An uproar has grown around the merger of two entertainment companies, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, but it is not all it seems.
What at first may appear a grassroots “Main Street” uprising of movie industry workers called Block the Merger, is actually organized by a cadre of anti-American groups funded by ultra-leftists including George Soros, Pierre Omiydar and Chinese communist ally Neville Singham.
Through their powerful nonprofits — who previously bankrolled immigration and climate demonstrations — they have put together coast-to-coast events in the so-called Block the Merger movement to attempt to disrupt and ultimately halt the $111 billion sale of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), which was approved by shareholders in April.
Critics say their reasons for doing so aren’t just rooted in labor issues, but they are against Larry Ellison and his son, David, who will be the main shareholders and control the new company, for their closeness to President Trump and their fiercely pro-Israel stance.
Sources close to the merger claimed to The Post the astroturfing — the hiding of the true sponsors or meaning of an effort —is also rooted in the ideals of the rising left-wing Democratic Socialists of America group, with one dubbing it a “college campus infiltration into corporate America.”
“It’s the DSA folks trying to expand and flex their muscles,” they added.
“The Paramount camp is all pro-Israel, pro-America centrists, but they’re coming at us really hard. It’s all the usual suspects coming together.”
Larry Ellison, who is one of the largest private donors to pro-Israel causes, maintains close personal ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has made repeated public statements of strong support.
His Oracle tech powerhouse — where he initially made his billions — also has business ties with the embattled Middle Eastern nation, notably through government data center contracts.
Sources who spoke to The Post allege this is part of the reason the usual Democratic Socialist of America-linked busybodies are stirring the pot.
“This Block the Merger fringe group is pressing a group of socialist-leaning state government people, purely for political reasons, to block the merger. But they won’t be successful,” a source involved in the merger claimed to The Post.
“They’re completely driven by antisemitism and socialism.”
On June 6, Block the Merger held its first public gathering in Los Angeles, a roundtable discussion where sources told The Post a paltry 100 people showed up and the event concluded with chants of “free Palestine.”
On Saturday, another Block the Merger event hopes to make a bigger splash in New York, at a similar roundtable. Democratic Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been invited, but it is unclear if he will attend. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a vocal political ally of the effort, is scheduled to appear.
Mamdani has publicly opposed the Paramount-WBD deal, saying it “must be stopped” ahead of the April shareholder meeting.
Mamdani, echoing other opponents, claimed the merger limited streaming service competition which would lead to higher costs, lead to a massive wave of industry layoffs typical in mergers and reduce the number of major US film studios to just four.
The Paramount-WBD deal is expected to be finalized in September, subject to US and international regulatory approval, and would create a major media and entertainment leviathan.
It unites Paramount, which owns CBS, with Warner Bros. Discovery which owns movie studios, HBO, TNT, Nickelodeon, CNN and various other networks and channels.
The transaction is currently undergoing antitrust reviews.
Pro-Palestine activist-actors Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem have both spoken in support of the Block the Merger cause.
Ruffalo called the merger a “threat to democracy itself” during a Senate hearing in April and whined in a New York Times op-ed that the deal marked the “potential end of one of the great movie studios, as well as putting CNN under the same roof as the now imperiled CBS News.”
In September, Ellison’s Paramount became the first major studio to publicly condemn a pledge signed by over 4,000 film professionals — including Ruffalo — to boycott Israeli film institutions, saying at the time, “silencing individual creative artists based on their nationality does not promote better understanding or advance the cause of peace.”
The Block the Merger campaign claims on its website the merging of Paramount and WBD will “substantially lessen competition” in the movie and TV markets and concentrate “control over content libraries, television networks, streaming platforms” and that they will “raise prices, cut workers, and bankrupt countless small businesses who support the [entertainment] industry.”
Block the Merger urges people to campaign their state attorneys general to challenge the merger.
So far roughly 10 state AGs have been reported to be preparing an antitrust lawsuit to block the deal, led by California’s Rob Bonta and New York’s Letitia James. Their coalition includes fellow Democrats in Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, Connecticut and Massachusetts and two Republicans in Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
While some of the backers of the campaign are film and TV media companies, others have more ideological roots.
They include the anti-monopoly nonprofit American Economic Liberties Project (AELP) and Democracy Defenders Action (DDA).
AELP has received at least $500,000 from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, with additional grants from far-left Ford Foundation and the Omidyar Network, the philanthropic operation of eBay founder and Democrat megadonor Pierre Omidyar.
Other Soros funded groups are also backers of the Block the Merger campaign. Meanwhile, DDA was co-founded by President Obama’s ethics czar and Democrat operative Norm Eisner, and receives donations from Democrat fundraising operation ActBlue and the leftwing MacArthur Foundation.
The US-based agitator group CodePink — currently under a federal microscope over a March 2026 photo-op trip to Cuba that may have violated foreign agent and sanction laws — has also thrown its support behind the anti-merger movement.
CodePink was founded and is largely funded by Chinese Communist Party-linked billionaire Neville Singham and his wife Jodie Evans.
“The motivation here is to further infiltrate the political system by impacting businesses. There’s no business basis for this [deal] not to happen,” another source with knowledge of the merger told The Post.
“If it wasn’t the Ellisons, who are known to be pro-Israel and proud of their Judaism this wouldn’t be an issue,” the source added.
AELP, the group leading the effort, did not respond to requests for comment from The Post.
Last week some members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee warned of possible ties between Chinese funding and anti-AI campaigners in the US, suggesting a wave of protests against large-scale data centers in rural communities are also being astroturfed by foreign entities.
The report cited a study by the Bitcoin Policy Institute that claimed “international actors are working through state media organizations, nonprofit networks, and dark money groups to shape US policy and public opinion on artificial intelligence” while highlighting the network of nonprofits bankrolled by Shanghai-based Singham.