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Fox News personalities and guests have long attacked Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, and now Pennsylvania lawmakers are trying to impeach him.

Earlier in September, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives sent Krasner a subpoena to hand over documents that pertain to the way he prosecutes crime, and Krasner refused to comply. Conservatives have attacked him over this and ultimately the state House voted to hold him in contempt. Krasner did partially comply with the subpoena despite calling it “undemocratic,” but he refused to hand over documents that might violate grand jury secrecy laws.

Now part of the push to impeach Krasner, who was overwhelmingly reelected in 2021, is a report that argues his policies contributed to a rise in Philadelphia’s crime rate. But criminology experts have taken issue with the report’s methodology, saying its conclusions are shaky. Texas A&M economics professor Jennifer Doleac wrote, “The errors are so egregious that publishing this article in this journal feels like malpractice.”

In reality, there does *not* seem to be a correlation between high crime rates and progressive prosecutors. In fact, one study shows that cities with progressive DAs actually saw slower growth in homicides and no correlation to high crime.

These discussions are lost in the right-wing echo chamber, where pundits relentlessly criticize progressive prosecutors. Right-wing media have singled out crime as a wedge issue to push conservative candidates onto voters, and their attacks have included district attorneys. Earlier this year, right-wing media successfully pushed for the recall vote of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and now they are looking to Philadelphia as their next target.

Many Fox News personalities argued Krasner was failing in his role in prosecuting criminals, decontextualizing Philadelphia’s crime rate from national crime rates and citing total numbers of murders rather than per capita rates. This makes Philadelphia’s crime appear higher than it actually is since the city has a large population.

Right-wing media are calling for or justifying Krasner’s removal, blaming him for crime rates, and engaging in antisemitic fearmongering about a link to Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros:

Justifying and calling for Krasner’s removal

Blaming Krasner for high crime rates

Linking Krasner to George Soros

SEE UMBERTO ECO DEF OF FASCISM ON SCHIZO ENEMY:

https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/facebook-ads-tucker-carlsons-hungary-vs-soros-documentary-have-been-viewed-millions-times

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Facebook ads promoting Hungary vs. Soros: The Fight for Civilization -- the season finale of Tucker Carlson’s Fox Nation “documentary” series -- have garnered more than 5.2 million impressions.

A new Media Matters analysis has found that Fox Nation -- the streaming service for Fox News “superfans” -- has run at least 56 ads since January 27 promoting the episode, which relies on antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories to attack George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire philanthropist and Holocaust survivor. The ad data is not available through the Facebook Ad Library because Fox Nation isn’t running these promotions as political ads, which is the only type Facebook’s Ad Library archives or provides data for. However, external data from Pathmatics reveals that Fox Nation spent more than $48,000 on the ads, earning more than 5.2 million impressions.

Hungary vs. Soros is the latest installment in the “Tucker Carlson Originals” series, which has a shameful record of using shock and awe tactics to push antidemocratic propaganda. Despite Tucker Carlson’s white nationalist brand, the streaming service has heavily relied on the prime-time host to promote and grow the platform.

The “documentary” calls upon antisemitic stereotypes to demonize Soros and puff up the far-right nationalist government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has embraced authoritarian tactics and faces reelection in April. Carlson simultaneously pushes many of the same talking points about Soros that Orbán used in his 2018 election campaign. As my Media Matters colleague Nikki McCann Ramirez noted, Carlson portrays Soros in the series “as an insidious, unseen political kingmaker who seeks to destroy the national sovereignty of Hungary and transform its culture by leveraging his money and control of the media" against a backdrop of menacing synth chords and black and white images of Soros.

Facebook is allowing Fox Nation to run ads promoting Hungary vs. Soros despite its authoritarian and antisemitic undertones. In fact, Fox Nation has run at least 56 ads related to the episode, with at least 44 still active at the time of publication. (The other 12 ads are no longer shown in Facebook’s ad library.)

The ads, which have been seen millions of times by Facebook users, include one of four texts that attack Soros for “unchecked political power” and/or praise Orbán for being Soros’ “newest foe.” Additionally, all the ads link to Fox Nation’s website, where users can subscribe to watch it.

Fox Nation_Hungary vs. Soros_ads_2

Fox Nation_Hungary vs. Soros_ads_1

Some of the ads also include a promotional 15-second video of the episode.

CitationFrom the February 11, 2022, Facebook ad from Fox Nation

Before Fox Nation started running paid advertisements for Hungary vs. Soros, several Fox Facebook pages shared posts promoting it, including pages associated with The Five, Tucker Carlson Tonight, and Fox Nation.

It was also repeatedly promoted on Fox News itself, not only on Carlson’s show, but also during his interviews on The Five and Fox & Friends.The Fox News website featured an ad for it on its homepage and published an article on the piece. Fox Nation also sent out a promotional email that said, “George Soros is waging cultural and political warfare on the West, but he’s met his match in Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.”

The right-wing fixation on Soros is a problem across the Fox brand. According to a transcript analysis from Kinetiq video database, Fox News mentioned “Soros” a total of 435 times between January 1, 2021, and February 8, 2022, with the coverage ramping up starting in November. With Facebook’s long history of profiting from the spread of harmful content, it is unsurprising that the platform is enabling the promotion of this production to millions.

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/tucker-carlson-and-george-soros/

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Earlier this week, fans of thehighest-rated host in U.S. cable news were told that one of the most recognizable and demonized Jews in public life is waging a "political, social and demographic war on the West." Hungary, they were told, is this monstrous figure's "main hunting area," but all of North America and Europe are in his sights, and only through the widespread embrace of aggressive conservative nationalism can he be defeated.

In fairness, not all of that is made clear at first. For the first quarter of Fox News host Tucker Carlson's new documentary short, "_{Hungary vs Soros: The Fight for Civilization}_," it's hard to tell why it was made. Yes, over the last several years Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's proudly "_{illiberal}_" Hungary has become the centerpiece of American conservative vision-boarding. Yes, many on the U.S. right would _{love}_ to emulate Hungary's pronatalist policies to encourage early marriage and large families; its crackdowns on press and academic freedom, including the defunding of university gender studies; its effective ban on Muslim immigration, and its actual bans on same-sex marriage, adoption and LGBTQ content for minors. It's no secret that Soros remains one of the right's foremost villains, _{blamed}_ for everything from protests against Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation to Donald Trump's election loss to migrants seeking entry to America.

But all that aside, the latest "Tucker Carlson Original" looks and feels, at least at first, like old news: a tighter, better produced, chalkboard-free remake of Glenn Beck's three-hour 2010 anti-Soros series, "_{The Puppet Master}_," which was widely condemned as antisemitic and is sometimes credited for helping drive Beck's _{departure}_ from Fox the following year.

Carlson's reboot, which wasn't aired on Fox News proper but its seedier online streaming service, Fox Nation, includes many of the same ingredients as the original. There's the same sort of ominous soundtrack and grayed-out coloring when Soros appears on screen, and the same fixation on Soros as a "globalist" who is allegedly erecting a new world order through his sprawling web of influence and his control of media "storylines."

There's a familiar framing, early in the film, of Soros as being amoral in some difficult-to-specify way. In Beck's version, an opening quote from Soros noted that his mother, in pre-Holocaust Hungary, had been "ashamed of being Jewish." In Carlson's, within the first minute or so we see a clip of Soros telling an interviewer he doesn't believe in God. While Carlson doesidn't repeat Beck's use of ghoulish medieval _{puppet}_ props, he deploys the same metaphor, accusing Soros of using his money and NGO network "to oust democratically elected leaders and install ideologically-aligned puppets into positions of power." And, _{like Beck}_, Carlson cites as evidence Soros's support for various Eastern European "color revolutions," without acknowledging to his audience that those revolutions were almost entirely peaceful protests against communist or post-communist dictatorships.

There are some notable differences in Carlson's update. In establishing Hungary under Orbán as the last bulwark against Soros's allegedly creeping empire, Carlson turns into something of a Budapest tour guide, marveling at airport advertisements encouraging people to have more children, the city's architecture and anti-Soros street signs. ("Will George Soros attack our country again?")

He works in some combat reporter-style helicopter footage as he tours the Hungarian border fence, and lingers long on the faces of two hapless teenage-looking refugees who were caught trying to enter the country, and who Carlson darkly suggests probably aren't Syrian, as they claim. He even stops to appreciate Budapest's "mostly conservative" graffiti, like a wall spray-painted with "Fuck Liberals" (in English) and a symbol that looks a lot like the white supremacist _{rendering}_ of the Celtic cross.

But the big reveal begins about a quarter of the way through, when Carlson first mentions "nationalism." Orbán was once the beneficiary of Soros's philanthropy, Carlson says, but now understands him as a threat after becoming "a Hungarian nationalist." This is likely to fly under the radar for most viewers, but that is effectively the documentary's guiding theme: Orbán is "the sort of man, the sort of political leader, who has taken these populist nationalist instincts and turned them into effective policy." Furthermore, "Soros opposes Orbán because Soros opposes nation states" and the upcoming Hungarian elections "will be the defining battle in the war between George Soros and Viktor Orbán, in the battle between globalism and nationalism."

None of that rhetoric is anything new when it comes to Orbán, who's made Hungarian national sovereignty the defining issue of his political identity. But it definitely says a lot about Carlson, and how he's helping to mainstream one of the most contentious and troubling ideologies of the contemporary right.

Last November, hundreds of right-wing academics and thinkers gathered in Orlando for the highbrow National Conservatism conference. Much of the three-day gathering focused on trying to develop a new conservative coalition along post-liberal lines. As _{I wrote in The New Republic}_ earlier this month, the National Conservatives see classical liberalism — meaning old-fashioned, small-L liberalism, which prioritizes individual rights and private property, and is embraced by many staunch conservatives as well — as the root of modern society's problems.

A society ordered around unfettered personal and market freedom, they argue, makes it too difficult to raise families according to "traditional" values. A widespread commitment to multicultural pluralism, in their view, has led to an oppressive cultural imperialism where individual countries are prohibited from protecting their borders or upholding their historical cultures. They'd like to see newly empowered national governments that embrace official or public religion, use state power to coerce people into leading virtuous lives (according to their standards) and reassert the sort of proud, unapologetic nationalism that reigned before the horrors of World War II.

Besides academics and writers, the National Conservatism movement has recently been _{adopted}_ by former American Enterprise Institute president Christopher DeMuth, and is influential enough that the November conference drew a number of leading Republican politicians and contenders, including sitting senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio, and wannabe-senator J.D. Vance.

Many of the intellectuals heading up the postliberal/National Conservatism movement are Roman Catholic "_{integralists}_," who ultimately want to see the country governed according to a conservative Catholic vision of the "common good" (with most details about what that means left strategically vague). Other leaders are avowed nationalists, seeking to reclaim the term from what they see as its unfair association with the likes of Nazi Germany. A number of them have made that case prominently in books published in the last four years, including First Things editor R.R. Reno's "_{Return of the Strong Gods}_," National Review editor Rich Lowry's "_{The Case for Nationalism}_," and National Conservatism conference organizer Yoram Hazony's "_{The Virtue of Nationalism}_."

In both of those camps within right-wing intellectual circles, Hungary has emerged as the most practical model they can aspire to: It's the sort of nationalist "Christian democracy,"as Orbán _{calls}_ it, that they believe stands the best chance of replication in the U.S. (at least until there's enough support for the right-wing Catholic utopia sometimes described, _{jokingly or not}_, as the _{Empire of Guadalupe}_). As abundant media coverage has noted, the U.S. right has cheered on most of Orbán's most controversial policies. His government has assiduously courted their support, including through private institutions' offer of visiting fellowships and scholarships to numerous conservative academics and thinkers and Orbán's personal invitation to figures like American Conservative writer Rod Dreher that they consider Hungary their "_{intellectual home}_."

Those overtures have reaped undeniable benefits. Fulsome statements of support have flowed in from the likes of Dreher (who plays a starring role in the Fox Nation documentary) and Carlson, who broadcast his top-rated prime-time show from Budapest for a week last August. Orbán's reelection bid has drawn the endorsement of Donald Trump and many of his acolytes, all the way down to, just this week, the New York Young Republicans Club. In tangling with critics about the endorsement on Twitter this Thursday, the club's vice president taunted his foes by writing, "We're literally unifying the international right. …I'm not here to argue. I'm here to win.")

Orbán's regime also had a major presence at the National Conservatism conference in Orlando.There was a promotional table offering free conservative Hungarian books and magazines; a panel on "international nationalism" featuring Orbán's political director, Balázs Orbán (no relation), who enjoys a sizable American following; and a plenary address from Dreher on "What Conservatives Must Learn from Orbán's Hungary." (They must learn to unashamedly embrace "state power" in defense of conservative values and build a "conservative deep state" to ensure that entrenched right-wing policies can survive the unfortunate results of electoral defeat.)

Most of Carlson's viewers are unlikely to know much about all the ideological furniture in the background, or to care about it. But he's doing his best to bring them the Cliff Notes version, breaking the ideas discussed by Ivy-educated right-wing elites in Orlando into digestible bite-sized chunks, and delivering them, airplane-style, into mainstream conservative discourse.

One of those chunks is the rehabilitation of nationalism as a conservative virtue. Another is the idea that it's not just acceptable but commendable to use family policy as a means of engineering a country's racial makeup.

For years, Hungary had one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. Combined with high emigration— mostly to other European Union nations — it was losing 32,000 people from its population annually. Orbán's government _{sought}_ to address this by unveiling an aggressive suite of pronatalist policies in 2019, including interest-free loans to families that are forgiven with the birth of a third child, subsidies for minivans, and a lifetime exemption from income tax for mothers who have four or more kids.

Policies like these have enjoyed support from some conservative quarters for years. In 2007, the international right-wing coalition World Congress of Families called for similar measures while warning about what it called "demographic winter." This was the idea that European countries were producing too few children, leading to both "the graying of the continent" and the creation of dangerous population vacuums that would be filled with immigrants too difficult to assimilate. At the time, as I reported in _{The Nation}_, most of the racial hand-wringing was couched in euphemistic terms. But these days that subtext has become text, and sometimes the flashing headline, with the proliferation of conspiracist narratives about "white genocide" and the "Great Replacement," or Trump-era activists _{calling}_ for a "white baby challenge."

In this new context, Orbán has been embraced by some on the right for framing his pronatalist policies as an intentional barricade against Muslim immigration, saying that while other countries were buoyed by immigration, Hungary didn't merely "need numbers" but _{rather}_ "Hungarian children," or that Hungary didn't "want our colour, traditions and national culture to be _{mixed}_ with those of others." Katalin Novák, the stylish and combative former family minister who became the face of Hungary's pronatalist campaign, _{warned}_ that countries that abandon tradition will find themselves "condemned to [demographic] death." Conservatives on this side of the Atlantic swooned, with Breitbart dedicating regular coverage to Hungarian pronatalism, the National Review_{**cheering**}_that Orbánwas "redefining the possibilities for modern social conservatism," and Carlson_{praising}_ the plan as a model of family values during a 2019 interview with Hungary's foreign minister.

Orbán is not quite that blunt in Carlson's new special — the second half of which focuses on Hungary's pronatalist initiatives as part of the country's battle against Soros — but unlike other countries that choose to, in Carlson's words, "import new citizens from the rest of the world," the prime minister says Hungarians "would not like to leave this country to the migrants, we would like to leave it to our grandchildren." Carlson nods along with this, visiting a series of large Hungarian families as they beam at each other on playgrounds or buy new cars with government subsidies, before cutting to a black-and-white clip of a grim-faced Soros, saying that he's very concerned about the direction Hungary is headed. The unsubtle takeaway is that these amorphous questions of shifting populations and changing family structures is actually deliberate "demographic war," with Soros as general of the opposing army.

That's not an original idea either. It's the encapsulated _{narrative}_ within or beneath the Great Replacement or white-genocide conspiracy theories, which hold that liberals — and specifically Jewish liberals — want to bring large numbers of immigrants and refugees into the U.S. or Europe to "replace" the white population there. That narrative has been the direct _{inspiration}_ for numerous mass murder events, including the El Paso Walmart shooting, the mosque murders in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the assault on worshippers at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue, where the killer _{blamed}_ a Jewish group for aiding refugees.

In September Carlson finally _{introduced}_ the term "the great replacement" to his audience — after hinting or gesturing at it for months — calling it a "policy" to "change the racial mix of the country" through "the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries."

In the documentary released this week, Carlson illustrates this premise with a series of images intended to land more powerfully than words: a back-and-forth contrast between scenes of white people strolling amid the old-world beauty of Budapest streets or boating on the Danube, and scenes of Black and brown people, almost exclusively in situations of violent chaos, surging against fences, fighting with cops or, at their most benign, crying on the street. Toward the end of the documentary, the video cuts rapidly and repeatedly between second-long shots of white couples on park benches and footage of a crowd of shirtless Black men, shouting in a foreign language and lunging at the camera.

The next shot is meant to come as a relief: Orbán, back at the interview table, saying that he hopes his administration's work will "be enough to convince the people that it's a reasonable decision to support us, and not give the country to George Soros."

Carlson's larger point appears to be that a similar decision, one with apocalyptic or civilization-scale consequences, faces Americans as well.

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Myth: “Soros-funded” district attorneys are eroding public safety

Fact: This narrative that Soros is controlling DAs is an antisemitic conspiracy theory with no basis in reality

mma921

After the Anti-Defamation League again called for Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s firing due to his promotion of the white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, Carlson’s first response was to tell a podcast interviewer, “Fuck them.” His second was to use his prime-time show to blame a Jew for the resettlement of Afghan refugees in “your” neighborhood, echoing the apparent motivation of the alleged perpetrator of the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre.

Carlson is the nation’s most prominent advocate for the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which posits that elites are trying to gain and entrench their power by using mass immigration to systematically replace white people with people of color in the U.S. and other Western countries. This noxious viewpoint was once limited to internet fever swamps, but Carlson has helped make it increasingly mainstream in the Republican Party.

On Thursday, Carlson drew cheers from white nationalists with his most unambiguous endorsement of the theory yet. He explicitly referenced “great replacement,” while alleging that President Joe Biden wants to “change the racial mix of the country” by replacing “legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries” for political gain.

The next night, just hours after ADL called for his firing, Carlson singled out Jewish financier and philanthropist George Soros for his role in promoting the resettlement of Afghans “without the consent of the people who live there,” through the group Welcome.US. According to Carlson,Soros’ motivation is that he “hate[s] this country and want[s] to destroyit.”

“It doesn't matter what you want, you're just a citizen,” Carlson spat. “Shut up. George Soros is richer than you, he decides what you get.”

Carlson added that Soros and the Clintons, Bushes, and Obamas, who are honorary co-chairs of the group, “have no idea who we are because they know nothing about the country.” He concluded by promising more reporting in the future about what he learned in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán, the country’s autocratic leader touted by Carlson, has waged a years-long war on Soros and his organizations. [vid?]

soros has long been afocus of right-wing media attacks for his role in funding progressive political candidates and organizations (including Media Matters). Those attacks often feature antisemitic overtones.

Carlson’s chyron described Welcome.US as “Soros’ Afghan Resettlement Org,” and his commentary suggested that Soros is playing a lead role. But in reality, Soros’ Open Society Foundations is one of more than 250 “organizations, leaders, and businesses" involved in the group. Other partners include such notorious America-hating radical organizations as the American Red Cross, Save the Children, the Episcopal Migration Ministries, and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and charities from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are also helping with the effort to resettle Afghan refugees.

But Carlson isn’t focusing his fire on any of those myriad nonprofit and faith groups involved in resettling Afghans. He chose to focus his fire very specifically on Soros, while portraying refugee resettlement as part of a plot to destroy the country. There’s a very dark history to that brand of attack.

Carlson feigned confusion as to why the ADL would concern itself with his “great replacement” commentary in his initial comments to the podcaster. But as the group’s initial letter calling for Carlson’s firing explains, that conspiracy theory provided motivations for a series of hate-fueled mass shootings -- including the 2018 attack on worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 people. The alleged gunman, a white nationalist, had accused the Jewish refugee resettlement organization HIAS shortly before the attack of bringing Central American “invaders” into the U.S, and he claimed that Jews were “committing genocide” against his people after being captured at the scene.

Now Carlson is offering virtually the same claim from Fox’s 8 p.m. hour, simply swapping Soros in for HIAS and leaving references to Jews implicit.

In 2018, Fox executives at least pretended to care about the network serving as a platform for vile rhetoric that echoed the alleged shooter. After Fox Business triggered a firestorm shortly after the attack by rebroadcasting Judicial Watch research director Chris Farrell’s false claim that Soros had masterminded a caravan of Central American migrants headed for the U.S. border, Farrell was permanently banned from Fox News and Fox Business.

But there were no repercussions for more prominent Fox personalities who propagated that same lie. And Fox executives all the way up to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch have since become even more invested in and supportive of Carlson using his platform to spew blood-soaked conspiracy theories.

https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/laura-ingraham-blames-huge-amounts-money-mark-zuckerberg-and-george-soros-local

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/how-donald-trump-will-try-to-scapegoat-george-soros-to-win-re-election/

no lnx twt

How Donald Trump will try to scapegoat George Soros to win re-election

Written by The Conversation July 16, 2020

by Neil McLaughlin, McMaster University and Iga Mergler, McMaster University

When future scholars write the history of the administration of Donald Trump, he may end up being called — among many other things — the conspiracy theorist president. Trump famously began his ascent to power with the false and racist “birther” claim that Barack Obama was not really an American.

Trump and his followers have also legitimized bizarre conspiracy theories against Hungarian American financier and philanthropist George Soros. It now appears continued attacks toward Soros will be a part of the president’s re-election campaign.

Soros has been a punching bag for authoritarians, anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists around the world since 1992, when he became famous as “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England” by making more than US$1 billion by “shorting” the British pound.

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Born in Budapest in 1930, Soros barely survived the destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis. Living in New York City since 1956, he has combined a long career as a successful capitalist while doing philanthropy under the banner of his Open Society Foundations.

Anti-Semitic attacks

Attacks on Soros have circulated on the margins of mainstream politics for years, tinged with anti-Semitism and fuelled by half-truths and outright lies. Russia has always been at the heart of anti-Soros propaganda, and it’s now joined by China in promoting attacks, distortions and lies. Over the last few years, these conspiracies have entered mainstream debate in Hungary, Poland, Brazil and the United States.

The Trump movement attempted to scapegoat Soros as part of its Make America Great Again rhetoric. Trump supporters accused Soros, among other things, of supporting the caravan of migrants attempting to enter the United States from Central America, being behind the attacks on Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court nomination (a falsehood Trump himself tweeted about) and promoting an elitist globalist agenda that undermined American jobs and culture.

Most incredibly, in recent weeks Soros has been accused of paying Black Lives Matter protesters who demonstrated across the United States after the police killing of George Floyd.

Trump has major liabilities in his quest for re-election: his incompetent handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his polarizing opposition to protesters after the Floyd killing and the decline of the U.S. economy since the outbreak of COVID-19. Loss of support among suburban white women, members of the military elite and moderate Republicans are now a threat to his electoral prospects.

Attacking Soros part of the plan

Attacking China, stoking nationalist resentments, uncritically defending the police, claiming economic competence and bashing Joe Biden will be Trump’s major electoral strategy. But Republican attacks on Soros are also likely to circulate widely until the election.

Soros is a perfect foil to try to convince people that Trump stands for the average American. What better scapegoat than a wealthy, uber-liberal currency speculator who helped fund Obama and Hillary Clinton, supports abortion, gay and trans rights and gives generously to the electoral campaigns of liberal public defenders and prosecutors? In Trumpist rhetoric, Soros is soft on crime and promotes the values of cultural liberalism and global elites over the average American. [HE'S ALSO THE WHATABOUTISM CORP OLIGARCH FOR KOCH BOROS; I'M NOT CORRUPT YOU'RE CORRUPT KNEE-JERK REFLEXIVE ST'D MOVE

Soros’s history of supporting Palestinian rights and calling for a negotiated peace settlement created an opportunity for the White House to exploit. Rhetoric about big finance linked to a “globalist” Jewish philanthropist understandably concerns Jewish voters and others opposed to anti-Semitism, but anti-Soros rhetoric can unify evangelical Christian Zionists, pro-Israel Republicans, interventionist neo-conservatives and far-right extremists.

Attacking Soros is also part of a Trumpist appeal to conservative Black voters, now being led Candace Owens, a young media figure and Republican activist.

Owens spreads paranoia

Prone to gaffes that expose her ignorance about history and politics, Owens has gained a massive online presence among far right-wing Trump supporters by directly challenging the mainstream Democratic Party narrative on racism, police violence and poverty in America. She’s also attacked George Floyd’s character. What’s more, Owens has spread anti-Soros paranoia online, giving it a cooler, hipper and younger flavour.

The core of the Trumpist scapegoating of Soros is an attempt to blame Soros for the Black Lives Matter protests and calls for defunding the police. The lie that Soros is paying for the protests that have swept through the United States and is promoting riots is deeply corrosive to American democracy.

Conspiracy theories work best when lies, exaggerations and paranoia are linked to real things in the world that can be distorted by spin. Soros’s recent pledge of US$220 million to support civil rights and racial equality groups like Black Voters Matter will add fuel to extremist fire.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson will play a major role in all this. During a recent segment on his show, former Missouri governor Eric Greitens attempted to link Soros to anti-police violence and made reference to a “George Soros-funded prosecutor” involved in the case of the couple in St. Louis who stood in front of their house with guns while anti-racism protesters marched on their street.

None of this is likely to save Trump from going down to an electoral defeat in November. While there are legitimate criticisms to be made of the role of billionaires like Soros in politics and economic life, the divisiveness of anti-Soros paranoia will take years to repair.

The Conversation

Neil McLaughlin, Professor of Sociology, McMaster University and Iga Mergler, PhD Candidate in Sociology,, McMaster University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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mma 620 ingraham

NIGER INNIS: I'm so pleased that President Trump, Attorney General Barr has labeled antifa a terrorist organization. What they need to do is follow the money. How is it that bricks and bats and two by fours end up in these communities from Kansas to Los Angeles to New York and given out to these violent anarchists?

Follow the money and I suspect you're going to find Open Society Foundation and George Soros' fingerprints. That man should have been deported several decades ago. He is the destruction to our civilization and a clear and present danger to our country.

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aha-ish: some awareness that right has been funded by rw oligarch for a long time, dupont cellophane league, ford elders of zion, so soros is mirror for kochs, the funder and thus the source of all evil (plus he's a Jew); plus they need simple explanation for why their ideas are not more popular: liberal press and prof's.

see conspir 7 elements vid: see one simple cause in chaos

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https://www.newsweek.com/us-protest-conspiracy-theory-george-soros-paid-protester-youtube-interview-social-media-1507866

no lnx twt see snopes

NEWS

George Soros Conspiracy Resurfaces Using Old 'Paid Protestor' YouTube Video: 'How Gullible Can You Be?'

BY JASON MURDOCK ON 6/1/20

A YouTube video of an interview with a "paid protester" who claimed to be funded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros is currently circulating on social media, as waves of protests continue to erupt across the U.S.

The footage—uploaded to the platform in 2017—has been circulating on Facebook and Twitter in recent days amid demonstrations sparked by the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, after an arrest by police in Minneapolis on May 25.

In the two minute clip, originally aired on the The Young Turks (TYT) news show, the unidentified man claims to have organized protests with money provided by Soros, a common trope used by conspiracy theorists—and president Donald Trump.

The video has this week been shared on social media as evidence of nefarious behavior taking place during the most recent outburst of demonstrations in the country.

Michael Tracey, the journalist who conducted the original TYT interview, tweeted today to stress the segment was not to be taken seriously—despite it being shared by Greg Raths, a veteran running for California's 45th Congressional District.

"People are... circulating this old interview I did with a 'paid protester' who said he was funded by George Soros. The guy was obviously trolling! It was a schtick. Anyone who actually believes this was authentic is incredibly gullible," he tweeted.

:{

}:

"The guy was an oddball doing an obvious shtick. If you are not delusional, you can tell I was playing along in the video," Tracey told Newsweek via direct message. "It's hilarious to me people have suddenly latched onto this over three years later, including a random Republican congressional candidate in California. How gullible can you be?"

People are apparently circulating this old interview I did with a "paid protester" who said he was funded by George Soros. The guy was obviously trolling! It was a schtick. Anyone who actually believes this was authentic is incredibly gullible, lol https://t.co/rpGA5R29bb

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 1, 2020

.@TheYoungTurks played THIS video, not any conservative news outlet, from MARCH 21 2017, that talks about paid GEORGE SOROS protestors.

From THE YOUNG TURKS—far leftists! @cenkuygur this is his political reporter, Michael Tracey! pic.twitter.com/BQy9CLTZx5

— Greg Raths (@GregRaths) June 1, 2020

There are some very clear signs in the original news segment that the unidentified man in the vox-pop was not a completely reliable source of information, including the claim hesigned up to be a paid protester via a form on George Soros' website.

"You just sign up, right there, you put your name in, you put your email address and there's an empty box there where you say how many times you are willing to protest and how much you want to get paid," the man says in the interview.

The interviewee claims the check came directly from Soros, and had been signed by the billionaire himself. "Does he sign it in blood?" Tracey responds.

"He even invited me to lunch," the man continues. "He said if I'm willing to gather some more friends I can get paid, like, twice as much for every friend that I gather and kind of set up a pyramid scheme. I already have [got rich]. So basically I have been organizing most of the protesting you see in California so far, and it's all due to being paid."

With a smirk, he added: "If I wasn't being paid I would be, you know, skiing. I just wish more people knew about it because then we could actually start a movement."

An earlier upload of the clip, dated March 21, 2017, attracted more than 627,900 views. It was re-uploaded to the platform by a conspiracy theory-filled account on May 30 this year, gaining close to 55,000 more YouTube views in just two days.

On Facebook, the clip was shared to a public group titled "Dan Crenshaw for President 2024" which has more than 70,000 members—potentially explaining the surge.

On Twitter, the video is being shared in response to uploads about the recent protests, despite being wholly unrelated and uploaded void of context.

:{

}:

Google, which owns YouTube, and Facebook have been contacted for comment by Newsweek.

:{

}:

Both videos, the original and the re-upload, remain online at the time of writing.

Conspiracy theories focused on Soros and his global network of partner operations—known as the Open Society Foundations—are well-documented.

Speculation in some corners of the internet—and some right wing media outlets—has long suggested that his support of progressive causes is tied to the financing of protest groups. He is often referred to as a "political bogeyman" of the far right.

The Hungarian-born philanthropist's website says he believes that "societies can only flourish when they allow for democratic governance...and respect for individual rights."

But his wealth and far-reach has only fueled global conspiracies.

Fringe no longer, in 2018 president Trump tweeted that "Soros and others" were tied to some of the public protesting his Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. The same year, Trump associated Soros with funding of the so-called "migrant caravan."

A demonstrator holds up a sign during a protest in Denver, Colorado, on May 31, 2020, over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died while while being arrested and pinned to the ground by the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.]

==

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/republican-elected-officials-are-peddling-a-conspiracy-theory-that-george-soros-is-paying-protesters/

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a statewide elected Republican official, has posted multiple memes and comments on his Facebook page in recent days falsely claiming that billionaire George Soros orchestrated nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd.

The posts are similar in nature and tone to some of the racist posts bylocal GOP officials in recent days that suggested the killing of Floyd in Minneapolis police custody was done with the intent of starting a race war or to erode black support for President Donald Trump. The posts from those local officials have prompted calls for resignation from the state’s top GOP officials.

One post from Miller on Sunday included an image of Soros with accompanying text that read, “Climate change didn’t work. Impeachment didn’t work. The virus didn’t work. Start the race war.”

“The man is pure evil!” Miller commented.

AD REMOVED FOR SUBSCRIBED USER

“Folks this is not a protest,” read another post from early Sunday morning. “It is a well orchestrated attack on America’s major cities with plans to attack the police, riot, loot, and burn buildings. The so-called ‘protestors’ are, in fact, domestic terrorists who were organized and paid for by George Soros to further divide our country. These terrorists were bused into these large cities. We must repel this attack and hold those responsible for their actions. This must be brought to a stop now or we will lose control of our country!”

Soros, who has spent billions of dollars supporting liberal and pro-democracy causes around the world, has long been a target of conspiracy theorists on the ideological right. Some theories note his Jewish heritage and invoke antisemitic tropes. The Anti-Defamation League has reported that hundreds of thousands of social media posts in recent days have falsely suggested that he is behind the recent protests. Fact-checkers have debunked multiple fake flyers circulating on social media purported to be from organizations linked to Soros that were offering people money to protest.

“Although the vast majority of Soros-related conspiracy theories do not mention his Jewish heritage, the concern remains that they can serve as a gateway to the antisemitic subculture that blames Jews for the riots,” the ADL said in a blog post this week.

In a statement addressing Miller’s posts and others written or shared by local GOP officials, Texas Democratic Party Communications Director Abhi Rahman said ” the onus falls on Governor Greg Abbott and other Texas Republican leaders to put an immediate halt on racially hostile actions from within their own ranks.”

On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott and other top Texas Republicans called for the resignation of the GOP chairs in Bexar and Nueces counties after they shared on social media a conspiracy theory that Floyd’s death was a “staged event,” apparently to gin up opposition to Trump.

A spokesman for Abbott did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Miller’s posts.

Miller has a history of posting incendiary and false statements on his social media channels, including on a Facebook page that has more than 800,000 followers.He posted — and then deleted — a tweet in 2016 that called Hillary Clinton the C-word and in 2015 wrote a Facebook post that endorsed the atomic bombing of the “Muslim world.” Late last year, after he read a Facebook post that accused officials running a Veteran’s Day parade in his hometown of Stephenville of denying entry to a Confederate group, he commented, “Who told them to leave? Get a rope.”

In December 2016, a Texas Tribune analysis of a portion of Miller’s social media history identified 10 postings of demonstrably false, misleading or unsupported information.

Disclosure: The Foundation to Promote Open Society, founded by George Soros, has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. 

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/new-trump-official-tried-to-cover-up-a-trove-of-conspiracy-laden-and-bigoted-tweets

no lnx

New Trump official tried to cover up a trove of conspiracy-laden and bigoted tweets

Written by Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos April 23, 2020

Michael Caputo is a former adviser to Donald Trump’s 2015-2016 presidential campaign. He is now the brand new spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). A New York Republican operative, you may remember Caputo from his very worried and somber post-Mueller investigation interview in May of 2019. Since the Republican Party is unwilling to do anything to remedy the issue of our treasonously impeached and corrupt president, people like Caputo continue to rise.

CNN reports that Mr. Caputo has all kinds of conspiracy-laden, illogical, and bigoted ideas that we have come to expect from the Trump administration, the Tea Party, and their conservative base. In a series of tweets, which Caputo deleted—but exist forever because it’s the internet, stupid—Caputo has all kinds of truly terrifying ideas about the COVID-19 pandemic. According to CNN’s KFile, Caputo did away with his entire Twitter history of over 1,300 tweets and retweets. And none of these ideas are good or smart or remotely helpful to the public health in general.

Using an internet archive, some of Caputo’s statements have been saved here. So what sort of things does one of Trump’s “best people” think? On Feb. 28, 2020, Caputo had this to say about the novel coronavirus:

“Bottom line, a lot of Americans have to get sick and die for coronavirus to tank the Trump economy.

The Democrats’ only hope for 2020 victory is a sunk economy. They’re talking it down right now.

But their strategy only works if a lot of Americans get sick and die.”

On March 8, 2020, Caputo—clearly tweeting his resume to Trump directly—wrote this:

“Coronavirus is the Democrats’ new Russia, their new Ukraine. And nobody will believe them except their zombies.

But know this: The Dems’ strategy to defeat @realDonaldTrump requires 100s of thousands of American deaths.

Will on of their nutjobs make it happen, a la Hodgkinson?”

“Hodgkinson” here is James T. Hodgkinson, the man who opened fire at a congressional softball practice, injuring Rep. Steve Scalise. The right-wing conspiracy world has floated all kinds of theories about Hodgkinson since he is the only domestic terrorist of the last few decades to reportedly not be an entirely racist right-wing asshole. On March 12, 2020, as the novel coronavirus pandemic became considerably more real and the evidence began mounting that the Trump administration has completely dropped the ball on this, Caputo—clearly feeling a bit testy—attacked people who questioned the administration’s racist pivot to calling COVID-19 “Wuhan flu,” or “the Chinese virus.”

”Sure, millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters but some foreigner snuck in a bottle of the good stuff. That’s it. [frowny face emoji]”

Replying to a tweet by right-wing dirtbag and “Pizzagate” extraordinaire Jack Posobiec, who was attacking Democratic donor and billionaire anti-Semitic conspiracy theory flash point George Soros for not funding coronavirus aid (Soros has directed a reported $130 million in foundation funds to coronavirus aid),Caputo wrote:

“Are you kidding? Soros’s political agenda REQUIRES a pandemic.”

Caputo is the perfect spokesperson for this administration: He’s the opposite of what his job requires.

==

https://www.mediamatters.org/60-minutes/fiona-hill-tells-60-minutes-about-receiving-death-threats-after-she-was-targeted-roger

LlESLIE STAHL (60 MINUTES CORRESPONDENT): When you took the job, I know that there were some of your friends who had urged you not to. I wonder if any of your friends stopped talking to you.

FIONA HILL: There were some people in the professional circles in which I move through certainly took, let's just say some took offense, frankly, at the fact that I had-- decided to give this. They had given me counsel not to do the job.And they, you know, actually did believe that I would be aiding and abetting something nefarious by joining the administration. I felt very strongly, however, that we were in a situation where we were to a confrontation with Russia that someone like myself, who was not political, someone who was an expert should step up and try to do something.

STAHL: Right after you started at the White House, there was a smear campaign against you. Public. Distressing I'm sure. What was that all about?

HILL: Well, I'm still trying to get to the bottom of some of that, to be honest.

(CLIP BEGINS)

ALEX JONES: He's got a major Soros mole discovered in the White House, breaking now--

(CLIP ENDS)

STAHL: May 2017, right-wing conspiracists launch an online campaign to discredit her.

(CLIP BEGINS)

ROGER STONE: George Soros has penetrated the Trump White House. A womannamed Fiona hill

(CLIP ENDS)

HILL: I have to say that the scale of this did take me by surprise.

STAHL: This was Roger Stone--

HILL: I was, Roger Stone, Alex Jones. And I did think--

STAHL: So from the right?

HILL: "Why me?"

STAHL: Were there death threats?

HILL: There were death threats. There was-- quite a number of them, especially online.

STAHL: She found it disturbing. And she doesn't rattle easily.

...

STAHL: In becoming an overnight public figure, she found herself contending with the anxieties of her 13-year-old daughter. How did she absorb all of this?

HILL: Initially, she was, you know, somewhat concerned about the whole thing.

STAHL: She must have been worrying all that time?

HILL: But she also helped me put things into perspective. Because on the day before I was meant to testify in public, and obviously I was trying to prepare myself for this, she was preparing for a big test. And she was having me quiz her in the car when I was driving her to school. And she was getting quite anxious. And, you know, I was kind of trying to pull rank on this one and said, "Look, put it into perspective. You know, Mommy, tomorrow has to, you know, kind of testify before congress and millions of people might be watching. And, you know, I mean, this is a test. And she just looked at me and she said, "This is much worse." And I said, "What do you mean?" And she said, "Well, you just have to tell the truth."

  1. ### :{Fiona Hill testified on the dangers of the “fictional narrative” of Ukrainian collusion -- the same conspiracy theory Fox News has relentlessly pushed for years:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

11/21/19 1:37 PM EST

  1. ### Former NSC staffer Fiona Hill testified about receiving death threats after being labeled a “:{Soros mole.:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}:” It started with Roger Stone.

11/08/19 5:38 PM EST

  1. ### Alex Jones presses on with Roger Stone’s smear campaign against Fiona Hill

11/25/19 3:30 PM EST

==

https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/ten-ways-conservatives-have-used-george-soros-undermine-impeachment

President Donald Trump’s allies have frequently sought to undermine the case for impeachment by invoking the progressive investor and philanthropist George Soros. They have highlighted Soros’ involvement in Ukrainian affairs to explain away Trump’s abuse of power in that country and seized on any tie, no matter how faint, to present the investigation into the president’s misconduct as a conspiracy. At times their smears of Soros -- a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust -- have echoed vile, centuries-old anti-Semitic tropes.

Soros has been a bogeyman for the American right since 2004, when he began heavily funding Democratic presidential candidates and progressive movement organizations. Right-wing commentators have frequently sought to delegitimize progressive politicians, groups, and actions by seizing upon links between them and Soros (conservative media figures had regularly and falsely claimed for years that Soros funded Media Matters before he announced in 2010 that he would support the organization).

But abroad, Soros’ Open Society Foundations fund pro-democracy and anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine and other countries in central and eastern Europe, supporting goals that traditionally align with bipartisan U.S. foreign policy in the post-Soviet era. There, his foes are authoritarian strongmen like Hungary’s Viktor Orban or Russia’s Vladimir Putin, both of whom have responded to his efforts by deploying virulent anti-Semitism.

During Trump’s administration, those two threads of Soros criticism, from domestic Republicans and international autocrats, have merged. Trump has shown much more of an affinity for the corrupt authoritarians Soros opposes than he has for traditional democratic allies in Western Europe, and little concern about corruption when it does not directly impact his personal or political interests. And so his allies have begun attacking Soros’ agenda abroad in the same manner in which they’ve traditionally targeted his domestic one. Meanwhile, foreign governments have sought to secure the dismissals of troublesome U.S. diplomats by smearing them as anti-Trump based on their purported links to Soros.

That effort culminated earlier this year with Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and conservative columnist John Solomon channeling the falsehoods of former Ukrainian prosecutors general Viktor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko. Officials who lost their jobs following corruption scandals, they suggested that they had been the victims of a conspiracy masterminded by Soros and former Vice President Joe Biden.

The impeachment inquiry into Trump’s misconduct has given those attacks new urgency, with the president’s allies seeking to blame the entire situation on Soros and link him to as many figures involved in the scandal as possible in order to undermine their damning testimony. Consistent with past domestic and foreign criticism of Soros, those attacks sometimes bleed over into anti-Semitic smears.

Here are 10 ways they’ve brought Soros into the discussion.

Smear 1: Soros is the “puppet master” behind the whole Ukraine story.

Multiple conservative media figures have described Soros as the “puppet master” behind the Ukraine story, invoking a centuries-old anti-Semitic conspiracy theory of insidious Jewish forces secretly controling world events.

BlazeTV’s Glenn Beck discussed Soros’ links to Ukraine in a November 21 episode titled “The Puppet Master in Ukraine,” claiming that the Jewish philanthropist had been manipulating events for his personal profit and that the State Department had created a “giant cover-up” to hide his work “fomenting revolutions” in that country.

Beck has been using anti-Semitic “puppet master” imagery to describe Soros since 2010, when he was widely condemned for a multipart Fox News special describing him as such. After Beck’s use of Soros imagery with regard to Ukraine was exposed by Media Matters and he was denounced by many on Twitter, he claimed that while “puppet master” imagery can be anti-Semitic, it isn’t when he uses it on Soros.

The fringe-right One America News Network similarly described Soros as a “globalist puppet master” behind Ukraine while paraphrasing an interview with right-wing conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi.

Smear 2: “Soros’ dirty money” is behind the whistleblower.

On September 26, the House Intelligence Committee released a declassified version of a complaint from a whistleblower detailing an effort by Trump to use “the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” The country in question was Ukraine, and disclosure of the whistleblower’s complaint had set off a sequence of events that resulted in an impeachment inquiry.

Frequent Fox guests Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing responded to the complaint that night on Fox News’ Hannity by invoking Soros. Noting that the complaint included footnotes to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international investigative journalism consortium, Toensing said, “One guess, Sean, who funds OOCRP? George Soros.”

“Soros' dirty money is all over this story from day one,” diGenova replied

[graf/vid?

According to OCCRP’s website, Open Society Foundations is a funder. But so are the United States Agency for International Development, the U.S. State Department, and the governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Toensing and diGenova would later be revealed as part of the group of lawyers, journalists, and con men who worked with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to concoct a series of lies about Ukraine that helped generate Trump’s abuse of power scandal.

Smear 3: Soros groups are behind the “lie” that Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was “corrupt.”

During the same Hannity segment, diGenova and Toensing claimed that Shokin had been smeared by Soros-linked groups and then was corruptly forced from office by Biden. In fact, Western leaders and institutions widely considered Shokin corrupt at the time Biden followed U.S. policy and pushed for his removal.

Biden “shook down the Ukrainian government,” diGenova claimed, and “lied about” Shokin “being corrupt” to protect Biden’s son.

“U.S. and other people made false statements about him, yeah, that was George Soros-funded NGOs who were also in bed with the State Department,” Toensing explained of Shokin. “They were in bed with each other during that time, in the name of anti-corruption, and it really means that Soros goes after his competitors.”

Smear 4: Soros “controls” State’s George Kent and large portions of the State Department and the FBI.

George Kent, who oversees Ukraine policy as a deputy assistant secretary of state, debunked several meritless Ukraine storylines that had played out in the right-wing media this year in testimony before the impeachment inquiry.

DiGenova responded to this testimony on November 13 by invoking Soros. He claimed during an appearance on Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs Tonight that Soros “controls a very large part of the career foreign service of the United States State Department” as well as “the activities of FBI agents overseas,” and that “Kent was part of that” as “a very big protector of Soros.”

DiGenova’s remarks were widely condemned as anti-Semitic, and Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called on Fox to permanently ban him from its airwaves. While Fox has not responded to such calls, diGenova disappeared from Fox News and Fox Business for weeks, returning to Fox Business only after Media Matters reported on his absence.

Smear 5: The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine is filled with “Soros people” like Bill Taylor.

Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer whose shadow foreign policy in Ukraine is one of the subjects of the impeachment inquiry, told Beck during an interview that he had been told by a Ukrainian that the U.S. Embassy there “works for Soros, not Trump.” He added, “They’re all Soros people.”

Giuliani singled out by name acting Ambassador Bill Taylor, who testified before the impeachment inquiry, and stated that the embassy is “holding up the visas for four or five people that could come here and blow up [House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam] Schiff’s completely fraudulent investigation.”

Smear 6: Former National Security Council staffer Fiona Hill is “a globalist whore of Soros.”

Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council staffer, testified to the impeachment inquiry about having been the subject of a smear campaign based on her previous work as an advisory board member to a pro-democracy group founded by Soros. She described such smears as anti-Semitic, stating that the “trope against Mr. George Soros was also created for political purposes, and this is the new ‘Protocols of The Elders of Zion,’” a reference to an infamous anti-Semitic tome.

The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones responded to Hill’s testimony by describing her as “a globalist whore of Soros, a trafficker in evil” and calling for her indictment for perjury. He added, “Her system is about destroying nation-states, tearing cultures apart, and putting it back together in people like Soros’ architecture.”

Charlie Kirk, the president of Talking Points USA and a Trump ally, similarly suggested that Hill might be “fighting so hard to impeach” Trump because she sat on the board of the Soros organization more than a decade ago.

Smear 7: House Democrats’ impeachment counsel is “linked to George Soros.”

Breitbart.com sought to undermine the impeachment inquiry by highlighting that Norm Eisen, a counsel for the House Judiciary Committee who questioned expert witnesses during that committee’s first impeachment hearing, was “linked to George Soros.” That purported link was that Eisen had co-founded the U.S. anti-corruption group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) in 2003, which reportedly received funding from Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Smear 8: Ambassador Yovanovitch was monitoring Americans to “protect” Soros.

Former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was removed after she became an impediment to Giuliani’s scheme and was targeted by an extensive right-wing media smear campaign. In October, after she testified to House impeachment investigators about her ordeal, the right-wing group Judicial Watch alleged that she had been “running a war room” by monitoring public statements about Ukraine by people like Hannity, Dobbs, and Giuliani, including references to “Soros.” They claimed this was an “Anti-Trump Enemies List” illegally targeting Americans in part to “protect” Soros.

It was later revealed Yovanovitch was running a basic Facebook search on CrowdTangle, a widely used social media tool. Judicial Watch then described CrowdTangle as a “Soros-linked media tracking tool” on the grounds that the group that determines who gets access to that tool at one time received a donation from Open Society Foundations for a separate project.

Smear 9: Yovanovitch was “working for Soros” after leaving Ukraine.

In a September report detailing Giuliani’s “shadow Ukraine agenda,” The Washington Post reported:

Though she was widely respected in the national security community for her efforts to prod Ukraine to take on corruption, Giuliani targeted Yovanovitch with wild accusations including that she played a secret role in exposing Manafort and was part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the liberal financier George Soros.

“She should be part of the investigation as part of the collusion,” Giuliani said in a recent interview with The Washington Post, adding that “she is now working for Soros.” Yovanovitch is still employed by the State Department and is a fellow at Georgetown University. She declined to comment.

Smear 10: Soros was at the center of supposed Ukrainian collusion during the 2016 election.

During his infamous July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump asked him to “do us a favor” and investigate the incoherent conspiracy theory that Ukraine, and not Russia, had hacked the Democratic National Committee’s emails in 2016, and that the evidence is on the DNC’s server, which is purportedly in Ukraine. As none of this makes any sense at all, Trump’s defenders have often instead tried to defend the president by focusing on the idea that Ukrainians interfered with the 2016 elections in other ways, a case that is dramatically overstated.

At times, those defenses have invoked Soros. As NBC News pointed out:

Giuliani also told CNN that month that an anti-corruption nonprofit in Ukraine that took funding from a Soros philanthropy had fabricated evidence against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. He later told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that the Ukrainians had “brought me substantial evidence of Ukrainian collusion with Hillary Clinton, the D.N.C., George Soros, George Soros' company.”

manafort, solomon black ledger nunes

https://theintercept.com/2019/11/19/republicans-use-impeachment-hearings-smear-ukrainian-helped-expose-manafort

no lnx many

Republicans Urge Americans to Follow Them Through the Fox News Looking Glass on Ukraine

Robert Mackey

November 19 2019

AMERICANS WHO DO NOT get all of their information about Ukraine from Fox News or right-wing Twitter and Facebook feeds have no doubt been baffled by the Republican cross-examination of witnesses called to give public testimony in the House impeachment hearings.

There have been frequent, context-free references to something called “the black ledger,” invocations of the supposedly nefarious role of George Soros in supporting Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, and even suggestions that Donald Trump’s former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, who is serving seven and a half years in federal prison for financial crimes stemming from his work in Ukraine, might have been framed.

All the President’s Crimes

Read Our Complete Coverage

All the President’s Crimes

The resulting spectacle has confused viewers unfamiliar with a series of conspiratorial reports about Ukraine from the conservative columnist John Solomon, whose work has been promoted relentlessly on Fox, and caused many to simply tune the proceedings out. Virginia Tilley, a political scientist at Southern Illinois University, suggested on Twitter that making the impeachment hearings nearly unwatchable might even be the Republican strategy.

Virginia Tilley

@unpetrifiedop

Scariest thing about our national crisis: lying GOP has made even impeachment hearing so repellent that few can bear to listen. They win by just repelling us with inane babble, demoralizing the principled with shrieking stupidities. Is this how democracy dies? Through BS fatigue?

This bizarre performance stretched into a second week on Tuesday, as Republicans sought to distract from the testimony of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council expert on Ukraine, and Jennifer Williams, a Russia adviser for Vice President Mike Pence, both of whom heard President Donald Trump press his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to open sham investigations of his Democratic political rivals.

Rep. Devin Nunes, the senior Republican on the House intelligence committee, devoted a significant part of his opening statement at Tuesday’s first hearing to complaining that recent criticism of Solomon’s shoddy, misleading reports on Ukraine’s supposed “meddling in the 2016 election to oppose the Trump campaign” was some sort of plot directed by the mainstream media’s Democratic “puppet masters.”

Justin Baragona

?

@justinbaragona

Devin Nunes uses his opening statement this morning to blast reporters for being very nasty and unfair to John Solomon.

Embedded video

“The media,” Nunes said, “is furiously smearing and libeling Solomon.”

Nunes went on to claim that there was a “concerted campaign by the media to discredit and to disown some of their own colleagues,” including Solomon and New York Times reporter Ken Vogel. What that characterization elides, however, is that there are good reasons to question the work of both Solomon and Vogel, who have helped propel far-right conspiracy theories about Ukraine by choosing to focus on certain facts and omit others. Solomon, whose work is now being reviewed by his former employer, The Hill, also recently joined Fox News as a contributor, which makes him a primary source of information about Ukraine for Americans overly reliant on Fox News, including the president of the United States.

In the hearings, the government officials called to testify so far have seemed at a loss when asked by Republicans to comment on claims of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election presented as fact by the president’s defenders in Congress.

Bill Taylor, the senior American diplomat in Ukraine, looked dumbfounded last Wednesday when he was asked by Steve Castor, the lawyer for House Republicans, if he would agree that the decision by a Ukrainian journalist and lawmaker to publicize evidence of Manafort’s crimes during the 2016 campaign proved that “there were elements of the Ukrainian establishment that were out to get the president.”

Heath Mayo

@HeathMayo

In a single clip, you can see here the utter disconnect between Taylor’s reality-based worldview and the conspiracy-based partisan blinders of the current GOP. This is precisely the reaction Castor deserved.

The GOP used to be more like Taylor.

Embedded video

As Fox News viewers are well aware, the so-called black ledger mentioned repeatedly by Castor refers to a book of handwritten accounting records discovered among the papers of the deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party after he fled to Russia following a popular uprising in 2014.

Those records, which were posted online by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau in August 2016, appeared to document secret payments, including $12.7 million to Yanukovych’s former political adviser, Manafort. One day after the records were made public, Sergii Leshchenko, a Ukrainian investigative journalist who was elected to parliament after the uprising, displayed pages from the ledger at a news conference in Kyiv, and Manafort resigned from Trump’s campaign.

[111819_corruption-1574129738In August 2016, Sergii Leshchenko, a Ukrainian investigative journalist then serving in parliament, showed reporters records of apparent secret payments to Paul Manafort, a former adviser to Ukraine’s deposed president. He was accompanied by Sevgil Musayeva-Borovyk, the editor of Ukrainska Pravda, which published the leaked records, and Anton Marchuk, an anti-corruption expert. Photo: Sergii Leshchenko, via YouTube]

Leshchenko, an anti-corruption activistwho continued to work as a journalist while serving in parliament, has never been, as Castor suggested, a pillar of Ukraine’s establishment, so the idea that his publication of pages from the ledger was akin to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election is absurd.

Leshchenko himself explained in a September Washington Post opinion piece that his motivation for exposing Manafort’s corruption was not, as Republicans now claim, part of a Ukrainian government plot to defeat Trump.

“I will always be angry at Manafort,” Leshchenko wrote. “His work contributed greatly to Yanukovych’s election victory in 2010; Yanukovych then used his position as president to enrich himself and his inner circle. I have no doubt that Yanukovych paid Manafort for his services out of the funds he robbed from Ukrainian taxpayers.”

“My desire to expose Manafort’s doings was motivated by the desire for justice,” he continued. “Neither Hillary Clinton, nor Joe Biden, nor John Podesta, nor George Soros asked me to publish the information from the black ledger. I wanted to obtain accountability for the lobbyist whose client immersed Ukraine in a blood bath during the Revolution of Dignity and the subsequent war in eastern Ukraine, when Yanukovych called on Russia to send troops.”

Despite claims by Manafort to the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, that the ledger was a forgery, bank records described in an FBI search warrant, and reviewed by the Associated Press, confirmed that at least $1.2 million in payments listed in the records next to Manafort’s name were actually deposited in one of his firm’s bank accounts in Virginia. (A record of one of those deposits was subsequently made public by Leshchenko.)

Andrew Kramer, the New York Times foreign correspondent who first revealed the secret payments to Manafort, also reported at the time that others in Ukraine who were named in the ledger had confirmed that the records were genuine.

Undeterred by the fact that there is no credible evidence that these records were forged, the lawyer for the House Republicans suggested on Friday to Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was forced out following a smear campaign by Trump loyalists, that “some have questioned whether the information that Mr. Leshchenko published was all correct, or whether it was doctored.” Yovanovitch, who is clearly not a dedicated viewer of Fox News, said that she had never heard that false claim.

Justin Baragona

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@justinbaragona

So the GOP's counsel is now apparently on a fishing expedition, introducing conspiracies straight from Hannity world about the Ukrainian black ledgers featuring Paul Manafort and asking Marie Yovanovitch whether she's aware they may have been "doctored"

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“It is a real document, with real signatures,” Leshchenko told me in a telephone interview in September, explaining that it had been examined by Ukrainian law enforcement experts. “Giuliani is continuing to misinform American society” about the ledger, Leshchenko added, “by saying it’s fraudulent.”

On Friday, Leshchenko, who has been appalled by the Republican effort to rehabilitate Manafort by attacking him, drew attention on Twitter to a section of Yovanovitch’s testimony where she told Castor: “I think from a Ukrainian perspective — I realize we are looking at this from an American perspective — from a Ukrainian perspective, what Mr. Leshchenko and others who were looking into the black ledger were most concerned about was actually not Mr. Manafort, but former president Yanukovych and his political party and the amount of money that they allegedly stole and where it went.”

Leshchenko

@Leshchenkos

To Steve Castor re his question Masha Yovanovitch. 1) Black Ledger was never found phony document. 2) Expertise of Ukraine law enforcement authorities proved that there are authentic signatures 3) Mr. Manafort was paid by money stolen from my country https://youtu.be/UbC-y-V-FtY?t=1948 …

YouTube ?@YouTube

When Castor then asked Yovanovitch if she could see why Trump might have seen the publication of records damaging Manafort by a Ukrainian lawmaker as an attack on him, the former ambassador replied that Leshchenko is an investigative journalist, “and he got access to the black ledger and he published it as I think journalists would do.”

“I don’t have any information to suggest that that was targeting President Trump,” she added.

But if there is no credible evidence that the payment records incriminating Manafort were fake, how did the president’s defenders on cable news and in the House impeachment inquiry get this idea? In an interview with CNN in September, Giuliani referred to the ledger as “a completely fraudulent document that was produced in order to begin the investigation of Manafort.” People in Ukraine who knew about this plot, he claimed, “were trying to get to us, but they were being blocked by the ambassador, who was a Obama appointee, in Ukraine, who was holding back this information.”

That was a reference to extremely dubious reporting from Washington by Solomon, who relied on the word of a disgraced Ukrainian prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky. Last year, Kholodnytsky was wiretapped by Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption bureau and caught on tape advising suspects in a corruption probe on how not to get caught. Kholodnytsky told Solomon that the ledger “was not authenticated.”

After Kholodnytsky was caught in that sting operation, Ambassador Yovanovitch, who was the top American diplomat in Ukraine until May, called for him to be fired. Kholodnytsky retaliated by helping Solomon and other right-wing pundits smear Yovanovitch as an anti-Trump, deep-state plotter, prompting the State Department to recall her from Kyiv.

Solomon’s other main source for the claim that the ledger was false turns out to have been Konstantin Kilimnik, Manafort’s former Ukrainian business partner,who has been linked to Russian intelligence and was indicted last year and charged with obstruction of justice by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Despite the questionable nature of his sources, Solomon’s reporting that the black ledger records were fake has been accepted as fact by the president and his surrogates. In June, two years after the bank records of payments to Manafort’s firm had been revealed, Solomon appeared on Fox Business Network, telling Lou Dobbs that the black ledger “was likely false, likely fake, a fraud.”

Lou Dobbs

?

@LouDobbs

#DeepState – @jsolomonReports: “FBI agents must use evidence that’s factually true. In this case, they cited the black ledger in 4 search warrants after they knew it was false, fake & a fraud. They knew the docs were wrong & still put it in the search warrant.” #MAGA #Dobbs

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Solomon seems to have concluded that the black ledger records were fake by screening out all evidence to the contrary. That technique was on full display in a long Skype interview he conducted with Leshchenko in July, in which he essentially ignored the Ukrainian’s clear explanation that Manafort’s bank records suggested the ledger was real.

Later in that interview — which was posted on YouTube in two parts (1 and 2) — Leshchenko told Solomon that the ledger was not introduced as evidence in criminal proceedings because the chain of custody for the records was unclear (the pages in his possession had come to him in an email from an anonymous source).

Solomon responded by claiming that the ledger must be fake because the former accountant for the corrupt former president Yanukovych’s party insisted that it “was not an accurate representation of his books, and that his books, the official books of the party, burned during a looting” of the party’s headquarters in 2014.

Treating the accountant’s claim as undisputed fact, Solomon then asked Leshchenko if he had any regrets about releasing some of the ledger, “knowing that it turned out to be not an accurate representation,” of the truth. “No,” Leshchenko replied, since “we have no proof that the black ledger is a fake document.”

The smearing of Leshchenko by Solomon’s fans in Congress comes as other anti-corruption activists, like Daria Kaleniuk of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, known as Anatc, have also found themselves condemned by the president’s allies based on misleading reports from the same journalist. The unhinged accusation against Kaleniuk is that her group is supposedly collaborating in a plot secretly orchestrated by George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has funded civil society groups in post-Soviet Eastern Europe.

In his CNN interview in September, Giuliani referred to Kaleniuk’s group as “Soros’s charity or whatever the hell it was, Antac,” and claimed falsely that the activists had “developed all of the dirty information that ended up being a false document that was created in order to incriminate Manafort.”

In fact, Antac, which has received less than 20 percent of its funding fromSoros’s Open Society Foundations,played no role in the publication of the ledger.

Behind all these lies there is an ugly truth. Under the guise of fighting corruption, the Trump administration and its Republican allies have thrown the full force of the United States government, and Fox News, into supporting what amounts to a counter-revolution in Ukraine. In a stunning reversal, Trump and his supporters have taken the side of the corrupt oligarchs and former officials ousted in 2014, as they seek to claw back power by undermining the reformers and anti-corruption activists supported by the Obama administration, under the leadership of former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former Vice President Joe Biden....

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/fox-news-commentator-sean-hannity-appears-to-be-knee-deep-in-trumps-ukraine-scandal-despite-his-profusive-denials

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Fox News commentator Sean Hannity appears to be knee-deep in Trump’s Ukraine scandal — despite his profuse denials

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon November 20, 2019

Fox News host Sean Hannity raved that he never spoke with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about ousted Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch after a third witness confirmed the alleged call to impeachment investigators.

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David Hale, the undersecretary of State for political affairs, testified under oath that Yovanovitch was the victim of a baseless smear campaign led by Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of President Donald Trump, which led to her ouster. According to a transcript of the closed-door deposition released Monday, the smears originally stemmed from the conservative columnist John Solomon, who wrote in The Hill that former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko had claimed that Yovanovitch gave him a “do not prosecute list.” Lutsenko later retracted that claim.

Hale, the third-ranking official at the department, claimed to impeachment investigators that Hannity had pushed the same narrative on Fox News and that Pompeo had reached out to Trump’s favorite host.

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“It did come up at some point with the secretary,” Hale said. “I understood that he did call Sean Hannity.”

Hale testified that Pompeo told Hannity, “I need to see what the evidence is.”

The State official added that no one at the department believed the allegations against Yovanovitch, though officials did not act to prevent her ouster.

Hale’s testimony is backed up by both Yovanovitch and George Kent, another senior State Department official.

Yovanovitch testified at her closed-door deposition that she was told Pompeo “was going to place a call to Mr. Hannity on Fox News to say, you know, ‘What is going on? I mean, do you have proof of these kinds of allegations or not? And if you have proof, you know, tell me, and if not, stop.’”

“I understand that that call was made,” she added. “I don’t know whether it was the secretary of somebody else in his inner circle, and for a time, you know, things kind of simmered down.”

Kent testified under oath that Solomon’s report was “primarily non-truths and non-sequiturs.”

Kent testified that a top official at the State Department reached out to Hannity but said it may not have been Pompeo.

“I believe, to the best of my recollection, the counselor for the department, Ulrich Brechbuhl, reached out and suggested to Mr.Hannity that if there was no proof of the allegations, that he should stop covering them,” Kent said.

Hannity previously called Yovanovitch’s testimony “fake news” and claimed that he did not “know anything about this woman.”

The host went off on his Fox News show Monday after Hale’s testimony was released.

“So apparently David Hale’s testimony was released a short time ago, and he says in the transcript it was his understanding that Pompeo called me to ask you what evidence you had of allegations regarding Yovanovitch,”Hannity told guest Gregg Jarrett. “Gregg, how many times do I have to say it? We barely mentioned this woman! Four times in passing. No, I never got a call from Secretary of State Pompeo or anybody else. Why would they lie about this?”

“You are being smeared,” replied Jarrett, the network’s legal analyst. “Donald Trump has been smeared for three years.”

Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

Sean Hannity addresses David Hale’s testimony by reiterating the same denial and asking “why would they lie about this”

Gregg Jarrett says Hannity is being smeared

The testimony Hannity is denying was given under oath while Hannity’s denials are not

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Even as he called Yovanovitch’s testimony “fake news” earlier this month, Hannity conceded that “her name came up a few times on the show” and that he “did ask one question about a news report if she was involved in something.”

“It was a question,” he said, “We do news here.” (While his show appears on Fox News, Hannity is a political commentator.)

Hannity referenced Solomon’s report, which has not been retracted despite his main source walking back his comments. Solomon was a frequent guest on Hannity’s show. The question Hannity mentioned was to attorney Joe diGenova, who Trump wanted to add to his legal team. DiGenova played his own role in Trump’s Ukraine saga and received an advance copy ofSolomon’s reporting linking the State Department’s work in Ukraine to billionaire Democratic donor George Soros.

Shortly after Kent testified publicly, diGenova was back on Fox airwaves pushing the baseless Soros conspiracy theory.

“There’s no doubt that George Soros controls a very large part of the career foreign service of the United States State Department,” he told Fox host Lou Dobbs.“He also controls the activities of FBI agents overseas who work for NGOs — work with NGOs. That was very evident in Ukraine, and Kent was part of that. He was a very big protector of Soros.”

Soros’ Open Society Foundations ripped the network for airing diGenova’s conspiracy theory in a letter to Fox News head Suzanne Scott.

“It is bad enough that Mr. Dobbs continues to repeat the widely discredited reporting of John Solomon . . . that has been debunked by the U.S. State Department and recanted by Mr. Solomon’s main source,” the letter said, adding that diGenova’s comment was “beyond rhetorical ugliness, beyond fiction, beyond ludicrous. It’s patently untrue; it’s not even possible. This is McCarthyite.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/its-own-precedent-fox-should-ban-joe-digenova

after a year that has seen Fox News battered by advertiser boycotts over the bigoted language common to its programming, the network's parent company held Thursday’s annual shareholder meetings embroiled in a new controversy over over the regurgitation of vile anti-Semitic tropes on its airwaves.

If Fox had actual standards like a normal news outlet, it would already have announced a permanent ban on future appearances by Joe diGenova, a Republican lawyer and frequent guest on pro-Trump Fox programs, in light of his Wednesday night interview.

During an appearance on Fox Business’Lou Dobbs Tonight alongside his wife and legal partner Victoria Toensing, diGenova downplayed impeachment inquiry testimony that day from State Department diplomat George Kent by arguing that Kent is a pawn of George Soros, a Jewish billionaire whose support of U.S. progressive causes and foreign anti-corruption, pro-democracy efforts has made him the frequent target of conspiracy theories steeped in**anti-Semitic trope**s.

According to diGenova’s bonkers, evidence-free theory, “Soros controls a very large part of the career foreign service of the United States State Department,” has “corrupted FBI officials,” and is seeking to “run Ukraine” using that influence over the U.S. government to benefit his business interests.

DiGenova’s comments, suggesting that the Jewish financier is a shadowy puppet master controlling vast swaths of the federal government for his own dark purposes, are “right out of the propaganda mills of Hungary’s Viktor Orban and other rightist anti-Semitic movements in Eastern Europe,” as Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall noted. Indeed, they are so reprehensible that Fox has previously ruled that such remarks earn a lifetime ban from the network’s platform.

When Judicial Watch research director Chris Farrell said the “Soros-occupied State Department” had funded caravans of Central American migrants during an October 2018 appearance on Dobbs’ program, the network condemned his “rhetoric” and said he would not be invited back. (Dobbs himself did not react to Farrell’s statement and in fact undermined the network’s response; he has his own record of anti-Semitic Soros smears.) 

In the wake of diGenova’s comments, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called on Fox to “hold the same standard” on diGenova as on Farrell.

But Fox has done no such thing. That may reflect how Fox punishments tend to be based on a sliding scale reflecting both the level of criticism the network is receiving and the relative importance of the perpetrator. And diGenova’s role as a key player in the Sean Hannity Extended Universe of pro-Trump conspiracy theorists grants him a great deal of protection.

Farrell’s comments caused a firestorm for Fox because they drew attention in the wake of a murderous rampage at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a white supremacist who was obsessed with the idea that Jews were behind the caravans.

Farrell’s relatively low status as a sometimes guest made the calculus easy for Fox: By cutting him loose, the network’s PR team could head off the subject and forestall niggling questions about the Soros conspiracy theory’s pervasiveness on its airwaves. Meanwhile, pro-Trump hosts like Dobbs and Hannity could simply slot in Farrell’s Judicial Watch boss, Fox regular Tom Fitton, for future segments.

By contrast, diGenova is essential to Fox’s conspiracy theory machine. He and Toensing were deeply enmeshed in Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s scheme to help Trump’s reelection by running a shadow foreign policy effort in Ukraine. They have employed or been employed by leading players in the plot to smear Joe Biden and undermine the intelligence community's findings that Russia interfered in our 2016 election, all while making dozens of appearances on Fox News and Fox Business to detail the ins and outs of the twisted narrative they helped assemble (diGenova alone has made at least 65 appearances this year, according to Media Matters research).

Indeed, the best argument that diGenova didn’t engage in anti-Jewish animus on Wednesday is that he was simply acting in the interests of his client Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch with ties to Russian organized crime. Firtash, who retained diGenova and Toensing to prevent his extradition to the United States on bribery charges, has clashed with Ukrainian anti-corruption organizations supported by Soros.

Of course, that’s simply another reason Fox shouldn’t allow diGenova on its airwaves: He has an irreconcilable conflict of interest on the topics he discusses -- one that he hid from the network’s audience.

The network’s latest failure to take action hammers home the reality that there are no real rules at Fox.

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Congressman Steve King wrongly outs George Soros’ son as Trump whistleblower

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, wrongly identified the whistleblower who triggered…

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Ingraham: “Powerful globalists including a George Soros-affiliated group” are funding efforts to abolish the Electoral College

https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/laura-ingraham-powerful-globalists-including-george-soros-affiliated-group-are

INGRAHAM (HOST): That could be the definition of, I don't know, today's deep state, cabal, intrigue and corruption, just tripped off my tongue. Well now, largely funded by powerful globalists including a George Soros-affiliated group,dispensing with the Electoral College has become a priority to most of the 2020 Democrats.

Previously:

Laura Ingraham announces Trump's reelection campaign is an official sponsor of her podcast

Laura Ingraham: Mueller was acting like a “mean girl” at presser

How disinformation works: News outlets are filtering Mueller's statement through Trump's lies

05/30/19 11:01 PM EDT

Laura Ingraham blames “globalists” for the rise of nationalism

04/03/19 6:01 PM EDT

Laura Ingraham Warns That The “Global Order Insists That America Stand Down” On The Second Amendment

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conspir theory funder on middle eastern terror in caravan

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/why-george-soros-became-the-favorite-bogeyman-of-the-global-right/

George Soros—billionaire investor and philanthropist—has recently been the target of much ire both the United States, where he is a naturalized citizen, and in his birth-country of Hungary. National leaders, such as Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and U.S. President Donald Trump have both promoted anti-Semitic treatment of Soros by their supporters.

Soros was born in 1930 in Hungary, where his Jewish family narrowly escaped Nazi persecution by using fake papers to hide in plain sight as Christians. After World War II came to an end, Soros fled Hungary as a new threat arose: Hungary’s domination by the Soviet Union and the imposition of Soviet-style communism on the Hungarian nation. 

Soros went on to become one of the most successful investors and hedge fund managers of the 20th century. Over the course of his life, Soros has donated over $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations (OSF), which he founded to advance the causes of civil society and democracy around the world. In Hungary, Soros founded the Central European University (CEU) and has supported numerous organizations to advance the rights of Roma, LGBTQ people, refugees and other marginalized peoples. (Full disclosure: Soros has also supported the People for the American Way Foundation.) Given his Jewish heritage, far-right forces both here and in Europe—which often traffic in anti-Semitic tropes and symbols—have used both innuendo and naked anti-Semitism to try to damage Soros’ work on behalf of democracy and marginalized minority groups.

Earlier this month, it was reported that cartoonist Ben Garrison, who drew a comic portraying Soros acting as a sinister puppeteer alongside members of the Rothschild family, was invited to the White House’s July 2019 social media summit. The trope of the “puppeteer” echoes well-known anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that allege a secret Jewish cabal is pulling strings to control international politics.  Weeks of outrage leading up to the summit ultimately resulted in the cartoonist being disinvited from the summit.

In recent years, the far-right in both the U.S. and abroad has turned Soros into what some have described as a liberal bogeyman. In both the U.S. and Hungary, Jews are often portrayed as both insider and outsider. Soros is simultaneously portrayed by the far-right as a foreign investor, meddling somewhere where he doesn’t belong, and the local Jew, who is depicted as placing his loyalty to his people before his country.

One place where the intersection between these two perceived identities becomes more tangible is the allusion often made to Soros as a “billionaire globalist” or the leader of a “globalist movement.” The term “globalist” is used by anti-Semites as shorthand for the idea of a global Jewish conspiracy for power and control. This idea of a global conspiracy has its roots in the Middle Ages, where paranoia about wealthy Jews began to become more prevalent, and the continued thread of this harmful trope can be traced to the 20:{th:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear;position:relative;vertical-align:baseline;top:-0.5em"):}: century myth of Judeo-Bolshevism.

Another aspect of these conspiracies is the suggestion that Jews are conspiring to weaken the state where they reside in order to heighten their own influence. This, specifically, is a common assertion when it comes to Soros’s treatment in the U.S. and Hungary. Soros has been known to lobby for the humane treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, especially after Hungary’s controversial treatment of asylum seekers in 2014. This has lead the Right to cast Soros as radically pro-immigration, with some asserting that he is trying to destabilize Europe and the U.S. by allowing dangerous migrants to enter.

In 2018, Donald Trump and others accused Soros of being the “mastermind” behind the migrant “caravan” that trekked from Central America to the U.S. Southern border in 2018. This narrative of Soros as a global mastermind and promoter of non-white immigration “replacing” white Europeans or Americans was cited by the**suspected shooter in the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.** The gunman had posted shortly before the massacre about his fears of “white genocide” by these migrant “invaders.”

During the migrant caravan controversy in the U.S., many right-wing commentators suggested that the migrants were being paid by Soros to come to the U.S., echoing similar accusations by right-wing politicians and media in both the U.S. and Hungary that Soros pays protesters to create chaos. By portraying protesters as “Soros agents,” right-wing leaders hope to undermine the legitimacy of protests.

The term “Soros agent” has been used to describe a plethora of people, including Hungary’s first black parliament member, Olivio Kocsis-Cake; the former chancellor of Austria, Sebastian Kurz; and Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. In 2018, the government of Hungary published a list of over 200 “Soros mercenaries,” which included human rights advocates, journalists, teachers and professors. By portraying these people as members of a foreign conspiracy to control local politics, right-wing political leaders seek not only to dismiss their critics but also to intimidate those who are working for change.

These anti-Semitic critiques of Soros are not limited to Hungary and the U.S.; Austria’s vice chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache of the far-Right FPÖ party described the Soros-funded Central European University as a “Wanderuniversität” or “Wandering University.” The “wandering Jew” is an image that has its origins in the medieval era and was co-opted by the Nazis in the mid-20th century to promote violence and hatred against the Jewish people.

The Hungarian government adopted a so-called “Stop Soros” Law in June 2018, which made it illegal for civil society organizations to “facilitate illegal immigration,”  which includes such actions as helping migrants apply for asylum or providing assistance to undocumented foreigners.

After the enactment of the Stop Soros legislation, the OSF started to consider moving its headquarters out of Budapest. Before the foundations officially left Budapest in the spring of 2018, Orbán launched another poster campaign, which many have called anti-Semitic. The posters show an image of Soros, with the words “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh!” emblazoned on billboards, bus stops and subway stations. The ad text is about stopping illegal immigration.

The image of “the laughing Jew” goes back to a speech given by Adolf Hitler in 1939, where he depicts the Jews of Germany laughing at his assertion that he would take over the nation and settle the “Jewish problem”; Hitler continues by saying: “If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”

By making a reference to this speech and stereotype perpetuated by Hitler, Orbán played on the anti-Semitic fears and histories of the Hungarian people. Hungarians were aligned with the Nazis before the country was occupied.  Recently, this Nazi-aligned past has come back to haunt the Orbán-regime after the addition of a controversial Holocaust memorial to Budapest’s Freedom Square seemed to erase the Hungarian collaboration with the Third Reich during World War II. Although the anti-Soros signs were up only for a short time, many of these signs were vandalized with graffiti that included phrases such as “dirty Jew” or crudely drawn swastikas.

In the spring of 2019, a new ad campaign supported by Orbán’s Fidesz party was denounced by the European Commission. The ad featured images of Soros and EC President Jean-Claude Juncker, with the words “You, too, have a right to know what Brussels is preparing.” The ads were denounced as promoting false narratives and using Soros to inflame anti-Semitic feelings and stoke anti-immigration fears in Hungary.

Both Trump and Orbán, along with many of their right-wing supporters, are playing a dangerous game, publicly condemning anti-Semitism while using veiled and not-so-veiled anti-Semitic tropes and stereotypes. Both countries have seen rises in anti-Semitic violence. In the U.S., the FBI reported a 37 percent rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes in 2017, and in Europe, 90 percent of Jews feel that anti-Semitism is on the rise in their home countries.

In October of 2018, a series of mail bombs were sent to top leaders, including former President Barack Obama and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who had vocally disagreed with President Trump; another of these bombs was sent to Soros’ New York home. The bombs did not reach their intended targets, and the sender, identified as Cesar Sayoc, plead guilty to the charges in March 2019.

Tags: Donald J. Trump George SorosViktor OrbanAnti-Semitism global Open Society Foundations

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In an astonishing turn, George Soros and Charles Koch team up to end US ‘forever war’ policy

By Stephen KinzerUpdated June 30, 2019, 5:01 a.m.

George Soros (left) and Charles Koch are teaming up on the effort.

BESIDES BEING BILLIONAIRES and spending much of their fortunes to promote pet causes, the leftist financier George Soros and the right-wing Koch brothers have little in common. They could be seen as polar opposites. Soros is an old-fashioned New Deal liberal. The Koch brothers are fire-breathing right-wingers who dream of cutting taxes and dismantling government. Now they have found something to agree on: the United States must end its “forever war” and adopt an entirely new foreign policy.

In one of the most remarkable partnerships in modern American political history, Soros and Charles Koch, the more active of the two brothers, are joining to finance a new foreign-policy think tank in Washington. It will promote an approach to the world based on diplomacy and restraint rather than threats, sanctions, and bombing. This is a radical notion in Washington, where every major think tank promotes some variant of neocon militarism or liberal interventionism. Soros and Koch are uniting to revive the fading vision of a peaceable United States. The street cred they bring from both ends of the political spectrum — along with the money they are providing — will make this new think tank an off-pitch voice for statesmanship amid a Washington chorus that promotes brinksmanship.

“This is big,” said Trita Parsi, former president of the National Iranian American Council and a co-founder of the new think tank. “It shows how important ending endless war is if they’re willing to put aside their differences and get together on this project. We are going to challenge the basis of American foreign policy in a way that has not been done in at least the last quarter-century.”

Since peaceful foreign policy was a founding principle of the United States, it’s appropriate that the name of this think tank harken back to history. It will be called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an homage to John Quincy Adams, who in a seminal speech on Independence Day in 1821 declared that the United States “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” The Quincy Institute will promote a foreign policy based on that live-and-let-live principle.

The institute plans to open its doors in September and hold an official inauguration later in the autumn. Its founding donors — Soros’s Open Society Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation — have each contributed half a million dollars to fund its takeoff. A handful of individual donors have joined to add another $800,000. By next year the institute hopes to have a $3.5 million budget and a staff of policy experts who will churn out material for use in Congress and in public debates. Hiring is underway. Among Parsi’s co-founders are several well-known critics of American foreign policy, including Suzanne DiMaggio, who has spent decades promoting negotiated alternatives to conflict with China, Iran, and North Korea; the historian and essayist Stephen Wertheim; and the anti-militarist author and retired Army colonel Andrew Bacevich.

“The Quincy Institute will invite both progressives and anti-interventionist conservatives to consider a new, less militarized approach to policy,” Bacevich said, when asked why he signed up. “We oppose endless, counterproductive war. We want to restore the pursuit of peace to the nation’s foreign policy agenda.”

In concrete terms, this means the Quincy Institute will likely advocate a withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and Syria; a return to the nuclear deal with Iran; less confrontational approaches to Russia and China; an end to regime-change campaigns against Venezuela and Cuba; and sharp reductions in the defense budget.

It aims to issue four reports before the end of 2019: two offering alternative approaches to the Middle East and East Asia, one on “ending endless war,” and one called “democratizing foreign policy.”Its statement of principles asserts that the United States “should engage with the world, and the essence of engagement is peaceful cooperation among peoples. For this reason, the United States must cherish peace and pursue it through the vigorous practice of diplomacy . . . The use of armed force does not represent American engagement in the world. Force ends human life, destroying engagement irreparably. Any resort to force should occur only as a last resort and should remain infrequent. The military exists to defend the people and territory of the United States, not to act as a global police force.”

The depth of this heresy can only be appreciated by recognizing the meretricious power that nourishes Washington’s think-tank ecosystem. These “talk shops” employ experts who pop up to advise politicians, journalists, Congressional staff members, and the public. They write opinion columns and bloviate on news channels. In foreign policy, all major Washington think tanks promote interventionist dogma: the United States faces threats everywhere, it must therefore be present everywhere, and “present” includes maintaining more than 800 foreign military bases and spending trillions of dollars on endless confrontations with foreign countries. That, with some variation, is the ethos that moves conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation as well as liberal ones like the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution. Just as pernicious as their relentless support of the global-hegemony project is the corruption that lies behind it. Many Washington think tanks are supported by industries and foreign powers eager to inflate threats in order shape American law, policy, and public opinion. Their “experts” are often paid shills who cloak themselves in institutional respectability so they can masquerade as independent analysts.

When foreign crises like the war in Yemen break out, critics of US policy emerge and are given space to air their views. These protests, however, are episodic. Little continuity ties one burst of outrage to the next. The Quincy Institute aims to offer a corps of experts in Washington who will promote a unified foreign-policy paradigm based on statecraft and cooperation. Its founders plan to become involved in grass-roots campaigns, especially in minority communities. They hope their specialists will eventually move on to populate Congressional staffs and the executive branch — as alumni of pro-intervention think tanks have been doing for decades.

“Some interesting currents are emerging in American politics and we want to capture this moment, but we’re in it for the long haul,” said Parsi. “We’ll be a failure if in 10 years we’re still criticizing. In 10 years, we want to be driving the bus.”

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/nra-official-contacted-sandy-hook-truther-to-discuss-conspiracy-theory-on-parkland-shooting-report/

Wednesday,  HuffPost reported that Mark Richardson, a National Rifle Association official and coordinator, got in touch with a noted Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist to speculate that the Parkland shooting in February 2018 may have been an inside job:

NRA officer Mark Richardson emailed Wolfgang Halbig, a noted harasser of parents of Sandy Hook Elementary School victims, to float a conspiracy theory about the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed last year.

“Just like [Sandy Hook], there is so much more to this story,” Richardson said in an email dated Feb. 15, 2018 ― just one day after the Florida shooting. Twenty children and six adults were killed during the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. “[The Parkland shooter] was not alone.” The email was sent from his official NRA email address.

Reached for comment by HuffPost, Richardson doubled down. “Since an individual who was prohibited from the school was aloud [sic] to pass through the front doors with a backpack containing a long gun, it is a legitimate question to ask if he had assistance concerning access to the school,” he wrote. “No one else seems to be interested enough to even ask the question?”

Conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook shooting have persisted for years. Far-right InfoWars host Alex Jones claimed that the whole thing was staged by the government with child actors and no kids were harmed ― which ultimately led to a lawsuit against him by parents of the victims.

With the Parkland shooting, conspiracy theories have tended to focus more on the student activists like David Hogg and Emma González, who have led the March For Our Lives youth campaign to effect reform of our nation’s gun laws. Hogg, in particular, has been the target of vicious smears, including claims that he wasn’t actually at the shooting or was backed by Hungarian billionaire George Soros.

The NRA has long agitated to crush tougher gun control laws in this country. But for its officials to be directly engaged in trutherism about school shootings is a new low.

==

==

IOF had teased in August on its website that “some of the top religious leaders in the world” would be attending, including the Vatican secretary of state, Archbishop Pietro Parolin; Patriarch Kirill, who is Patriarch of Moscow; and Elder Christoffel Golden, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Dodon will also be speaking, “along with a stellar list of experts, academics and inspirational leaders.” With the release of the official schedule, however, it appears that Patriarch Kirill will not be attending, though a representative for him will be. 

In an IOF email newsletter dated September 10, Brown noted he and Dodon will be addressing WCF, and also said IOF staff will lead panel discussions at the conference, including WCF founder Allan Carlson and Nicole King, editor of The Natural Familyjournal, which IOF publishes. The newsletter said:

All told, attendees at WCF XII will have thirteen discussion panels from which to learn from experts, covering such diverse and important topics as emplowering [sic] families in the education of their children, how George Soros operates, challenges to the sanctity of life and strategies to confront them, gender ideology, the United Nations, motherhood, faith and politics.

Brown’s address to WCF, according to the newsletter, will deal with

…the importance of uniting countries in the east with those in the west to present a global defense of the natural family. Brown will point out that ideas to deconstruct the family and redefine institutions such as marriage, parenthood and gender often start with elites in the west, and are then pushed by wealthy leftist ideologues like George Soros who use their power and influence to spread them worldwide.

Hungarian-born philanthropist George Soros has become a target of the right over the years, which has created conspiracy theories around him suggesting he funds some sort of global order that seeks to undermine Europe’s Christian values and impose multiculturalism on the continent.Soros is a frequent target of Hungarian authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose party has passed “Stop Soros” laws to crack down on civil society groups who help immigrants.

Some other details about WCF are emerging via Eastern European media. Accent-TV Moldova reported August 22 that Dodon held a meeting of the WCF working group at which organizational issues were discussed,

==

nratv

CHUCK HOLTON (NRATV CORRESPONDENT): Now it’s undoubtedly awfully convenient that these huge caravans are forming now and are being speedily transported north just in time for the November 6 election. But the real story here is the nexus we’re finding between left-wing groups from the United States, [George] Soros-funded groups in Latin America and the Venezuelan government.

==

wapo glen kessler factcheck fail:

..So, read in context,everything AOC said was true, even if we accept Kessler’s factual counterclaims! The entire fact-checking ritual was a charade. As I suggested earlier, it was really a boundary-policing episode, meant to keep her “radical” ideas outside the sphere of legitimate debate by portraying her as untrustworthy. Further, it was meant to deter others from similar infractions while trying to break through the barriers excluding them from legitimacy. (See AOC’s related Twitter thread on “gravitas” here.)

But the problem is that Kessler’s implied boundaries are not worth policing, or even recognizing. The whole system is in crisis, and the mainstream media’s assessment of what is deviant, what reflects normative consensus and what represents legitimate debate bears little or no relationship to reality. Take two other examples AOC has been associated with — raising top marginal tax rates to 70 percent and a Green New Deal. The first idea drew immediate majority support — 59 percent in a poll for the Hill, including 56 percent of rural voters and 45 percent of Republicans—and scorn from the 1 percent at Davos.

Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell laughed at the idea (video here), and said he thought it would be bad for economic growth. “Name a country where that’s worked,” he responded. “Ever.” Sitting there with him was MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson, who supplied the example: the United States, throughout most of its post-World War II expansion. It was a rare, Marshall McLuhan-in-“Annie Hall” moment. Usually, when the super-rich or their sycophants spout off like that, truth does not intrude. Certainly not from the fact-checking media.

But the media’s failure is even more striking when it comes to climate change and the Green New Deal. It’s still a rarity for the media to treat climate science as firmly within the sphere of consensus, where all reputable researchers say it belongs. As far back as 2004, a study found that “US prestige-press coverage of global warming from 1988 to 2002 has contributed to a significant divergence of popular discourse from scientific discourse,” and that “the prestige press’s adherence to balance actually leads to biased coverage of both anthropogenic contributions to global warming and resultant action.”

Four years later, just after the financial crisis hit, George Soros told Bill Moyers that something akin to AOC’s Green New Deal was needed, to respond both to global warming and the financial collapse:

For the last 25 years … the motor of the world economy that has been driving it was consumption by the American consumer, who has been spending more than he has been saving, all right? Than he’s been producing. So that motor is now switched off. It’s finished. … You need a new motor. And we have a big problem. Global warming. It requires big investment. And that could be the motor of the world economy in the years to come.

For all Soros’ supposed power, you’ve probably never heard that idea. It remained on the fringes, if not beyond the fringe in the sphere of deviancy. But if that prescription had been followed, rather than the austerity economics that took over after 2010, we’d be living in a radically different and more hopeful world today.

Ocasio-Cortez’s ideas — on marginal tax rates, a Green New Deal  and economic justice — are only deviant in a media system that’s utterly divorced from reality. That’s why it would be a serious mistake to view her in isolation. The intellectual incoherence of “fact-checking” poses a serious threat to Democrats and progressives — and to democracy itself — through the 2020 election, at least. The sooner we all wake up to that, and respond to it, the better.

==

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Rep. Louie Gohmert repeats disgusting lie about George Soros helping the Nazis.

George Soros, the wealthy Hungarian-born Jewish billionaire philanthropist, is frequently a target of anti-Semitic attacks.

This week, one such attack came from Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), and host Stuart Varney was apparently so caught off-guard by Gohmert's casual hate speech that he simply tried to move on:

Embedded video

Justin Baragona

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@justinbaragona

Holy crap!

Appearing on Fox Biz, Louie Gohmert says "George Soros is supposed to be Jewish but you wouldn't know it from the damage he inflicted on Israel and the fact that he turned on fellow Jews & helped take the property that they owned."

Stuart Varney quickly moves on

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Gohmert is referring to a frequently-debunked lie that Soros helped the Nazis confiscate Jewish property — which is not only false, it is a despicable claim to make against a Holocaust survivor. Sadly, various members of the right, including Donald Trump Jr., have been circulating this claim for a while, hoping to make it stick by repetition.

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fox-news-actually-apologizes-after-texas-congressman-goes-anti-semitic-rant

no lnx

Fox News actually apologizes after Texas congressman goes on anti-Semitic rant

In a truly tortured segue, Gohmert connected George Orwell to another George—Soros. Get it?

By Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos December 7, 2018, 6:20 AM GMT

Fox Business’s Stuart Varney, a man that somehow makes Piers Morgan sound less smarmy, had wildly dumb Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert on his show Thursday morning. Varney was hosting a segment about how the tech giant Google has been willing to be complicit in the Chinese government’s censorship of the internet in order to penetrate the Chinese marketplace. Attacking Google for its complete lack of ethics is totally warranted, but of course the reason that Fox News is attacking Google is in order to build the vilification of China, justifying Trump’s incoherent trade while attacking a company perceived as being “liberal.” Rep. Louie Gohmert is sort of like having a drug-fueled 1970s rock-and-roll legend on your show—sure they’re narcissistic and terribly erratic asshats, but they will likely make for some entertaining television.

Gohmert makes a clearly well-worn and on-brand right-wing conspiracy joke about George Orwell. He then explains how Google has “literally sold their souls” to China. Classic rock god antics! Literally! Of course, the problem with putting an erratic and unsophisticated mind and mouth in front of a microphone is that, so very frequently, they veer off into truly insane (and thinly-veiled) anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

In a truly tortured segue, Gohmert connected George Orwell to another George—Soros. Get it?

Gohmert: You mention Orwell, it reminds me of another George, ah George Soros. Because Google is born in a free country and they go over and oppress others, help oppress others in another country. George Soros is supposed to be Jewish but you wouldn't know it from the damage he inflicted on Israel and the fact that he turned on fellow Jews & helped take the property that they owned.

Varney quickly moved on, probably afraid that Gohmert would pull out his Glenn Beck blackboard to begin drawing lines between Hitler, the Rothschilds, George Soros, and black ops helicopters. If Louie Gohmert has a “brand,” it’s called “Batshit Crazy.” But the awfulness of the claim, so grotesquely wedged into a conversation about China, clearly stuck in someone’s craw at Fox Business, and according to the Daily Beast, Varney made an on-air apology later in the segment.

In the following broadcast hour, Varney issued an on-air apology for Gohmert’s remarks: “Congressman Louie Gohmert, for some reason went out of his way to bring up George Soros and made unsubstantiated and false allegations against him. I want to make clear those views are not shared by me, this program or anyone at Fox Business.”

This isn’t the first, second, or last time he’s publicly promoted the abhorrent George Soros as a Nazi collaborator meme. But here’s a quick primer on George Soros:

When World War II began, and Jews were swept up into camps, with more than 6 million ending up systematically murdered by the Third Reich. George Soros was 9-year-old Jew living in Hungary with his family when the war began. Soros was 14 years old when the Nazis occupied Hungary, and his family forged false identification papers and split up, in order to escape being sent to a Nazi concentration camp. Soros and his father forged similar papers for other Hungarian Jews during that time, before leaving the country and relocating in England.

The erroneous meme about Soros that has taken off in right wing circles originated with Glenn Beck—back when he was the heinous Glenn Beck we all remember. An old 60 Minutes interview with Soros shows him explaining how, at 14—charged with pretending he was the Christian child of an Hungarian officer—he had to watch as Hungarian and Nazi officials stole away the property of Jewish citizens who had been sent to their likely deaths in concentration camps.

None of us can know how we would have responded under the kinds of circumstances people like George Soros were put in as children—and adults—during World War II. But I will bet you another blue wave in 2020 that at 14, Louie Gohmert would have sold his family to the devil to keep his hair.

==

https://www.alternet.org/how-mainstream-media-helps-weaponize-far-right-conspiracy-theories

Once an anti-Semitic rumor moved from fringe to the mainstream, it took less than two weeks for violence to erupt. The false allegation that liberal philanthropist George Soros was funding or supporting a caravan of Honduran refugees heading to the U.S. spread wildly from a single tweet posted on Oct. 14.

Along with far-right memes, that allegation helped motivate both an alleged  mail-bomber and a mass shooter at a Pittsburgh synagogue. The way these messages traveled across the internet in this short time span is just one example of how extremist messages and memes circulate with incredible speed across mainstream social media platforms.

From our vantage point as researchers of visual and digital communication, memes– short, often image-based forms of communication – are powerful engines of persuasion, even though they can appear innocuous or even humorous. Perhaps the best known examples are LOLCats memes, pairing funny pictures of cats with customizable phrases or sentences.Memes can disseminate information quickly because they invite people to share or remix content with little effort required, making widespread dispersal more likely.

Memes need not be humorous or factual to be functional. All they need to do is attract attention online, which often translates into mainstream media coverage. That makes memes potent tools for distributing disinformation. Moreover, the online and mainstream platforms that amplify memes’ circulation can weaponize false claims and encourage conspiracy theorists – sometimes toward violence.

Memes move conspiracies

Understanding how these messages embolden anti-Semitism and other forms of terrorism involves grappling with how white supremacists use digital media. As we detail in our forthcoming book “Make America Meme Again,” messages and memes weaponized in far-right networks are deft political tools that move swiftly across social and traditional media. Because memes are stealthy political messages that usually offer rebellious or irreverent humor, they can be easily retweeted, shared or even pasted to the side of a van.

Before the dawn of today’s social media network, right-wing extremists were more difficult to find, often gathering in local communities and later discreetly in online forums unknown to the vast majority of internet users. Paranoid, rabid discourses of this ilk still boil around those darker corners of the internet. Today, memes help right-wing extremists communicate with one another and with mainstream audiences.

Soros has been demonized by right-wing activists for years, if not decades. Long before the Pittsburgh attack and the mail bombings, conspiracy theories about him were common on all sorts of right-wing discussion areas – including on Infowars, 4chan, Reddit and Gab. Starting in March 2018, the terms “caravan,” “immigrants” and “Soros” were frequently posted together on Twitter and Facebook. Memes depicting Soros as an evil fascist facilitating an invasion were commonplace.

The alleged mail bomber covered his van with “images and slogans often found on fringe right-wing social media accounts.” But the suspect didn’t find them on radical sites where white supremacists hide. Instead, based on his social media activity, he likely was radicalized in the same place most people look at cute photos of friends’ kids and check up on Aunt Beatrice – Facebook.

From fringe to network

Social media platforms have tried to push hate speech and uninformed conspiracy theories off their sites, but that’s a difficult task both technologically and ethically. Often, conspiracy promoters find ways to get their ideas into well-trafficked social media, where algorithms promote posts that garner lots of responses – whether appreciative or outraged.

Despite repeated fact checking, the conspiracy grew. Bots and other automated accounts drove roughly 60 percent of online talk about the caravan – but people were part of it too, often sharing posts without doing any sort of verification. Ultimately, these messages and memes may have inspired terrorism.

By October, discussions of the “caravan of immigrants” had grown beyond social media. Within a week of that Oct. 14 tweet alleging Soros was funding a group of refugees seeking asylum, far-right commentator Alex Jones broadcast the conspiracy on Infowars, to his audience of over 1 million daily visitors.

The conspiracy grew from there, with the video or related images popping up on nearly every platform. Eventually the conspiracy reached hundreds of thousands of potential viewers – including the men who would allegedly become the mail bomber and the synagogue shooter.

The two men may never have known of each other or the other’s plans. But their actions intertwined with a viciously networked conspiracy theory.

Connecting to mainstream media

Once there is enough social media attention on a topic or claim, it may be covered in more traditional news outlets. That can spread the idea even more widely, and lend credence to inaccuracies and lies. Politicians may also notice online discussion and join in, as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and a clerk for Texas’ Harris County did with the purported Soros connection to the migrant caravan.

Conspiratorial ideas often become an echo chamber, in which each post draws more attention than the last, generating stronger outrage and escalating the conspiracy. The average user who looks at a conspiratorial meme may not believe its message, but many users may. Even people who don’t believe it initially might come to assume it’s true after seeing an idea several times from different sources. Still others might spread the conspiracy just for amusement in the distress of others.

Demonize, divide, conquer

Memes, tweets and other forms of propaganda are designed to rile up constituents. Scaring voters with purported invasions was one way to infuriate voters as they headed to vote in the midterm elections.

President Donald Trump has historically spread far-right conspiracy theories with little regard for the truth. Just before the election – after the mail bomb attempts and the tragedy in Pittsburgh – Trump himself explicitly repeated the conspiracy about Soros.

When anti-Semitic, racist and xenophobic ideas spread through social media networks, they can infect a host of mainstream information sources – and make fear and violence more likely. That broadens the picture of a dangerous world from which people need protection. Fear appeals of this sort can influence voting, and even push people to take matters into their own violent hands. Until social media platforms or federal agencies find ways to diminish extremism, the proliferation of far-right memes, videos and texts will continue to imperil the citizenry.

Heather Woods, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Technology, Kansas State University and Leslie Hahner, Associate Professor of Communication, Baylor University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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pounder definer PR

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/16/bombshell_investigation_how_facebook_fought_critics

https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/three-most-insane-conspiracy-theories-republicans-ballot-counting

no lnx

Here are the 3 most insane conspiracy theories Republicans are using to subvert democracy and avoid counting every vote

Republicans are scared of democracy. And they have some very creative reasons why.

By Matthew Chapman / AlterNet November 12, 2018, 9:07 AM GMT

Tuesday's election did not go well for Republicans, but it has been getting even worse for them since then as ballots continue to trickle in.

In Florida's Senate and gubernatorial races, Republicans are panicking at the prospect of a recount even though they hold a narrow lead. Meanwhile in Arizona, the steady counting of mail-in ballots has turned the narrow lead the GOP held in the Senate race on Election Night into a more than 30,000-vote deficit, putting Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema on track to become the first Democrat to win a Senate race there since 1988.

Republicans have responded to the embarrassments with a long string of conspiracy theories. Here are three of the craziest ones:

Broward County trucked off a ton of ballots.

On Thursday, Sen. Marco Rubio retweeted a video, demanding, "Has anyone in local media looked into this claim or asked elections dept about it?"

The video was originally posted to Twitter by Tim Canova, a local professor and gadfly candidate who twice tried to primary Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, once with Bernie Sanders' blessing, and in this election ran as an independent. A conspiracy theorist who previously suggested Democrats had DNC staffer Seth Rich murdered, Canova, along with the supporter who shot the video, claims it shows filled-out Broward County ballots being illegally loaded into trucks and driven off, possibly to be destroyed and replaced with "fake ballots."

Embedded video

Tim Canova

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@Tim_Canova

Caught On Video: Concerned citizen sees ballots being transported in private vehicles & transferred to rented truck on Election night. This violates all chain of custody requirements for paper ballots. Were the ballots destroyed & replaced by set of fake ballots? Investigate now!

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The video, filmed from a distance, does not actually show what is in the boxes, so there is no evidence they contained filled-out ballots, as opposed to unused ballots or some other kind of election equipment. Even Canova himself acknowledged this, but added "the video itself demands an investigation."

Incredibly, Canova is now running interference for GOP Gov. Rick Scott as he tries to demonize Broward County supervisor Brenda Snipes, find a pretext to shut down the vote tally, and declare himself the winner of his race against incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson without a state-mandated recount."For two years, I have been warning that the Broward Supervisor of Elections office is a swamp of corruption," Canova wrote in an op-ed for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "I'm sure Gov. Scott now wishes he had heeded those warnings."

It makes no sense for the GOP to claim a far-left independent's conspiracy theory about his ballots being "stolen" somehow proves Republicans are being targeted and that the fix is to stop counting ballots. But logical consistency doesn't seem to be their strong point.

The Arizona ballot dispute is linked to Operation Fast and Furious.

On Saturday, as Sinema's lead over GOP Rep. Martha McSally in the Arizona Senate race grew steadily larger, National Republican Senatorial Committee communications director Calvin Moore tweeted an attack on Maricopa County elections recorder Adrian Fontes:

Calvin Moore

@CalvinMoore_

WOW. The AZ election official destroying evidence to cook the books for @kyrstensinema defended narco-terrorists.

Now it’s all making sense why he’s stretching the rules for Kyrsten “I Don’t Care If Americans Join The Taliban” Sinema. #AZSENhttps://www.foxnews.com/politics/arizona-election-official-at-center-represented-ringleader-of-gun-straw-buyer-in-fast-and-furious …

Election official in Arizona's Senate dispute represented figure in 'Fast and Furious' arms scandal

Arizona’s Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, who is being accused by the GOP of destroying evidence to cover up “voting irregularities,” has previously defended the accused ringleader of a gun...

Moore is referring to the fact that Fontes, when he was working as an attorney, defended a group of straw buyers who were tracked as part of the 2010 ATF "gunwalking" scandal. Under a sting operation at the beginning of President Barack Obama's administration, called "Operation Fast and Furious," federal agents let licensed firearms dealers sell to gun runners, hoping to track them over the border to the Mexican drug cartels and make larger arrests. Unfortunately, they lost track of the illegal shipments, and the guns ended up being used in a number of crimes, including the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and provoked diplomatic tensions between Mexico and the United States.

The failure of this operation became a rallying cry of Republicans arguing Obama was soft on crime or corrupt. But why representing defendants caught in this sting would discredit Fontes' ability to administer the election is left to the imagination.

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Furthermore, as even outgoing Republican Sen. Jeff Flake made clear, Moore can't seem to provide any evidence for his claim that Fontes is "destroying evidence to cook the books for Kyrsten Sinema."

Arizona election officials are in league with George Soros.

George Soros, a liberal Hungarian-born billionaire philanthropist and Holocaust survivor who has devoted much of his fortune to promoting democracy in Eastern Europe, has been the repeated focus of vicious, and often anti-Semitic, conspiracy theories from the far right. So it is perhaps little wonder that the GOP also tried to drag his name into all of this.

This weekend, the Arizona Republican Party filed a public records request seeking any interaction between Soros and the Maricopa County elections office.

Daniel Dale

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@ddale8

Conspiracymongering via FOI: via @brahmresnik, the Arizona Republican Party has filed a freedom of information request for any interactions between the Maricopa County elections office and...George Soros. http://bit.ly/2JUqBLB

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10:17 AM - Nov 11, 2018

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AZGOPRecordsRequest

Source document contributed to DocumentCloud by 12 News (12 News).

There is, of course, not a shred of evidence Soros had any contact with election administrators in Arizona, but Republicans seem desperate to uncover some. And this rhetoric could have dangerous consequences, especially coming less than a month after a fanatical supporter of President Donald Trump mailed a pipe bomb to Soros' house.

Taken together, these conspiracy theories paint a picture of a political party that has no interest in objective reality or the integrity of the ballot process, and that will say whatever it takes to cast doubt on their opponents' legitimacy.

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hungary neo fascist bellweather:

http://hungarianfreepress.com/2018/10/13/anti-semitic-conspiracy-theories-from-hungary-have-now-arrived-in-the-us/

http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/key-trump-adviser-has-disturbing-ties-anti-semitic-groups

Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories from Hungary have now arrived in the US

October 13, 2018 1:15 pm·

The US media was somewhat puzzled when the Orbán government chose George Soros as their favorite enemy and thousands of anti-Soros posters covered Budapest. Many in the US didn’t know much about the Hungarian-born New York billionaire and Holocaust survivor. Surreal pictures of Budapest streets and metro stations plastered with Soros posters, some scribbled with “Dirty Jew,” spread in the US media. Many wondered: What does this mean? Is this anti-Semitic?

Soros poster in Budapest with graffiti “Dirty Jew”.

Conspiracy theorists claimed that the anti-Soros campaign was NOT anti-Semitic, and produced “evidence” that Soros has collaborated with the Nazis in Hungary during World War II. Roseanne Barr, a Jewish TV actress spread this rumor and Hollywood immediately cancelled her contract. (Read Barr’s apologies to Soros here.)

Poster claiming that Holocaust survivor Soros was a Nazi collaborator during WWII.

During his presidential campaign Trump singled out “those who control the levers of power in Washington” and “global special interests.” Many thought that the cryptic language referred to then-Federal Reserve chief, Janet Yellen or to George Soros, both Jewish. Then on October 5, 2018 Trump tweeted that anti-Kavanaugh protests at the Capitol were “paid by Soros.” This was the first time he publicly mentioned Soros by name. More recently Trump has claimed that the paid protesters were angry “because they haven’t gotten their checks.”

Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a friend of US Ambassador to Budapest David Cornstein, increased the rhetoric. The Catholic former New York City mayor and Trump confidant retweeted a message calling Soros the “anti-Christ.” He also suggested that Soros’s assets should be frozen.

Several universities have reported that anti-Semitic posters were distributed on their campuses showing pictures of Soros and US politicians who opposed the Kavanaugh nomination. Senior Democratic Senators Feinstein and Schumer, both Jewish, along with others appeared on the posters.

Neo-Nazi poster from a California University campus with Soros and Jewish American politicians opposing the Kavanaugh nomination.

Mainstream media outlets have started to denounce Trump’s anti-Soros outburst. (Read here.) Comedians mocked anti-Soros statements. (Watch Jimmy Kimmel here.) Jewish media connected the anti-Soros sentiment to Orbán emphasizing that Soros has been his favorite bogeyman in recent years in his native Hungary. “There Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has pegged Soros and his organization Open Society Foundations as symbols of intruding globalist forces. Orbán’s unabashed anti-Soros message and anti-democratic goals have been widely criticized by the EU, Human Rights Watch and others.” (Read the Cleveland Jewish News here.)

(During WWII teenager George Soros was saved by Elza Brandeisz. Read more by clicking here.)

György Lázár

*

Letter from Chancellor Carol Christ

To the Berkeley Campus Community,

I am writing following the discovery by some of our students of a disturbing, disgusting anti-Semitic poster. The image in question, almost certainly disseminated by those who espouse neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology has, according to reports, appeared on campuses across the country. This toxic material demands a response, though I regret that by doing so we provide adherents of this vile ideology with more of the attention they seek.

The image on the poster alleges that Jewish Americans, including prominent, elected representatives, are involved in “anti-white, anti-American, anti-freedom” conspiracies, and portrays opposition to a recent Supreme Court nominee as the latest example. This, of course, is a common, classic refrain perpetrated by those who see our Jewish friends, colleagues and fellow citizens as the root of all evil. There is little, if any difference between this demonizing rhetoric and that used by the Nazis in the lead up to, and during the course of the Holocaust.

In the wake of this incident I want to make clear that my administration and this campus community stand together in condemnation of this and all hateful ideologies. We abhor and condemn anti-Semitic words and deeds on this campus and beyond. UC Berkeley unequivocally supports the University of California Regents’ “Principles Against Intolerance,” which clearly condemn bias, hatred, prejudice and discrimination. We also adhere to and strongly support this specific statement in the Principles; “Anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination have no place in the University.”

Staff from Student Affairs have reached out to students who expressed concern about this poster on social media, and we urge community members who need support to seek help. The campus has several resources, including counseling services. For students needing help navigating these resources, please contact: deanofstudents@berkeley.edu or visit deanofstudents.berkeley.edu/well-being.

We urge anyone with information about the incident to come forward. The UCPD phone number is (510) 642-6760. For information and support on reporting hate crimes or hate-motivated acts: stophate.berkeley.edu

We cannot seal off our open campus from hatred and ignorance, but what we can and will do is come together and determine how we can best deter and confront not only this particular form of bias, but all manifestations of intolerance that violate our shared values and Principles of Community.

Sincerely,

Carol Christ

Chancellor

==

https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/steve-king-depths-freedom-party-austria

...FPÖ was founded by an SS officer and is currently led by Heinz-Christian Strache, who formerly participated in neo-Nazi groups. The party now distances itself from past connections to the Nazis, but even today takes an extreme, hardline stance on immigration reminiscent of President Donald Trump's.

In the Unzensuriert interview, held in August and published in September, King openly endorsed white nationalism, saying that Europe and America are threatened by low white birthrates and an influx of Hispanics and Muslims, and that "If we don’t defend Western civilization, then we will become subjugated by the people who are the enemies of faith, the enemies of justice." He added, "What does this diversity bring that we don't already have? Mexican food, Chinese food, those things — well, that's fine, but what does it bring that we don't have that is worth the price? We have a lot of diversity within the U.S. already."

King also expressed his belief in the "Great Replacement", a conspiracy theory that nonwhite immigration is an orchestrated plot to replace the white population of Europe. He suggested that George Soros, the Hungarian-born liberal billionaire philanthropist and Holocaust survivor, is behind it, insisting, "if you trace it back, you can connect it to his foundation."

According to the Post, King stands by his claims aboutSoros,calling him "a leftist operator that's been engaged in upsetting freedom," and echoing a right-wing smear that, instead of being a Holocaust survivor, Soros actually collaborated with the Nazis as a teenager.

Jonny Daniels, president of From the Depths, said that he had no idea King had gone to meet with FPÖ leaders after the end of the tour, but expressed his dismay. "You sort of hope that a trip like this gives a better understanding to a parliamentarian, understanding that the connection between hate speech and hatred of any people or nation leads directly to places like Auschwitz-Birkenau."

King has met with a number of other far-right European politicians, including French National Rally leader Marine Le Pen and Dutch anti-Muslim firebrand Geert Wilders. He also recently retweeted a Nazi sympathizer activist who has praised Adolf Hitler, and refused to apologize when questioned about it.

This November, King faces a challenge from Democratic former professional baseball player J.D. Scholten.

bomb delivered in person to house

Secret Service Intercepts Potential Explosive Devices Addressed to Obamas, Clintons

ginni 2013 pix

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/ginni-thomas-caravan-fake-meme

...

invasion thank gof for trump"

...BVut sharing extremist right-wing content is not a new thing for Thomas, a conservative activist who has made frequent use of social media. Earlier this year, she shared posts attacking the Parkland kids and praising the "#WalkAway" movement, a fake campaign of Russian trolls pretending to be people of color leaving the Democratic Party.

The migrant caravan, which consists of thousands of men, women, and children fleeing civil strife in Central America and heading toward the United States, is not actually anything new or unusual; similar groups of migrants have routinely formed over the last 20 years, and there is no evidence anyone in the group poses a danger. But it has still become the fear du jour in the Republican Party, particularly among those hoping to gin up enough fear among President Donald Trump's core voters to turn them out to the polls and counteract a blue wave.

Trump has claimed with no evidence that "unknown Middle Easterners" are traveling with the caravan. And last week, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) theorized that left-wing Jewish billionaire George Soros is secretly funding the caravan, in the hope that it will somehow disrupt the midterm election in favor of Democrats.

10/18 bak

==

crc bizarroworld crypto so they need a left koch bro

promoted to primary 5/15 (2ndary before b/c his $ dwarfed by koch NETWORK, and prolly adelson et cetera

but now is mirror bogey man to give cover to billionaire funders of GOP

plus trump says he pays for all protestors

beck bogeyman? (went of fox right after obama inauguration?)

see also Tides

o'keefe fail

==

Articles by Kevin Mooney

ECONOMY NEWS

Groups Linked to George Soros Behind Campaign to Repeal Trump Tax Cuts

Kevin Mooney / July 13, 2018

Left-wing financier George Soros figures prominently in a campaign by progressives to repeal the Trump tax cuts,according to a review of the campaign’s allied… Read More

left-wing financier George Soros figures prominently in a campaign by progressives to repeal the Trump tax cuts, according to a review of the campaign’s allied organizations and their tax records by The Daily Signal.

The campaign, called “Not One Penny,” first came together almost a year ago with what The Washington Post reported was “a seven-figure ad buy in eight Republican-held congressional districts.”

All of the districts, the Post reported, include “large numbers of white voters without college degrees, who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 but have not historically been passionate about tax cuts.”

The “direct action and activism” of the Not One Penny campaign, the Post reported, closely model the Tax March held April 15, 2017, and successful efforts to block repeal of Obamacare in the Senate.

The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >>

Several organizations listed as partners by Not One Penny have tangible ties to Soros, the Hungarian-American billionaire and hedge fund manager. Soros is the founder and chairman of Open Society Foundations, an international grant-making institution based in New York City and known for financing progressive political causes.

The Washington-based Capital Research Center, a nonprofit that examines how foundations, charities, and other nonprofits spend money and get involved in politics and advocacy, maintains:{a detailed profile:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}: of Soros, his activities, and the operations of his Open Society Foundations at its:{“Influence Watch”:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:website.

“Among Not One Penny’s allies are plenty of groups funded by George Soros through his philanthropies,” MatthewVadum, a senior vice president at Capital Research Center, told The Daily Signal in an email. “Among them are Demos, MoveOn.org, People’s Action (formerly National People’s Action), People for the American Way, Public Citizen, [and] Working Families.”

>>> Related::{The Left-Wing Plot to Repeal the Trump Tax Cuts:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:700;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:

Vadum described Not One Penny as a project of the:{Sixteen Thirty Fund:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:, a left-leaning nonprofit that has received funding from labor unions and a Soros-funded organization called the Tides Foundation.

“The Sixteen Thirty Fund has ties to George Soros and paid $400,000 to his ultra-secretive Democracy Alliance group for consulting services, according to its:{2016 IRS filings:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:,” Vadum said.

The Tides Foundation is among left-leaning U.S. political organizations receiving “multimillion dollar gifts” from Open Society Foundations, according to the Capital Research Center....

alt rt everything you love will burn wants to interview soros as he is nexus of all conspir theories

==

==

https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/09/01/long-debunked-lie-george-soros-was-nazi-collaborator-resurfaces-thanks-dinesh-d-souza/217826

no link

soros917

Long-debunked lie that George Soros was a Nazi collaborator resurfaces thanks to Dinesh D’Souza

Research ››› September 1, 2017 4:38 PM EDT ››› ALEX KAPLAN

Discredited conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza has revived the long-running and debunked claim that billionaire philanthropist George Soros collaborated with the Nazis as a child. The false claim comes as D’Souza has been trying to promote his latest book, which links Democrats to fascism and pushes the Soros lie. The smear, which has been invoked by other right-wing media figures in the past, has been repeatedly condemned by journalists. Nevertheless, other conservative media and GOP officials have run with D’Souza’s recycled and false charge.

Discredited author Dinesh D’Souza accuses George Soros of working with the Nazis

Dinesh D’Souza: George Soros was a “collection boy for Hitler” and is like Josef Mengele of Auschwitz. Author Dinesh D’Souza, speaking with C-SPAN at a FreedomFest event in July, claimed that his new book The Big Lie shows that billionaire philanthropist George Soros “was a kind of collection boy for Hitler” and that Soros admitted as much during an old interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes. D’Souza also claimed there was an “eerie parallel” between Soros and Josef Mengele, a physician at Auschwitz who selected victims for the gas chambers and performed deadly experiments on prisoners, because, D’Souza said, both defended their crimes by saying that if they hadn’t done them, someone else would have. Since the C-SPAN interview (and besides in his book), D’Souza has pushed the claim on Twitter, in The Daily Caller, and in an interview with far-right troll Stefan Molyneux. From C-SPAN’s coverage of FreedomFest on July 20, which aired on August 20:

PETER SLEN (HOST): In The Big Lie you also have a chapter on George Soros.

DINESH D’SOUZA: Yes. It’s not a chapter on Soros, but it’s a -- it’s a section on Soros because Soros claims to be the great anti-fascist. In fact, Soros funds a lot of the Antifa, anti-fascist parties. And what I do is I say, OK, well here’s some -- Soros will talk about, for example, the fact that he's inspired by libertarianism, by Karl Popper and the Open Society. In reality, as you look into Soros' past, his sort of secret history, if you will, you realize that Soros, along with a mentor of his, was a kind of collection boy for Hitler. This is seems harsh to say, but it’s true. It was discussed by Steve Kroft in an interview with Soros in which Kroft asked Soros --

SLEN: For 60 Minutes.

D’SOUZA: For 60 Minutes. He says, “You would go around confiscating the property of the Jews and turning it over to the Nazis, right? And how can you feel good about that?” And Soros goes, “I don't feel bad about that at all.” He goes, “Let's remember that if I didn't do it, somebody would do it,” right? Now this gets me thinking because, because I remember a very powerful scene. This actually involves Josef Mengele, the sort of killer of Auschwitz, the crazed doctor of Auschwitz. Mengele escaped after the war and went to Argentina, and one of his sons tracked him down and confronted his father and said, “Dad, how could you do the things you did in Auschwitz?” And guess what Mengele said? Mengele said, “If I didn’t do them, somebody else would have.” In other words, “Here were these captive people and I, as a scientist, simply saw the opportunity to make them into research specimens, so don't blame me because the bad stuff would have gone on anyway.” So here is an eerie parallel between what I would call the “Mengele defense” and George Soros, out of his own mouth, not as a young man. I don't blame anybody for what they did at the age of 15, but as a mature George Soros now reflecting upon his past, there's lots of dark secrets there. [C-SPAN, The Big Lie, 8/20/17; Twitter, 8/2/17, 8/14/17, 8/22/17, 8/24/17; The Daily Caller, 7/31/17; YouTube, 8/16/17; Media Matters, 4/26/17]

D’Souza has a history of making racist comments and pushing false claims and fringe conspiracy theories. D’Souza has repeatedly pushed false claims and conspiracy theories including that one of the main organizers of the white supremacist gathering in Charlottesville, VA, was some kind of liberal double agent, that the Clintons were behind the death of a former Haitian government official, that former President Barack Obama is “anti-American” and "embraced a Third World ideology,” and that Hitler took three "very destructive, genocidal ideas from the Democratic Party” -- a claim he made recently, while promoting his new book. He also shared a fake photo of Obama with Soros, and he has a history of racism, writing about Obama on Twitter, “YOU CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF THE GHETTO,” comparing Obama’s father to Ebola, and writing that African-Americans are “better off as a consequence” of slavery. [Media Matters, 8/18/17, 7/18/17, 9/28/12, 2/18/15, 10/6/14, 7/9/14; Snopes, 8/25/17; Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/1/17]

D’Souza’s smear is an old right-wing lie that has been previously debunked

Soros did not admit to being a Nazi collaborator in a 60 Minutes interview. During his interview with 60 Minutes, Soros said yes specifically in response to Steve Kroft noting that “you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson … went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews,” not that he confiscated property himself. As Snopes noted, “Perhaps because of the way the 60 Minutes interview … was edited, or perhaps because Soros was blindsided by Steve Kroft’s accusatory line of questions, or both, his responses were contradictory and confusing. … Soros went on to clarify that he hadn’t actually participated in any confiscations.” Soros said, “I was only a spectator. I had no role in taking away that property, so I had no sense of guilt.” [Media Matters, 2/5/07, 11/10/10; Snopes, 11/28/16]

Soros biographer: Soros did not collaborate with the Nazis as a teenager. According to Michael Kaufman, the author of the biography Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire, Soros “collaborated with no one” during the Holocaust and was simply adopting a secret identity to protect himself while living with a Hungarian government official who was forced to confiscate property from a Jewish aristocrat. From Kaufman’s book:

While he was living with Baumbach as Sandor Kiss, an event occurred that more than a half a century later would become the basis of charges that George Soros, the international financier and billionaire, had somehow collaborated with the Nazi occupiers of his homeland and had exploited his fellow Jews. The issue was raised in a bizarre television profile and interview of Soros aired on the CBS television program 60 Minutes in December of 1998. In the segment, Steve Kroft, the interviewer, noted with prosecutorial gusto that George's father had "bribed a government official to swear that you were his godson," and added that this survival strategy "carried a heavy price tag." For, he continued, "as hundreds of thousands of Jews were being shipped off to the Nazi death camps, a thirteen-year-old George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his rounds, confiscating property from the Jews." Visibly dumbfounded by the line of questioning, Soros could only manage to say that he had no role in the seizure of property and was merely a spectator. To underscore Kroft's point, film footage showed masses of Hungarian Jews being led away at gunpoint.

This is what actually happened. Shortly after George went to live with Baumbach, the man was assigned to take inventory on the vast estate of Mor Kornfeld, an extremely wealthy aristocrat of Jewish origin. The Kornfeld family had the wealth, wisdom, and connections to be able to leave some of its belongings behind in exchange for permission to make their way to Lisbon. Baumbach was ordered to go to the Kornfeld estate and inventory the artworks, furnishings, and other property. Rather than leave his "godson" behind in Budapest for three days, he took the boy with him. As Baumbach itemized the material, George walked around the grounds and spent time with Kornfeld's staff. It was his first visit to such a mansion, and the first time he rode a horse. He collaborated with no one and he paid attention to what he understood to be his primary responsibility: making sure that no one doubted that he was Sandor Kiss. Among his practical concerns was to make sure that no one saw him pee. [Media Matters, 12/8/10]

Glenn Beck pushed the smear in 2010, and journalists roundly condemned him

Then-Fox News host Glenn Beck in November 2010 falsely claimed Soros took “property from the Jews as a teenager.” Glenn Beck in November 2010 falsely claimed that Soros “had to go over and take the lands from the people, his Jewish friends and neighbors,” and that he admitted as such in the 60 Minutes interview. From his Fox News show:

GLENN BECK (HOST): But when he had to go over and take the lands from the people, his Jewish friends and neighbors who were being sent to the gas chambers, I can't imagine what that would do to a teenager, or anybody, an adult. Well, what did it do to George Soros? In an interview with Steve Kroft, Soros was asked if he felt guilt at all about taking the property from the Jews as a teenager. He responded, no. [Media Matters, 11/10/10]

New Yorker: Beck’s Nazi smear of Soros is “blood variety” “libel.” The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg condemned Beck for using a 1995 New Yorker article to criticize Soros, adding that his claim about Soros and the Nazis was “no ordinary libel—it’s more akin to the blood variety.” From the November 29, 2010, article:

Call us oversensitive, but when our efforts are shanghaied like a nineteenth-century sailor and forced to work as a deckhand aboard a ship of lies, we can’t help getting our hackles up. You don’t have to be a professional semiotician to see that the Glenn Beck promo is intended to leave the impression that George Soros, the hedge-fund investor and funder of anti-totalitarian and liberal causes, is an anti-Semite; that he was somehow complicit in the Holocaust; and that he is an enemy of Israel. These are lies—lies told by innuendo, but lies all the same.

[...]

The ugliest single sentence Beck uttered that week came on his radio program, which supplements his TV show. “Here’s a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps,” he said, referring to Soros, age thirteen. That’s no ordinary libel—it’s more akin to the blood variety. It was Beck’s ruminations on the Jewish Question that exhausted the patience of some conservatives, but that is a relatively minor aspect of his malicious crusade against Soros. [The New Yorker, 11/29/10]

Former ABC News reporter Kari Marton: “Beck's smearing of George Soros echoes the anti-Semitic attacks of the Hungarian far right.” Former ABC News reporter Kati Marton wrote a piece in The Daily Beast about Beck’s attacks on Soros. The piece’s subhed said the “smearing ... echoes the anti-Semitic attacks of the Hungarian far right and is a perverse twisting of his experience with the Nazis.” Marton wrote that Soros “acted as a messenger of the Budapest Jewish Council” and was “sent to alert Jews to report to various collection points around the city” but that he “urged defiance” instead. From the November 13, 2010, article:

I, however, find it impossible not to speak up when I hear the likes of Beck from the comfort of his armchair charge Soros with anti-Semitism. Beck paints Soros as a Nazi tool for having had the supreme nerve to survive Europe’s most violent Holocaust: the one that swept through Hungary under SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann during the summer and fall of 1944. Eichmann’s was a well-oiled machine by then, and he had to make quick work of Europe’s last remaining intact Jewish community. Even the most deluded Nazis knew the war was over, their cause lost. But Eichmann was determined to finish the job in Hungary. Only the most resourceful and the luckiest survived.

It is well known that the 14-year-old George Soros acted as a messenger of the Budapest Jewish Council, a group of aged and terrified elders who thought if they kept the city’s Jews calm, and followed the Gestapo’s every command, they might survive. Sent to alert Jews to report to various collection points around the city, the young Soros, prompted by his canny father, urged defiance instead. “There was one man I shall not forget,” Soros recalled, “I told him what my father had said. And he answered, ‘Tell your father that I am a law-abiding citizen, that I have always been a law-abiding citizen and that I am not going to start breaking the law now.'" We know how few of those law-abiding citizens survived Eichmann’s barbaric campaign to make Hungary Judenrein. The fact is that only by assuming false identities, through bribery and deception, could people survive that Kafkaesque nightmare. Andy Grove, the legendary founder of Intel, another young Budapest Jew, survived thus, as did my own parents. Raoul Wallenberg, the great Swedish humanitarian, performed his miracles in Budapest partly by forging passports and bribing Nazis. [The Daily Beast, 11/3/10]

The Nation’s Jonathan Schell: Beck’s Nazi attack on Soros was “especially vile” and constitutes “libel.” The Nation’s late correspondent Jonathan Schell wrote that Beck’s Nazi “libel” of Soros was “especially vile,” noting that Soros “never took any lands or anything else from Holocaust victims or anyone else.” From the December 2, 2010, article:

In a novel and especially vile (and also false) twist, Beck, while heaping the classic anti-Semitic slurs on Soros, insinuates that Soros, a Holocaust survivor, is himself anti-Semitic. Beck, who denies that he is an anti-Semite, accuses Soros of having had to “go over and take the lands from the people, his Jewish friends and neighbors, who were being sent to the gas chambers” when he was a boy in Hungary during World War II. (In reality, as Michael Kaufman reveals in his book Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire, Soros’s Christian protector was ordered to inventory the estate of a Jewish aristocrat who had escaped Hungary. He brought Soros, 13 at the time, with him. Soros wandered the estate and rode a horse. He never took any lands or anything else from Holocaust victims or anyone else.) In a perverse way, the libel is a perfect complement to the history of anti-Semitism: now the Jew is found to be guilty of, on top of all of history’s other evils, his own people’s persecution. [The Nation, 12/2/10]

The debunked smear has been around since at least 2006 and has been pushed by others besides Beck

Right-wing authors David Horowitz and Richard Poe claimed in 2006 that Soros survived the Holocaust by “assimilating to Nazism.” In a 2006 book, right-wing authors David Horowitz and Richard Poe claimed that Soros was a Nazi "collaborator in fascist Hungary" and "survived [the Holocaust] by assimilating to Nazism" as a 14-year-old boy. [Media Matters, 8/2/06]

Right-wing radio host Lee Rodgers in February 2007: Soros “apparently very cheerfully and willingly went to work for the Nazis.” Radio station KSFO was forced to apologize in February 2007 after conservative radio host Lee Rodgers claimed that Soros “apparently very cheerfully and willingly went to work for the Nazis," which another co-host claimed Soros did to “further his own career." [Media Matters, 2/27/07]

Ann Coulter in March 2009: Democrats have "a Nazi collaborator, literally -- international financier George Soros -- funding their phony grass-roots organizations." Right-wing commentator Ann Coulter claimed that Democrats “have a Nazi collaborator, literally, international financier George Soros funding their phony grass-roots organizations.” From the March 2, 2009, edition of Fox News’ Glenn Beck:

ANN COULTER: And the other thing I wanted to say about what you were saying -- this obsession with is Russia our leader? Is Russia our leader? I finally figured out why that bugs me so much. Power -- right-wing and conservative power has always bubbled up from the bottom. You -- Rush Limbaugh came out of a very strong legal family. He goes on radio. He gets fired. He gets fired. He gets fired. Free Republic. Just some guy out in California. Joe the Plumber -- it's always been bottom up.

GLENN BECK (HOST): Sure.

COULTER: Not with the Democrats. Oh, no. They have a Nazi collaborator, literally, international financier George Soros funding their phony grass-roots organizations. So they look at Rush and say, "Who’s funding you?" Well, Rush Limbaugh’s funding Rush Limbaugh. [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 3/2/09; Media Matters, 9/20/10]

Human Events: Soros is “also a Nazi collaborator.” An online piece from the conservative Human Events claimed Soros was “a Nazi collaborator” who “helped cart off the possessions of Hungarian Jews after they were sent to concentration camps.” From the March 10, 2009, article:

Soros is a behind-the-scenes despot. He is an evil man who has used his wealth to further all the causes the Democrat Party holds dear.

He was also a Nazi collaborator. In his autobiography, entitled "Soros on Soros," he blithely describes how as a teenager he helped cart off the possessions of Hungarian Jews after they were sent to concentration camps. Soros wrote that this never bothered him, even though his father was Jewish and he grew up in a Jewish home. He says he has no regrets for his actions. "Somebody would have done it," he wrote. [Human Events, 3/10/09]

Investor's Business Daily: Soros is a "former Nazi sympathizer." A March 11, 2009, Investor's Business Daily editorial accused Soros of being a “former Nazi sympathizer.” From the editorial:

If, as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says, Rush Limbaugh "is the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party," it is only fair to ask: Who is his Democratic counterpart?

Our nominee is George Soros, the Hungarian billionaire and former Nazi sympathizer who helped fund MoveOn.org, the radical group that smeared Gen. David Petraeus with its "General Betray Us" ad last fall.

Through his Open Society Initiative and personal contributions Soros has funded many liberal causes and many Democratic candidates with the intent of undermining democracy and capitalism. His ultimate goal is to create a global socialist collective where we hand over our money and/or freedom and sing "Kumbaya."

For our part, we'll take Rush over Soros. [Media Matters, 9/20/10]

Coulter: Soros "did well under the Nazis." Coulter claimed that Soros “collaborated with the Nazis in Hungary, as he admitted.” From the March 26, 2009, edition of Fox News’ Hannity:

ANN COULTER: I don't think George Soros' name should come out without pointing out that this is not the first crisis he's done well in. He collaborated with the Nazis in Hungary, as he admitted, so he did well under -- under the Nazis. [Fox News, Hannity, 3/26/09; Media Matters, 9/20/10]

Founder of right-wing outlet The Rebel in Toronto Sun column: Soros "collaborated with the Nazis" to survive the Holocaust. Ezra Levant, now the head of Canadian right-wing outlet Rebel Media, wrote in a September 5, 2010, Toronto Sun column that Soros “collaborated with the Nazis” and “turned on other Jews to spare himself.” The Sun was subsequently forced to issue a retraction and apology. From the column:

When the Nazis took total control of Hungary in 1944, the Holocaust followed. In two months, 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to death camps.

To survive, George, then a teenager, collaborated with the Nazis.

First he worked for the Judenrat. That was the Jewish council set up by the Nazis to do their dirty work for them. Instead of the Nazis rounding up Jews every day for the trains, they delegated that murderous task to Jews who were willing to do it to survive another day at the expense of their neighbours.

Theodore hatched a better plan for his son. He bribed a non-Jewish official at the agriculture ministry to let George live with him. George helped the official confiscate property from Jews.

By collaborating with the Nazis, George survived the Holocaust. He turned on other Jews to spare himself. [Media Matters, 9/20/10; BuzzFeed, 5/29/17]

WND columnist: Soros has a "pro-Nazi past.” A WorldNetDaily (WND) columnist on December 7, 2010, wrote that Soros has a "pro-Nazi past," and falsely claimed that Glenn Beck had been criticized by "liberal Jewish leaders" for merely "quoting from the Soros interview." [WND, 12/7/10]

Infowars’ Alex Jones: “Soros Helped Nazis During WWII.” Infowars’ Alex Jones published a January 2012 video titled “Soros Helped Nazis During WWII: Infowars Nightly News” that claimed Soros in the 60 Minutes interview said that “he would go around to the different Jewish homes helping catalogue their property and land, which the Nazis then took.” Infowars has also published videos in recent years with the titles, “Insane Nazi Collaborator Soros Calls Trump Hitler,” “Soros: The Nazi Collaborator Who Sold Out Jews To Survive,” and, “George Soros: Freak Nazi Collaborator.” [YouTube, 1/25/12; YouTube, accessed 9/1/17]

Other right-wing media figures and Republican officials and candidates pushed the debunked smear thanks to D’Souza

...

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The founder of Soros Fund Management shelled out $21 million last cycle, placing him twelfth on the biggest donor list. About $9.5 million went to Priorities USA Action, which focused on boosting Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in her White House bid, as well as other liberal groups like House Majority PAC, Planned Parenthood Votes and the anti-Rubio United for Progress. Soros spent more in 2016 than he had in any of the three previous election cycles.

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bs // follow the networks malkin:  http://keywiki.org/George_Soros_-_Affiliations

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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/glenn-beck-thinks-the-womens-march-was-george-sorosradical-islam-astroturf

Glenn Beck opened his radio show today by attacking the media for failing to report that last weekend’s massive Women’s March on Washington was nothing more than an “astroturf” rally orchestrated by George Soros and radical Islamic groups.[trms hi % trump ppl believe]

Beck heaped praise on a piece on the New York Times website by Asra Nomani, a self-described liberal Muslim who has previously said that she voted for Donald Trump because she believes that “the liberals and the left have really betrayed America” when it comes to fighting Islamic extremism, who claimed that “Soros has funded, or has close relationships” with dozens of organization that participated in or supported the march. **Update**: The piece was not actually posted on the Times’ website, but rather, as the NYT’s public editor [explained, it was posted “on a site affiliated with The Times — but completely distinct from the paper — called Women in the World … The Times is a business investor in Women in the World and provides the website’s digital platform, but the two have separate editorial operations.”]

“I’m afraid tomorrow I have to go back to my chalkboard,” Beck said. “We’ve been working on it this weekend. We’re going to give you some of the connections, we’re going to talk to the woman who wrote that article for The New York Times about the connections to George Soros and to radical Islam and have a talk with her. Tomorrow I’m bringing the chalkboard in because the connections are there and if you want to call me a conspiracy theorist again, you can; I’m not going to accuse anybody of anything, I’m just going to point out the facts because somebody has to and perhaps someone in the media will listen.”

==

2016

http://www.alternet.org/media/how-misinformed-tweet-was-manufactured-major-right-wing-news

Buzzfeed News analysis found that the top 20 fake political news stories in circulation during the election got more clicks, views, shares and reactions on Facebook than the top 20 real news stories. The vast majority of those fake stories—all but three—were “overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton,” meaning they pinged around the conservative webosphere, where they were accepted without question by millions and then passed to the next gullible consumer.

Paul Horner, among the most prolific and successful fake news writers, recently told the Washington Post that Trump voters and other “right-wing Republicans” were almost single-handedly responsible for the $10,000 he pulls in every month, because they “post everything, believe anything,” and continue to share fake news even when they find out it isn't true. That might explain why so many fake news stories seem specially tailored for the conservative news reader.

One of Horner’s most popular stories was a fabricated interview with a made-up person who said he’d been paid to protest Trump ahead of the election. During the campaign, multiple members of Trump’s team retweeted the story, even though many sources pointed out it wasn't true. The ludicrous idea that anti-Trump demonstrators are each paid thousands of dollars by billionaire George Soros—who plays a starring role in pretty much every right-wing conspiracy—has now become conservative gospel.

Eric Tucker, a marketer in Austin, Texas, was probably very familiar with this rumor when he recently sent an erroneous tweet that launched a viral right-wing story.The New York Times decided to examine how Tucker's tweet became a major topic of conservative discussion, following its online travels step by step. On the evening of November 9, just as protests against President-elect Trump were erupting all over the country, Tucker tweeted the photo and message below to his tiny group of 40followers. 

[img]

According to the Times, Tucker heard about anti-Trump demonstrations in Austin hours after he saw the buses in the photo, and for reasons that aren’t entirely clear (except that if you look for boogeymen everywhere you will find them), assumed a connection between the two. The Times confirmed that Tucker’s photo actually features buses booked for employees of Tableau Software, which was having a conference in the city. (Tucker told the Times he did a search for nearby conferences but didn’t find anything.) Roughly four hours after the original tweet went out, it ended up :{on :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Reddit:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:. “BREAKING: They found the buses!” the header reads. “Dozens lined up just blocks away from the Austin protests.” The thread of comments that follow indicate subreddits full of Trump supporters who, riding high on an election victory, are ecstatic to have a new conspiracy they can hang on the left.

“Alex Jones is based in Austin,” one commenter declares. “Let him know, and his crew can check it out.”

That’s followed by a lot of wishing the worst on Soros, complaints about “cucks,” suggestions thatJames O’Keefe get involved, and a lot of assumptions rooted in racism and paranoia. “Busing in violent mobs? Please tell me how this isn't inciting treason,” one person demands. This inexplicably devolves into a conversation about Obamaphones.

By the morning of November 10, the story appeared on right-wing message board Free Republic, where a user linked back to the original tweet. Here’s the point at which things quickly build momentum, picking up the pace across right-wing echo chambers. According to the Times, that same day, “Facebook pages like Robertson Family Values, which is named for but not affiliated with the stars of ‘Duck Dynasty,’ and Donald Trump Commander in Chief 2020, linked to the Free Republic discussion.” A Times screengrab of aFree Republican Facebook post repeating the Reddit message shows 307,616 shares. The paper also cites 5,000 shares of each of the aforementioned blog posts.

By now, the story had trickled upward to local news outlets. When the Austin-based affiliate for Fox called Coach USA North America bus companyto get more information, they were told by spokesperson Sean Hughes that the company wasn’t involved in any protests. Hughes even sent the station a statement clarifying that buses were in town "for a conference” and that “at no point were Coach USA buses involved in the Austin protests." The television station’s website, now empty of most of the content that appeared there, still features photos of the buses taken by Tucker, with a caption that poses thisleading question: “Were tens of thousands of protesters across the U.S. paid to walk the streets, hold signs, and chant anti-Trump sayings?”

That evening, Gateway Pundit, a major conservative blog, posted a story with the headline, “Figures. Anti-Trump Protesters Were Bussed in to Austin #FakeProtests.” They used Tucker’s original pictures, and according to the Times, linked the nonexistent busloads of fake protesters to “Soros money.” Three hours later, President-elect Trump or someone on his team took to social media to tweet about the fake story to his 16 million followers.

“Just had a very open and successful presidential election,” the message reads. “Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!”

As of this writing, the tweet has more than 71,000 retweets and 240,000 likes.img

On November 11, a spokesperson for Tableau, the tech company that rented the buses for its conference attendees, sent a statement to the Austin American-Statesman. The newspaper, in turn, published an article debunking Tucker’s original tweet and all of the stories that followed. Included was an interview withEric Tucker, who praised Alex Jones and stated, “I think that it is necessary for us to risk sometimes being wrong to help develop moving the dialogue forward.”

Later in the day, according to the Times, Tucker sent a tweet that acknowledged the possibility his first suggestion may have been “flat wrong.” There was also a Snopes article declaring the rumor false. Instead of stopping the fake news dead in its tracks, the case essentially turned into proof that "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes," as the old saying goes. Also, the internet loves a lie that supports its political agenda. According to the Times, “Mr. Tucker’s initial tweet continued to generate thousands of shares on Facebook through Free Republic and pages like Right Wing News and Joe the Plumber.”

On the night of November 11, Tucker put up the tweet below, which shows his original message updated to carry a bright red “FALSE” across it. The corrected tweet, as of this writing, has a paltry 60 retweets and 66 likes. He told the Times that moving forward, "I can assure you I’m going to try my best to be balanced with the facts and be very clear about what is opinion and what is not." He also said that knowing what he knows now, he “might have still tweeted it but very differently. I think it goes without saying I would have tried to make a more objective statement.”

The same night, Tucker finally trashed the tweet that started it all. While that’s been scrubbed from social media, its impact isn’t going anywhere. Neither, coincidentally, is President-elect Donald Trump.

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http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Open_Society_Policy_Center

hired orion?

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http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/grants/open-society-fellowship

deadline 1/14

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chery

Dana meadows says the most powerful balancing feedbacks are the ones that repair/enhance other balancing feedbacks; she also says in natural systems balancing feedbacks are rarer than amplifying

George Soros (Hungarian: Soros György) (pronounced /ˈsɔroʊs/ or /ˈsɔrəs/,;[^^3]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#cite_note-2) Hungarian IPA: [ˈʃoroʃ]; born August 12, 1930, as Schwartz György) is a Hungarian-American currency speculator, stock investor, businessman, philanthropist, and liberal political activist.[^^4]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#cite_note-3) He became known as "the Man Who Broke the Bank of England" after he made a reported $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crises.[^^5]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#cite_note-4)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#cite_note-Atlantic-5)6]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#cite_note-Atlantic-5)

Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Instituteand a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from Communism to Capitalism in Hungary (1984–89),[^^6]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#cite_note-Atlantic-5) and provided Europe's largest ever higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest.[^^7]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#cite_note-6) Later, his funding and organization of Georgia's Rose Revolution was considered by Russian and Westernobservers to have been crucial to its success. In the United States, he is known for donating large sums of money in an effort to defeat President George W. Bush's bid for re-election in 2004. He helped found the Center for American Progress.

...

Eastern Europe

According to Neil Clark in the *New Statesman*, Soros's role was crucial in the collapse of communism in eastern Europe. Clark states that from 1979, Soros distributed $3m a year to dissidents including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union; in 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars into opposition movements and independent media.[^^40]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#cite_note-39)

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Soros' funding has continued to play an important role in the former Soviet sphere. His funding and organization of Georgia's Rose Revolution was considered crucial to its success by Russian and Western observers, although Soros has said that his role has been "greatly exaggerated."[^^41]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#cite_note-40) Alexander Lomaia, Secretary of the Georgian Security Council and former Minister of Education and Science, is a former Executive Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $2,500,000.[^^42]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#cite_note-41)

The fundamental motivation that drove Soros to establish his first foundation in 1979 has been to help people voice their opinions, organize, and promote tolerance, democratic governance, human rights, and the rule of law. Soros's efforts over the last three decades have resulted in a family of foundations in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States that can quickly respond to an earthquake in Haiti as well as launch sustained campaigns to promote freedom of information and reform regressive criminal justice policies.

Much of Soros's dedication to these activities is rooted in his personal experience and education.  Born in Budapest in 1930, he survived the Nazi occupation and fled communist Hungary in 1947 for England, where he graduated from the London School of Economics in 1952. His experiences with Nazi racism as a teenager helped prompt Soros in 1979 to support black students at the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. While living and studying in England, Soros watched his country become shrouded in communism's repressive dogma, an experience that fueled his desire to challenge totalitarianism. In 1984, Soros created an education and culture foundation in Hungary that also funded underground solidarity movements in Eastern Europe. As communism crumbled in Central and Eastern Europe, Soros expanded his commitment to critical thinking and democratic political development by establishing Central European University in 1991 and the Open Society Institutein 1993. Throughout the 1990s, Soros used much of the earnings from his success as a financier to establish foundations throughout the world. To date, Soros  has given away over $7 billion to support human rights, freedom of expression, and access to public health and education in 70 countries.

Philosophy and Finance

At the London School of Economics, Soros discovered the work of philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideas on open society had a profound influence on his thinking. He was attracted to Popper's critique of totalitarianism, The Open Society and Its Enemies, which maintained that societies can only flourish when they allow democratic governance, freedom of expression, a diverse range of opinion, and respect for individual rights. Later, working as a trader and analyst, he adapted Popper to develop his own "theory of reflexivity," a set of ideas that seeks to explain the relationship between thought and reality, which he used to predict, among other things, the emergence of financial bubbles. Soros began to apply his theory to investing and concluded that he had more talent for trading than for philosophy. In 1967 he helped establish an offshore investment fund; and in 1973 he set up a private investment firm that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund, one of the first hedge funds.

Publications

Soros's most recent book is The Soros Lectures: At the Central European University(2010). His other books include The Crash of 2008 and What it Means: The New Paradigm for Finance Markets(2009); The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of The War on Terror(2006); The Bubble of American Supremacy (2005); George Soros on Globalization (2002); Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (2000); The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (1998); Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (1995); Underwriting Democracy(1991); Opening the Soviet System(1990); and The Alchemy of Finance(1987). His essays on politics, society, and economics appear frequently in major periodicals around the world.

George Soros's political activities are wholly separate from the Open Society Institute. Read an official OSI statement on this subject.

For more information about George Soros's activities that are separate from the Open Society Institute, visit www.georgesoros.com.

fox on soros plot:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/03/23/media-ignoring-plans-george-soros-remake-entire-global-economy/

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Soros has funded many political projects in recent years. They are listed below.

Contents

Political organizations

Founded or helped to found

Supported

Studies

References

  1. ^ Open Society - Georgia Foundation | George Soros
  2. ^ Baltimore Algebra Project, Inc
  3. ^ NGO Monitor
  4. ^ Rondi Adamson (29 October 2007). "Soros-Funded Media Matters Attacks Conservatives". Human Events. Retrieved 2010-11-18.
  5. ^ ACLU http://www.aclu.org/2008/06/10/george-soros-war-on-drugs-is-one-of-the-most-repressive-aspects-in-american-life.
  6. ^ "The Soros agenda". Wall Street Journal. January 3, 2004. Archived from the original on May 5, 2008.
  7. ^ Montague, Brendan (2008-01-13). "Anti-war Soros funded Iraq study". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 2011-04-11.

External links

Categories:

Democracy Alliance was founded by former Clinton Treasury official Rob Stein, Erica Payne and various donors in 2005. The Muckety website maintains a relationship map on some of the major financial donors to the Democracy Alliance.

View Democracy Alliance Muckety Map

Contents [hide]

Website

Background

"At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades," The Washington Post reported in August, 2005. [1]

Rob Stein's PowerPoint presentation on how the Right built a strong infrastructure of think tanks, non-profits, non-profit groups, scholarship recipients, academics, lobbyists, right wing activists and the media led to the founding of the Democracy Alliance, and also a separate organization, the New Progressive Coalition founded by entrepreneurs Andy and Deborah Rappaport.

The Democracy Alliance tries to keep a low profile and its wealthy donors prefer anonymity. According to published reports, organizations funded by Democracy Alliance are asked not to reveal the funding.

In 2006 a San Francisco, CA, office was established by the Democracy Alliance at the Presidio in the Tides Center, where Alliance member Drummond Pike has his offce.

Rob McKay of the McKay Foundation and Anna Burger of SEIU are the elected chair and vice chair of the board of directors of the Democracy Alliance. [2]

"Members of the Democracy Alliance include billionaires like George Soros and his son Jonathan Soros, former Rockefeller Family Fund president Anne Bartley, San Francisco Bay Area donors Susie Tompkins Buell and Mark Buell, Hollywood director Rob Reiner, Taco Bell heir Rob McKay ... as well as New York financiers like Steven Gluckstern." [3]

In October 2006, an article in The Nation magazine reported "the Alliance's 100 donors have distributed more than $50 million to center-left organizations and activists--a lot of money, yet still largely symbolic given the deep pockets of its members. Even as the donors pour millions into a new political infrastructure, however, problems have emerged that mirror many of the problems of the Democratic Party today and the progressive movement in general. The first is determining what, exactly, the group stands for and wants to accomplish. ... Rob Johnson, an early board member, says the tension in the Alliance is between 'party subsidizers' and 'climate changers'--those who want to fund organizations that work toward more effectively electing candidates versus those who aspire to change the fundamental nature of political debate with a stronger set of governing principles. ... Since its inception, the Alliance has been unabashedly elitist, while also poorly run. ... To stabilize the organization internally after almost a year of early stumbles, the partners chose as its managing director Judy Wade, a member of the elite firm McKinsey & Company, consultants to multinational corporations." [4]

Board of Directors and Members

The Board of Directors identified on the Democracy Alliance website (September, 2007) are:

Members of the Democracy Alliance self-identified or identified in published articles include:

Staff of Democracy Alliance

The following staff are listed on the Democracy Alliance website (September, 2007):

Funding Recipients

Organizations self-identified or identified in published reports as receiving financial support from the Democracy Alliance include the following:

Related SourceWatch Resources

Articles

2013

2005

2006

2007

2008

Categories: