Fidel Castro Acolyte Karen Bass Is No Stranger To Orchestrating Organized Chaos
By Breccan F. Thies
Written by Breccan F. Thies
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Bass believes that the use of taxpayer dollars to deploy the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to protect the city and its citizens, as well as federal law enforcement, is ‘shameful’ and ‘despicable’
With riots and looting destroying Los Angeles (again), it is important to remember that the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, reportedly led a radical Cuban communist cell that was part of a group responsible for radicalizing youth and organizing chaos.
In the 1970s, when Bass was in her 20s, she led the Southern California cell of Cuban Venceremos Brigade — a Fidel Castro regime-linked organization and alleged terror group started to subvert the United States and proliferate communism. After working as a “brigadista,” Bass climb the ranks to become an “organizer,” visiting Cuba every six months.
The rioting, looting, destruction, firebombing, assaults on federal officers, waving the Mexican flag, burning the American flag, and the like in her city — deemed by Democrats and their friends in the corporate media as “peaceful” — coupled with the failure of state and local law enforcement to protect the the citizens of Los Angeles is far less surprising when put in the context of Bass’s reported violent revolutionary sympathies.
She actually let the cat out of the bag on CNN recently, admitting that Los Angeles has a “rapid response network” of agitators, adding, “if they see ICE, they go out and they protest.”
And that is exactly what happened. But, whether the rioters knew it or not, the instigating factor was not even deportations, as they claim, but rather ICE conducting law enforcement operations against drug traffickers, child abusers, robbers, human traffickers, assaulters, and those with history of domestic violence, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Even if they were just deportation raids, that would still be a completely legitimate use of federal resources, particularly after, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put it, “21 million illegals have crossed our border under the previous administration.” But Bass’s response to the law enforcement operations seems more intent on running an agitation psy-op than simply wanting millions of illegals to stay in her city.
“I am deeply angered by what has taken place. These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city,” Bass said in a statement. “My Office is in close coordination with immigrant rights community organizations. We will not stand for this.”
DHS blamed Bass and other Democrats’ rhetoric for violence against ICE agents.
“Make no mistake, Democrat politicians like Hakeem Jeffries, Mayor Wu of Boston, Tim Walz, and Mayor Bass of Los Angeles are contributing to the surge in assaults of our ICE officers through their repeated vilification and demonization of ICE,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. “From comparisons to the modern-day Nazi gestapo to glorifying rioters, the violent rhetoric of these sanctuary politicians is beyond the pale. This violence against ICE must end.”
In a news conference, Bass essentially threatened more violence unless federal law enforcement stops in the city, as White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said, adding, “The Mayor of LA is effectively saying the mob violence is caused by the mere presence of ICE in the city and the violence against ICE will not stop unless federal law enforcement is withdrawn from the city. This is the definition of insurrection. LA and CA leadership demand the right to illegally import unlimited foreigners into America, to control America’s entire immigration policy by fiat — and if they are not so permitted they will allow mobs to target ICE with impunity.”
But organized violence appears to be a concept Bass is already familiar with.
Despite denying that she was in a leadership role in her communist organization, an October 1975 issue of the Daily World, a communist newspaper, described her as the “leader of the Venceremos Brigade in southern California.”
Part of the Brigade’s mission was to “develop solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and the peoples of the Third World,” “promote and develop the political formation of the progressive forces in the US,” and “educate the US movement to an anti-imperialist consciousness.”
The Brigade targeted the most radical members of the American left and organized trips to Cuba for almost 50 years. Julie Nichamin, an original organizer of the Brigade, said that the trips would encourage participants to reflect on whether they were “really making a contribution toward destroying Amerikan [sic] imperialism and building a revolution in this country.”
On June 15, 2010, the Central Intelligence Agency said of the organization, “In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the WUO, the Venceremos Brigade, and similar ‘New Left’ groups in the United States had extensive contacts with and support from the governments and intelligence services of the Soviet Union, Cuba, North Vietnam, Communist China, and some East European Soviet satellites.”
In 1972, investigator Dwight Crews testified that those entering the Brigade were required to profess they are “Marxist-Leninist,” submit to 14 weeks of “twice-per-week indoctrination sessions,” and fill out a “detailed application” in order to obtain membership.
Bass posted a picture of her first trip to Cuba in 1973 to commemorate her visit with former President Barack Obama in 2016.
The March post preceded Castro’s eventual November 2016 death, for which Bass issued a press release honoring and affectionately referring to the dictator, stating, “As Cuba begins nine days of mourning, I wish to express my condolences to the Cuban people and the family of Fidel Castro. The passing of the Comandante en Jefe is a great loss to the people of Cuba.”
Bass had also admitted to traveling to see Castro speak on multiple occasions and called him “extremely charismatic.”
The “rapid response network” to which Bass referred on CNN is partially run by the far-left American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California, which encourages reporting ICE activity to the local networks within the organization.
One of those local networks is the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), which received tens of millions of dollars from the Biden administration and is an agitator group in Southern California, according to the New York Post. CHIRLA was behind anti-ICE protests last week, and has seen an increase in funding from the state of California, having received $34 million from the government in 2023, more than doubling the $12 million it received in 2022.
CHIRLA denied having any connection to the current violence in Los Angeles, despite admitting to having “organized a press event” and rally to protest the actions — and the fact that the riots last week were in direct response to ICE arresting violent criminals.“We have not participated, coordinated, or been part of the protests being registered in Los Angeles other than the press conference and rally cited above,” a CHIRLA spokesman told the Post.
As Vice President J.D. Vance put it — undercutting the Gov. Gavin Newsom’s narrative that none of the violence was happening before the federal government became involved — “Newsom and his stooge Karen Bass fomented and encouraged the riots, because their entire political movement exists for one purpose: to promote mass migration into our country. It is their reason for being.”
It is unclear if Bass is using her communist organizing ties to inform the rioters in the city she is supposed to govern, but the rioters themselves do appear to be quite organized and totally inorganic.
The inorganic nature of the riots is displayed even in the details of the shields (which in some cases involve a labor-intense process to make plywood with handles look like cardboard protest signs) that have been seen in the 2020 George Floyd riots and the 2024 pro-Palestine protests.
Organizing groups reportedly hand out protective gear and other equipment to the supposedly organic rioters for them to use during the violence. The protests also appear calculated to put responders to the violence in what is called a “decision dilemma,” where law enforcement is forced to either negotiate and meet demands or react with force.
Blockading, taking over buildings, or putting themselves and others at risk are actions protesters use to evoke a reaction from authorities that make it seem like the rioters are innocent on camera, particularly by positioning sympathetic-seeming rioters in positions to undergo a high-visibility arrest. Such tactics might include drawing attention to the elderly, or bringing a baby to a riot, or platforming persons from certain ethnic groups that might not normally be associated with the movement (e.g., a white person being arrested at a Black Lives Matter riot might make an observer believe this is a widespread movement for justice).
The organized rioters are able to create maximum unrest and damage because they are allegedly so well-funded — potentially by groups like CHIRLA, an organization that was getting grant funding from the Biden administration and the state of California.
Without a sense of irony, Bass believes that the use of taxpayer dollars to deploy the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to protect the city and its citizens, as well as federal law enforcement executing immigration law, is “shameful” and “despicable.”
Maybe that’s because she’s asking herself if she is “really making a contribution toward destroying Amerikan [sic] imperialism and building a revolution in this country.”
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This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
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