The Media Research Center’s election-year war on George Soros continued with an Aug. 30 post by Joseph Vazquez rehashing his employer’s dishonest narrative portraying combating misinformation as “censorship”:
A leftist group financed by self-appointed Minister of Truth George Soros is partnering with a Big Tech-backed organization in an attempt to interfere in the 2024 election.
The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) boasted in an Aug. 21 press release how it was leading a joint effort for “Helping Election Officials Combat Misinformation in 2024” with a “course” co-led by the Google and Facebook-backed Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), which was significantly involved in the whole “Zuck Bucks” scandal to influence the 2020 election. Notably, Soros pumped at least $1,496,000 into the coffers of CDT and its international affiliate between 2016 and 2023, according to grant disclosures reviewed by MRC Free Speech America.
In fact, the “Zuck Bucks” story was not a “scandal” — Vazquez is lazily repeating unproven claims by the right-wing Capital Research Center that encouraging people to vote is somehow “election fraud.” Vazquez then bizarrely likened teaching election officials who to spot misinformation to “grooming,” as if these officials were planning to sexually abuse voters:
CDT claimed the course seeks to supposedly groom election officials “by teaching terms and concepts related to information operations, helping them identify and respond to mis-, dis-, and malinformation, and preparing them to respond with a defensive communications strategy.” It’s as though they’re converting officials into Soros and Big Tech’s own personal election foot soldiers. Talk about an unholy alliance.
MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider warned Americans about the implications of this chilling development in a statement. “It wasn’t enough for George Soros to direct and control prosecutors or manipulate various media across this country, but now it’s clear his machine is trying to wield his enormous influence over the people responsible for overseeing the elections just as the 2024 race is heating up.” He continued: “Make no mistake. This is yet another terrifying example of how powerful the Soros machine is. Americans need to be on high alert.”
This new Orwellian alliance between a Soros-funded group and the Big Tech lobby is especially chilling because Soros was already exposed for doling out $80 million to groups pressuring social media platforms to censor Americans before the 2024 elections.
Neither Vazquez nor Schneider explained why they didn’t want Americans to receive factual information ahead of the election, or why it’s supposedly “Orwellian” to correct false claims. Nevertheless, Vazquez whined: “It appears the Soros machine and Big Tech are joining forces just in time for November. Big Brother, no doubt, is pleased.”
Vazquez returned to grouse in a Sept. 17 post:
A radical censorship-obsessed group financed by leftist billionaire George Soros is doubling down on efforts to interfere in the 2024 election by turning the screws on Big Tech to censor speech and by manipulating journalists.
Free Press, fueled with at least $2 million by Soros between 2017 and 2021, announced that it was launching a new Orwellian scheme called “‘Democracy Is … .’” This so-called “new initiative” will deputize journalists through indoctrination by the Soros machine and engage the public on how to censor speech by supposedly “flagging disinformation” on social media platforms. In addition, Free Press pledged that the initiative would “provide other needed resources to influence media and technology platforms to better serve our communities and strengthen our democracy,” the press release boasted. [Emphasis added.]
The new “Democracy Is …” website sensationalized how “In an era of misinformation and manipulation, the role of media and tech matter more than ever,” offering chilling insights into where the Soros empire is zeroing its focus ahead of the November elections.
[…]MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider ripped the coalition in a statement. “Free Press’s view of saving Democracy is to take away the rights of half of Americans by silencing its political opponents who express different political points of view,” he rebuked. “Nothing can be more undemocratic than that.”
Again, no explanation of how it’s “Orwellian” to make voters have accurate information. And, no, spreading lies is not “different political points of view.” And aren’t Vazquez and Schneider trying to silence its political opponents who express different political points of view?
Tom Olohan took a break from that narrative by reviving an old one in a Sept. 24 post that repeated a attack from the right-wing Daily Wire claiming that a “George Soros-backed group exposed by the Media Research Center for controlling race-obsessed Soros-backed prosecutors” was purportedly “hypocritically fostering racism within their own office.” That was joined by a Sept. 26 compilation post by Olohan and Tim Kilcullen purporting to list “Seven Ways Soros Prosecutors Have Broken Their Oath.”
Donald Perkins then attacked free speech at a Soros-funded group — and rehashed discredited attacks on Soros regarding Israel — in an Oct. 8 post:
On the first anniversary of the horrific Hamas Oct. 7 terror attack against Israel in 2023, a prominent leftist philosopher decried the creation of the Israeli state in a George Soros-funded outlet.
In an op-ed published in the Soros-funded publication Project Syndicate, Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian Marxist philosopher and director at the University of London’s Birkbeck Institute, insinuated the destruction of the Israeli state would result in peace in the Middle East. Žižek had the temerity to invoke biblical language by bafflingly referring to the Israeli state as Europe’s “original sin” following World War II that sparked much of the conflict around that region seen today and as a “symbol of European oppression and colonialization.” An estimated $2,914,890 was funneled into Project Syndicate by Soros, who has a sordid history of peddling anti-Israel sentiments and financing anti-Semitic groups that celebrated the Oct. 7 massacre. In a resurfaced op-ed from early 2007, Soros demanded America and Israel “open the door to Hamas.” Žižek, in effect, fits himself right in with the Soros brand.
[…]Dan Schneider, Vice President of Free Speech America blasted Žižek in a statement, saying, “Žižek is a shining example of how really smart people can also be really dumb. First, he is very deceptive about how he describes the creation of the modern state of Israel. Jews have been continuously living on that land for thousands of years, more than twice as long as Islam has even existed as a religion. Jews were ‘given’ nothing they didn’t already have a right to.” Schneider continued, “And the so-called ‘sin’ of which Žižek writes allowed for the creation of the only country in the Middle East that honors the rule of law, individual rights, and pluralism. Try being a Muslim of the wrong sect in Egypt, Jordan, Iran, or any other Islamic country. The two safest places on the planet for Muslims are the US and Israel. The Marxist dogma remains strong in Žižek to this day.”
It seems that Schneider doesn’t want Soros or anyone associated with him, however tangentially, to have the “free speech” he demands conservatives be given without being held accountable for what they say.
Catherine Salgado took a post-election shot at a Soros-funded group in a Nov. 13 post:
The Brookings Institution, an entity substantially funded by Big Tech and leftist billionaire George Soros, is whining for increased censorship in the wake of the 2024 election.
On Nov. 7, Brookings senior fellow Darrell West asserted Republicans won the 2024 election due to insufficient censorship of so-called online disinformation. Disturbingly, Brookings has financial ties to multiple Big Tech platforms that can censor speech online.
Salgado is lying — West did not use the word “censorship” in his article, and cited examples of actual disinformation, not “so-called” or “alleged” or “supposed” as Salgado thinks. One example West noted was of “a Haitian man (although he was not really Haitian) saying he had just gotten to the United States and had voted in two counties—Gwinnett and Fulton—in Georgia, but it turned out to be a fake video made in Russia.” Salgado refused to explain why that was “so-called” disinformation.
Rather than addressing what West actually said, she reported to lame whataboutism, whining: “Brookings also did not list the times accurate information was censored in the past with the excuse of suppressing ‘disinformation.’ Infamously, the Hunter Biden laptop story was crushed online, swinging the 2020 election in Joe Biden’s favor.” Salgado made no effort to prove that West was involved with any of that, and she failed to disclose that the so-called MRC “study” claiming that reasonable issues about the laptop swung “the 2020 election in Joe Biden’s favor, given how it was based on questionable polls by highly biased pollsters, one of whom worked for Donald Trump.