When young demonstrators poured into Paris’ Bastille Square on Thursday, the relatively obscure outlet BreakThrough News issued a “BREAKING” alert declaring: “French students flood Bastille Square in Paris.”
That headline, however, captured only part of the picture.
A News Media investigation found that an international network of far-left communist and socialist groups is using France’s student unrest to promote a much broader political agenda. The strategy resembles tactics used in the United States over the past decade to magnify protests, intensify political divisions and portray public disorder as widespread chaos.
Earlier in the week, BreakThrough News featured another prominent headline: “French students shut down schools in historic strike against austerity.” The report said the students were organizing “with support from unions and progressive forces.”
Those “progressive forces,” however, extend well beyond the high school students involved in the “Lycéenne Mobilisation,” or high school student movement, who are protesting education policies and deteriorating school conditions.
Protestors gather around the Monument à la République in Place de la République in Paris on Oct. 4, 2026, during nationwide demonstrations against an overcrowded, ill-equipped and understaffed education system. A masked protestor holds a red flag of the Soviet Union with the communist hammer and sickle. (Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images)
Only 1 of 3 is a Student or Youth Group
According to the investigation, well-funded activists in France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Greece and India are using the school protests as a vehicle for a wider ideological battle. BreakThrough News, described by News Media as a pro-communist outlet based in New York City, is funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American-born technology executive based in Shanghai who has supported communist and far-left organizations in the United States. Those groups have repeatedly used public grievances to fuel street demonstrations, the report said.
The reporting outlines an extensive organizational structure behind the demonstrations. While coverage has largely portrayed the movement as a student-led response to worsening school conditions, unions, communist activists, far-left parties and international media groups have helped organize rallies, call strikes, recruit supporters and distribute footage and updates globally, including through “BREAKING” alerts.
After reviewing dozens of news reports, social media posts and public statements, News Media identified 50 organizations connected to the French student protests or to the broader network supporting and promoting them. The findings point to an activist coalition that reaches far beyond the students who initially took to the streets.
Fifteen of the 50 organizations are student or youth groups. The list includes multiple communist youth organizations as well as a Muslim student association.
The other 35 organizations include 12 labor unions, eight communist or socialist groups, five organizations focused on issues ranging from taxation and parental rights to environmental activism, economic justice, international media and diaspora advocacy, five civil- or human-rights groups and four political parties. Among the parties are La France Insoumise, or France Unbowed, and the French Communist Party. The network also includes a Palestinian advocacy group, completing what the report characterizes as a leftist-Muslim “red-green” alliance.
Smoke billows around protesters as they march toward the Place de la Bastille in Paris on Oct. 8, 2026, as part of a nationwide protest movement over learning conditions. The orange vest carries the acronym “CGT” for the Confédération générale du travail, a trade union. Protestors carry a purple flag of La France insoumise, a political party, and a red flag of Fédération Syndicale Étudiante, a student group. (Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Red-Green Ecosystem’ of Socialists and Islamists
The coalition links French schools and labor federations with communist groups in Greece and Britain and with international socialist media outlets including BreakThrough News. Its involvement has transformed a dispute over education into a larger campaign addressing capitalism, austerity, policing, military spending and Israel.
“What we’re seeing here is the same Red-Green ecosystem that disrupts infrastructure choke points in our country, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, college campuses and congressional hearings,” Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told News Media. “And in the case of BreakThrough News, the same sugar daddy — Neville Roy Singham.”
The protests also offer a window into the ambitions of France’s revolutionary left. Despite the country’s powerful unions, established Communist Party, sizable parliamentary left and long history of demonstrations, the organizations involved are pressing for changes that reach beyond the traditional boundaries of France’s left-wing political establishment.
During the unrest, the far-left environmental group Les Soulèvements de la Terre, or “Earth Uprisings,” posted a message celebrating the young demonstrators: “Glory to the rebellious high school students.”
The group paired that support with a broader call for political upheaval: “Pour un soulèvement antifasciste,” translated as “For an antifascist uprising.”
The international campaign surrounding France’s protests demonstrates how a local dispute can be reframed for audiences abroad as part of a much larger confrontation with Western governments and institutions.
“The communist Red and the Islamist Greens have nothing in common but a common enemy, the Judeo-Christian, capitalist, free West, led by the U.S.,” Gonzalez said. “Their goal is to dismantle us.”
Gonzalez argued that the situation could be especially volatile in France because of the country’s longstanding communist parties and its history of governments being challenged by mass street protests. He pointed to the collapse of the Fourth Republic in 1958 following demonstrations over Algeria and to the threat to the government during the student-led unrest of 1968.
“And of course, there was the blood-drenched violence of the 1789 French Revolution,” Gonzalez added.
High school students gather at Place de la Bastille in Paris on Oct. 8, 2026, with one waving a flag of the La France Insoumise political party, known by its acronym LFI. (Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Right to Revolt’
Since late September, politicians from the far-left political party, La France insoumise, were seen working with students organizing blockades in Seine-Saint-Denis, a low-income suburb northeast of Paris. French-Moroccan journalist Nora Bussigny wrote that “many elected officials” from La France Insoumise “have indeed worked to co-opt the student protests, at the risk of seeing them spiral out of control: by fanning the flames, discrediting institutions like the police, and legitimizing the principle of political violence.”
Soon after, a wide network of far-left groups put out the call for tens of thousands of secondary school students and supporters to march through Paris on Oct. 6, while demonstrations spread across France.
Student organizations in the network of 50 include the Union Syndicale Lycéenne, or High School Students’ Union; Union Étudiante, or Student Union; Fédération des Associations Générales Étudiantes, or Federation of General Student Associations; and Union Nationale des Étudiants de France, or National Union of Students of France, helped mobilize students for the Oct. 6 demonstrations.
Other student organizations, including Solidaires Étudiantes, or Solidaires Students, have joined the broader campaign.
The organizational machinery supporting the mobilization extends beyond the teenagers who first took to the streets. National labor federations and professional education unions have called on adult workers to join the mobilization, bringing the institutional reach of organized labor into the student movement.
The Confédération nationale du travail, or National Confederation of Labour, declared: “The demands of high school students are also ours. They are right to revolt.”
The adult-led labor organizations in the network of 50 include: the Confédération générale du travail, or General Confederation of Labour; Force Ouvrière, or Workers’ Force; and Union nationale des syndicats autonomes, or National Union of Autonomous Trade Unions.
Several education-sector unions called for a strike and demonstration in support of the high school movement.
The organizations include the CFDT Public Education, Training and Research; CGT Éduc’action; the National Federation of Education, Culture and Vocational Training–Workers’ Force; SUD Éducation; and Syndicat National des Enseignements de Second Degré, the National Union of Secondary Education, affiliated with the Unitary Trade Union Federation.
The support extends beyond teachers and students into a wider collection of organizations, including parents’ associations, civil-rights groups, antiracist organizations and political movements.
Among them are the Fédération des Conseils de Parents d’Élèves, or Federation of Parents’ Councils; Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, or Human Rights League; Mouvement Contre le Racisme et Pour L’amitié entre Les Peuples, or Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples; and SOS Racisme, or SOS Racism.
Tens of thousands of secondary school students and their supporters march from Republic to Nation square on Oct. 6, 2026, in Paris, France. Nationwide student protests and violent school riots have disrupted over 700 secondary schools and led to roughly 5,000 arrests across France. What began in late September 2026 as peaceful blockades in the low-income Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis has rapidly escalated into a major public order crisis for President Emmanuel Macron’s government. (Guy Smallman/Getty Images)
Communist Flags and Calls for ‘Class War’
In Paris on Tuesday, the big day of the protests, the ideological character of the mobilization was visible on the streets.
In Paris, activists waved red flags of the far-left Fédération Syndicale Étudiante, or Student Trade Union Federation. Some demonstrators wore Palestinian keffiyeh scarves covering parts of their faces as they marched behind a bright red banner bearing the words “Contre Les Guerres Impérialistes,” French for “Against Imperialist Wars.”
The slogan is a recurring political message among anti-war, feminist and revolutionary-left organizations.
The message on the red banner continued, “Guerre De Clasee !” or “Class War!” over a bright yellow image of the hammer and sickle.
The banner identified the Young Communists, associated with the Mouvement Jeunes Communistes de France, or Young Communists Movement of France, which works closely with the French Communist Party.
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Activists carried flags bearing the communist hammer and sickle.
On Instagram, the organization announced the launch of “Democratic and Antifascist Vigilance Committees.”
“High school students neglected, pro-Palestinian activists persecuted, unionists fired. State repression against our democratic rights has intensified in recent years,” the group declared.
Young communists carry a banner that says “Contre Les Guerres Impérialistes,” protesting “imperialist wars” as part of the student protests in France on Oct. 6, 2026. (Vincent Koebel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
‘Parti Communiste Français’
At the protest, Fabien Roussel, national secretary of the French Communist Party, took photos with protesters and later posted a message on X: “Standing alongside high school students in Paris, together with Communist elected officials and activists.”
Red flags with white stars and the message “Parti Communiste Français” flapped around him.
Online the French Communist Party has continued advancing other political campaigns, including a demand to stop supplying arms to Israel, under the slogan “Stop arming the Palestinian genocide!”
On Wednesday, after the peak protests, the Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste – L’Anticapitaliste, “The New Anticapitalist Party,” rallied supporters, declaring there are “always more reasons to mobilize.”
Other revolutionary-left groups, including Le Poing Levé, or The Raised Fist, and Révolution Permanente, or Permanent Revolution, have promoted solidarity between high school students and university activists.
Protesters hold Palestinian and Antifa flags as French high school and university students attend a demonstration in Strasbourg, France, on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2026. (Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)
Palestine Flags
In Saint-Denis, where the protests began, the Parti des Indigènes de la République, or Party of the Indigenous of the Republic, shared a photograph of young men standing outside Lycée Paul Éluard, a high school that has become a symbol of the unrest.
As red smoke billowed above them, the students stood in front of large gray letters spelling out the school’s name, holding a Palestinian flag. The school was later featured in the New York Times under the headline, “The School Near Paris That Shows Why French Students Are Protesting.”
In the network of 50 groups, Étudiants Musulmans de France, or Muslim Students of France, rallied followers to protest for the right of youth to “study with dignity.” And members of Urgence Palestine, or “Palestine Emergency,” marched proudly in the student protests with the Palestinian flag.
Elsewhere, French lawmaker Louis Boyard of the far-left party, La France Insoumise waved a Palestinian flag while standing at Paris-Est-Créteil University with students as they blocked their campus. In marches, their activists wave trademark purple flags that flutter with the group’s acronym “FI” and a white φ symbol for the Greek word “phi.”
Democratic Socialists of America member Hasan Piker and CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans of CodePink meet in Cuba, as part of “United Front” to support the communist regime. (CodePink via Storyful)
Singham Network Broadcasts France’s Unrest
On Wednesday, BreakThrough News published an article portraying the demonstrations as a “historic strike against austerity.”
It also published a dramatic Instagram video of Bally Bagayoko, the far-left mayor of Saint-Denis and a politician with La France insoumise, sliding in front of students during a confrontation with police.
BreakThrough News described the scene as Bagayoko protecting “a line of French students from police as they attack the protesters.”
The anti-policing video received about 346,000 likes in one day.
Mayor of Saint-Denis Bally Bagayoko, a member of the leftist party La France Insoumise, reacts as clashes occur between demonstrators and riot police during a protest against education conditions and to highlight the lack of resources and staff in high schools in Paris, France, on Oct. 6, 2026. (Anadolu via Getty Images)
Bally Bagayoko, mayor of Saint-Denis and a member of the leftist party La France Insoumise, poses for photographs as he arrives on Bastille square at the start of a nationwide demonstration called by high-school students demanding better learning conditions in Paris on Oct. 8, 2026. (AFP via Getty Images)
Among the accounts that liked the video were Twitch influencer Hasan Piker, a self-described Marxist; BreakThrough News editor Zoe Alexandra; the Houston chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Pittsburgh chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups in the Singham network.
Earlier this year, Piker traveled to Cuba as part of a far-left “caravan” supporting the island nation’s communist government. There, he took a photo with Jodie Evans, Singham’s wife and co-founder of CodePink, which has received $1.33 million from Singham.
From Latin America, teleSUR, an international television network in the Singham network, frequently circulates material from left-wing media outlets, including BreakThrough News, and it shared footage of French students clashing with police.
The video featured a dramatic soundtrack and the headline: “TENSIONS ESCALATE….”
From France to Greece, India and the US
As French students stormed the streets, the Communist Youth of Greece publicly expressed solidarity with their movement. “Victory for the struggle of the school students in France!” the group said in a statement.
BreakThrough News quoted the Greek communist organization in its France coverage, describing the developments as “foreshadowing more student struggles to follow.”
Another international connection runs through Indian Alliance Paris, a small France-based organization of students, researchers and professionals who describe themselves as committed to a “democratic and egalitarian” India.
In mid-January 2023, Indian Alliance Paris co-sponsored a teach-in in Manhattan, opposing the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The venue: the People’s Forum Inc., a midtown Manhattan hub for communist organizing that Singham launched in 2017 with $22.44 million in funding. Over the past near decade, leaders of the People’s Forum have coordinated hundreds of protests across America’s streets.
The People’s Forum co-sponsored the event with Democratic Socialists of America and other organizations in the Singham-funded activist ecosystem, including CodePink and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
In mid-May 2024, the People’s Forum hosted a screening of a 1967 French film “La Chinoise,” and described the film as a story about a small group of French students studying Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, “trying to find out their position in the world and how to change the world to a Maoistic community using terrorism.”
Mao unleashed mass political persecution, violence, imprisonment and social upheaval in China.
Attendees were invited to purchase an $8 “solidarity ticket.”
On Tuesday, Indian Alliance Paris promoted the French student agitation while drawing parallels with student demonstrations in India. It posted a message on X, sending a heart emoji “to Gen Z: In France. In India. Bravo for today.”
The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: far-left activist networks amplify protests around the world, then package the unrest as evidence of a growing global uprising.
On Thursday, after the French students had headed home after their siege on Bastille, BreakThrough News posted a collage on Instagram of short video clips from the U.S., Spain, India, France, Brazil, Belgium, Chile and Germany with youth waving communist flags, clashing with police and flooding the streets.
It posted a headline in bold capital letters over the videos: “YOUTH RISE UP AROUND THE WORLD.”