In November 2023, Fergie Chambers, the self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist and anti-imperialist crusader, convened a meeting of his closest advisers at his New England commune. Their mission was to map out how to spend the roughly $250 million he’d inherited as an heir to the Cox Enterprises business empire.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas’s terrorist attack on southern Israel a month earlier was breathing frenetic new life into the anti-Israel movement globally. And Chambers, now 41, wanted it known that he had established a financial vehicle through which to spend his millions on Palestine and other far-left causes.

“We are the Babochki Collective,” Chambers proclaimed on his Facebook page on November 9, 2023, giving a name to his investment fund. Babochki means butterflies in Russian, and he said it was “a cadre collective focused on revolutionary funding, propaganda and political education, direct action/legal support, and the open proliferation of a steadily stronger anti-imperialist united front.”

Joining Chambers that day was a coterie of young comrades, a number of whom would go on to make names for themselves by launching protests and sabotage operations against companies and institutions seen as aiding Israel. These associates included teenage activist Calla Walsh and Paige Belanger of Palestine Action U.S., a sister organization to the British group that the UK government designated as a terrorist entity last year. Also present were Mirah Wood and Jorge Rocha of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) International Committee.