Anti-semitism and the making of a bogeyman
How did a Holocaust survivor who has given away most of his massive fortune become a global hate figure?
What makes George Soros special?
Now aged 88, the Hungarian-born investor is “generally considered the greatest speculator Wall Street has known”, according to a recent profile in The New York Times. He is also one of America’s leading philanthropists: Forbes magazine estimates that he has a net worth of $8bn, but that he has given away some $32bn – a bit less than Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, but a larger percentage of his wealth. Since the 1980s, most of that money has gone to groups that build democracy and civic institutions around the world, particularly in eastern Europe. Starting in the early 2000s, Soros also began giving heavily to the US Democratic Party and to left-wing causes in America.
How did he survive the Holocaust?
He was born György Schwartz in Budapest in 1930. His father, a secular Jew, changed the family name to Soros (which means “will soar” in Esperanto). And when the Nazis invaded in 1944, he arranged for George, then 13, to live with a Hungarian official, who passed him off as his Christian godson. Soros once accompanied the official as he took inventory of a confiscated Jewish property; in recent years, this story has been twisted to suggest that he was a Nazi collaborator. He survived the War and the siege of Budapest, and in 1947, as the Communists were coming to power in Hungary, he fled to Britain. There he studied philosophy at the London School of Economics, working as a waiter and a railway porter to support himself.
How did he make his money?
Soros wrote to every merchant bank in London until he finally got a job. In 1956, he moved to New York, where he worked as a trader specialising in European stocks, and showed a knack for reading the market. In 1969 he set up his Quantum Fund, a wildly successful hedge fund that regularly delivered 30% returns. By the late 1970s, he was extremely wealthy. In 1992, he made his most famous trade, betting that the Bank of England would stop trying to prop up the pound’s value against the Deutschmark to keep it in Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism. The pound duly plummeted and Soros cleaned up, earning his fund $1.5bn and himself the nickname “the man who broke the Bank of England”. His fund made similarly successful bets against the Thai baht and Malaysian ringgit in the 1997 Asian currency crisis; he was accused of triggering and profiting from the events.
What are his aims as a donor?
In London, Soros had studied under the philosopher Karl Popper, and he embraced Popper’s defence of open societies that, unlike the Nazi and Soviet systems, promote individual liberty, pluralism and free enquiry. He created his Open Society Fund in 1979. It initially sponsored black South African students under apartheid. Later, it financed dissident movements in eastern Europe, such as Solidarity in Poland and Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, and provided scholarships to foster a new generation of liberal democratic leaders. After the Soviet Union fell, Soros flooded money into former Soviet satellites, creating and funding civic organisations that taught the tenets of capitalism and democracy. In the 1990s, he funded groups involved in the “colour revolutions” that toppled Kremlin-backed autocrats in ex-soviet Georgia and Ukraine. Today, Soros’s Open Society Foundations operate in about 100 countries, and also provide support for refugee and minority rights.
Why is he so controversial?
Soros is a liberal internationalist who spent billions trying to prevent eastern Europe relapsing into authoritarianism, and as such is a hate figure for Vladimir Putin and the autocratic nationalists inspired by his example. Russian propaganda has long painted Soros as a meddlesome Jewish banker, secretly pulling strings to control the world. He has been demonised by right-wing politicians from Poland to Romania to Macedonia. In April last year, Hungary’s PM Viktor Orbán – a former Soros protégé – was re-elected after running a campaign in which he accused Soros of plotting to overwhelm Hungary with Muslim immigrants. Both the local Open Society Foundation and the Soros-funded Central European University had to relocate from Budapest, to Berlin and Vienna respectively.
How about in America?
In the early part of the century, Soros decided that the response by George W. Bush to the 9/11 terrorist attacks – notably the invasion of Iraq – were steps towards authoritarianism, and he began funding Democratic candidates and a range of liberal causes. He was a major donor to John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns. Soros has personally contributed more than $75m to federal candidates and campaigns, making him one of the biggest political donors of the modern era. As a result, vilification of Soros has reached new heights in the US.
And how is he vilified there?
At best, he is seen by right-wingers as a “globalist billionaire” dedicated to making America a liberal wasteland. At worst, he is seen – in the classic anti-semitic tradition (see box) – as a shadowy mastermind conspiring to shape world events. He has been blamed for funding the riots in Ferguson, Missouri; the protests during the national anthem by NFL players; and the migrant caravan to the Mexican border. A Facebook page called “George Soros Exposed” calls him “the most evil man on the planet”. Senior Republican politicians have echoed these portrayals. Senator Chuck Grassley accused Soros of paying the women who protested against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. President Trump repeated the charge and said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if Soros had funded the migrant caravan. In October last year, a bomb was sent to Soros’s home in New York.