Neville Roy Singham and Jodie Evans are wealthy Americans who use their money to support Communist China, Communism in general, as well as terrorist organizations like Hamas, under the guise of popular action and pro-peace idealism. The Free Press tells about their funding and support of two organizations, The People’s Forum and Code Pink, as well as their Marxist backgrounds.
But Singham is more than just a Marxist with deep pockets. He is also a China sympathizer who lives in Shanghai and has close ties to at least four propaganda news sites that boost the Chinese Communist Party’s image abroad, the [New York] Times reported.
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Singham’s wife Evans was once critical of the Chinese government. In 2015, she stood in solidarity with Chinese feminists, writing on Twitter that the government must “stop brutal repression of their women’s human rights defenders.” But after marrying Singham, she started to change her tune. She launched the #ChinaIsNotOurEnemy campaign through Code Pink in 2020, and now leads a series of webinars on Code Pink’s YouTube page where she praises China’s “beautiful history” and its party-state political structure.
“The idea that it’s an authoritarian system that controls everything is, like, so crazy, what a crazy notion that we’ve been sold,” she said four months ago in an hour-long virtual talk. The people of China are not oppressed, she added, because “I know what it’s like to be with people who are oppressed.”
Francesca Block. The Free Press. November 14, 2023.
Singham made it it big with his company ThoughtWorks, selling it off to spend more money and time on his activism. According to the company’s website, it is a “leading technology consultancy with over 11,500 Thoughtworkers across 51 offices in 18 countries”. The current market capitalization for the company is over $1.2 billion.
Questions
According to The Free Press article above, Singham was always a Marxist. It is interesting to note that his wife apparently changed her mind on China, after getting involved with Singham. Was it love, money, or just going along to get along? Or does she really believe that China is not run by a repressive regime?
How can a Marxist do so well in a free-market system? What does that say about the values of Thoughtworks and the many top companies that they serve? Why do so many companies bend their knee to China?
Consider the recent dinner at which CEOs of American companies paid to have an audience with his royal terribleness Xi Jinping. They stood and clapped for the dictator. A standing ovation.
Is it merely craven business interests that draw such firms to serve the dragon? A strong priority of profit-seeking over all other considerations? What happens when China sets the rules of the game and can take away all that treasure that has been bestowed?
Isn’t it time we look more closely at the values of corporate leaders? Does a blind rush toward “globalization” make us better off if “globalization” puts us under the dominion of the Chinazis?
Something bothers me about this post and especially as illustrated by the accompanying image (representing rich people generally, not rich people doing bad things). I agree with the general conclusion that wealth should not be used to commit evil.
Globalization per se, if “globalization” refers simply to cross-border interactions, is not an evil, just as economy per se and trade per se are not evils but indispensable means of achieving good. One would not indict human action as such or life as such because bad people doing bad things must act and must be alive in order to do them. Of course, one should do nothing blindly, whether the scale of one’s actions is local or global. A person living in a small town can provide the funding for another person living in a small town to rob a bank in that small town. No global scale and no enormous wealth are required.
One can achieve enormous wealth virtuously, by honest production and trade, or by committing crime. One can spend honestly gained wealth to achieve good things or, perhaps out of a desire to appease people who say you’re bad for being rich, evil things. Wealthy proponents of communism or fascism and poor proponents of these evil systems are not supporting them because of their wealth or lack of wealth, but because of their moral choices and ideas. The richer person has greater material means of spreading the evil. But some rich people and some corporate entities work to advance individual rights and freedom. They may sometimes err badly when doing so; but their errors, if corrected once seen, don’t put them in the same moral category as the Neville Singhams of the world.