The Media Research Center has been cranking out its usual collection of lazy guilt-by-association attacks against George Soros as this year has progressed:
- PEEK-A-BOO! Soros-Funded Groups Exposed in Gov’t-Financial Sector Surveillance Collusion Scandal
- Soros-Funded Brennan Center’s Dystopian Take on Free Speech Case Bastardized Its Namesake
- Soros-Backed ‘Fake News’ Queen Visited Biden WH Nearly 20 Times
- Mark Levin Scorches ‘Soros’ Puppet’ Antony Blinken for Rampant Election Interference
- NYT Ignores Soros Influence in Coverage of Biden State Dep’t Sanctions on IDF
- Liberal Media, Soros-Funded Group Attack Ted Cruz for….Hosting a Podcast
All of these attacks are about demonization of Soros in order to push partisan narratives in portraying Soros as a scary bogeyman — a puppet master, if you will. The MRC is simply implicitly doing what it explicitly did before it got called out for doing so since “puppet master” is an anti-Semitic trope. So, in order to distract from that, the MRC goes into deflect-and-deny mode every time someone points out the anti-Semitism underlying a good number of anti-Soros attacks. Alex Christy complained in a May 8 post:
After former President Donald Trump gave some remarks to reporters assembled outside of his New York trial on Tuesday, CNN’s host of The Lead, Jake Tapper, brought on the network’s resident fact-checker, Daniel Dale, to assess the accuracy of Trump’s claims. In one instance, Dale shamed Trump for calling D.A. Alvin Bragg a Soros-backed prosecutor, even going so far as to claim Soros is a frequent victim of anti-Semitism.
[…]Dale then went off the rails, “He refers frequently to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor behind this case, as a Soros-backed district attorney. Now, I’d say there’s some arguable basis for that, but I think it’s important to clarify the facts.”
He elaborated, “So, Mr. Soros, who’s a liberal billionaire philanthropist, also a frequent target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, did not make any direct contributions to Mr. Bragg’s election campaign. He also says he’s never spoken once to Mr. Bragg. What did happen was he donated to a liberal PAC that then in turn donated to Mr. Bragg’s campaign, as well as other reform-minded prosecutors. So, this is at best a one-step removed relationship.”
As Dale would say, “there was a lot there.” First, with anti-Semitism surging on college campuses, labeling criticisms of Soros’s political donations to far-left causes, including those anti-Israel encampments, as anti-Semitic is as nonsensical as it is appalling. Second, Dale wants to pretend as if Soros giving money to an organization, which in turn donates it to a candidate, is somehow evidence that Soros doesn’t financially support Bragg. Soros doesn’t need to have spoken to Bragg to support him. Plenty of people donate to organizations, who in turn donate to candidates because they support those groups’ missions and trust them to donate to candidates who support that mission. Soros just does so in great quantity. Third, “reform-minded” is a convenient way of hiding their soft-on-crime progressivism.
There’s also a lot in Christy’s distraction strategy. First, it’s actually nonsensical for him and his fellow right-wingers to portray Soros as an anti-Semite through guilt-by-association attacks on donations to groups allegedly linked to pro-Palestinian protests in the U.S. — as we’ve documented, these attacks are dishonest and counterfactual, supporting the rights of residents of Palestine is not inherently anti-Semitic, and the MRC has never provided evidence that Soros money is directly funding any protests. Still, it’s all about feeding the “puppet master” narrative, which is still an anti-Semitic trope whether Christy wants to admit it or not, even when using it to portraying a person of Jewish heritage as anti-Semitic.
Clay Waters spent a May 10 post whining that the New York Times called out right-wing attacks on Soros that lean into anti-Semitism:
As pro-Hamas campus protesters scream end-of-Israel slogans on college campuses and President Biden cuts off weapons to Israel, the New York Times put its investigative journalism to a very political task, neutralizing any attempt by Republicans to campaign against antisemitism:
How Republicans Echo Antisemitic Tropes Despite Declaring Support for Israel
Prominent Republicans have seized on campus protests to assail what they say is antisemitism on the left. But for years they have mainstreamed anti-Jewish rhetoric.
The Times spent some 3,500 words and used Artificial Intelligence and four staffers (Karen Yourish, Danielle Ivory, Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, and Alex Lemonides) to try to paint the GOP as the true anti-semitic party. Their methodology?
The Times used a variety of methods to examine the extent to which federal politicians have used language promoting antisemitic tropes.
Reporters examined official press releases, congressional newsletters and posts on X (formerly Twitter) of every person who served in Congress over the past 10 years that contained the words “Soros,” “globalist” or “globalism” — terms widely accepted by multiple historians and experts on antisemitism as “dog whistles” that refer to Jews.
The paper’s ideologically motivated thesis rests heavily on the false assumption being that criticism of left-wing ideological financier George Soros is by definition anti-Semitic.
When the Times noted that “The favored personification of the globalist enemy is George Soros, the 93-year-old Hungarian American Jewish financier and Holocaust survivor who has spent billions in support of liberal causes and democratic institutions,” Waters huffed in response: “The Times will not tolerate any criticism of leftist financier George Soros.” And when the Times pointed out that right-wing links between Soros and the protests are indirect at best, Waters grumbled, An ‘indirect’ connection is still a connection, no matter how often the press throw around ‘anti-Semitism’ in Soros’s defense.”
Waters didn’t mention his employer’s history of invoking anti-Semitic tropes to attack Soros. He did, however, let pass without comment the Times’ observation that current attacks on Soros “rarely, if ever, directly mention Jews or blame them outright” yet that link is implicit.