Behind the accusation of Donald Trump, the right sees a well-known villain – George Soros

For more than a quarter of a century, from East Asia to Central Europe and the United States, the mysterious financier George Soros has been protagonist as puppeteer by conspiracy theoristswho pointed to him as the man behind the scenes responsible for crises as varied as falling currencies, rising immigration and general moral laxity.

Now the American right is crediting Soros, a billionaire and frequent donor to Democratic causes, with a new achievement: the accusation of Donald Trump.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was “appointed and funded by George Soros,” the former president said on Thursday when news of his indictment broke.

The “Soros-backed” assessment. he was joined to Bragg’s name by Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and Trump’s possible rival in the race for the White House; Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, a member of the House Republican Caucus; Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the last leader of the Republican campaign arm of the Senate; and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a far-right agitator, as she traveled to Manhattan on Monday to protest Trump’s indictment.

The right-wing fixation on Soros has waxed and waned for years, but the hype surrounding Trump’s impeachment has breathed new life into what critics are calling a fixation tinged with anti-Semitic bigotry. Soros, a Hungarian Jew, survived the Holocaust, fled communism and became a major financier of democracy promotionanti-communism and liberal education around the world.

conspiracy

“We understand that when someone makes comments about ‘Soros-backed prosecutors,’ that in itself is not necessarily anti-Semitic,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish civil rights group.

“But when one person or political party repeatedly and relentlessly claims that there is a ‘Soros-backed cabal of globalists destroying our country,'” Greenblatt said, “This invokes a classic anti-Jewish conspiracy theory and should be condemned.”. Trump and his allies have been pointing the finger at Soros for years, Greenblatt added.

The remarkable skill of Soros’ alleged power has only made his critics’ allegations more surreal. In 1997, the Prime Minister of Malaysia he blamed the financier for his country’s economic debacle. The now disgraced former Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, has suggested that Soros’ efforts to block George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004 may have been financed with “drug money.”

Trump hinted at this in 2018 Soros financed migrant caravans headed for the southwestern border of the United States. Right-wing figures have also implausibly claimed that Soros financed both the “great replacement” of white Americans with people of color and the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as an act of “false flag” to damage your cause.

Hungarian leader Viktor Orban made Soros his villain A favorite in the pursuit of what he calls “illiberal democracy,” an all-purpose scapegoat whenever his government faces a crisis it can’t handle.

Orban first discovered Soros’ potential as a politically useful enemy during the 2015 European migration crisis. It was then that Orban accused non-governmental organizations partly funded by Soros of pushing desperate people from Africa and the Middle East to reach the Hungary as part of a conspiracy. to dilute the native population and create a pool of future liberal voters.

This is the message sent to voters by Orban’s media machineit became the focus of his party’s Fidesz campaign ahead of the 2018 general election. Billboards with pictures of the smiling financier and the slogan, “Don’t let George Soros have the last laugh,” were put up across the country.

Fidesz has proposed a bill called Stop Soros ban organizations considered pro-migration and also tax groups receiving foreign funding, a bill that aimed less at stopping migration than at limiting the influence of civil society groups considered hostile to Fidesz.

now with trump

Trump’s impeachment has returned Soros to the center of US politics… and reignited the debate whether criticism of a democratic mega-donor who is Jewish can be branded bigotry. Soros, after all, also reacted to Trump.

In a rare public address at the annual Munich Security Conference in February, Soros called the former president a “trusted crook whose narcissism has become a disease.” Soros then predicted that Trump would lose the Republican nomination, run as a third-party candidate, and lead to a landslide victory for the Democrats.

Conservative columnist Charles CW Cooke argued strongly The national review that Soros’ active involvement in politics, such as his intervention to promote the election of liberal district attorneys like Bragg, makes him a legitimate target, and that allegations of anti-Semitism are misplaced.

“This is America,” he wrote. “In free countries, free people can defend whatever type of elected official they like. And, in turn, other free people can criticize them.”

Soros’ involvement in Bragg’s election is indirect. In 2021, during a heated Democratic primary, the political arm of the self-described racial justice organization Color of Change pledged $1 million to support Bragg’s campaign.

Soon after, Soros gave the organization a million, one of several donations he has made to the group totaling $4 million since 2016. While Soros declined a request for an interview, a spokesman said the financier and the Manhattan district attorney had never met and no contributions a Color of Change was especially intended for Bragg when he was a candidate.

In politics

Additionally, the Color of Change political action committee, which is supposed to be independent of the political candidates it supports, reneged on its pledge to back Bragg as it spent about half of the million it pledged.

“I think some people on the right would rather focus on crazy conspiracy theories than the serious allegations against the former president,” Soros said in a text message to news organization Semafor.

Soros’ influence on liberal politics is equally complicated. His $125 million 2021 donation to his own political action committee, Democracy PAC II, made him by far the largest donor in the 2022 midterm elections.

but the cap spent only a fraction of that money, about $11 million, more than half of which went to one organization, the Senate Majority PAC, the Democrats’ semi-official super PAC that funds the party’s efforts to keep the Senate.

“Usually you’re at or near the top, but in ’22 the money you donated went nowhere,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan Washington group that investigates bell funding. “It’s almost misleading to call him the top donor because he had almost no impact on the cycle.”

But its impact on political discourse has been enormous. Senator JD Vance of Ohio and Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, both freshman Republicans, accused Soros of buying Bragg. The ADL referred to far-right social media posts that amplified such claims and also spilled over into outright anti-Semitism, with claims such as: “’Jews don’t rule the world.’ Meanwhile, George Soros he just brought him to trial.” President Trump.”

The ADL noted that dozens of fundraising emails sent by the Trump campaign mentioned Soros, using what the group called “explosive language” as “puppeteer” or “master puppeteer”.

“In any context, that language would be alarming,” Greenblatt said. “At a time when anti-Semitism in the United States has reached historic levels, this behavior is not only disturbing; It is indisputably dangerous.”

Rashad Robinson, President of Color of Change, he called the attacks on his organization anti-Semitic and racistas they portrayed a Harvard-trained prosecutor as a puppet controlled by a Jewish billionaire.

The attacks had an impact, he said. Funding for criminal justice reform groups was running out as the issue became more partisan, she said. Now her group spends money on security, monitors Internet threats and makes sure allies keep their distance.

“It’s scary and it’s hard and it’s complicated,” Robinson said.

Conservative commentators say such statements seek to shut down legitimate debate about how liberal and partisan prosecutors overreact.

The same argument caused a stir in Hungary, where some Orban critics, appalled by anti-Soros hoardings, accused the Hungarian leader of uses an anti-Semitic cliché, the “laughing Jew”. Others believe that Orban’s demonization of the financier is rooted less in bigotry than in a broader, more politically expedient hostility toward wealthy liberal elites, regardless of their ethnicity or religion.

Soros, nearly 93, doesn’t speak as much in public as he once did, but in Munich he seemed to understand the irony of his desire to shape world events without unduly altering reality. It is this desire to shape events that has invariably angered his detractors.

“As participants we want to change the world in our favor”, She said. “As observers we want to understand reality as it is.”

“These two goals,” he added, “interfere with each other.”

© The New York Times Translation: Elisa Carnelli