In 2024, climate activists in New York City protested alongside anti-Israel protesters at a rally headlined “Climate Justice Means Free Palestine.” Last year, climate change celebrity icon Greta Thunberg tried to storm Israel by sea on a flotilla protesting the country’s war in Gaza, yelling “Free! Free! Palestine!” when she was refused entry.
And, last week, activists from CodePink, a far-left feminist activist group that has received funds from an American expatriate, , living in Shanghai, took a break from their rallies supporting the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Cuba Communist Party to circulate a video on Instagram, attacking a Utah data center project backed by investor Kevin OLeary.
What connects these causes?
Climate activists, anti-Israel protesters and other activist movements with very different agendas have become strange bedfellows united by a shared disdain for America and funding from China, according to experts who warn the trend is weakening the United States amid a rapidly accelerating AI race.
Critics say the same activist ecosystem is now targeting Americas AI infrastructure and industrial power, in a development that experts warn could undermine the United States in its technological competition with China.
The growing convergence increasingly includes communist and Islamist activist movements, and it recently extended into campaigns targeting Americas artificial intelligence data centers, with activist and environmental groups helping delay or block dozens of such projects worth billions of dollars over concerns about energy use, water consumption and environmental impact amid rising power demand.
Fox News Digital has observed many of the movements protesting side-by-side at demonstrations across the country despite their otherwise stark ideological differences.
“What all of these protests have in common â the protests against AI data centers or the environmental protests or the protest against Israel â is that anti-American trend within them,” Hudson Institute fellow Zineb Riboua told Fox News Digital.
” was also one of those very trendy causes to protest for or against, and now theres always this quest to find what is the next thing to revolutionize,” Riboua added. “And this revolution against the United States is always welcome, no matter what type of forms and shapes it takes.”
Fox News Digital has previously reported that Singham, a U.S.-born tech tycoon living in Shanghai, funneled roughly $285 million into six activist nonprofits accused by lawmakers and analysts of promoting protest movements.
OLeary accused local groups opposing the Utah project of being tied to China-linked funding networks and argued the backlash reflected a broader nationwide trend of activist campaigns targeting AI infrastructure, though Fox News Digital has not independently verified the Utah-related allegations.
Riboua, who specializes in and Chinas influence in the Middle East, warned that the overlap between climate activists, anti-Israel protesters, communists and Islamists is being driven by a broader anti-American worldview she described as “Third Worldism,” an ideology that divides the world into “oppressors” and “oppressed” and casts the United States and the West as the primary source of global problems.
The ideology unites otherwise unrelated activist causes under a shared anti-Western framework, she said.
“Third Worldism drives anti-Americanism because the goal of Third Worldism is basically dismantling a cohesive Western society or Western country,” Riboua said.
WATCH: Expert warns red-green-green alliance helping China gain AI edge
Energy expert Brenda Shaffer, a research faculty member at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, described the broader activist convergence as part of a “red-green-green alliance,” an ideological overlap between three elements: communist movements, characterized by the color red; Isla
