When activities, funding, and ideology line up with a foreign adversary
Merriam-Webster defines a “fifth column” in its original, literal sense as “a group of secret sympathizers or supporters of an enemy that engage in espionage or sabotage within defense lines or national borders.” This 1936 definition has been broadened to include groups involved in subversion of vulnerable minorities or immigrants and/or collusion with a foreign power.
This is Part II of an article that is analyzing five proto-fifth-column cluster categories in the U.S. that conform to the broader definition. Part I examined foreign influence and intelligence operations, mass immigration and sanctuary policy advocates, and Islamist networks tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR. This part looks at far-left militant and propaganda networks and other fifth column candidates, as well as examines where the interests among the categories align and concludes the series with monitoring recommendations for the future.
Note: analysis results in this part are assigned to one of three evidentiary tiers:
- [Documented] means confirmed by court record, government designation, sworn testimony, or primary source document.
- [Credible/Contested] means reported by named officials, congressional committees, or investigative journalism, but disputed, unresolved, or based on a single source.
- [Speculative/Analogical] means an inference, pattern, or rhetorical framing rather than an established fact.
The analysis goal throughout is to “keep things clean” so that the reader can discern documented fact from informed speculation.
CATEGORY 4: FAR-LEFT MILITANT AND PROPAGANDA NETWORKS
These are domestic actors whose organizing, funding, and messaging align with foreign adversaries and treat the U.S. political order as the enemy.
[Documented]: Antifa is not a membership organization but is a decentralized militant milieu, which is precisely why it resists conventional designation; there is no single entity to designate, accordingly. In November 2025, the State Department made its first-ever such move, naming four European cells (including Antifa Ost) as Specially Designated Global Terrorists.
In August 2026, State separately sanctioned Autistici/Inventati (“A/I Collective”), an Italy-based encrypted communications provider, after finding it supplied digital infrastructure used by both Portland-area Antifa accounts and by accounts linked to Hamas, PFLP, and the IRGC. Note: that is a documented shared-vendor relationship, not a documented command relationship.
[Documented]: the Neville Singham-funded network is the best-evidenced part of this category. Singham, who sold ThoughtWorks for $785 million in 2017, has since funneled roughly $591 million across 223 transactions (2017-2025) through six nonprofits to some 2,000 organizations, per a 2026 House Financial Services subcommittee hearing (“Trojan Horses”). The largest named recipient is the Justice and Education Fund, Inc., a New York grant-making hub, at $68.7 million. The People’s Forum, a New York organizing and events hub, received $22.44 million. Tricontinental Ltd., a Massachusetts-based research and messaging outfit, received $16.76 million, and CodePink, the anti-war activist group, received $1.33 million.
CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans is married to Singham. CBS News and multiple outlets report CodePink softened its public position on China, including on Uyghur genocide allegations, after the funding relationship began. Singham is under grand jury investigation in the Southern District of New York, with the inquiry reportedly expanding from Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) violations into tax and money-laundering questions.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and its ANSWER Coalition arm operate in the same organizing space – anti-ICE, anti-Israel, and pro-Cuba/Venezuela campaigns – and share personnel and platforms with the Singham-funded outlets, though PSL’s own funding is less thoroughly documented than the entities described above.
[Credible/Contested]: congressional witnesses (Christine Balling and Michael Gonzalez) characterized the network’s aim as working to “disrupt and destroy from within,” and outlets across the political spectrum, including the leftwing World Socialist Web Site, have described the federal probe as political motivated. No indictments have yet been returned regarding congressional findings and testimonies.
CATEGORY 5: OTHER FIFTH COLUMN CANDIDATES
Two more clusters are worth naming at different evidentiary tiers.
[Speculative/Analogical]: a “red-green alliance” thesis, advanced in a Washington Times op-ed citing an Israeli counterterrorism researcher, argues Cuban intelligence-linked entities (ICAP, Resumen Latinoamericano) function as a connective node between Iran-aligned Islamist networks and U.S. activist groups, including some already named in Category 4. It is included here because it names real organizations and cites real but thin sourcing because there is no cited DoJ, FBI, or congressional finding.
[Speculative/Analogical]: transnational cartel and cartel-linked networks that exercise de facto parallel authority in parts of U.S. border communities – e.g., taxation, dispute resolution, coerced labor, corridor control – arguably meet a fifth column-adjacent definition (a parallel authority structure operating inside sovereign territory) even without any ideological or political program. This is a criminal governance problem more than an ideological one, but it belongs on the list of “parallel societies” associated with fifth column movements intending to supplant the existing order.
WHERE INTERESTS ALIGN
One premise behind this article – that unorganized groups can still create strategic risk through convergent interest – has real support in the record, short of a proven joint command that coordinates all activities.
Documented common cause. Islamist-linked and far-left networks have repeatedly co-organized on two issues: opposition to Israel/pro-Palestinian mobilization, and opposition to immigration enforcements. CAIR chapters, PSL/ANSWER, and Singham-funded outlets have appeared as co-sponsors or con-promoters of the same protest actions and campaigns since 2023, per event listings and the organizations’ own public materials. This is documented as co-appearance and co-promotion, not as centrally directed coordination.
Both clusters also independently produce messaging that a foreign adversary state (China on Xinjiang/Taiwan, Iran on Israel, and Cuba on sanctions) would regard as favorable, without needing to prove either cluster takes direction from that state to describe the effect as convergent.
Structural overlap. The A/I Collective sanctions show Antifa-linked and Hamas/IRGC/Hezbollah-linked accounts sharing the same encrypted infrastructure vendor, which is not proof of joint operations per se, but is a documented point of technical convergence worth tracking.
The Singham financial network is the clearest funding overlap. It reaches explicitly Marxist-Leninist organizing (PSL-adjacent groups), anti-war/anti-Israel messaging (CodePink), and general left media (BreakThrough) from a single donor with reported CCP-aligned messaging preferences – meaning one funding source already spans several of the categories in this article.
Deliberate synthesis – what to watch for. Here is what would count as evidence of deliberate synthesis versus incidental overlap among these groups going forward:
- Shared board members, signatories, or legal counsel appearing across CAIR-linked, PSL/ANSWER, and Singham-funded entities simultaneously, rather than sequentially.
- Joint fundraising appeals or shared bank/payment-processing infrastructure spanning the Islamist and far-left clusters.
- Messaging synchronized in timing and phrasing across outlets in different clusters within hours of a foreign state news cycle (a pattern UFWD and IRGC information operations are documented to use elsewhere).
- A cluster’s public position reversing to match a foreign patron’s interest shortly after a funding relationship begins. The documented CodePink/China pattern is the template to watch for elsewhere.
- Formal coalition structures (shared 501(c) fiscal sponsorship and joint press operations) rather than one-off protest co-sponsorship.
Absent those, what exists today is real, worth monitoring, and short of a fifth column in Gen. Mola’s sense: parallel grievances, overlapping tactics, and in at least one case (Singham) a shared funding source – but not yet a demonstrated unified command. However, the clusters are inching toward coordination which is just one degree of separation from an integrated (and potentially distributed) command structure.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
It should be noted that the term “fifth column” has been weaponized in the past against minority populations such as the Japanese who were interred during World War-II, as well as against Americans of German descent during both world wars. Nevertheless, documented foreign influence operations, a court-tested organization with ties to a terrorism financing case, and a $591 million CCP-adjacent funding network are not manufactured; they are in the public record as cited in this article.
The most defensible version of the premise that drove this article’s analysis is narrower than “a fifth column” and broader than nothing: several distinct domestic and foreign-linked networks have documented, sometimes overlapping records of hostility to American constitutional order. At least one of them (CCP united front and IRGC linked operations) meets the term’s original meaning, and at least two more (the CAIR/Muslim Brotherhood cluster and the Singham-funded left ecosystem) have court records, government designations, or congressional financial tails that go well beyond ordinary political disagreement. What is not yet documented is a unified command linking them together.
For ongoing tracking of proto-fifth column groups in America, four things matter most:
- The outcome of the SDNY Singham grand jury, which will either produce an indictment establishing FARA/tax violations or close without charges;
- Whether Florida’s CAIR designation proceeds and whether any federal designation follows the Texas and Florida state actions;
- Further A/I Collective-style disclosures showing shared infrastructure or funding across the Islamist and far-left clusters, per the synthesis indicators outlined above; and
- DoD FARA enforcement patterns following the 2025 Bondi memo and NSPM-7, which reportedly tightened enforcement.
A constitutional republic depends on a background assumption that political contestation happens inside agreed rules – i.e., elections, courts, a free press, and lawful advocacy within the establish rule of law – rather than through covert foreign direction or a strategy of long-term institutional capture and replacement. George Washington’s Farewell Address warned against exactly this vulnerability: “the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake” to foreign influence, which he called “one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”
That warning was not abstract in 1796 and is not abstract now: a UFWD memo naming American universities as targets, a terrorism-financing case naming an organization’s founders, and a $591 million funding network reshaping what U.S. nonprofits say about a foreign government are not partisan talking points; they are the kind of documented facts self-government requires citizens to know about their own institutions and elected officials.
Vigilance and legality have to move together, or the vigilance defeats its own purpose. FARA enforcement, congressional oversight, state and federal terrorist designations subject to court challenge, and investigative journalism are the lawful instruments discussed in this two-part series. They are also the instruments that keep the republic’s response to real threats from becoming a threat of its own.
Preserving the constitutional order, in other words, is not just a matter of identifying which networks are hostile to it; it is a matter of answering and countering them only with the tools the Constitution itself provides.
The end.
StuinSD is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support his work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This article originally appeared in Stu Cvrk’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA