Behind France's student riots: Communists, unions and a global propaganda network

When young adults stormed France's Bastille Thursday, a little-known media outlet called BreakThrough News sent followers a "BREAKING" alert: "French students flood Bastille Square in Paris." But that isn't the full story.

A Fox News Digital investigation has found that a transnational network of far-left communist and socialist organizations is seizing on France’s fiery student protests to advance a wider political and ideological agenda, using tactics deployed in the United States over the past decade to amplify unrest, deepen divisions and project an image of chaos.

Earlier in the week, BreakThrough News splashed another headline across the front of its website: "French students shut down schools in historic strike against austerity," mobilizing "with support from unions and progressive forces." But those "progressive forces" aren't limited to students demanding education reform as part of their "Lycéenne Mobilisation," or high school student mobilization.

From France to the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Greece and India, adults with deep pockets are tapping France's school protests and turning a domestic education dispute into a platform for broader political and ideological confrontation.

BreakThrough News is a pro-communist propaganda outlet based in New York City, funded by an American-born, Shanghai-based communist tech tycoon, Neville Roy Singham, who has financed a network of communist and far-left groups in the U.S. that have capitalized on grievances to stoke similar street unrest for almost a decade.

A Fox News Digital investigation traces how a movement that the media is mostly framing as students protesting deteriorating school conditions is actually part of an extensive infrastructure of unions, communist activists, far-left political parties and international media organizations that are organizing demonstrations, calling strikes, mobilizing supporters and broadcasting the unrest around the world with "BREAKING" alerts.

In a digital analysis of scores of news articles, social media posts and public statements, Fox News Digital has identified 50 organizations in the French student protest movement and its wider network of supporters and international amplifiers, revealing an activist ecosystem extending far beyond the students who launched the demonstrations.

In the network of 50 groups, 15 are student or youth groups, including several communist youth movements and a Muslim student association.