Smurfing and UNC antisemitism (03-24-2025--Hour1)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetecalinarshow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] I want to welcome to the program to kick us off on this Monday, this dreary, gray, rainy Monday, AP Dillon. She is a reporter for the North State Journal, NSJOnline.com. Also the publisher of a Substack newsletter, More To The Story. AP, how are you? Good Monday morning. Yeah. Not. Yeah. Yeah, it was kind of, yeah, there was a beautiful weekend. And so dreariness this morning, not conducive to getting out of bed.

[00:00:57] But, so we usually talk with you at two o'clock, but scheduling conflicts make it so we're going to do it now. And so let's kind of jump into it. First, tell us what the heck is smurfing? What is smurfing? Smurfing is referring to lots of little donations given over time, a period of time by an individual that total, you know, hundreds, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[00:01:24] Act Blue has been under investigation for this. That is the Democrat fundraising arm that they use for their fundraising purposes. And they have been accused of smurfing. Right. So there's been investigations by muck wrecker James O'Keefe, as well as some local investigations here in North Carolina, where they went out and they found an individual who had given something like 200 different donations, a small amount over the period of maybe four or five days, or, you know, four to six months, totaling tens of thousands of dollars.

[00:01:54] And these individuals have absolutely no idea. They didn't make the donations. These were done in their name without their knowledge. Right. So Act Blue, and we've talked about this before on the program, the scandals regarding Act Blue. It's been going on for a long time. You mentioned James O'Keefe, also Stephen Horn with this week in the triangle. He went and like knocked on some people's doors and found people that had not. They said, oh, yeah, I made one donation or something.

[00:02:21] And then when shown the FEC filings, they were like, I did not donate 20 something thousand dollars. I don't have that kind of money. So it bears all of the hallmarks of some kind of and you refer to it also as zombie donors, where essentially they they're trying to like if if they got your name and then they can create a profile, they can attach donations to you. So you don't bust through the caps that may exist for individual donor levels.

[00:02:51] And so what's happening then is obviously money is coming from somewhere else that is not allowed to be donated or is not allowed to be donated in that amount attached to a single donor. And so they're they're spreading it out. And it also boosts their their numbers when they say, oh, we've had, you know, a billion small dollar donations. But they're not actually from different people. They've just spread it out over different people's profiles.

[00:03:17] Yes. And it's also a little bit disturbing in the fact that for a long time, ActBlue didn't have its verification settings on for credit card donations, which meant that you could go buy one of those disposable, you know, Visa cards loaded up and make donations using that. And they wouldn't be verifying it with the with the security number on it. So those things could be donated from anyone, anywhere.

[00:03:43] And for people who are not aware, ActBlue is essentially the fundraising platform for all Democrats and many, many, many of the Democrat aligned nonprofits and activist groups. And you don't like this is at the local level, at the state level, national level. Democrats use this ActBlue. Republicans have one called Win Red.

[00:04:05] But as far as I understand, they don't have these kinds of accusations against them over on the Republican side, mainly because they switched on the those controls, as you mentioned. Yes, exactly. There was one guy we've mentioned before, Matt Van Swal, who has been doing a lot of work out in western North Carolina. I was not aware he got swatted the other day, but I was not aware that he apparently had a bunch of these donations made in his name, too. Yes, he was smurfed. He was smurfed.

[00:04:36] Yes. In addition to being swatted, he was smurfed. He's had some some trouble in the last few weeks. Yeah. Over the last weekend, he he found, you know, a law enforcement officer showing up to his house at like one in the morning. They had received an anonymous phone call that he had murdered his wife and was hiding in his house. So the situation luckily was diffused quite quickly. The officer noticed that there wasn't a disturbance at the house.

[00:05:03] The call seemed to be off from what he was seeing visually. And the fact that his wife answered the door. Yeah. Kind of helped. Right. Not dead. He had some problems there. Yeah. And this has been happening with increasing frequency. It's led to calls for greater penalties for this kind of swatting. It's in my view, it's attempted homicide is what it is. And they need to investigate it as such and then hold people accountable for that. Yeah. It could have gone sideways in so many different ways. Yeah.

[00:05:30] And I know the attorney general, Pam Bondi, she's looking at it. The FBI director, Cash Patel, says he's investigating it. So hopefully we'll see some activity on that end of things. It's it's a very dangerous scenario. I mean, if if anyone but her had answered the door, they might have, you know, busted it open and their, you know, his children were asleep upstairs. Yeah.

[00:05:55] Speaking of Pam Bondi, she has also announced the arrest of three individuals responsible for bombing, firebombing Tesla cars and charging stations. And in case so two of the three transgender, I don't know if that matters. It kind of feels like it's an important detail just because there seems to be an emerging pattern occurring, particularly with this sort of intersectionality, if you will, with with Antifa people and the fundraising platform.

[00:06:25] So do we have do we have any evidence of a connection with the Antifa violent protesters? Well, they don't mention that in the press release that the Justice Department put out. So the three individuals were that were identified was one was Adam Lansky in Oregon, Lucy Grace Nelson in Colorado, Daniel Clark Ponder in South Carolina. They're all dudes. Yeah, they're all dudes.

[00:06:53] The first two identify as transgender. According to a local station in Colorado, however, a second person was arrested, a 24 year old named Cooper Frederick. So we haven't seen anything going on with that. But there have been hints that ActBlue has been involved in processing money or funds for these protests that are going on at the Tesla dealerships and other places.

[00:07:21] In fact, Elon Musk himself tweeted out on Act not so long ago, I believe earlier this month, that an investigation found that there were five groups responsible for the Tesla protests that were having money funded through them through ActBlue. And two of them, at least to my eye, are Antifa related or adjacent.

[00:07:45] They list the troublemakers, the disruption project, rise and resist the individual indivisible project and the democratic socialists of America. So the indivisible group, they've got a whole bunch of chapters all over the place and they're they're turning up in a lot of these anti doge protests and stuff. They are. They are. And that was a group that rose when Trump first came into office in 2016.

[00:08:13] The indivisible project was put together by some former democratic staffers, I believe, and it had links to the Hillary Clinton campaign. There were certain staffers that were involved with that. I'm not sure if they've changed leadership since then, but the whole point was to give a blueprint for activists to go out and to disrupt town halls, to do protests on the street, how to garner media attention, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:08:39] It kind of reminds me of the Mo Mo Mo, the Moral Monday movement. It does. And in fact, that that has been a component of some of the protests here in North Carolina over anti doge items in Raleigh. They had an anti doge protest to the same day there was a Tesla protest in Glenwood Avenue. And at that doge protest, our friends, the Raging Granny showed up. Oh, God. The ones who were always singing during the Moral Monday.

[00:09:07] So they were there, but they also had a band called the Muskrats. Oh. Yeah, I know. It's all so theater, kid. It's gross. It is. It is. It's very theatrical. Yeah. So much of just, just, just like junior high level performative garbage. And it's always been the way. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, Francis Collins, he did that.

[00:09:32] He did another song at his, at some rally against the NHS cuts too. Yep. I don't, I don't understand the allure. I don't, I don't even find it persuasive. I don't even think, I even think it's, it's particularly motivating for their own side. Well, poll after poll in the last couple months has shown that folks are happy to see Doge making the cuts. Yeah. The majority of people are happy to see Doge making the cuts.

[00:09:58] And meanwhile, the internal polling for the Democratic Party is just, it's dropped to a historical low. I think NBC News had it at 27%. Mm-hmm. And their internal polling has been coupled with these memos that have gone out from, you know, their, their advisor groups. Um, one in particular basically told them that, in essence, told them, be more normal. Um, stop, stop with the theatrics, stop with the protesting, stop with calling people racist, bigots, and homophobes.

[00:10:27] And, quote, be more normal. Mm-hmm. So there, no, apparently many of them haven't gotten that number yet. Well, it's a bold strategy. We'll see if it pays off for them. Um, yeah. Uh, AP Dillon, you can read her work at the North State Journal, nsjonline.com, and also at her newsletter called More to the Story. It's a substack newsletter. AP, thanks so much for your time as always. We'll see you next week. Absolutely. Thanks, Pete. All right. Take care. Here's a great idea.

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[00:12:00] Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has issued warning letters to 60 higher education institutions about Title VI violations related to anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination.

[00:12:29] A.P. Dillon's piece at the North State Journal headlined Education Department Issues Reminder on Protecting Jewish Students. Just a reminder, colleges, you have to protect the Jews on your campus. They're people too, and you're not allowed to turn a blind eye while people are harassing and threatening to kill them.

[00:12:54] So, just a reminder, just a helpful note for all of you college administrators. The letters caution the universities about potential enforcement actions if they fail to fulfill their legal obligations to protect Jewish students on campus, including ensuring uninterrupted access to facilities and educational opportunities. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon is quoted,

[00:13:23] University leaders must do better. Among the 60 schools named in the letter, UNC. Give it up, everybody. UNC. Some good work there. It does not actually specify a particular campus, so let's just assume it's all of them.

[00:13:46] Additionally, the Department's Office of Civil Rights directed its enforcement staff to prioritize resolving the backlog of complaints alleging anti-Semitic violence and harassment. The press release notes that many complaints, quote, were allowed to languish unresolved under the previous administration.

[00:14:06] No. UNC Chapel Hill, where pro-Palestinian protests erupted last year, already has a Title VI complaint against it involving anti-Semitism and discrimination against Jewish students. David Weisberg, a Jewish American attorney, filed the complaint against Chapel Hill. He also alleged the school breached a prior resolution that it had reached in 2019 with the Office of Civil Rights.

[00:14:48] Along those lines, this story from campusreform.org. Columbia University agrees to Trump administration's pro-safety demands as it faces $400 million in funding loss. Columbia is a private university. Why is it getting $400 million plus in taxpayer funds? The school will ban masks.

[00:15:19] It will boost security presence on campus and adopt a formal definition of anti-Semitism, among other measures, which, look, that is needed because, remember, Columbia, they had a very difficult time even defining what it was. So at least now they'll get a definition and now, you know, then now they'll know when they see it.

[00:15:39] Columbia University in New York has agreed to many of Trump's demands regarding school efforts against anti-Semitism after the Trump administration cut off $400 million in federal funds for the Ivy League school. Columbia University's leadership agreed to many of the demands from the White House. Goes on to say they're going to ban face masks during protests, which has always been an obvious thing to do.

[00:16:05] The North Carolina General Assembly did this as well because this was one of the things that COVID protocols allowed, was that it normalized the covering of faces and then that allowed people to engage in illegal activity without being identified. We saw this occur in the fiery but mostly peaceful summer of love after the death of St. George Floyd.

[00:16:30] So, yes, obviously, ban masks during protests. Also, Columbia says it's going to hire 36 special officers with powers to arrest and remove disruptive protesters. So special officers. This is in addition to the campus security. Other measures include the adoption of the definition of anti-Semitism recommended by the task force from last summer.

[00:17:02] Also, expanding intellectual diversity among faculty and making a commitment to greater institutional neutrality. See, so now that the Hamas holies got to harass and intimidate and take over the campus and stuff, now we're going, no, no, no, no, now we've got to be neutral, everybody. Neutrality is the word of the day. That's what we're going to be doing now. So don't you try to stand up for yourselves anymore. Jews, sorry. You can't do your things.

[00:17:31] Now it's neutral. After we made it very clear where we stood last year, now we're neutral. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do, too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place. So you can compare coverage and verify information.

[00:18:00] You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description, too. I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news slash Pete.

[00:18:27] Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. All right. So I got an email also from John at the beginning of the program. Actually, it was from this morning, but I saw it just before the program began.

[00:18:51] And there is a related situation brewing. Over at UNC Charlotte. So maybe UNC Charlotte is part of this Title VI warning letter that the United States Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights flagged. They wrote this warning letter to 60 higher education institutions.

[00:19:20] It went to UNC, but we don't know if it was directed at a particular campus or not because UNC Charlotte has had some tentifada action. And they've got an event scheduled for, I believe, tomorrow. Yeah. There is an event scheduled for tomorrow, March 25th.

[00:19:47] And it's called Triggered the Tour. It is a nationwide campus tour featuring a panel of Israeli Defense Force soldiers. So IDF soldiers who saw action after October 7th.

[00:20:08] The speakers are, according to the release here from the Students Supporting Israel Organization or SSI, the speakers are set to talk about the importance of Israel defending itself from terror threats and misguided propaganda and the way that the Israeli society stepped up to volunteer following October 7th.

[00:20:35] According to the organization, the name of the tour is intentionally, you know, triggered to point out, ironically, the fact that students on campuses are mostly not triggered by world events unless it has anything to do with Israel. The tour indeed has triggered outrage among anti-Israel groups who are aggressively demanding that SSI and university administrators cave to their pressures and cancel the events.

[00:21:05] So the one scheduled for tomorrow at UNC Charlotte. They're not demanding the school is not demanding that they cancel the event. They're just going to price gouge the event. So much so that it cannot be held. That's the accusation from SSI.

[00:21:30] Despite the students' efforts to share the story of Israel's self-defense against terrorism and our overwhelming adherence to campus policies and protocols, UNC Charlotte administrators are succumbing to pressure from these radical anti-Israel groups. In a move that punishes pro-Israel students instead of those who attempt to silence our voices,

[00:21:55] the university is coercing SSI by imposing a roughly $5,000 campus security fee if SSI were to go ahead with its event. They're requiring 22 security personnel, 16 police officers and 6 staff security, which would create not only financial barriers and stifle our freedom of expression,

[00:22:22] as most student groups would be deterred by such a significant cost. So what is UNCC doing? They are aiding in the heckler's veto, right? You have one group of students that wants to hold an event, a peaceful event, a panel discussion, right? Exchange of ideas one would think might be at place on a campus of, quote, higher learning.

[00:22:52] And another group wants them to shut up. That they would be the heckler's. That would be the heckler's veto. In other words, I want to say my piece. I want to have an event. I want to have a discussion, a dialogue, whatever. And you don't want to hear what I have to say. You don't want anybody else to hear what I have to say.

[00:23:16] So you are going to shout me down so nobody can hear me speaking. And rather than UNCC stepping in and saying, this is protected speech, they are a legitimate organization, this is a legitimate event, and they should be allowed to have their event on the campus as any other student organization can.

[00:23:41] Rather than saying that, UNCC is bowing and aiding and abetting the heckler's. They're bowing to that pressure. They're caving. And so they're going to tell now the students, you have to pay for your own security. You have to pay for your own security for the event.

[00:24:04] This excessive charge, the SSI press release reads, requiring 22 additional security personnel, makes the Jewish students pay to be kept safe on their own campus following threats against them. Think about how grotesque that is. Right? A bunch of kids want to get together and host an event.

[00:24:34] And the Hamas holes say, shut up, Jew. You can't talk. You can't have that event. We hate you. I'm sorry. It's about peace. And so you can't have your event. And we will intimidate you and pressure you and harass you. We will do all of these things that we have all read about in the media all over the country for the last year and a half.

[00:25:00] And the administration comes in and says, let us adjudicate this impartially. Yes, Jews, you need to pay for your own security. Rather than saying, hey, hecklers, Hamas holes. You guys can't do what you are intending to do. You cannot disrupt their event.

[00:25:18] Rather than doing that, rather than trying to enforce, right, the, not only the spirit, but the basic fundamental idea that you're supposed to be at an institution of higher learning where the free flow of ideas and the exchange of arguments is supposed to be welcomed.

[00:25:42] But no, no, not when you're talking about Palestinians, Hamas, and Israel. When this is the subject, only one side, only one side gets to be heard. All right. So spring is here, a time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime.

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[00:27:08] How are you? I'm good. What's going on? I am a retiree from UNC Charlotte. I worked there for over 30 years. Oh, wow. I could tell you instances of this more numerous than you could imagine. But I'm going to, you know, I still have friends working there.

[00:27:27] And of course, if you work 30 years in a government university, you make very good friends with people who are completely politically opposed to you. Sure. Unless you're a lefty. When I first got there in, I began working there in 1986. The attitude was, oh, you're one of those. How quaint.

[00:27:55] And by the time I retired, and I left officially during COVID. By the time I retired, it was very much a case of, we don't like your kind. Yeah. But one of my jobs over the course of working there was every year I had to help a Holocaust survivor professor put up a display for Holocaust Remembrance Week.

[00:28:23] and she was not the most friendly person on the planet and nobody wanted this job because she was kind of gruff and demanding. And the video that accompanied the week-long display was old VHS tape that was on a loop and it would be played and the students would occasionally complain about it because it was on with audio for an entire week. And it was video of the Holocaust, right?

[00:28:52] And I saw where it needed to be updated. I saw where things needed to be played with. But over time, I watched them take her from a main location to a more secluded location to a location where no one would ever see it. And then the last year that I was helping her put it up, she said to me, when I retire, Holocaust Remembrance Week will never be acknowledged again. And this was a while ago. Yeah.

[00:29:21] And she was virtually right. So was she still there when you retired? No, she was not, although she passed away after I retired. Okay. No, she had retired. She was virtually right that it just disappeared when she disappeared.

[00:29:36] I went from some of the people that the university touted and that Charlotte was proud of and named as important people. And I'm not just talking donors. Mm-hmm. I'm talking history. We're Jewish.

[00:30:04] The Jewish community in Charlotte was extremely influential in the civil rights movement. Mm-hmm. And by the time I left, it was not mentioned, let's take that down. What does that name need to be there for? I was shocked.

[00:30:33] I mean, I'm old enough that my parents were alive and my dad served in World War II. So to ever see this kind of attitude shift is so incredibly chilling to me. And it's anti-Semitism. It's not simply anti-Zionism. Well, and that's what I was going to ask.

[00:30:56] Is it, I mean, obviously, with the eruption of the war after the October 7th attack, there are a lot of people that now are making the, you know, oh, it's just anti-Israel and we're against the war and that sort of stuff. And so they've got a very good sort of cover story for it. But you say this has been happening long before, you know, October 7th. And so it's, you think it's about... Yeah. It's a whole way of thinking.

[00:31:25] And on the university campus. And that includes the way the campus thinks about free speech in general. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Belk Tower in the middle of campus, which was, you know, it was an ugly thing. But the university got rid of it by benign neglect. They didn't want that to be the centerpiece of the university anymore. So they let it decay until they could tear it down.

[00:31:50] But on the grounds of the Belk Tower, let's say the whole 25 of the 30 years I worked there, there was a plaque stating that it was a free speech zone. So in the area surrounding the Belk Tower, anything goes or anything did. And there were preachers that were allowed. From the time I got there, there was all kinds of the kind of thing you expected to me, in my mind, on the college campus.

[00:32:16] The kind of debate and posters and protests and things happened surrounding the Belk Tower. When the Belk Tower was torn down, that plaque disappeared. It was part of my job because, like I said, I did display such things. To try to figure out where it went. So I did some inquiries about where the plaque go.

[00:32:41] And the kind of responses I got was, well, we're going to put up something else, which never materialized what I'm aware of. And then it was like, well, it's for the safety of the students. Statements like that were being made. Yeah. And I don't know if there's any true place where you could really say your piece on that campus anymore. Well, I think if you're pro-Palestinian, I think you can. I think it's pretty much all over the place. Jews, not so much. Not so much.

[00:33:11] Yeah. And there are other movements that were like that. I don't know if you remember the Occupy movement. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, I recall them putting up tents on the grounds. And I walked by at O Dark Thirty because that's when I started working. And nobody was sleeping in the tents. And all the tents were from, what's the name of it? The same company. They were all from the identical company. And nobody was sleeping in them.

[00:33:40] And I commented to someone about how it's really odd that the tents hadn't popped up on our campus. Well, they popped up overnight like mushrooms. Pictures were taken. They were touted. But to my knowledge, they were not the students who did it. Yeah. Trisha, I got to leave it there. I'm up against a break. I appreciate the call. Thanks for the insight. No problem. Yeah, no. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it. By the way, they are asking for the SSI Kids, the student organization, is asking people

[00:34:08] to send an email to the UNCC administration urging them to confirm the continuation of the event, to absolve the group from the unfair burden of the security fees, and to stand up against anti-Semitic bullying and intimidation. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here.

[00:34:35] You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalendorshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening. And don't break anything while I'm gone.