By Chuck Warren
George Soros is the founder of the Open Society Foundation. The foundation has done work in former communist countries to promote civil society and free markets. Bravo!
In the United States, it’s an entirely different outfit. With one of the richest men in history funding it, it has enormous resources to promote extremely progressive causes, including soft-on-crime policies.
The foundation supports the candidacies of progressives for prosecutor positions. Chesa Boudin is one alumnus of the project. The son of two Weather Underground members, adopted by Bill Ayers himself after his parents went to prison, he had on his résumé working as a translator at Hugo Chavez’s presidential palace. He was too far left for San Francisco Democrats that they ended up successfully recalling him. Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia district attorney more concerned with prosecuting the police than criminals, is another one. A third alumnus is Alvin Bragg, the man who invented a legal theory so he could deliver his campaign promise to indict Donald Trump.
The foundation has also been affiliated with figures any conservative would find objectionable. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Soros announced a $220 million budget for black equality, with $70 million specifically for criminal justice reform on the local level. One leading adviser to the project has been Heather McGhee, an activist with extreme views including reparations for black people.
Soros’s money has gone to countless progressive causes. Most recently, he gave millions of dollars to Janet Protasiewicz who successfully won her race for Wisconsin state supreme court. Climate change, LGBT advocacy, abortion, and all other progressive causes have been beneficiaries of his wealth. Countless Democratic candidates and officeholders can say the same. Overall, Soros claims to have donated $12 billion to Democrats and progressive causes.
The mainstream media love to bogeyman the Koch brothers—so much that the Koch brother’s meme has survived the death of David Koch—but the expenditure by the two combined is only a fraction of what Soros has done. Quite frankly, Republicans and conservatives should be the ones doing the complaining about the left’s asymmetrical advantage.
Yet whenever someone mentions Soros’s monetary influence on politics, they immediately get accused of pushing anti-Semitic tropes. In 2018, Anti-Defamation League published an article about right-wing attacks against Soros for his being Jewish. As evidence, the article cited anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney and a neo-Nazi website best left unnamed not to give it unnecessary traction. It is no surprise that hateful people also hate Jews, and they should have no place in public discourse; they deserve all the condemnations in the world, and conservatives and Republicans should disavow them. But there is a difference between a good-faith criticism of Soros and being a neo-Nazi. Something most corporate media cannot seem to grasp.
Conservatives oppose crime-friendly policies, redistribution of wealth in the name of racial justice, abortion, and other items on the progressive wish list. So, it should not be surprising that they attack the biggest funder behind them, especially since Soros is both public and proud of the work he does, regardless of religion and ethnicity. It would have been no different if Soros were Episcopalian and Catholic. Indeed, even Jewish organizations such as Commentary, the Jewish National Syndicate, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) frequently criticize him.
The left uses anti-Semitism as a tactic to discredit all critics. In fact, the avoidance of talking about anti-Semitism and even sometimes excusing on the left is proof that they are not invested in protecting Jews anyway. It’s just to shut down the discussions. And it is hypocritical for the left which has for decades argued that criticism of Israel, even anti-Zionism, is not the same as anti-Semitism to now say that any criticism of Soros is now anti-Semitic.
Conservatives and moderates are entitled to criticize Soros and attack his failed progressive policies. Those who do so on policy merits deserve to be engaged with in good faith and debated on the merits of their arguments. Not the typical liberal trope of defaming the person they are debating.
There are vile, anti-Semites who attack Soros for being Jewish too. Condemn them all the way. They have no place in public discourse or polite society.
But a nonagenarian, who crashed the British pound which eventually led to the Black Wednesday Crash, and who has given billions to progressive and crime-friendly policies, deserves criticism and open, unfettered debate.
READ GEORGE SOROS BIO HERE
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.