Democrats wanted a makeover. They got Marxism and Molotov cocktails.

In February, Democratic Party operatives and elected officials met for a retreat in Virginia hosted by Third Way, a self-described center-left organization. Their goal: develop a strategy to reverse the party’s hard-left drift and reconnect with working-class voters.

They brainstormed ways to neutralize the far-left infrastructure that now defines the party. Among their key recommendations? Embrace patriotism, community, and traditional American imagery. Show up at tailgates, gun shows, local diners, and churches.

Corporate media and DC careerists will pretend these protesters don’t represent the party. They’ll try to repackage the fury in the streets as civic activism. But we won’t let them.

That plan flopped.

Democrats didn’t pivot to working-class America. They ran straight back into the arms of their radical base. By June, they had poured money and institutional support into the No Kings protests erupting nationwide.

These protests didn’t happen at tailgates or in small-town churches. They returned to the same streets torched during the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020 — angrier, louder, and even more extreme.

And the party cheered them on.

From Hillary Clinton to Chuck Schumer, Democrat leaders lined up in support. Corporate media echoed their talking points. None of them could rein in their base. More damning, none of them wanted to.

The protests weren’t fringe outbursts. In fact, they revealed the party’s core. Their rhetoric was radical. Their goals were openly anti-democratic. Many participants waved explicitly communist banners, marched under Marxist slogans, and called for the dismantling of American institutions.

That imagery — the rage, the theatrics, the ideological extremism — was exactly what February’s conference attendees feared. But it’s now the public face of the Democratic Party. The working class isn’t clamoring for more street theatrics. They want real solutions from people in power.

So we at the Oversight Project did what we do best: investigate.

We focused on a key protest organizer, a group called 50501 — short for “50 protests in 50 states for 1 movement.” Its website paints a clear picture. Placards read “Impeach the dictator,” “Impeach the bitch,” and “No one is illegal on stolen land.” Moderate? Hardly.

We compiled Instagram activity from 50501’s state chapters — 34 in total, plus Washington, D.C., and several national branches. We tracked who its social media managers followed, and what emerged was a clear pattern of associations: communist, neo-Marxist, anti-American, and foreign-aligned groups.

These protests didn’t bubble up from the grassroots. They were built from the same radical networks that have long tried to destabilize the country from within.

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  Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Seventeen accounts followed nearly 20 accounts tied to the Party for Socialism and Liberation — a Marxist-Leninist group that splintered from the Workers World Party. One of its former members carried out the shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., earlier this year.

Thirty-three accounts followed Democratic Socialists of America pages. Sixteen followed Students for a Democratic Society. Twelve connected with Students for Justice in Palestine.

Many accounts also followed known foreign-aligned activist groups, including Code Pink — famous for its disruptions in congressional hearings — and the Act Now to Stop War and Racism coalition (ANSWER).

Naturally, we found ties to Antifa as well, including groups like Anti-Fascist Aktion and prominent members such as @PunkwithACamera.

We wish we had this report back in February. We would’ve printed it out and handed it to every Democrat in attendance — just to watch their faces drop as they saw what their party has become.

This is the story of the American left for the next decade: the radical tail wagging the party dog.

Corporate media and D.C. careerists will pretend these protesters don’t represent the party. They’ll try to repackage the fury in the streets as civic activism. But we won’t let them.

We’ll keep exposing the ties. We’ll name the names. And we’ll make sure every Democrat trying to rebrand ahead of 2028 wears the consequences of these alliances around their necks.