Astroturf: (Noun) A substance that appears to be "grassroots", but is artificial. Maybe even completely fake.
Or as Bronson Winslow at "Restoration News" puts it:
If the Left does one thing well, it's to convince everyone that all of their movements are seemingly grassroots—but don't let that image stick.
Instead of a lovingly curated yard think instead a pristine golf course strategically engineered, backed by millions of dollars, and maintained by a crew of professionals that hide behind the curtain.
Example: The "organic, grassroots" campaign of demonstrations and vandalism against Tesla.
As I (among many others) have noted, Big Left excels at building financial networks to support their human networks. Big Left's network of non-profits that provide labor and receive and exchange ("launder" is such an ugly word) money from big-money donors is huge, well-developed, and intentionally opaque.
It's true of all of Big Left - including the Anti-Tesla fracas. What seems chaotic and organic...
⚠️ And just like that the LEFT Hates EV's and Climate Change No Longer Matters to them
— World On Fire Media (@CultureWar2020) April 1, 2025
@elonmuskhas changed the trajectory of electric vehicles for the better and now the Marxists on the LEFT want to Destroy him and Burn it all DOWN#Tesla #TeslaTerrorism $TSLA pic.twitter.com/cl30cgyKRd
...is anything but
Winslow looks (among many others) at "The Disruption Project", a group helping drive the anti-Musk/Tesla narrative:
A surface level investigation shows that behind the branding lies a network of institutional support, shielded funding from large donors, and connections to other groups that all unjustly call themselves "grassroots."
At first glance, their website gives them away. Instead of a simple, possibly quickly built website that would characterize a grassroots movement, it’s clean, highly produced, and suspiciously over legalized. Instead of a rag tag collective, disruption-project.org is layered with legal disclaimers and a privacy policy more fit for a tech startup than a street-level movement.
The only available contact is a sterile "info@" email. No staff. No organizers. No accountability.
Its puzzling to see a "grassroots" group so entrenched in the professional gloss of the corporate world—but when the curtains are removed, and the unsurprising backers are revealed, it all starts to make sense. A deeper dive shows the group is almost 100 percent backed by Tides Advocacy, a powerful wing of the Tides Network, which specializes in funneling anonymous, high-dollar donations into progressive causes.
Read the entire report.
Liz Collin from Minneapolis-based Alpha News interviewed Winslow:
From the AlphaNews report:
Winslow explained that, “When you look into the funding, you start to realize, OK, these are corporate, polished, D.C. establishment-backed groups and the money comes from the same people. You’re looking at the Tides Foundation, you’re looking at Soros, you’re looking at Reid Hoffman and ActBlue. So as much as they like to paint this as a grassroots kind of formation, it’s simply a rendition of BLM. It’s just one more front of the left pushing their own money and puppeteering these ideas for people on the ground.”
...
However, one of the key points that Winslow touched upon was the manipulation involved with these groups. While supporters want to feel “connected,” Winslow cautioned how, “it’s all puppeteered, it’s all fabricated, and none of it’s truly representing what I believe most Americans would like to put forward as the ideals of America. And of course, that’s all because there’s litanies of money being pushed in from the left.”
The conservative movement
