We got so caught up in covering how the ConWeb applied its right-wing bias to the 2024 election that we set aside our monitoring of the Media Research Center’s dirty war on George Soros. With the election over, now it’s time to start catching up. Joseph Vazquez raged in a May 15 post:
A massive effort spearheaded by a censorship-obsessed group financed by leftist billionaire George Soros is looking to incorporate global pressure to push Big Tech platforms to juice their censorship operations before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Free Press, a Soros-funded media group that claimed responsibility for helping get former President Donald Trump banned from Twitter, is at the helm of a new push to restrict free speech online. “More Than 200 Groups Urge Leading Tech Platforms to Implement Election-Integrity Policies to Protect Democracy Worldwide,” Free Press blared in its Apr. 9 press release on a new co-signed letter by groups around the world.
In the letter, the anti-free speech groups raged at social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter (now X) and YouTube for reducing “interventions necessary to keep online platforms” allegedly “safe and healthy” and demanded “swift action” to protect so-called democracy. MRC research unveiled that at least 45 of the signatories have had their coffers packed with Soros cash to the tune of a whopping $80,757,329 between 2016 and 2022 alone.
The letter was distributed to top executives at Big Tech platforms at Discord, Google, Instagram, Meta, Pinterest, Reddit, Rumble, Snap, TikTok, Twitch, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter).
The document attempted to justify that it was written with reducing “real-world harms” and “the rise of extremism and violent attempts to overthrow democratic governments” in mind. However, it appears that its true design is to pressure Big Tech companies to silence speech the left despises as 60 countries across the globe gear up for their elections in 2024. But even more disturbing was the letter’s implication that its primary target is interfering in the 2024 U.S. election. This development is directly in line with Soros’ brand, who has dedicated millions of his ungodly fortune to groups looking to interfere in elections by stifling online speech.
Vazquez repeated scare-quote-laden right-wing ranting about “so-called 2020 election ‘disinformation’ in the U.S. election” — though he offered no reason why he refuses to deny that there is a objective definition of the word. (No mention, of course, of Elon Musk using his even more ungodly fortune to interfere with elections.) He continued to rant:
The fact that Free Press is at the tip of this Soros-tied spear should concern every American. Free Press’s obsession with censorship and gaining control of the Internet cannot be overstated. This is the same group that boasted how it was “involved in direct talks that pressured Google and Amazon to boot the dangerous” pro-free speech platform Parler from their platforms because of so-called “election lies.”
Vazquez cited no example of “so-called ‘election lies'” that actually weren’t — in fact, Parler played a major role in spreading indisputable lies about the 2020 election, and the Capitol riot was organized in part on Parler. He also failed to disclose that a major funder of Parler was Rebekah Mercer, who also happens to be a key funder of the MRC. He concluded with this bit of fearmongering: “Americans beware. The Soros network is coming after your free speech just in time for the U.S. elections — again.”
Catherine Sagado played Soros guilt-by-association in a May 31 post:
An organization repeatedly funded by leftist billionaire George Soros is pressuring Big Tech to target free speech after the guilty verdict against Donald Trump.
Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the coalition the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, released a statement after Trump was controversially convicted on all counts by a Manhattan court Thursday. In the statement, she urged both social media and government officials to target so-called “disinformation.” Notably, the coalition of some 240 national organizations has received millions of dollars from Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF).
The coalition not only aims to crush free speech but has received extensive funding from Soros to help accomplish this goal.
[…]Wiley cited the events of Jan. 6, 2021, as a supposed proof that online content from Trump supporters could turn violent as she argued for censorship. She ended by making the worrisome argument that both Big Tech and government officials have an obligation to protect users from content she considers false.
Salgado offered no evidence that Wiley is the sole arbiter of what is false.
Tom Olohan unleashed another guilt-by-association attack in a June 6 post:
A coalition of leftist groups published a dishonest attack on Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito just prior to the announcement of the verdict in former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial last Thursday and in the midst of the Supreme Court announcing numerous opinions this June and July — among them a case involving presidential immunity. A number of the involved groups received millions from leftist billionaire George Soros, not that the leftist media will care anyway.
On May 29, 25 radical leftist organizations, including seven groups that have received at least $19,512,000 from Soros between 2016 and 2022, wrote a letter to Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) calling for Justice Alito to be investigated for “recent conduct,” suggesting Alito “recuse himself from cases where the public has a clear reason to doubt his impartiality.” The letter used a distorted history of a flag from the American Revolution and a separate recent flag nontroversy to claim that Justice Alito should be investigated.
Politico, which did cover the story, did not spare even one word about Soros’ generous financing of seven of the signatories. Instead, Politico legitimized the attack, referring to flags flown at Justice Alito’s house as the “latest ethics black eye.”
Olhan didn’t explain how mainstream liberal groups that signed the letter like People for the American Way and the Center for American Progress are suddenly “radical leftist.” He went on to whine:
These radical groups ludicrously asked Durbin to investigate Justice Alito “for the public’s long-term faith in the rule of law,” but went on to rely heavily on a time Justice Alito’s wife flew the American flag upside down and a separate time when the family flew the “Appeal to Heaven” Revolutionary War flag. Their ridiculous argument dishonestly refers to a historical and patriotic flag as “another flag also closely linked to the January 6 attack.” On this absurd basis, the signatories claimed that “Justice Alito’s clear lapses in judgment call into serious question his ability to fairly judge cases concerning the 2020 election.”
Actually, the MRC devoted numerous articles to the Alito flag story, which tells that Olohan and his co-workers didn’t actually consider it a “nontroversy.”
The MRC kept up the anti-Soros sniping:
- DeSantis Celebrates Soros DA Defeat on Fox News, Says Soros Prosecutors Put ‘Their Jurisdictions at Risk’
- Another Soros Connection: $80M Into Groups Calling for Big Tech Censorship Before 2024 Elections
- AGAIN? Another Collective of Soros-Funded Groups Pressures Big Tech for Election Censorship
Yet again, the MRC is falsely framing correcting lies and misinformation as “censorship.”
Olohan returned to falsely frame Soros foundation money encouraging the development of clean energy in developing countries as somehow being “anti-energy” in a July 15 article:
The Associated Press (AP) fawned over the history and new direction of leftist billionaire Alex Soros’ grant-making behemoth, Open Society Foundations (OSF).
In a July 16 article, the AP carried water for Soros’ restructuring of the OSF, highlighting a new initiative to allocate $400 million to move Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Senegal, Malaysia and Indonesia away from cheap and abundant sources of energy.
The puff article, which praised the OSF as “one of the biggest funders of human rights advocates and supporters of political dissidents around the world,” had zero criticism of the potentially massive impacts of this spending on the developing nations.
“The goal of the investment was to produce sustainable jobs and a shift toward clean energy and away from carbon intensive industries in Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Senegal, Malaysia and Indonesia,” OSF President Binaifer Nowrojee told the AP.
The AP and Nowrojee both chose to ignore how important “carbon-intensive” activities are to both developing and developed nations. Oil, natural gas and coal supplied 82% of the world’s energy needs in 2022 and 84% of the world’s energy needs in 2023 according to the Energy Institute. Highly in-demand materials like plastic, cement, steel and fertilizer require fossil fuels for their production and transportation.
Olohan’s source for the idea that these industries “require fossil fuels” is a quote from Ian Plimer, an Australian geologist who works in the mining industry and sits on the board of several mining companies, so it seems his objectivity on the issue can be reasonably questioned. The fact that Olohan is so eagerly shilling for fossil-fuel interests tells us he’s carrying water for somebody.