganda outlet, formerly called Palestine Action US, whose British parent organization has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United Kingdom.
Unity of Fields’ main figurehead, Calla Walsh, got her start in far-left political organizing as a leader of the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), a pro-Cuba organization with ties to Cuban intelligence through the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), a propaganda outlet that works with foreign students. After being stopped by the Department of Homeland Security on the way back from Cuba, Walsh would later make waves for traveling to Iran to participate in a propaganda campaign following the June 2025 US-Israel joint operation against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear weapons program.
CCP-funded campaigns to support Hamas; Cuban assets serving up propaganda for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); and Filipino Communist propaganda for the benefit of Palestinian terrorism. At the fringes of the narrative – while supposedly reflecting American youth’s rejection of Israel and endorsement of revolutionary violence – the meddling hand of foreign actors begins to take shape.
Subversion on the Right
But perhaps all this seems obvious. Foreign Communist and Islamist subversion of the American left-wing to the benefit of Palestinian terrorism is traditional Cold War fare. The old high school buddies in the naked at high school dream, characters in the narrative acting as one might expect.
But how does one explain the sudden appearance of pro-Hamas and pro-Iranian talking points on America’s right?
Supposedly Pro-Trump figures, and even communications media personalities with established track records of being pro-Israel, made a sudden about face to savage the administration for its military action against Iran’s nuclear weapons.
Was this a legit, if long-dormant sentiment?
Certainly, there are well-meaning people (on the right and left) who simply have a visceral aversion to conflict and an emotional longing for peace. Such a sentiment has a long pedigree in American discourse, even if, as an operational foreign policy, it lacks specificity. But this change is something different.
Steve Bannon
Consider former Trump insider Steve Bannon, host of the War Room on the Real America’s Voice network. In 2018, Newsweek reported on Bannon’s full-throated support for moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and calling for an end to the long-time US policy of endorsing “a two-state solution.” In 2017, Bannon identified himself as a “Christian Zionist” at the annual Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) dinner, according to The Times of Israel, where he praised pro-Israel conservative donor Sheldon Adelson.
But post-October 7, Bannon labelled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (whom President Trump recently described as a “war hero”) as a “war criminal.” He further utilized his platform to savage the US-Israel relationship, in comments swiftly redistributed globally through Turkish and Qatari media outlets including The Middle East Eye and TRT News.
Given China’s hand in anti-Israel sentiment on the left, is it reasonable to ask whether Bannon’s about-face on Israel has any relation to his ties to Chinese billionaire Miles Guo, currently in federal custody for a conviction for fraud? Guo notoriously pleaded the Fifth Amendment when asked about detailed allegations that he served as a CCP spy and “dissident hunter” during a federal civil trial in New York in 2019. Bannon was so close to Guo that he was arrested while residing aboard the Chinese billionaire’s 150-foot yacht.
Tucker Carlson
Much critical ink has been spilled regarding former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, now the star of the Tucker Carlson Network. Carlson’s network has devoted unprecedented time to covering increasingly anti-Israel positions, in between fawning soft-ball interviews of Vladimir Putin, Qatari Emir Sheik Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
On US-Israel relations, Carlson emphasizes the principled position espoused by President George Washington that America should avoid “entangling alliances.” However, when discussing Qatar, Carlson is effusive about the small Gulf emirate’s role as a US ally, a curious inconsistency that may provoke those with a suspicious mind.
News reports show that Carlson and other conservative media figures were the targets of an extensive blitz orchestrated by Qatar’s registered foreign agents.
Carlson denies receiving money from Qatar, and he may be telling the truth. But perhaps that’s not the whole story. According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, foreign-backed “bot farms,” many linked to Russian or Iranian intelligence, have been flooding the “America First” social media space, attempting to manipulate the discourse.
Social Media Networks
Because of the nature of social media monetization methods, one could hypothetically use bots to drive millions of clicks to an influencer who is repeating key propaganda themes, spreading the message while also “paying off” the influencer for parroting the right words.
Is it entirely a coincidence that those who most aggressively pivoted to these antisemitic and pro-foreign government messages are almost all operating as independent social media content producers reliant upon clicks to literally sing for their supper?
Carlson, for example, devoted an entire show to the case of Chairman Omar Yeshitela of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), an organization indicted for operating as an unregistered Russian agent, seeking to push Russian agitprop themes about black reparations in exchange for cash from an agent of the FSB (Russian Federal Security Service, successor to the KGB). Yeshitela is an unrepentant 1960s Black Power pan-African socialist who thinks Black Lives Matter is too soft in its calls to defund police. Carlson was a strong voice for law and order during the BLM riots of 2020, yet Carlson called Yeshitela’s indictment, “the most important criminal case you’ve probably never heard of.”
The post received more than 3.3 million views, 53,000 retweets, and 57,000 likes. Were there really that many Americans waiting with bated breath to hear the sad tale of a ‘60s black radical socialist run afoul of the FBI?
Perhaps it is not even the money that drives influencers to increasingly inexplicable positions. Could the mere dopamine-inducing promise of foreign-backed bot swarms sending a tweet or video into viral stardom be enough for some influencers?
Weakening Your Own Side
Whatever the proximate cause, on both the right and the left, the common theme is the gradual sabotage of their own political side from within. During the 2024 presidential race, the pro-Palestinian radical left aggressively targeted President Joe Biden, and later heckled Vice President Kamala Harris as insufficiently radical. This undermined their own side in a race against former President Donald Trump, even while they described him literally as a fascist dictator.
Similarly on the right, defectors like Bannon, Carlson, and others are directing their agitation at President Trump and his base. They pay no mind to apparent successes, like the ongoing deportation campaign or crackdown on crime, instead focusing on repeating discredited Hamas death statistics, World War II revisionist history, complaining about insufficient transparency in the Jeffrey Epstein case, or conducting interviews about bizarre UFO conspiracies.
Fundamentally, these foreign campaigns are not really about specific issues, whether it’s Israel, Iran, Russia, or anything else. The fundamental goal is broader and far more dangerous. It’s the subversion of the American public and its confidence, not just in individual leaders but in our reality.
Expect matters to get only more bizarre. Consider a recent example. “Groypers” (a term used for fans of antisemitic podcaster Nick Fuentes) launched an online campaign endorsing Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom for president in 2028, a move curiously boosted by the X account of Zhao DaShuai, representative of the People’s Armed Police Propaganda Bureau of the PRC, an active X user. Coincidentally – or not – these efforts were synchronized with Newsom’s launch of a deliberately imitative “Trump-style” social media blitz. Newsom has been on a publicity tour targeting right-wing social media influencers and podcasters for months, who have largely greeted the liberal governor with open arms.
If the United States continues to funnel politics through the looking glass of social media, our policy debates, whether foreign or domestic, will continue to take on nightmarish qualities. As more think tank leaders, members of Congress, and even agency and cabinet secretaries are increasingly treating their social media platforms as auditions to be the “influencer in chief,” expect the situation to deteriorate.
As Soviet defector and subversion specialist Yuri Bezemenov noted, a country’s citizens must want to be subverted. As long as Americans continue to insist on engaging in politics almost exclusively in the online dream realm, we will find foreign bad actors prepared to turn it into a nightmare.
Kyle Shideler is Senior Analyst for Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism at the Center for Security Policy.
