Today, Explained - Why does everyone hate George Soros?

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

There are three things you need to know about George Soros: 1) You’re pronouncing his name wrong. 2) He’s richer than rich. 3) He’s one of the most hated people in the world. Roseanne tweeted that the Holocaust survivor was a Nazi on Tuesday, and Hungary is currently trying to pass legislation that would ban him. Foreign Policy’s Emily Tamkin explains how the financier-philanthropist came to have so many haters even though he gives away his money to the poor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first thing you need to know about George Soros is you're saying it wrong. You say like Soros. Soros, yeah. Is that how you really say it? Yeah. That's important. Is the whole world saying his name wrong? I'm afraid so.

Really? Yeah. Well, let's start there. The second thing you need to know is he's an investor who's got about as much money as God. He can move world financial markets simply by voicing an opinion or destabilize a government by buying and selling its currency. And the third thing is he might be one of the most hated people in the world. I think that I've been blamed for everything.

I am basically there to make money. Remember on Tuesday when Roseanne got into all that trouble on Twitter? Some of her tweets were about George Soros. She called him a Nazi, even though he's a Holocaust survivor, and a Jewish one to boot. And Roseanne's just the tip of the iceberg. George Soros has haters in different area codes, from Washington to Warsaw. In Hungary, they're trying to pass a bill to basically ban George Soros. So what did he do? So we're almost talking about two George Soros's, right? We're talking about the man who comes from Hungary and made a lot of money and then gave it away. Emily Tampkin writes for Foreign Policy.

And then we're also talking about this myth who is vilified by governments around the world. So let's start with the man. George Soros is this very famous Hungarian Jew. But before that, he was just a Hungarian Jew. So his family is in Hungary. They are able to sort of hide out as Christians during the war. They survive. He eventually makes it to the United Kingdom.

He gets his education at LSE, the London School of Economics. At first, he has difficulty finding a job. And he says this is one of the worst periods of his life. And eventually, this Hungarian managing director sees him and hires him and he starts working in the financial world. And is he already making enemies at this point? No, no, he's not. I mean, maybe he has like financial rivals. Yeah. But the enemies don't come until much later. So he makes this money. He uses it already in the 70s and 80s to start doing philanthropic work in South Africa, fighting apartheid.

He set up his first open society in Europe in Hungary in 1984. What does that mean? The Open Society Foundation is his philanthropic group to give money to individuals and to organizations that he felt would create a more liberal, democratic, open and welcoming society. Obviously, after the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc, this really picks up, right? There's now much more that they can do. I had somebody say to me, I reported on this in Slovakia and Romania, and this woman in Romania goes to me, Soros is an iconic name. She was like in the 90s, in the same way that American might be like, well, I was on my full right. They would be like, when I was on my Soros grant.

This is in all through Eastern Europe. So this is a Romanian woman who told me this. And she said, you know, I had more money that sent me to Scotland than I had ever had in my life before for like a little travel grant. You know, and she and she was like, I met these people and I was exposed to ideas that I'd never been exposed to before. The idea was to literally open up society and to not make it so that like, oh, you lost the Cold War, slip back into obscurity. That was not the idea. Right. It was it was how can we create a liberal, welcoming, literally open society. And actually in the 90s, for the most part in Eastern Europe, which is the part of the world that he's still like associated with at this point in terms of his giving, with some exceptions, he was quite well liked. His reputation was not what it is today.

But I think in order to understand how it gets to be what it is today, you have to understand this man was everywhere. He gave people more money than he had before. He supported arts. He supported debating groups. He poured a lot of money into this part of the world at a time when arguably it really needed it, at a time when people's thoughts on democracy were shaping, but everybody knew who he was. And that's important to understand how we get to where we get to today. So George Soros has a ton of money. I guess that's the one thing everyone knows about him.

I also know he's in like banking, investing, but how did he get to be so rich? I mean, the one thing I always hear is that he broke the Bank of England. He doesn't become known as the man who broke the Bank of England until the early 90s. Is that a thing? So Black Wednesday in England is the day that Soros broke the pound. No, it's the day that he didn't break the pound. He and other investors made Britain pull out of Europe's exchange rate mechanism. Okay. The most dramatic U-turn in government economic strategy for 25 years

was forced on the Prime Minister and Chancellor by the overwhelming pressure of billions upon billions of pounds being sold in the foreign exchange markets. The pound will now be left to find its own level in the markets, inevitably below the ERM floor, which the government was pledged to defend. Soros and other British investors sort of looked and said, oh, this is like we know which way the wind is going. And so they basically bet against the pound. The Bank of England lost billions and Soros gained about a billion. Wow.

Right. Just himself. Yes. So he's doing all this philanthropic work. He's promoting democracy. He's promoting student travel. How does someone who seems to be doing sort of benign, likable, philanthropic work first start to get controversial? When exactly does that happen? When do people start to hate George Soros? Okay, so he opened society. These countries join the EU in the aughts, early mid-2000s.

And then open society says, okay, this is now the job of the European Union. We're going to start to pull back out of this region a little bit. It's actually only after he pulls out of the region a bit that this idea of Soros as the monster comes up. And the reason is that these countries are now in the EU. The EU is not delivering the sort of magic turnaround that had been promised to the people. And you have these populist leaders come to power or come back to power. So you have Orban in Hungary, you have Fica in Slovakia, you have Dragnea in Romania, you have law and justice in Poland, all of whom are sort of similarly moderately far right or moderately far left, and all of whom are far and away the most powerful actors in their country, right?

So none of whom really want to build up a political rival at home. All of them can turn to Soros. He is Hungarian, which means that he's not liked in Romania or Slovakia, and in his native Hungary where he could be painted as a traitor, even though back when he was even more involved there financially, he was quite popular. He is Jewish, which is just not a popular thing to be in that region. He's in finance, which plays to the Jewish stereotype. And also, if you were like a common person in, I don't know, like a village in Romania,

right, is sort of a very easy thing to suspect. If you look at the protests against Central European University, which was the university that he founded, Zoros founded, that is, in Budapest in the early 90s, they say that they're under attack from legislation from the Orban government. When people come out to protest, it's very easy for the Orban government to say, look, this is the liberal, cosmopolitan elite,

and we are protecting you from that and their globalist influence. And it's an argument that works and that you can sort of apply to whichever country in the region. It's like, choose your own anti-Zoros adventure. Yeah, sure. So at first you have, you know, we're dissatisfied, we start talking about Zoros. But then especially in 2015, the migrant crisis begins. Soros funds NGOs that help migrants and asylum seekers. So it's sort of two birds, one stone, right?

You can have your anti-migrant campaign, even though you're not letting any in. OK. And also attack Soros and have this outside enemy and solidify your own political power. Just thinking about how Roseanne is tweeting about this guy, and he's also so important in Eastern European politics and such a controversial figure there, it feels like he can just be whatever boogeyman you want him to be. Yeah. So I think of him like in those Harry Potter books where the young witches and wizards looked into that mirror. I see that you, like so many before you, have discovered the delights of the mirror of Erised. I think it's called the mirror of Erised.

I trust by now you realize what it does. They see whatever it is that they most want or need. So then it shows us what we want, whatever we want. Yes. Soros is like that, but with like hate, you know? So like if you're in Romania, you don't like him because he's Hungarian. If you're in Hungary, you don't like him because he's Hungarian and he left Hungary and made his money elsewhere. And now he's coming back and influencing your country.

If you're in Israel, you don't like him because he's overly supportive of Palestinians. If you are in the United States, well, he's funding these democratic politicians. Now, he's not actually a politician in any of these countries. He's not the one that you necessarily need to be going after to change policy,

but he's very effective if you want to change politics. George Soros has done a lot of things in his 87 years on planet Earth. He even taught dogs how to protest. That and other conspiracy theories next on Today Explained. Our friends over at SB Nation have a new sports show. It's called Foul Play. Actually, it's called Foul Play Paid in Mississippi. It's a documentary series about the shady economy that fuels college football in the South.

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The series just launched yesterday. Check it out on Verizon's streaming service, Go90. So how does George Soros get to be this immensely divisive figure in the United States? I believe it's in 2004 is when he really gets involved in U.S. politics and funds democratic institutions. So 2004, we're talking George W. Bush? We're talking Bush re-election. The Bush campaign is trying to put a favorable spin on it. But the situation in Iraq is dire. If we re-elect President Bush,

we are telling the world that we approve his policies and we shall be at war for a long time to come. And the thing is, even if it's like his side hustle, right, it's still millions of dollars. This man has so much money. But again, like Roseanne wasn't going off about Soros in 2004. So I think even though he's been involved in politics here for a while, the sort of cartoonish vilification of Soros happened later. And it only happened here after it happened in Central and Eastern Europe. But like most Americans aren't following the intricacies of Eastern European politics, right? So how does that attitude about him sort of get imported here? Okay, most Americans don't

aren't following like the political debate in Hungary. But I don't think most Americans need to, right? Just some Americans need to. Yeah like some American or Australian newspaper men, right? They can be following the narratives all over or some political actors or some lobbyists, they can know the arguments all over. So not every American needs to be closely following like Romanian anti-corruption protests where people said, oh, Soros paid my dog to be here.

Could we get like a greatest hits of George Soros conspiracy theories? Oh my God. So in Romania last winter, there were these massive anti-corruption protests. And the leader of the political movement that has power said that Soros was paying dogs to show up in protest. The dogs then showed up with signs that was like, where's my money? Wait, the dogs showed up with signs? The humans, I'm guessing, made the signs.

Wow. Here, I mean, six senators signed a letter that said, U.S. State Department, like, please look into how you give your money. Soros is trying to upset countries that just want to be conservative and have good conservative values. Certain civil society actors in Hungary believe that they got that through lobbyists who's representing the Hungarian government. But like now the senators have said it, right?

Alex Jones is no stranger to Soros conspiracy theories. People ask why I talk about George Soros so much because every time I kick down another door digging into this thing, it's him on the other side of it. Tomi Lahren, when in response to a Kaepernick protest, was like, oh, Kaepernick, you must have made your buddy George Soros very proud. These spontaneous protests around the country are just the beginning. And why do you think that is? Because nothing scares rats like Soros more than American patriotism.

You don't need to fully know what the debate is somewhere else to be like, that name, and use it, right? Like, do I think that Tomi Lahren knows the intricacies of Hungarian politics? Maybe, but I think more likely she's familiar with the idea that there's this guy who has these conspiracy theories

all around him. How much of this hate against George Soros is just straight-up anti-Semitism? I think the percentage depends on who you ask, but I will say that when I was reporting this and asked, like, what is everyone's beef with this guy? Everybody I spoke to said, well, you know, and he's Jewish. And they said it in this way that was like, well, of course, like, of course, like people don't like him because he's Jewish. And I don't think that, especially in Eastern Europe, that we can really disentangle anti-Semitism from the George Soros hate. It's not just that he is Jewish and people don't like Jewish people.

That's not what I'm saying. It's that you can very easily dog whistle in ways that play up stereotypes that have deep, deep roots in this particular region. So for example, during his reelection campaign, Orban gave this rally where he was like, we have to stop the moneymakers, the rootless finance people. Now, as a Jewish woman, it is pretty clear to me of whom he was speaking, right? Do I think it's the only reason that he's so easily built up into this, into like the world's most famous evil ghost? No, I don't. Do I think it's a reason?

Yes, absolutely. To be like an 87-year-old person who's drawing the ire of everyone from Roseanne to like Eastern European politicians, it feels like it'd just be easier to like retreat from this at this point in your life why is he so stuck to his philanthropic efforts to his politics is there some like great personal benefit or is he just you know deeply concerned well first of all he already has retreated quite

a bit he's not this public persona who's like regularly popping off about Orban or Trump or anything like that. But even in his philanthropy, like I think that he thinks that he's doing the right Foundation in Budapest announced that it's moving to Berlin. So they are, I mean, they are like they're physically retreating. Central European University may also be moving. I personally don't think that that will make this go away. Because to say that that would make this go away suggests that Soros is actually what these politicians care about. And I don't think he is, right? Like, I think they care about having power. And I think they care about covering up the fact that Orban allegedly made his father and inner circle a lot of money. I think they care a lot about passing certain reforms and winning

re-election. I don't think they really care a whole lot about, like, what Soros does in his free time. Which is teach dogs how to protest. Yeah, exactly. So he's 87. How's his health? Not to be morbid, but time comes for us all. And when you're 87, that is inevitably a question of like sooner rather than later. Right. Who's the next George Soros? If I were to predict, I would think that for a while after it's not him, it'll still be him.

I think this will linger for a while. But then at some point, people will have to find someone else. Why do people need to find someone else? Because the alternative is to engage with the political issues and with your political rivals. Which is easier, to go and give a rally about Soros or to say, you're right, we are committing constitutional overreach and we are corrupt and we have let down our electorate and some of your frustrations with the EU are real and we haven't respected the EU's migrant quotas. I mean, I know which I personally would prefer a government do,

but I think one sounds a lot easier than the other. Emily Tamkin writes about diplomacy at Foreign Policy. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained.