How many police officers have to die so a grad student in gender studies doesn’t have to get a real job?

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Follow the money is the watchword of politics.

The left pretends that it is above money or against money, but its networks rival those of any drug cartel or mob outfit and are often constructed to thwart any investigation of its finances.

These networks are strange reincarnations of Cold War era Communist front groups. Except that instead of the money coming from Soviet agents, the cash flows from left-wing billionaires and family foundations hijacked by the left to serve uglier and darker purposes.

And yet the setup has remained basically the same.

Out front are the front groups. These organizations pretend to be grassroots movements stocked with photogenic young people. They zero in on specific issues targeting a key demographic. Behind the scenes are the big money people who are pulling their strings. In between is a shadowy world built to distance the funders from the funded. The passionate young people don’t seem nearly so authentic when you realize that they’re just puppets dancing to the tune of an 86-year-old billionaire rattling around a 16-room mansion on Fifth Avenue or a vast estate in Bedford.

The recent Soros leaks showed how the left’s grass roots organizations are dictated to by radical billionaires like him. And they also show that Soros‘people were well aware of the need to distance themselves from the organizations that they were funding. And it is all about the funding.

Take Black Lives Matter.

Behind the bullhorns and race riots is something different. It’s not outrage. It’s big money.

In a splashy item, the Ford Foundation announced that it had helped found the Black-Led Movement Fund. The Black-Led Movement Fund wants to raise $100 million on top of another $33 million from Soros and assorted left-wing groups.

What is this Black-Led Movement Fund? The announcement defaults to Borealis Philanthropy. What is Borealis Philanthropy? It’s what is known as a philanthropic intermediary. And it’s not the only intermediary behind the Black-Led Movement Fund.

The Ford Foundation press release claims that it partnered with “Borealis Philanthropy, Movement Strategy Center, and Benedict Consulting.” The Movement Strategy Center is yet another intermediary connecting funders and donors. And that’s alongside Solidaire, Neighborhood Funders Group–Funders for Justice and, for those who still feel too exposed, Anonymous Donors.

Why does all this funding need to be heavily disguised?

First, it’s a good bet that a good deal of it will be going to people who are not protesting anything.

Nobody needs $133 million to rile up a mob in Baltimore, Ferguson or Milwaukee. The social justice grads who are kept on the payroll to community organize don’t cost nearly that much.

The more the money is moved around, the harder it is to tell where it’s going and who is cashing in.

For example, the Benedict Consulting referenced by the Ford Foundation in its Black-Led Movement Fund piece doesn’t appear to have any sort of internet presence. It may however refer to Ingrid Benedict who was formerly a senior fellow at the Movement Strategy Center also referenced as having helped found the Black-Led Movement Fund. Benedict also appears to have assisted in putting together Resource Generation’s framework for funding Black Nationalist movements.

And Benedict also appears to work as a Philanthropic Consultant while heading up Abigail Disney’s Daphne Foundation. Benedict’s clients include the Ford Foundation, Resource Generation, Neighborhood Funders Group and the NoVo Foundation. These groups also appear to be involved in funding the Black-Led Movement Fund.

Is there a conflict here? Probably far smaller than the ones involved in the Clinton Foundation. But there is also little doubt that money fed into this network will be following a most interesting route.

Second, funding Black Lives Matter and the various organizations orbiting around the same protests means funding race riots, sedition and street violence by hate groups.

It’s understandable that some major donors might not wish to be publicly associated with that. Some people would love to have their name stamped on the sack of Baltimore. But not everyone does.

Radical Chic, as Tom Wolfe documented so aptly in the piece of the same name, is exciting for some. Rich Saudis and Qataris fund mass murder from Syria to Paris. The obese princeling that tires of his imported luxury cars and his harem of imported slaves brought in by modeling agencies can pay for mass murder by cutting a check to Al Qaeda or ISIS. His American counterparts in Marin County or Arlington can watch poor neighborhoods burn after cutting a check to the right domestic terrorists.

The latest wave of Black Nationalist activists is cashing in on that frisson. So are the fundraisers.

And they should not be allowed to get away with it.

Call it Radical Chic or the Capitalist Communism of left-wing billionaires, those who suffer are the families of wounded and murdered police officers, the small business owners whose shops are looted or put to the torch and the residents of troubled neighborhoods for whom life grows even worse.

The last ten years have witnessed a monumental effort by the left to recreate its worst abuses of the seventies without a hint of apology, acknowledgement or conscience. This time around there is absolutely nothing natural or historical about these developments. Instead they are being funded as a dedicated effort by some powerful and influential people who are forcing history to repeat itself.

The grim farce of left-wing billionaires funding race riots in poor neighborhoods is as ugly as it is unacceptable. Twenty year olds in t-shirts and thirty year olds in blue uniforms should not be dying for the amusement of George Soros or any other bored Manhattanites looking for a radical thrill.

Financing race riots is not charity. It’s domestic terrorism. And the powerful men and women funneling money into the racist network of Black Nationalist groups should be treated just like Al Qaeda funders.

It’s time to hold them accountable.

Beyond the Soros clan, the entire network of family foundations and front groups financing street violence has to be investigated and dismantled. The funding of domestic terror in our cities must be curtailed by exposing who is behind them and how they have benefited from the violence.

Those who have gotten cash and kicks from the destruction of cities must be brought to justice.

Black Lives Matter is a racist hate group. But behind the hate is profit. Social justice activists go to extremes to catch the attention of funders. There are a great many graduates with useless degrees whose only career paths run through social justice activism. And activism does not pay well.

Take the tactics up a notch and you won’t have to punch the clock for pennies at some storefront educational non-profit, but you can get cash from George Soros. The ugly hateful tactics of Black Lives Matter paid off. Follow the money and you’ll see broken lives but also heaps and heaps of dirty cash.

And that is what it’s about.

How many police officers have to die so a grad student in gender studies doesn’t have to get a real job? How many towns and cities have to be burned so Soros can relive his World War II glory days?

Even one is too many and we have long since gone past one.

Follow the money. Bring on the justice. End the violence.