Jim “Fergie” Chambers, the Communist millionaire and heir to the Cox media fortune, has long bankrolled one of the nation’s most militant protest networks. But in recent weeks, he has turned his fire on a putative ally: Shanghai-based tech billionaire Neville Roy Singham, who himself funds a transnational web of far-left groups.
What’s going on? In a series of X posts, Chambers alleged that Singham’s network of nonprofits and activist groups has tried to redirect insurgent organizing into tightly controlled institutions linked to the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a U.S.-based revolutionary Communist party. Chambers sees Singham’s operation as “turn[ing] their back on direct actionists”—implying that Singham prefers exercising control over the movement to enabling the sort of serious radicalism Chambers endorses.
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The conflict between the two is in part another example of the Left’s tendency to collapse into infighting. But more importantly, Chambers’s criticism offers a rare public window into the inner workings of the Singham network, one of the radical Left’s most effective and prolific organizing operations. And, in its surfacing of the importance of the PSL to that network, Chambers’s X commentary highlights a potent target for policymakers looking to dismantle Singham’s influence operation.
Chambers is one of the main funders of America’s radical Left. His money has flowed to a host of projects in the “anti-imperialism” organizing space. These include a recent $1 million Ramadan donation to Palestinian causes, including a group that advances terrorist-sympathetic messages in America’s schools.
Chambers claims that he and Singham are effectively the two primary financiers of the “US radical left.” Despite this, the two have apparently been at loggerheads—a conflict that has now gone public.
Chambers’ attack appears to have been triggered by the Singham-aligned People’s Forum’s choice to host an event with Kat Abughazaleh, the former Media Matters journalist turned congressional candidate. The event drew backlash from more militant-aligned factions of the radical Left. Radical activist Calla Walsh, a Chambers friend, has denounced Abughazaleh as a “neocon” over her support for arming Ukraine and Taiwan.
Whatever the trigger, the break was a long time coming. According to Chambers, the roots of the conflict go back to the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. Shortly afterward, Walsh—the 21-year-old DSA activist turned mouthpiece for America’s adversaries—launched Palestine Action US with Chambers’s support. The group is an offshoot of Palestine Action U.K., a designated terrorist organization in Great Britain.
Chambers claimed that senior Singham network figures responded to the launch by discouraging “direct actions”—a movement euphemism for illegal vandalism, destruction, and force—targeting the Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems. Those figures allegedly urged Chambers and Walsh to travel to New York City for meetings aimed at persuading them to reconsider the campaign, including warnings to “stop this direct action and go back to school.” The effort failed, and Palestine Action US continued its direct-action campaign and caused nearly $100,000 in damage to an Elbit facility.
According to Chambers, Singham quietly instructed affiliates to distance themselves from Palestine Action, eventually creating Shut It Down 4 Palestine as the network-approved vehicle for pro-Palestine direct action. Chambers described the PSL leadership as having “actively interfered, sought to control [Palestine Action US], snuff it out, hurt its reputation, and isolate its actionists.”
It’s not clear why Singham’s network, no stranger to radical action, tried to discourage attacking Elbit. But it is consistent with the network’s longstanding view that revolutionary mass movements will fail unless they are guided by an educated vanguard—a strategy Chambers criticized as resulting in “a vanguard party comprised of liberal arts theater kids.”
At the same time, the split between the far-Left’s two most serious backers suggests that Singham’s network was not looking to collaborate, but to exercise centralized control over the whole of the extreme anti-Israel movement.
The same tendency is apparent in Chambers’s claims that the Singham operation had previously courted him. In 2023, Chambers operated a commune-style activist compound in Massachusetts centered on political agitation, ideological training, and physical conditioning. He also financially supported a network of young militants that included figures such as Walsh.
According to Chambers, Singham network-aligned figures proposed to use his property for a People’s Forum training facility. Chambers said the proposal gave him insight into how the Singham network operates, especially after he reviewed a sketched organizational chart. That structure made it clear that, regardless of the project, the PSL is at the center of the network, with each initiative ultimately designed to build the party.
Neville Singham, too, appeared to exercise an iron grip on the network. While the network may rely on various public-facing figures and young-adult activists for social-media promotion, Chambers said Singham still advances a “firm agenda” and coordinates activity through private chats.
The allegations leveled across Chambers’s multiday airing of dirty laundry paint a picture of the Singham network as focused on unifying the often fractious and disorganized radical Left under the control of one man and one party. At the same time, they leave opponents of the Singham Network with lots of questions. If not Chambers, then who else might have capitulated to their proposals—and under what terms? If the Party for Socialism and Liberation sits at the fulcrum of the Singham network’s American arm, should lawmakers focus more closely on that organization?
Congressional scrutiny of the Singham network has recently intensified. Several House committees have sought documentation from affiliated organizations. Lawmakers have also referred The People’s Forum to the IRS, urging review and possible revocation of its tax-exempt status, and asked then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Singham under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The congressional inquiries now underway may help establish a public record concerning this influence network, but Singham’s cooperation is unlikely. Since he lives in China, he can refuse cooperation indefinitely or simply wait out the current administration. More effective scrutiny would likely focus on the PSL’s domestic infrastructure, especially insofar as it is involved in coordinating large-scale unrest.
The PSL does not publicly disclose official membership figures, but it claims to operate in “over 50 cities.” The party’s financial structure is similarly opaque. Donations to the PSL are processed through Liberation News, the organization’s official newspaper.
The organization also invests heavily in long-term physical infrastructure. Over the past several years, the PSL has established more than a dozen Liberation Centers in multiple American cities, including a soon-to-be-opened facility in Washington, D.C. These centers function as hubs for protest coordination, coalition-building, political education, and cadre development.
Taken together, Chambers’s allegations, the congressional inquiries, and the Singham network’s footprint raise a pointed question about the entire ecosystem: Is this a loose collection of allied organizations and projects, or a coordinated influence operation shaped by a small circle of confidants around Neville Roy Singham together building a “vanguard” party? The evidence increasingly points toward the latter.
In the course of the public feuding, Chambers has also inadvertently drawn attention to the network’s core organizing hub, the PSL, which he says ultimately anchors the broader system. If that is the case, government scrutiny should not be applied piecemeal across the broad array of peripheral organizations. It must reach the structure at the center of the system, where influence and coordination converge, and where critics, both left and right, argue real control ultimately lies.