The idea that George Soros was a Nazi collaborator or sympathizer is a lie that WorldNetDaily has regularly forwarded over the years. WND had a chance to correct the record — but chose not to.
An anonymously written June 9 WND article is a highly selective rewrite of a Washington Post article about Soros during the Trump administration (to which WND curiously fails to link), highlighting his “left-wing agenda” and claiming he spoke from “his plush hotel suite by Lake Zurich.” In fact, the Post article described his agenda as “liberal,” not “left-wing,” and it did not describe Soros’ hotel suite in a way that WND could have divined that it was “plush.”
The WND article states at one point:
He also admits the barrage of attacks he has faced from his opposition, especially those that have portrayed him as a global puppet master, have blunted his effectiveness.
“It makes it very difficult for me to speak effectively because it can be taken out of context and used against me,” Soros said.
In fact, the full statement in the Post included a reference to the Nazi lie, which WND studiously avoided putting in its own article:
Soros’s willingness to remain in the fray comes as he faces renewed vilification from a wide-ranging group of opponents that includes actress Roseanne Barr and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has been accused of being an all-powerful puppet master, a Nazi sympathizer and the person controlling the Democratic Party.
He acknowledges that the attacks can blunt his impact.
“It makes it very difficult for me to speak effectively because it can be taken out of context and used against me,” Soros said.
[…]Last month, Soros’s name went viral again when [Roseanne] Barr tweeted that he is “a nazi who turned in his fellow Jews to be murdered in German concentration camps & stole their wealth.”
Among those who retweeted her was the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
Soros, who said he used false papers at age 13 to survive the Nazi occupation of Hungary, calls such claims “a total fabrication,” adding that they “annoy me greatly.”
If WND was ever interested in addressing the fake news and conspiracy theories that have been a hallmark of its so-called journalism and played a major role in its recent near-death experience, this was an opportunity to try and turn that image around. That it refuses to do so tells us that it still doesn’t care about real journalism — and that WND will likely be facing another extinction-level event in the not-too-distant future.