What's so sordid about Soros - at least from the perspective of the right?
I could understand the left loathing him more - due to his involvement in the financial sector.
I have a tendency to view him positively because of his support of the concept of the Open Society and his espousal of Popper's political project. I don't know a huge amount about him beyond that but this alone makes me lean towards regarding him as a force for good - even if the idea of billionaires spending money advancing political agendas is deeply troubling on the whole.
is he? My understanding is that he actually funds organisations like the Open Society Foundation and Media Matters - just because he's Jewish doesn't mean he's a stand-in for old conspiracies, especially if he actually does fund progressive political organisations.
Having once been a recipient of an Open Society Foundation grand on the order of X00,000$, I have to say that both of you are right: His jewishness is definitely used to amplify opposition to him, by people opposing him primarily because he advocates for open democracies.
It's important to clearly state what is meant when people talk about Soros' "liberal" or "progressive" values: the work I have seen is almost exclusively concerned with the mechanisms of politics, not the content. It is motivated by his experience of seeing both fascism and communism devastating his native country and opposes both extremes. The work I was involved in organised debating competitions for students from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and everything in between and there's nothing "liberal" about it, unless you count allowing women to participate on equal footing as such.
He does fund those organizations. But when I read comments from Trump supporters about Soros, they're assigning him a superhuman level of control and manipulation that has nothing to do with his actual financial contributions. His name is used as a stand-in for a conspiracy.
Also it's worth noting that factual statements about Jews can be used in antisemite contexts. For example, "there are so many Jews in Hollywood..." is not incorrect, but it's easy to imagine how that phrase is typically used.
It's easy to imagine how "Jews run Hollywood" is used (well we don't have to imagine; we know, and examples are probably not hard to find).
OTOH, unless we're saying Jews in Hollywood, or George Soros, get a free pass just because they happen to be Jewish (assuming Soros even is; I suspect most people who criticise him don't know), then we need to be careful of silencing legitimate criticism by falsely labelling it anti-Semitic.
That's the point though: it's quite difficult to conceive "lots of Jews in Hollywood" as a criticism rather than a pretty anodyne fact unless one is making "Hollywood is liberal because Jewish conspiracies are using it as a tool to push their agenda upon an unsuspecting public" which seem rather more deeply rooted in anti-Semitism than reality
Your understanding is correct. It's a fact that he funds a large number of such organizations (and has for decades now). I can't imagine anyone disputing that at this point, it's extremely well known at all levels politically. I'm not aware that he even attempts to hide most of it. It'd be like pretending the Koch brothers don't do many of the equivalent things on the right.
I think I'd rather have NGOs lobbying for laws to mitigate corruption and improve education, than NGOs telling people in Africa that using birth control is a sin and that they should kill gay people.
No. There are many people with Jewish background who oppose his agenda. And he does not hide being rich or pushing unwanted agendas in the countries where his NGOs operate.
Your first link is a fine example of the kind of projection that goes on around George Soros. Let's trace the links around how you arrived at the conclusion that an American citizen is financing Islamists in Europe.
Over the past decades, he has donated his time and money to create the Open Society Foundations with the aim of improving civic society and democracies around the world. The OSF have two dozen programs, ranging from Education Support to Fiscal Governance to Public Health:
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/programs
One of these programs is the Human Rights Initiative, which has hundreds of projects and focus areas around the world. The scope of projects is as wide as human needs: disability rights, government accountability, etc.
CCIF has applied and received grants from OSF. It's important to note that CCIF is not otherwise affiliated with OSF or Soros. Thousands of organizations receive grants. CCIF is a recognized non-profit in France.
Within some CCIF subgroup, there are apparently people sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, a large and rather loose transnational organization that promotes an Islamist society (although the Brotherhood claims to be a peaceful organization and condemns all violence).
So, the connection between Soros and the Muslim Brotherhood is filtered through several layers of NGOs and grant boards. The number of grants made by OSF over the years must be in the hundreds of thousands. It's ridiculous to claim that Soros is personally involved in financing Islamism. (As a Finnish taxpayer, I probably have as much involvement in indirectly supporting some Islamist group -- there must be a botched aid project where Finnish money ended up in the hands of Somalian militants, for example. It's just statistics of trying to do long-term good in a very flawed world.)
which is why the media barely paid attention to the OpenSociety leaks
Or maybe it was because there was nothing to "leak". Seriously, that Open Society was founded by Soros, that it gave a grant to the CCIF and that it funds political initiatives across Europe is not a "leak", it's on their damn website.
