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The Riots Never Came: Has The Protest Machine Stalled, Or Is It Regrouping

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Authored...

Summer has ended without riots.

In Part One, we examined whether Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's crackdown on NGOs was having an effect. We now revisit that question, examining the far-left groups and subversion networks involved in mounting a revolution against the U.S.

The National Network on Cuba released a "National Rapid Response Plan" that called for nationwide actions against U.S. bases, ICE, and other federal facilities. Nothing happened. Black Alliance for Peace published an interactive map of U.S. military bases, urging their followers to use the map to find facilities in their communities and "strategize how and where to organize and agitate." Again, Nothing happened.

The Marxist Neville Roy Singham network, which has become the primary driver of the protest-industrial complex nationwide, also seems to have lost its momentum despite opening up Liberation Centers across the country to organize protests. Despite their deep pockets and extensive infrastructure for mobilization, they also seem to be unable to mobilize large crowds of their comrades as they used to post-October 7th. ANTIFA, which was designated by the Trump administration as a domestic terrorist organization in September of 2025, also appears to be on its back heels and unable to take control of public space in the way they did in Portland during the Summer of Love riots of 2020.

So we must ask ourselves, why?

It is not as if Democrats have actually gathered the courage to oppose the rising extremist networks in their own party. Quite the opposite. Congressman Jerry Nadler even went on the record once and stated that ANTIFA is only an idea. Party leaders have had no choice but to embrace the far-left, such as DSA, even calling their party a "big tent." 

Gavin Newsom tacitly welcomes the DSA into the Democratic Party, saying he wants "a big tent party":

The reason that the violent Marxist revolution against the West might be on its back heels is that the Cuban regime is on its back heels. This would prove Secretary Rubio's State Department correct in the theory that all revolutionary activist networks in the U.S. are in fact deeply connected to the Cuban regime and its intelligence service, all of whom have recently been sanctioned.

We laid this all out in December 2025:

In July, the State Department released a report titled "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism." The report outlined a sprawling 60-plus years of history between American far-left revolutionaries and how they were all influenced, trained, and working in coordination with the Cuban intelligence service and their front group, ICAP. In the beginning of the Castro regime, Students for a Democratic Society made a pilgrimage to Cuba, which marks the beginning of the Venceremos Brigade. Upon their return to America, the most radical members of SDS split off to form the Weather Underground, which would soon become America's most prominent domestic terrorist organization, who Cuba covertly supported during their campaign of violence.

It is hard for people today to imagine America experiencing regular bombings by left-wing radicals, but as per the State Department's report: "In one 18-month period between 1971 and 1972, the FBI counted some 2,500 bombings on American soil – a rate of nearly five a day."

The State Department has recently sanctioned the Cuban president, their intelligence service, ICAP, and ICAP's president Fernando González. And since this has happened, the "calls for revolution" by the Singham network and the National Network on Cuba - over 60 organizations - have not stopped, but have gone unanswered. The actions against Cuba and ICAP appear to have disrupted the revolutionary pipeline. 

As video evidence posted by Stu Smith of the Manhattan Institute has shown: everything the NNOC does is per the direction of ICAP. And now that ICAP is on their back heels, the revolution against America, capitalism, and democracy doesn't seem to be gaining ground anywhere except in politics, where the DSA - also partnered with ICAP - is supporting the Cuban regime and their ideology politically, but not via violent Marxist revolution.

Earlier on Tuesday, President Trump told the United Nations General Assembly in New York that Cuba has spent decades coordinating with far-left revolutionaries and subversion networks into the U.S. Trump said the State Department has worked to uncover Havana's ties to subversive and radical groups such as the Communist Party USA, Antifa, and the DSA. 

The New York Post recently reported that Treasury officials are drafting a framework to audit NGOs suspected of exploiting their 501(c)(3) status for political activity, illegal conduct, or support of radical groups, which has only put left-wing billionaire foundations and donor-advised funds on notice. 

The question is whether the federal government's war on the radical left and the foreign subversion network that seeks to sow chaos has shaken that protest-industrial complex to its core. A source told the New York Post that officials were "like a dog with a bone" and reckoned that many NGOs and their donor bases could be "on borrowed time."

Also, the dismantling of USAID might have been another reason funding for riots is drying up, alongside the federal government's pressure on donor-advised funds and large left-wing foundations that are now thinking twice before funding riots and chaos as their 501(c)(3) status comes into the crosshairs. 

Then there's the complete fall of socialism across almost the entire South American region, as right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro could defeat socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva early next month in the Brazilian election and cement the entire continent's shift to the right. Shifting to Europe, the continent is set to "lurch right" according to Normua analysts. 

The riots never came, and the torching of small businesses seen during the BLM unrest was not repeated. The question now is whether that reflects diminished mobilization capacity, a shift in tactics, or a temporary lull. 

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