December 1st, 2022 | RYAN TYLER

Mobs On Demand: The Truth About Paid Protesters

Poor and downtrodden people are sometimes paid to riot and protest.

We've seen the protests and shouting matches across America and Canada. We've seen the hordes of black-clad thugs throwing bricks, shouting people off stages and shutting down public events. We've seen them organize and coordinate in ways that most low-income people can't. Just like the barbarians who sacked Rome, they're driven by their shared hatred of other people's wealth and success. This is reflected and proven not only by their Marxist symbols and black flags, but by the fact that their services are available at such low costs. These thugs and savages who throw bricks and shout down peaceful people aren't wealthy or successful—they're poor, jealous and starved for money and ways to vent their anger. This is what makes the business of supplying crowds so successful. It's also what makes them mostly left-wing and anti-capitalist.

Most of the highly publicized protests we've been seeing across America aren't spontaneous or random. They're organized, coordinated and funded. Minus a few cling-ons who join in on the chaos, most of the protesters and thugs—like the ones who shut down speeches and light things on fire at universities—are bought and paid for. They cover their faces not only because they're cowards, but because they don't want their identities to be traced back to their employers. Once a person is identified, the risks of being exposed as actors or paid protesters become greater. Being exposed creates problems for the people who hire crowd services, the crowd services themselves, and the protesters who get paid by crowd services.

To get a better perspective on all of this, we can take a look at one particular crowd service called Crowds On Demand. Not all crowd services are as public as Crowds On Demand, but this company's existence proves that there is a demand for the types of services it provides. Before going any further, it's important to mention that Crowds On Demand hasn't been linked to any violent or illegal protests and—as far as we can tell—the company does not support or promote violence. The same can't be said for less legitimate, low-key service providers.

Crowd Services

Crowds On Demand was founded by a guy named Adam Swart in 2012. Swart is from California and worked as a reporter for Patch.com before he founded Crowds On Demand, or CoD. The company started out by providing “celebrity arrival services” to ordinary people and politicians. This service consisted of driving clients around in fancy cars and limousines and placing small crowds of fawning fans and paparazzi at their destinations. This service created the illusion of fame for clients who could afford it. Since then, Crowds On Demand has grown into a burgeoning business with clientele across America and operations in California, Las Vegas, New York City and—you guessed it—Washington DC.

According to an interview Swart gave to LAist in 2012, requests from “big players” on the Los Angeles political scene started pouring in early on:

We've had some pretty interesting requests from some of the political candidates in the Los Angeles spring election. We don't reveal our clients unless they ask us to but we've definitely been in contact with some of the 'big players' on the political scene. So, the most interesting 'request' was for a political protest against a candidate's opponent... we're working to make sure that the protest is appropriate as we are an honorable business and would never want to spread anything that is false about anyone.

A couple of years after that interview, CoD ended up with a branch conveniently located in Washington D.C., near Capitol Hill. Most of the company's operations are directly run out of its head office in Los Angeles, but the company has been caught advertising its services in major cities across America. By 2014, CoD was getting paid more than $51,000 from wealthy capitalists like Tim Draper to organize crowds in support of political initiatives. In Draper's case, his campaign paid CoD to provide services for his failed “Six Californias” campaign, which sought to divide California into six different states.

In 2013, Vice interviewed Swart at a fake protest that was organized to raise awareness for mental health. Swart told Vice that most of CoD's clients range from up-and-coming celebrities to charities, and their services start in the low thousands. When asked how much his protesters get paid, Swart told Vice that the protesters at the mental health rally were being paid $15 per hour—which is where activists across North America are trying to take minimum wage.

In 2015, Swart told CNN that CoD started by helping up-and-coming celebrities get attention, but then “started fielding political requests to provide crowds for world leaders and US political candidates at the federal, state and local level, or to conduct rallies and protests in support or opposition to an issue”.

As CoD proves, there is a huge market for paid protests and rallies. The only problem is, there appears to be a huge market for violent disruptions and aggressive mobs as well. Providing less savoury services can't be done out in the open, so this is when paid protesters and disruptors need masks to protect themselves, their employers and their employer's clients.

When clients mean business and are looking for more than peaceful rent-a-fan services like CoD, they turn to companies and organizations that filter money through several sources and organizations before sending it to the front lines. Activist organizations, environmental organizations (especially those) and political action groups will try to hide their individual donors by funnelling money back and forth and making it difficult to trace. As we see in the environmental movement, wealthy individuals and industrialists donate to organizations who then donate to other organizations who donate to other organizations—and so forth—until their money becomes almost untraceable. At some point, their money ends up in the pockets of unemployed degenerates who are looking to smash windows and intimidate ordinary people for crack money.

When looking at organizations that provide protests on demand, we can't just look at the free market. Labour unions have been organizing astroturf rallies and protests for generations. In fact, it was labour unions that mastered the art of disruption, division and barbarism. Andrew Breitbart infamously confronted and exposed SEIU staging a protest at Right Nation in 2010. Protesters held signs accusing Glenn Beck and Breitbart of racism with the SEIU insignia on the back. They shouted profanities and were at times whisked away by SEIU organizers after yelling homophobic aspersions. When asked what their signs meant or who was paying them, they couldn't give answers. One protester admitted to Breitbart—on video—she had heard about the rally through a Democratic group connected to Obama called Organizing For America. The protesters were filmed leaving on school buses after being rounded up and herded away. You can watch video of Andrew Breitbart's confrontation here.

Paid Protesters

The people who get paid to participate in fake rallies and protests aren't paid a lot of money. If you watched the video of Andrew Breitbart confronting SEIU protesters or have watched the latest Antifa protests, you can make a clear judgment of your own. At most, paid protesters are paid minimum wage and are scooped up off the streets or attracted by vague employment ads offering quick money. In some cases, to make it even less traceable, protesters are paid in cash and their services are documented by organizations as “miscellaneous services”.

Ads on Craigslist have offered anywhere from minimum wage to $1500 per week, but most admitted protesters claim to make nowhere near $1500 per week. When it comes to union organized events, it has been well known for years that protesters are often union members or people plucked off a street corner. Dating back to the Occupy protests, one unemployed participant admitted on camera to being paid $60 per head to protest at CPAC. When he was asked what CPAC was, he said he didn't know. The interaction was posted on Youtube and can be watched here.

In March of 2016, an ad appeared on Craigslist offering $15 per hour to crash a Trump rally. This was around the time of the infamous Chicago riots that shut down a Trump event and led to people boasting about their accomplishments on Twitter and social media.

As seen in the video above, where a protester admits to being unemployed and paid $60 to protest at a conservative event, most paid protesters aren't well off. Organizations—and unions—that hire paid protesters prey on society's weakest and most vulnerable citizens. They scour downtrodden neighbourhoods and impoverished communities for people who are desperate for money. They do this with the intent of exploiting them for their cheap services and economic pain in order to fulfill a twisted political objective.

The Clients

People who pay companies and organizations to provide protesters on demand are who make it a booming business. Those people can range from individual industrialists to corporations and political parties and action committees. When it comes to unions, it's no secret who most of them support during elections in the United States and Canada. Hint: they don't support Republicans or anything that contains the word conservative. When the Democrats need a protest, they usually give a few union bosses a call.

Many industrialists looking to protect American oil and energy interests indirectly fund environmental protesters who try to shut down and disrupt the construction of pipelines in other countries—namely, Canada. I wrote about this in 2014 in a now unpublished piece called “Following The Anti-Oil Money”, where I also gave credit to Vivian Krause, who has done a great deal to expose the elusive finances of certain environmental groups acting against Canada's energy industry. I wrote about this again in 2016 during the DAPL protests in Dakota:

One of the groups directly involved with organizing the clashes is Climate Direct Action – the same group responsible for shutting down five pipelines that ship Canadian oil into the US. The group is directly connected to the Climate Disobedience Action Fund. Like most other environmental groups, it cloaks itself with other names and variations – just like its donors cloak themselves to divert nosey journalists and investigators. The group appears to be directly linked to yet another “independent” organization called the Climate Disobedience Center, founded by Tim Dechristopher, Marla Marcum, Jay O'Hara and Ken Ward. All of these names are important to remember, because we'll be getting back to them.

Of course, the Dakota Access is a pipeline that was built in the United States, but it was rumoured that it would eventually be connected to existing pipelines in Canada—a rumour that has yet to be denied by the companies involved.

One of the companies with a stake in the pipeline is Enbridge.

As we've seen, other clients of crowd service companies include politicians and billionaires with certain political agendas. Tim Draper openly (but still indirectly through his campaign organization) used the services of Crowds On Demand for peaceful purposes, but other famous and infamous billionaires have been named as big clients of less savoury demand services that require some masking. Many of the environmental groups who funnel their money into activist and protest groups get their funding from affiliates and umbrella organizations who receive donations from individuals. This same structure can be seen in other industries, where organizations funnel money downward into protest and activist groups. The higher we look up the chain, the more peaceful and “ethical” these organizations appear to be.

Donors to less controversial organizations are almost always aware of where their money ends up. Wealthy individuals donate to certain organizations that appear innocent and ethical, but that funnel their funds out into less ethical organizations until they reach the streets. In most cases, individual donors give direction on where exactly they'd like their money to end up and what objective they'd like to achieve.

To sum it up, at the top of the food chain are the wealthy industrialists, corporations and political groups, followed by the “ethical” organizations they give their money to. At the very bottom of the food chain are the unions and the crowd providers. It's a chain of command and a pattern that appears in almost every high profile or chaotic protest.

The people at the top are the indirect clients of the organizations at the bottom. This kind of structure protects the clients and maintains a level of plausible deniability. It allows stories like this and any mentions of their indirect connections to be brushed off as conspiracy theories. It forces journalists to step back and claim that there is no direct proof of anything—which there really isn't. That's the point. Media and journalists who still think they have credibility are forced to protect what they have left or risk facing ridicule.

Journalists will often cite the existence of unpaid, natural protesters at well funded, orchestrated events as evidence there is a "grassroots" element to all of it. However, one explicit intention of all paid protests is the attraction of "natural" protesters and cling-ons. The most desired outcome of a paid protest is the creation of natural crowds and observers. This happened with the Occupy Wall Street movement, which originally started as a small astroturf protest in New York.

It's A Reality

Companies that provide protesters and crowds are real. There is no way to deny their existence. Companies like Crowds On Demand and the revelations made by Adam Swart are anything but a conspiracy theory. He and his company have been approached by politicians and CoD admits to running a branch in Washington D.C.—of all places.

Mainstream media has tried to bend over backwards in trying to disprove the existence of paid protesters. Most journalists won't touch it, but the ones who do are out to “debunk” it. It's true that many of the protesters at Trump rallies and GOP townhalls weren't necessarily paid or violent, but the media has used Trump's past allegations about paid protesters as proof that paid protesters don't exist at all and that everyone who believes otherwise is delusional. According to most mainstream journalists, Donald Trump is a liar and everything he says is false. They use his history of embellishment as a means to discredit anything and everything he tries to deem legitimate. Essentially, partisan journalists are programmed to do and think the opposite of what Trump says. This is why there was no outcry over Barack Obama's tough talk on immigration during his presidency.

If Donald Trump claimed that zebras have a genetic link to horses, journalists would say it was false and argue that zebras are actually a type of alligator, just to spite Trump. At some point in our history, this is what journalism became.

As an example of this weird and duplicitous world of faux journalism, we can look at Vice—the magazine that ousted one if its own founders for being too conservative. They were the ones who wrote an entire piece about fake, paid protesters and interviewed Adam Swart in 2013, but then did backflips in 2017 to try and prove that paid protesters are a figment of our imaginations:

The "paid protester" narrative is more than a fringe conspiracy theory—the president himself has been ramping up a storyline he peddled on the campaign trail, in which "professional anarchists" and "thugs" are working to stop his agenda.