Eco-Terrorists Crowdsource Harassment and Terror

ByDaniel Greenfield June 25, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog 

Some leftist groups beat around the bush about what they stand for and what they do.

Not ‘Climate Defiance’ which is running a fundraiser to ‘Make Complicit Climate Cowards’ Lives F____g Miserable’.

The ecoterrorist group which boasts of having “fully shut down Joe Manchin’s keynote” and “made pipeline lover Amy Klobuchar flee the stage at her own book launch party” is also pretty clear about what donors can buy by funding the environmentalist group.

For $100, you get “photography for one direct action” while $1,000 buys you a “whole keynote speech shutdown, soup-to-nuts”.

Funding for this illegal activity is being processed by Stripe and PayPal. Both companies have a history of suspending conservatives, but have no objection to allowing leftists to directly subsidize harassment of elected officials. When contacted for a comment, they did not reply.

But Climate Defiance’s operations also share a funding platform with the DNC.

Climate Defiance announced its fundraiser for a “a bold action to blockade the White House Correspondents Dinner on April 29th to call attention to President Biden’s failed campaign promise to stop drilling on Federal Lands” on the Action Network.

That same month, Declare Emergency, another eco terrorist group, made headlines by vandalizing Degas’ Little Dancer sculpture case at the National Gallery of Art. Even though the two perpetrators were indicted by a federal grand jury, no action was taken against the group despite its flyers being left at the scene and Declare Emergency urging others to follow suit.

Declare Emergency has retained its 501(c)(4) status despite this criminal activity. Tax code regulations clearly state that illegal and criminal activity voids any such status, but as the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s IRS investigations have shown, leftist eco-terrorists, actual terrorists and pedophiles have been able to retrain C3 and C4 status no matter what their crimes are.

The eco terrorist group linked to the Degas attack, like Climate Defiance, fundraises through Action Network. And they are not alone. Freedom Center investigations have shown that Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March, the DSA and Communist Party USA and Antifa all fundraise through the Action Network. As does the Democratic National Committee.

The Action Network, like Climate Defiance and Declare Emergency, is a 501(c)(4) and it shows the entanglement of the Democrat establishment with the far Left even when its extremists are targeting Senate Democrats and the White House for not adopting their full radical agenda.

The eco terrorists aren’t just funneling money through 501(c)(4)s, but have received funding from an actual 501(c)(3) organization that has to meet the gold standard of charitable activities.

Eco-terrorism and any kind of illegal actions are very definitely not on the list.

Climate Defiance, currently crowdsourcing the harassment of elected officials, received a grant from the Climate Emergency Fund. The Climate Emergency Fund is a 501(c)(3) backed by, among others, Aileen Getty, a Getty Oil heiress, Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the deceased senator, and leftist director Adam McKay.

Its support for eco terrorism has never been subtle and the Freedom Center had previously exposed its funding of attacks on paintings in Europe by Just Stop Oil. Like Climate Defiance and Declare Emergency, Just Stop Oil engages in ‘direct action’ and made headlines by splashing tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting in London’s National Gallery.

The Climate Emergency Fund has been linked to the funding of numerous ecoterrorist activities around the country, including the Atlanta Forest Defenders, who were described in an arrest affidavit as a “group classified by the United States Department of Homeland Security as Domestic Violent Extremists” after violent riots and assaults that ended in at least one death.

But Climate Defiance, a listed CEF grantee, is further testing whether the IRS will cover for leftists or enforce the law by directly targeting.Senator Manchin, Senator Klobuchar and brags of having shut down “keynote addresses by Biden’s two top climate advisors”.

The Biden administration and the IRS could easily put a stop to this if they choose to. The violations are blatant and pulling the Climate Emergency Fund’s nonprofit status is as straightforward as it gets. The tax code and precedent make it abundantly clear that illegal activities and protests are incompatible with tax-exempt status for charities.

The Fund has lied to the IRS by falsely claiming in its 990s that it “supports only nonviolent, legal activities”. Even the briefest glance at its grantees and partners, and its own rhetoric, makes it clear that it supports organizations engaged in illegal activities.

And that was obvious even before Climate Defiance began crowdsourcing “Make Complicit Climate Cowards’ Lives F____g Miserable” which offered donors the opportunity to donate $1,000 to fund the shutdown of an event by public officials.

Why won’t the Biden administration stop this even when its own personnel are being targeted?

The American Left is the tail that wags the Democrat dog. The Biden administration would rather be slapped around by its own political extremists than take action against them. Biden’s Justice Department tried to go after mothers protesting at school board meetings as domestic terrorists, but doesn’t have anything to say when actual leftist domestic terrorists target it.

The Climate Emergency Fund is also funded by the Democrat donors that Biden and his party are not about to offend. That includes Aileen Getty, who has provided generous support to Obama, Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Raphel Warnock and others. In an op-ed after the National Gallery attack, Getty defended the vandalism of a classic painting and admitted that “I proudly provide funding to the Climate Emergency Fund” which makes grants to vandals including “Just Stop Oil”, but claimed that she does “not fund these groups directly” and does not control them.

That has always been the familiar excuse of the funders of terrorist groups around the world.

While Democrats and their media continue to posture about an insurrection, their donors and their platforms are funding an actual insurrection that includes eco terrorists targeting Congress and even occupying Pelosi’s office. This continuing green assault is made possible by the complicity of the IRS in allowing 501(c)(3) charities and 501(c)(4) platforms and activist groups to continue funding vandalism, riots and attacks on elected officials.

The real Complicit Climate Cowards are in the IRS. Those complicit climate cowards are the reason why art is under siege and events are closed down. The IRS has ignored the law, allowed eco terrorists to abuse the tax code, to destroy culture and intimidate elected officials.

The vandalism of paintings, the disruption of events and the attacks on Congress could be stopped very easily. The IRS could end it in a month if it enforced the law, but the same organization that sends chills down the spines of ordinary taxpayers is terrified of using its nearly limitless power to hold even the worst leftist nonprofit abusers accountable.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.