Minneapolis communists make a cameo appearance in best-selling book “Blood Money”
Peter Schweizer’s Blood Money devotes a good part of its Chapter 5 to the activities of an obscure Minneapolis-based outfit, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). We had previously discussed Freedom Road and related entities in this post.
Published last month (Harper), Blood Money currently (as of March 15) sits at #25 in Amazon’s overall ranking and No. 1 in several subcategories. Blood Money sits at No. 2 on the New York Times‘ list of nonfiction books (down from No. 1).
The book runs 198 pages, with another 90 pages of footnotes and a 14-page index.
The book details China’s interference in American domestic affairs. For example, Chapter 4 (“Arming Criminals”) details the role that the Chinese manufactured “auto sear” technology plays in increasing the firing rate of ordinary semi-automatic firearms.
The city of Minneapolis makes its first appearance (unrelated to FRSO) in the book in this chapter (pp. 60-61). Schweizer writes,
In Minneapolis, there were just five incidents of machine-gun fire in 2020. In 2021, there were seventy-eight–a rise of over 1,400 percent.
I recently wrote about an ongoing gang war in Minneapolis. A filing in a Federal gang-related case described (p. 3, paragraph 9) the use of auto sears on the streets of Minneapolis.
Minneapolis appears more prominently in the next chapter (“Magnifying Social Chaos”). The George Floyd riots are mentioned on page 70. The Freedom Road group first appears on page 73 where Schweizer mentions the 2010 FBI raids of the organization and its leaders.
Pages 77 to 80 of Blood Money are devoted to documenting the role of FRSO in organizing the local George Floyd protest marches in the summer of 2020 and the group’s admiration for communist China (and vice versa).
Lest you think either I or Schweizer is exaggerating, here is how FRSO describes itself,
We are organizing the united front against monopoly capitalism — with the strategic alliance of the multinational working class and oppressed nationality movements at its core. This is our general strategy for revolution in the U.S.
FRSO is recruiting and building towards the creation of a new Communist Party based on Marxism-Leninism. This is necessary to lead the way to socialism and liberation.
The FRSO website if full of statements congratulating China for various achievements, including some recent ones issued in October 2022 and July 2021.
Freedom Road makes a final appearance in Blood Money on page 112, hosting a combination pro-China, pro-Hamas event in Minneapolis. Here’s how FRSO promoted the event on Twitter (X) at the time,
Snacks provided!
To be fair, FRSO has promoted Palestinian Liberation from way back. But the organization, and its affiliates, such as the MN Antiwar Committee, gravitates to whatever the cause of the day is.
Today, it’s the ceasefire in Gaza. Back in 2022, it was abortion. It’s always something.
If you are so inclined, you can join their protest tomorrow afternoon in Bloomington against General Dynamics.