Good news! I am now officially part of the Deep State! Or at least that's what it's all pointing to, according to certain conspiracy believers out there. Two weeks ago I was in Vienna and took part in an event at my old university:the Central European University. This university was – you might remember – driven out of Budapest by the regime of Viktor Orbán and just had to move to Vienna. One of the speakers at this opening event was the founder of the university:George Soros. When you see this old man on stage like this, you can hardly imagine it, but there is probably no other private person who is currently the subject of as many conspiracy myths as he is. He's the boo man of the new right around the world. So let's take a look at what could be causing this and who this man actually is. I can say in advance:It won't be too edifying.
Who is George Soros?
One thing can be said at the beginning:George Soros is certainly not a “normal” private person like you and me. After all, the 89-year-old is one of the richest people in the world. As a hedge fund manager since the 1970s, he has accumulated assets in the tens of billions. That explains in part why he has to be used again and again for conspiracy theories. But only in part. Apart from that, his biography is remarkable and his rise to a billionaire is somewhat unlikely. As a Jew born in interwar Budapest, which was deeply marked by anti-Semitism, Soros' starting position was not particularly promising at first. Last but not least, he owes it to the luck that he and his family survived the Holocaust and that he was able to move to London to study after the end of the war. And here, too, his decisions do not fit the image of the multi-billionaire. He didn't enroll in economics in London, but studied philosophy.
As is well known, George Soros ended up in the financial sector anyway. In the 1960s he took his first steps there, celebrated his first successes and soon after that he also began to promote liberal civil society actors and associations. Eventually he founded his Open Society Foundation and in the 1990s the Central European University. At this point I want to finish the biography of George Soros. Because it's not his wealth, his career and not even his social commitment that make him one of the most hated people right-wing politicians and journalists. It goes a lot deeper... But first, let's look at what sort of secret dealings George Soros is commonly associated with. Why is this man so terribly unpopular with Messrs Orbán, Trump and Farage?
The control of the economy
In right-wing conspiracy myths and statements, George Soros is regularly accused of controlling the global economy. Or at least he belongs to an elite group that does so. Such accusations against him have been coming up again and again for decades and recently they found a new resonance in the Brexit debate. After all, many right-wing Britons still regard Soros as the man who defeated the Bank of England (a crazy story, by the way, which you can read more about here). So it's almost natural to blame him for the Remain protests and all other liberal stuff. As I said, the allegations of control of the economy are much older in relation to George Soros. In the 1990s, Malaysia's prime minister accused him of targeting the country and its currency. And yes, when he accused a single person of driving an entire country into the abyss, he meant it quite seriously. Years later, however, he withdrew his statements.
Refugees, Migration and the "Soros Plan"
Nowadays, however, George Soros is seen in the media again and again because of one topic:migration. According to some conspiracy theorists like Viktor Orbán and Nigel Farage, Soros hatched nothing less than a plan to destroy Europe. Obviously someone isn't satisfied with peanuts. First the control of the world economy and then this! Some of these accusations come from well-known sources. Matteo Salvini has expressed such theories in relation to Soros in the past, Nigel Farage immediately called Soros “the biggest danger to the entire Western World” and Viktor Orbán has his eyes on the billionaire anyway. He spent millions of euros on a poster campaign against him. And the myths don't end here either. On top of that, Soros is said to have simply distributed thousands of Mastercards to refugees on the Balkan route...
George Soros, the Puppeteer
Aside from these very concrete allegations, George Soros is also often portrayed as the puppeteer behind all sorts of movements. And no evidence is needed for that. In US media such as Fox News, he has been the personification of the Deep State par excellence for years. The "migrant caravan" of 2018 (remember the hoax?) is said to have been financed by him, the Women's March against Trump 2017 as well, the Occupy Wallstrett Movement as well (which then somehow seems inappropriate for a banker like Soros) ... And To round it all off, Fridays for Future, Merkel's migration policy and the Freemasons are of course also attached to Soros' wallet. But it gets even more perfidious. When a letter bomb attack against George Soros (as well as high-ranking democratic politicians) was uncovered in 2018, right-wing media such as Alex Jones' "Info Wars" soon began to circulate the first theories that Soros himself was behind the attempted assassination...
What are we dealing with here? Bingo! Anti-Semitism
So how is it that George Soros of all people became the target of such hate campaigns? As already mentioned, this has something to do with his prominence and his commitment to civil society. But even with the best will in the world, he is not the first in history to have been confronted with such accusations. There were plenty of others before him:the Rothschilds, the Freemasons, the Illuminati... At its core, George Soros is little more than a symbol for a very old idea for his right-wing attackers. He stands for a conspiracy myth that had developed over many centuries:the idea of the Jewish world conspiracy. Jews have long been the target of such accusations. There is a whole series of anti-Jewish myths in history, from the "deicide" to the sacrilege in the Host, the poisoning of wells and the kidnapping of children. These ultimately led to the mother of all modern conspiracy theories:the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and to famous cases such as that of Alfred Dreyfus. At least since the (false) protocols, it is clear to every conspiracy believer:A secret group of people controls the fate of the world from behind the scenes! Today it's called the "New World Order" and George Soros... He's their figurehead.
Everything fits together with him! Soros is Jewish, although not a believer (not that that ever deterred anyone). He's a capitalist, he's rich, and to top it all he's liberal, which in the conservative American context is almost tantamount to Bolshevism anyway. And I'm sure you remember:The Bolsheviks are all Jews anyway! The alleged links between Soros and some version of the "New World Order" are everywhere today. Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani shared a tweet calling George Soros the Antichrist. Steve Bannon even called Soros the devil. These are all ideas prominent in religious variants of the New World Order myth. In right-wing circles, the name Soros is repeatedly associated with revolutions such as 2003 in Georgia or 2004 in Ukraine. He's the puppeteer behind it all and why? The protocols of the wise men of Zion have already explained this:With these crises, the secret powers want to destabilize the world and initiate the New World Order. George Soros represents exactly that.
I also trace the path of modern conspiracy myths from anti-Semitic prejudices to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the New World Order in my new e-book:"Fake News from Yesterday". So if you want to know more about what the New World Order is all about, feel free to take a look! On this week's podcast I also talk about another modern theory, which unfortunately is also not very far from the New World Order:The Flat Earth Theory. Listen!