George Soros

George Soros was born in Hungary. He moved to London then New York City, eventually making billions of dollars as a hedge fund manager.

He currently has a net worth of approximately $7 billion. He is almost 94-years-old (as of this writing). He has many homes around the world, but seems to live primarily in New York (both NYC and The Hamptons).

Soros has since become the target of dozens of conspiracy theories, mostly from Conservative and Right-wing groups. Soros occupies the intersection of multiple groups:

1. He is foreign-born
2. He is ethnically Jewish, though not particularly religious (A Jew in finance, no less, which extends a common stereotype)
3. He donates generously to progressive, liberal, and Left-wing causes

In 1979, Soros created a charity called the Open Society Institute (now Open Society Foundations) to give money to various causes. Since founding the organization, Soros has donated tens of billions of dollars to this organization, which constitutes most of his income during this period.

The self-proclaimed “themes” of the organization are:

1. Climate Justice
2. Equity
3. Expression
4. Justice

Clearly, these are all causes aligned with the political Left. This has made the group hostile to many governments and groups. Russia, Turkey, and Pakistan have all forced or caused the organization to cease operations in their countries.

Their website lists almost 18,000 grants given. An example of some recipients:

• $675,000 to a US program to help former convicts re-enter society
• $31,000 for a program to educate Pakistani citizens about honest government practices
• $300,000 to fund for abortion services in Baltimore
• Many millions of dollars “to provide general support” to immigration advocacy groups in the US

These are all groups very much aligned with Left-wing causes.

Thus, George Soros is natural antagonist of Conservatives and the Right-wing in the United States. He’s a large source of funding to causes they consistently oppose.

Here are some of the conspiracy theories used to discredit Soros:

• He was a Nazi, or a Nazi-collaborator or sympathizer
• He organizes or exacerbates protests by paying people to agitate
• He is trying to institute a world government

None of these have been proven.

However, Soros donates to a lot of causes – his organization gives out thousands of grants every year. Is it possible that one or more of these organizations used donated funds in a way that might be construed to further some nefarious goal? Absolutely.

Specifically, when discussing the idea of paying agitators, again, is this a direct goal or action, or indirect? Many of the rumors and stories make it seem like a specified agent of George Soros has instituted a payroll system for professional protesters who don’t care about the causes, and are only present because they’re being paid. However, the truth is more likely that that Soros’s foundation has supported many organizations that have organized protests for or against various causes at different times. Does this mean Soros actively orchestrated the protests or specifically paid the protestors?

Consider: if you provide a free lunch for protestors, or provide travel to the location of the protest, are you “organizing” the protest? Even if so, if Soros donated to a third-party organization that did this, does that mean Soros himself is organizing a protest or intended it to be organized? And if even if that point is true, is this somehow unique to Soros? Or is this a fairly common practice by all sides of an issue?

Politifact covered this exact point in an investigation entitled: Fact-checking claims that George Soros is ‘paying student radicals’ involved in campus protests. They examined a social media post that said:

George Soros and his hard-left acolytes are paying agitators who are fueling the explosion of radical anti-Israel protests at colleges across the country.

The article did identify several groups that received funds from Open Society Foundations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace, Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation, Within Our Lifetime, Students for Justice in Palestine. However, these grants were over the course of many years, were not linked or earmarked for any particular protest, and were presumably used for other things as well (a look at the timing and amounts makes it clear the weren’t used for a specific, one-day event).

Which brings us back to the central question: how direct does support have to be for someone to be credibly accused of organizing a protest or “paying agitators”?

At one extreme, we can envision a newspaper ad offering cash payments for otherwise disinterested people to pretend to be angry about a cause they care nothing about at an event that wouldn’t have occurred without a financial incentive. At the other extreme, someone donates money to an organization or cause they believe in, and that organization incidentally participates in a protest sometime after that as one part of a larger program of advocacy.

Where on that continuum do we put Soros’s actions?

In general, the incidental actions of an organization someone has donated to is not the same thing as the vision of someone actively masterminding activities in pursuit of a sinister goal.