How the right blames George Soros for just about everything
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George Soros has been the go-to bogeyman for the American right — and right-wing leaders around the world — for years.
The 95-year-old billionaire has funneled money into causes around the globe, supporting democratic endeavors, immigration efforts and criminal justice reform through his Open Society Foundations, which he founded in 1979.
In the intervening decades, Soros, with his large network of progressive causes and opposition to strong-arm governments, has become the target of conspiracy theories in areas that range from Malaysia to his birth country of Hungary, where a so-called “Stop Soros” law made it illegal to aid undocumented immigrants in 2018. A major donor to Democrats, Soros has repeatedly drawn the ire of President Donald Trump, who has accused him, without evidence, of funding everything from Black Lives Matters protesters in the summer of 2020 to Trump’s own indictment in New York in 2023.
So it should come as no shock that some conservative lawmakers in the US are placing blame on Soros after the assassination of the provocateur and political organizer Charlie Kirk.
Vance tries to tie Kirk outrage to Soros
Vice President JD Vance was emotional and angry when he hosted Kirk’s podcast Monday and promised vengeance on anyone who celebrated Kirk’s death.
Vance pointed to an article in The Nation, the long-running left-leaning magazine founded in the 1800s by abolitionists.
That article originally mischaracterized one of Kirk’s more inflammatory claims, about the journalist Joy-Ann Reid, former first lady Michelle Obama, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who have acknowledged the role affirmative action played in their careers.
Speaking on “The Charlie Kirk Show” in 2023, Kirk said this of the four Black women:
“They’re coming out, and they’re saying, ‘I’m only here because of affirmative action.’ Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”
The article originally stated that quote described all Black women that way instead of the specific famous women Kirk named — an error to which Vance took serious offense. The magazine, in a statement, stood by writer Elizabeth Spiers’ critique of Kirk, but it corrected the story and noted it had “clarified the phrasing of a quote by Kirk that Vice President Vance referenced.”
Threatening investigation again
Vance said the administration could look at the tax-exempt status of organizations that supported The Nation, including Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation, which he said are “setting fire to the house built by the American family over 250 years.”
Both Open Society Foundations and Ford Foundations have condemned Kirk’s killing and all political violence, and neither currently funds The Nation.
Does Open Society Foundations support The Nation?
As Vance pointed out, Open Society Foundations is a tax-exempt organization, which also means it must publicly disclose a large amount of financial information in an annual IRS form 990. It also publicly discloses the groups it supports. It has not given direct support to the Nation in more than 25 years, according to a spokesperson.
When Vance said Open Society Foundations supports The Nation, he was likely referring to three grants to a nonprofit associated with the magazine between 2016 and 2022, including to fund an investigative journalism fellowship.
It does not appear that nonprofit has gotten any funding from a Soros-affiliated organization in the years since.
Trump would use RICO Act to investigate
Vance’s allegation is in line with a previous suggestion in August by President Trump.
“George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America,” Trump said on his social media platform as protests unfolded across the country over his administration’s use of ICE for its mass deportations and its use of the National Guard in Washington, DC, and Los Angeles.
Critics from the right around the world
Whenever there are protests that target his policies, Trump is likely to allege they are organized by paid, professional protesters and he frequently invokes Soros. As do conservative leaders in other countries where Open Society Foundations are active, including his native Hungary, where the right-wing leader Viktor Orban has a particular dislike of Soros and ejected Open Society Foundations from the country. Elon Musk has said Soros “hates humanity.”
Soros is frequently maligned as a “globalist” who secretly manipulates international finance, which many interpret as antisemitism.
Why is Soros the center of conspiracy theories?
“I think that they do it because it’s been proven to work,” said Emily Tamkin, author of the 2020 book “The Influence of Soros: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for an Open Society” in a phone interview.
“It works because it combines partisanship, conspiracy and antisemitism, and allows for vilification of other types of people as well.”
Tamkin noted that Open Society Foundations has funded groups tied to multiple progressive causes, including criminal justice reform. It is immigration reform that is often at the heart of conspiracy theories that surround Soros and specifically the Great Replacement theory pushed by Kirk and Musk, among others. She pointed to the false conspiracy theory that Soros was behind migrant caravans coming into the US during Trump’s first term, a theory that ended up inspiring the deadly 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
What does Open Society Foundations say?
In a statement posted to X after Vance’s comments, Open Society Foundations said the organization opposes “all forms of violence and condemn(s) the outrageous accusations to the contrary.”
The group added, “It is disgraceful to use this tragedy for political ends to dangerously divide Americans and attack the First Amendment.”
Back in August, when Trump suggested his Department of Justice use racketeering law to charge the Soroses over protests, Open Society Foundations said it funds “an array of nonprofit civil society groups across the United States that work to advance human rights, freedom, and justice and to defend democracy.”
While some of those groups “undertake peaceful civic engagement,” the group added, “We do not pay people to protest or directly train or coordinate protestors,” and said it expects all grantees comport with the law.
Who runs Open Society Foundations now?
Soros handed over the reins of Open Society Foundations in 2023 to his son Alexander, who recently married Huma Abedin, a longtime top associate of Hillary Clinton and herself the subject of multiple conspiracy theories.
How reliant is the left on Soros?
Soros is at the center of conspiracy theories, but his money and organization are a foundational resource for liberal politics and causes. Much of it flows through the Open Society Foundations to distribute his fortune, and to which he’s given “over $32 billion” since its creation, according to the organization.
Billing itself as the “world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for rights, equity, and justice,” the Open Society Foundations funds groups across the political spectrum, including the libertarian CATO institute, but its emphasis is definitively on the left.
Where did Soros come from and how did he become a billionaire?
Soros was born in Hungary in 1930. His family changed their identities to survive the Holocaust and later fled to England. He came to the US in the 1950s and became wealthy in part by revolutionizing hedge funds.
His most notorious business accomplishment came in the 1990s, when his firm shorted the British pound, betting against sterling and earning more than $1 billion in one day. As CNN’s Phil Mattingly and Jeremy Herb wrote, “the move brought the Bank of England to its knees and had ramifications that rippled through the British political economy for years.”
One key Soros employee taking part in that endeavor was Scott Bessent, current secretary of the Treasury and a mastermind of Trump’s tariff and economic strategy.
Who does Open Society Foundations fund?
The Open Society Foundations acknowledges funding thousands of grants around the world. In 2023, a little less than a quarter of its grants went to groups in the US. The grants range from small to very large and fund a wide variety of organizations. In 2023, $15 million grants went to groups as varied as WorkMoney Inc, a nonprofit focused on helping people save money, and Future Forward USA, an issues PAC that spent money backing the campaign of Kamala Harris. The Open Society Foundations have also given money to groups including Planned Parenthood, Indivisible and MoveOn, which organize around politics. There is a larger searchable database of previous grants on their website.
Where does the money go?
As with Future Forward USA, it can take some dot-connecting to figure out where the money is ultimately coming from. And that’s true of conservative donors too, including benefactors like Charles Koch, the fossil fuel billionaire, and Harlan Crow, the Texas businessman whose financial support for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas drew scrutiny last year.
