The initial event reportedly drew more than five million people scattered across the country in various cities, determined to have their voices heard, to push back against Trump’s policies and to convince anybody within earshot that the elected US president is an authoritarian leader who must be stopped. “The crowd was populated mostly by Baby Boomers,” said Rufo in the City Journal, “who appeared to be living out a political fantasy, in which they could ‘stop fascism’ by reenacting the protest movements of their youth.”
And today, October 18, expect much of the same. “[M]illions of us are rising again,” explains the event’s website, “to show the world: America has no kings, and the power belongs to the people.” Of course the power belongs to the people – that’s how Trump returned to the White House: The people chose him. Though if you believe the progressive narrative, when millions of Americans protested in June, the president was mere inches away from getting crowned. But thankfully, the “world saw the power of the people, and President Trump’s attempt at a coronation collapsed under the strength of a movement rising against his abuses of power,” claims the No Kings website. Phew.
This occurred on the same day the president hosted a military parade in DC to commemorate the army’s 250th anniversary – it was also his 79th birthday. But No Kings protesters deliberately avoided the nation’s capital, which might be how they successfully stopped an imaginary coronation.
Truth appears secondary. It’s likely more about shaping public opinion and less about the reality of Trump’s presidency – or reality in general. Maybe some people just want to be a part of something and lose themselves in a crowd for a day. Philosopher Eric Hoffer put it best in his 1951 book True Believer:
“A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves—and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.”
But the funders and organizers, the puppeteers – well, their motives are likely much different.
Astroturf
One of the lead organizers of No Kings is Indivisible, self-described as “a grassroots movement of thousands of local Indivisible groups with a mission to elect progressive leaders, rebuild our democracy, and defeat the Trump agenda.” Grassroots might be a bit of a misdirection. George Soros’ Open Society Foundations has given the left-wing group seven grants since its conception in 2017. According to OSF’s website, the last contribution was in 2023, a two-year grant of $3 million “to support the grantee's social welfare activities.” Many of the nearly 200 partners that No Kings advertises on its website have also apparently received funds from OSF.
The day before the first No Kings protests, Fox News published an opinion piece by Asra Q. Nomani, editor-in-chief of a nonprofit initiative called the Pearl Project, in which she did a deep dive into who’s behind the No Kings curtain. She discovered all its partners are aligned with the Democratic Party and collectively bring in “$2.1 billion in annual revenues.” The list of partners hasn’t changed since June and includes Democratic political action committees, “official entities of the Democratic National Committee,” and labor unions, such as the American Federation of Teachers. The ACLU is also a partner of No Kings, along with 75 other political non-profits.
Welcome to the resistance, a well-funded political machine advertised as grassroots activism, seemingly using progressive protesters as pawns to spread a pre-packaged story that appears to hinge on hatred. “This is what is behind these protests,” said Nomani, “elite partisan leaders in ideologically motivated networks using the mask of social justice to wage political and cultural warfare in America.”
They don't even look as if they're trying to hide the Astroturf propping up this operation. Maybe that's because few people seem to be paying attention, which is probably how so many on the left are fully convinced Trump is an authoritarian. Perhaps the most baffling part of it all is that even if the protests have zero impact on the political realm, everybody involved with No Kings can likely still say the endeavor was successful since the president was, in fact, not crowned king of America. Turns out fictitious problems are easy to solve.
