Meet the pro-CCP Marxist revolutionary group behind the Mahmoud Khalil protests

Protests against the arrest of a pro-Palestine Columbia graduate student are being organized by a Marxist revolutionary group that is pro-Communism, anti-Israel, and has potential links to the Chinese Communist Party.

Mahmoud Khalil, a leader in the pro-Palestine and anti-Israel encampments at Columbia University, was detained earlier this month by the Trump administration, with the Department of Homeland Security arguing that he “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” The People’s Forum helped organize some of the campus chaos and is now organizing protests to free Khalil.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) is the pro-Palestine and anti-Israel group that sparked many of the student encampments at Columbia University. Khalil was a lead “negotiator” for CUAD as the group occupied buildings on Columbia’s campus in the wake of the deadly Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023.

A former CUAD leader, Khymani James, said that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and was eventually banned from campus. While CUAD initially apologized for James’s remarks, last October the group withdrew its apology and declared: “We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance… Long live the Intifada.” CUAD had also shared a message on Instagram stating that "we are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.”

“Following my previously signed Executive Orders, ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University,” President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social last week. “This is the first arrest of many to come."

The Trump Education Department has also pulled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of grants from Columbia and has provided the university with a list of demands to comply with.

Khalil’s large legal team is fighting his detention and deportation, writing in federal court that “this case concerns the government’s targeted, retaliatory detention and attempted removal of a student protestor because of his constitutionally protected speech.”

The Forum and Khalil

The People’s Forum has been a driving force behind protests condemning the detention and possible deportation of Khalil. There are scores of videos posted by the forum on social media detailing the group’s role in organizing, promoting, attending, and leading the pro-Khalil protests, including a rally outside a NYC courthouse and a “sit-in at Trump Tower.” Khalil’s legal team addressed the crowd at a protest organized by the forum. There is no indication that Khalil himself is involved in the protests by The People's Forum.

The communist group has connected its pro-Khalil efforts to its broader “Shut It Down For Palestine” street protest campaign and to its fight against ICE being allowed on campus. The group said that “we will take to the streets to demand the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil and reaffirm our commitment to struggle for a free Palestine.” The forum urged supporters to be “All Out for Mahmoud Khalil.”

"Zionist harassment campaigns"

The forum’s leader, Manolo De Los Santos, has also personally tweeted multiple times to promote the forum-led protests for Khalil.

The forum immediately promoted a petition the day after Khalil was arrested, with the petition contending that “Khalil has been the target of various zionist harassment campaigns.” Another petition by the forum — signed by a host of leftwing celebrities and activists — lamented that “Mahmoud is just the first target of the Trump Administration's newfound Anti-Semitism Task Force.”

The forum is currently helping organize a “powerful event” scheduled for this weekend “in support of Mahmoud Khalil, Palestine, and civil liberties.” The group says that Khalil’s legal team and anti-Israel celebrities such as Macklemore and Alana Hadid will be there. A flyer by the forum promoting the upcoming event says, “Free Mahmoud. Free Palestine.”

The Forum’s “Marxist Comrade”

A major patron for The People’s Forum is wealthy communist businessman Neville Roy Singham.

“For months we’ve been the target of a campaign that alleges our funding comes from ‘dark money.’ A few years ago we met Roy Singham, a Marxist comrade who sold his company & donated most of his wealth to non-profits that focus on political education, culture, & internationalism,” The People’s Forum tweeted in December 2021.

Singham married Jodie Evans, the co-founder of the radical left-wing group Code Pink, in 2017. Her group touts itself as antiwar and has become increasingly pro-China in recent years.

The New York Times reported that Singham works in Shanghai, that his efforts there are linked to the CCP, and that he has attended at least one CCP workshop on promoting the party globally. The outlet also reported that Singham provides backing for The People’s Forum.

The Free Beacon reported that key leaders for the forum “serve in top positions at Singham's Justice and Education Fund.” The outlet also reported that the network run by Singham is also behind BreakThrough Media and Dongsheng News, who both push pro-China narratives and whose content is regularly reshared by the forum.

The Free Press reported that Singham and Evans “have donated over $20.4 million to The People’s Forum from 2017 to 2022 through a series of shell organizations and donor advisory groups — accounting for nearly all of the group’s funding.” The outlet reported that the pro-China “No Cold War” group was also linked to Singham’s network. Singham was unable to be reached for comment, and The People's Forum did not respond to requests for comment from Just The News.

The People’s Forum “reported total revenue of $15,026,419, total expenses of $3,660,180, and $17,421,642 in net assets” in 2019, according to Influence Watch.

Praising the CCP

The forum is openly pro-China and has produced dozens of what it describes as teaching materials, many of them pro-CCP.

A multi-part series titled “China75” from October praised the Communist revolution in China, celebrating that “the Chinese Revolution triumphed and millions of Chinese people ‘stood up', signaling the beginning of a long journey of building socialism.” The advertisement for the course prominently featured a quote by Mao on how “we have stood up.”

The information in the “student portal” is almost universally laudatory toward Mao and the CCP. 

One lengthy “reading packet” by the forum describes Mao’s victory thusly: “The long revolutionary struggle to seize power and create a new China was successfully concluded. The CPC was then in a position to lead the Chinese people in building a socialist future.”

Another “reading packet” by the forum argues that “efforts to tackle the ‘three mountains’ of the high cost of housing, education, and health care faced by all Chinese people, including migrants, is at the center of the Chinese government’s vision and policy reforms towards ‘common prosperity’ for all its citizens and the building of a modern socialist society.”

And another “reading packet” by the forum “underscores the emerging multipolar world that China navigates as it forges an independent path of socialist development while confronting U.S. imperialist hostility.”

The forum celebrated last October that “75 years ago today, on October 1, 1949, the Chinese people stood up, taking their destiny into their own hands and rejecting the humiliation and exploitation imposed by Western powers” as it praised the CCP’s rule since then.

In reality, the CCP’s shambolic “land reform” movement, the massive famine resulting from the disastrous Great Leap Forward, and the torture and executions during the Cultural Revolution resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese people. The CCP’s “One Child Policy” was marked by surveillance, propaganda, and forced sterilizations and abortions, resulting in tens of millions of children — most of them girls — never being born.

The forum also repeatedly sided with China during the pandemic, arguing that “we firmly reject racist, xenophobic attempts to spread anti-Asian sentiments and specifically anti-Chinese rhetoric” and falsely claiming that “the people of China were able to take effective measures to rapidly contain the outbreak.”

"Challenging U.S. aggression on China"

The forum also launched a petition claiming: “McCarthyism Is Back: Together We Can Stop It. We stand together against the rise of a new McCarthyism that is targeting peace activists, critics of US foreign policy, and Chinese Americans.” And the forum has also promoted pro-CCP propaganda films.

The People’s Forum has repeatedly collaborated with a group called the Qiao Collective on events aimed at softening the image of the CCP and China.

The pro-CCP collective describes itself as “a diaspora Chinese media collective challenging U.S. aggression on China.” The collective says: “We aim to challenge rising U.S. aggression towards the People’s Republic of China and to equip the U.S. anti-war movement with the tools and analysis to better combat the stoking of a New Cold War conflict with China. We seek to be a bridge between the U.S. left and China’s rich Marxist, anti-imperialist political work and thought in order to foster critical consideration of the role of China and socialism with Chinese characteristics in contemporary geopolitics.”

Tiananmen Square called a "myth"

The collective praised “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” as being “the second great innovation in the Sinicization of Marxism-Leninism, the first being those advances enshrined under Mao Zedong Thought.”

The Qiao Collective claims that “the politicization of China’s anti-terrorism policies in Xinjiang is another front of the U.S.-led hybrid war on China.” The State Department determined in 2021 that the CCP was carrying out “crimes against humanity” and a “genocide” against the Uyghurs and other religious and ethnic minorities in China.

The collective also calls the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989 “a touchstone of a Western mythology spun to challenge the fundamental legitimacy of the Communist Party of China.” The State Department during the first Trump administration said that “we honor the heroic protest movement of the Chinese people that ended on June 4, 1989, when the Chinese Communist Party leadership sent tanks into Tiananmen Square to violently repress peaceful demonstrations.”

The collective also published a lengthy article connecting Mao’s revolution in China in a positive light with Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israel, including attempting to put a favorable spin on the Hamas attacks of October 7th.

The collective argued in a May 2020 event with the forum that “as the spread of COVID-19 exposes the dysfunction and illegitimacy of capitalist and imperialist system, we need to maintain an internationalist and working class analysis.” Layan Fuleihan, the forum’s education director, praised the Chinese response to COVID-19 and attacked the U.S. response.

The People’s Forum hosted another event with the collective in August 2020 on “Socialism vs. Barbarism: Understanding the New Cold War on China.” A video the forum shared promoting this conference argued that “China has accomplished amazing things” and that “China is not our enemy. China isn’t belligerent towards us. China just wants peace."

Santos described his comrades in the collective as “a courageous collective of Chinese in the diaspora who are fighting against the new wave of misinformation and disinformation against the People’s Republic of China” during the event, and said that “as revolutionaries” it is important to understand China. The speakers from the collective then spent more than an hour giving a lecture attacking the U.S. government and defending the CCP.

The forum also hosted the collective for another event — with Code Pink’s Jodie Evans in attendance — in September 2021, where self-described Marxist and communist Vijay Prashad praised the CCP and called the U.S. the world’s top enemy. Other speakers included Zhun Xu, a professor who joined Code Pink’s “China Is Not Our Enemy” campaign, and an assortment of other Marxists and communists. The People’s Forum has collaborated with them on the campaign.

The conference, titled “CHINA AND THE LEFT: A Socialist Forum,” aimed to “provide a space for those invested in challenging rise in the U.S.-led imperialist aggression on China to meet, strategize, and discuss.”

Celebrating October 7th

The day of the Hamas attack, forum leader Santos made multiple posts on X celebrating the attacks. “Long Live the Palestinian Resistance! This struggle for national liberation in Palestine has entered a decisive new phase against the genocidal occupation of their land & people,” De Los Santos tweeted that day as he shared a purported video of Hamas terrorists paragliding into Israel to carry out the terrorist attack.

He also tweeted that day: “The people have broken out! The heroic resistance of the Palestinian people is an example to all revolutionary movements.”

He also took issue with a tweet from philosopher Cornel West, who had contended that “the vicious Israeli occupation and the ugly Palestinian retaliation results in the killing of precious innocent people on both sides.” De Los Santos replied, "Long live the beautiful resistance of the Palestinian People! The only ugly thing here is the cowardice of those who think there are two sides to this struggle!”

Santos’s forum also organized a demonstration in Times Square on October 8th — the day after the Hamas attacks — where attendees voiced their support for the attack.

The forum shared the pro-Hamas slogan of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” — which implies the elimination of the state of Israel — one week after October 7th. Santos said in May 2024 that "we know more than ever that the Palestinian movement in the United States is serving as an anchor for our larger mass anti-imperialism movement,” according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), and he said that “we have to bring down this empire with one million cuts.”

MEMRI also reported that Santos also said at an October 2024 rally that "we have a common enemy – the Palestinians and us – our common enemy continues to be Washington D.C.” He also argued that “Israel is not a country! Israel is a U.S. military base in the Middle East.” Santos also praised the "glorious resistance” of terrorists in Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Gaza. The forum leader declared: "On October 7th, the Palestinian people broke out of a concentration camp.”

The Free Beacon reported in 2024 that the People’s Forum had “encouraged anti-Israel activists to re-create the violent protests of  ‘the summer of 2020’ just hours before rioters stormed and occupied a building on Columbia University’s campus.” Just the News previously reported on the presence of the People’s Forum and of Santos at other anti-Israel protests on New York college campuses.

Touting Communism

The People’s Forum is openly and proudly revolutionary and communist.

The forum ran classes on the Communist International and the history of the Communist Manifesto, and held a collective reading of and posted multiple study materials for the Communist Manifesto too. The group posted in remembrance of “comrade Che Guevara” in 2021. The forum also tweeted: “Every May 19th a revolutionary constellation appears in the sky. These stars provide clarity in the long night of capitalism and guide our path to liberation.” The forum said in 2022 that “today we celebrate the birth, life & legacy of Fidel Castro, a leader of the Cuban Revolution.” The group also picked writings from Ho Chi Minh to be “this year’s guiding text” during “Revolutionary Summer School.”

Just the News previously reported on forum leader Santos’s history of collaborating with officials from the Communist-run government of Cuba, including Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who succeeded Raúl Castro — the brother of Fidel Castro — as the leader of Cuba.

The Cuban president tweeted thanks to the forum in October “for your support and solidarity during these difficult times. Even if the US government maintains its genocidal policies, in Cuba we will always have a revolution of the people and for the people.” The forum has also touted its meetings with the Venezuelan government led by Nicolas Maduro.

Communist Merch

The forum also sells communist merchandise through its “1804 Books” — a shop named for the Haitian overthrow of French rule. The store “is your shop for socialist literature and revolutionary theory with internationalist resources for political education, organizing, & movement building.”

The online store contains a carefully cultivated selection of tracts, including a pile of anti-Israel and pro-Palestine works, multiple books advocating for communist revolution, The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, books focused on the writings and speeches of Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro, books lionizing Che Guevara, and defending the Bolshevik Revolution, Castro’s Cuba, Soviet Russia, and Communist China.

There are also books aimed at children such as “Coloring Our Socialism: A Socialist Coloring Book” and the anti-Israel “From the River to the Sea” coloring book. The forum also sells a Communist Manifesto pin.

“In 2023, the Communist Manifesto turned 175! The spirit of the Manifesto reverberated around the world, as working class people all over the world devoted themselves to the struggle for liberation, sovereignty, and socialism. Almost two centuries later, the fight continues!” the forum store advertises. “Join the masses who celebrate this monumental text and texts just like it, ones that give us an opening to critique capitalism, and compel us to organize and build a better world! Wear this pin proudly.”

The GOP Investigates

Congressional Republicans have called for investigations into The People’s Forum, its links to the CCP, and its role in anti-Israel protests, vandalism, and violence on campus.

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee wrote to the IRS in 2023 “with growing concern surrounding the influence of America’s foreign adversaries, including the CCP, on U.S.-based tax-exempt organizations” — and specifically pointed to The People’s Forum.

Then-senator and now Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Justice Department that year that “it appears that organizations tied to Neville Roy Singham, a U.S. citizen, have been receiving direction from the CCP.” The Republican-led House Natural Resources Committee sent a letter directly to Santos, the leader of the communist forum.

"The Committee is concerned with the CCP’s growing attempts to influence U.S. policies and that the relationship between the CCP and The People’s Forum may impact The People’s Forum’s political and advocacy activities, including those relating to the abuse of free speech," lawmakers wrote.

The communist outfit responded to GOP calls for investigations with derision: “The political assault against The People’s Forum is part of a larger effort by Republicans and other right-wing forces in Congress to criminalize and demonize Palestinian, Muslim-American, and anti-war organizations.”