Left-wing activists who have successfully pressured some corporations to stop advertising on Breitbart are now pressuring investors to pull their money from hedge fund Renaissance Technologies because its co-CEO is conservative billionaire Robert Mercer.
Sleeping Giants, an anonymous group of left-wing activists, is targeting the hedge fund because Mercer is the main financial backer of Steve Bannon and Breitbart News.
NEW ACTION: Robert Mercer is funding bigotry. Institutions are investing in him. Let’s contact them. Read this: https://t.co/H7gsObtzG5
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) October 23, 2017
The group cites a ThinkProgress article that named several universities and public utilities as among the investors in Renaissance Technologies. The article was titled, “These wealthy institutions are quietly financing white nationalism.”
“These are institutions whose stated values are to support and educate of people of all backgrounds, no matter their sex, race, religion or sexual orientation,” reads a Google document organizing the campaign.
“So are they aware their investments in Renaissance Technologies are being systematically re-invested in hate speech and bigotry? Do they know their funds are working directly against their missions?”
One of those institutions is Michigan State University.
The document includes contact information for the university’s president and board of trustees and encourages leftists to contact the university officials to voice their displeasure.
The activist group will target a different institution every two days.
Sleeping Giants has organized a pressure campaign meant to shame Breitbart advertisers into pulling their ads from the site. More than 3,300 advertisers have pulled out from Breitbart, according to a running list kept by the activist group.
Sleeping Giants was among the left-wing groups who pressured advertisers to pull their ads from former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s show, eventually leading Fox News to fire him.