The Radical Foreign Groups That Helped Elect Obama and Whose Remnants Remain a DNC Tent Pole
In his new book, The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon, Peter Schweizer, Breitbart News senior contributor and bestselling author, exposes how radical foreign groups helped elect former President Barack Obama in 2008 and how this network remains part of the Democratic Party machine today.
Schweizer focuses on one group in particular, the Salvadoran radical political party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which became a party after beginning as a Marxist guerrilla group in El Salvador.
Thousands of immigrants linked to foreign radical movements, including the FMLN, “held important positions in American unions and got involved in American political campaigns, whether they were American citizens or not,” starting in the early 2000s, explains Schweizer.
He cites Dr. Arpi Misha Miller’s “sympathetic account” of the group that left an imprint on the U.S. political sphere in his 2013 doctoral dissertation, “Reconciling the Americas: Salvadoran Immigrant Activists and Political Transnationalism,” at the University of California. Miller in particular went to serve as director of ISAAC of Northern Colorado, a nonprofit organization that describe presents itself as being “committed to equity, empowerment and justice” on its Facebook page.
Miller noted in his 2013 dissertation that FMLN activists “gained additional on-the-ground experience in community and labor organizing, serving as lead organizers with powerful groups,” including AFSCME, Change to Win, OneLA, and SEIU, between 2004 and 2009.
Activists contributed to Obama’s 2008 campaign “as individuals and through their work in unions,” with some activists holding organizing positions that were full-time paid jobs, according to Miller.
Schweizer writes that these radicals continued El Salvador’s Marxist insurgency in their political work in America, bringing “their cause with them when they crossed the border.”
“For Barack Obama and other progressive leaders, my house is your houseideologically. “It’s no wonder that Obama called on these activists to work hard on his campaign and insisted that they obtain citizenship as quickly as possible, in that order,” says Schweizer.
At a rally in Los Angeles in November 2008, an activist told Miller that the City of Angels “is a strategic city for El Salvador, with 800,000 Salvadoreños or more!” ” and that the campaign “started YEARS ago.”
“These foreign radical activists would not remain on the sidelines,” emphasizes Schweizer in The invisible blow.
The activist group CASA counts FMLN members among its leaders, according to Schweizer. Two of CASA’s board members, Thomas Perez and Cecilia Muñoz, rose to the highest levels of the U.S. government during the Obama administration. Perez, who would eventually lead the Democratic National Committee, became deputy attorney general for civil rights under Obama. He later became an aide to then-President Joe Biden.
Muñoz led the Domestic Policy Council during Obama’s presidency before serving on Biden’s transition team following the 2020 election.
President Barack Obama, right, with his Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Muñoz, speaks to the press before a meeting with CEOs on immigration reform June 24, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Ron Sachs/Getty Images)
Schweizer writes that Obama “rewarded FMLN members and supporters for their assistance,” and his administration took steps in 2013 – shortly after the start of his second term – to remove “most terrorism-related rules” that prevented FMLN members and leaders from attaining citizenship or residency status in America.
“While recognizing that the FMLN was a “Marxist-Leninist armed insurgency supported by the Cuban government” and was once labeled a “Tier III terrorist organization” due to its violent activities, an exemption was still granted,” he notes.
American leftists enlist Latin American migrants in their efforts to advance socialist agendas, with migrants serving as “political intermediaries in their host countries,” according to Schweizer, who cites United Nations migration officials Larisa Lara-Guerrero and Sébastien Rojon.
“They call these people “leaders” who “can encourage and guide” [other] “Migrants must become political actors with enough agency to engage in controversial policies,” writes Schweizer in The invisible blow.
“They call it “immigrant political transnationalism,” when foreign nationals, often illegally in the United States, engage in political activities here “aimed at obtaining political power or influence at the individual or collective level in the country of residence,” he adds.
According to the best-selling author, “subversion” might be the more appropriate term.
The FMLN’s efforts to influence American politics persisted once Trump emerged on the political landscape. Schweizer recalls a meeting of 25 “travelers from the United States,” including U.S. citizens and employees of the Salvadoran embassy from Washington, D.C., to San Salvador, at a São Paulo Forum meeting in 2016. Most of the group were members of the FMLN. Political leaders and government officials from Latin American countries were also present at the meeting.
The Forum included a session to celebrate Fidel Castro’s 90th birthday, and another session on what Schweizer cites as “the new challenges on the migration front and the imperial counter-offensive.”
“But beyond the speeches, there were plots about how to influence the US elections and defeat Donald Trump. » The invisible blow details:
Dan La Botz, an American socialist also present as an observer, pointed out that the FMLN “is both the leading party in El Salvador and an important political organization of Salvadoran immigrants in the United States in places like the state of Maryland and in cities like New York, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.” La Botz continues: “She works to organize Salvadoran immigrant communities in social movements and in political action in general within the Democratic Party.
The American delegation, like everyone else at the meeting, wanted Donald Trump to be arrested because of his hard line on immigration. “FMLN members and leaders argued that voter registration and high turnout against Donald Trump served the best interests of voters. [immigrants] in the United States,” recalls La Botz.
Schweizer emphasizes that FMLN members have not been deterred by the fact that they, or any other foreign political party, are not expected to influence U.S. elections.
from Switzerland The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon is published by HarperCollins and is available for purchase now.
