The Soros conspiracy genre

What it is

George Soros was born in Budapest in 1930. ¹ In 1936 his family changed its surname from Schwartz to Soros, putting distance between themselves and an identifiably Jewish name. ¹ In the summer of 1944 his father arranged for him to live with a non-Jewish employee of the Ministry of Agriculture, posing as the man's godson. ¹

Germany occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944, when between 760,000 and 780,000 Jews lived there. ⁴ Between May 15 and July 9, roughly 437,000 Hungarian Jews were deported on 147 freight trains, about 420,000 of them to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where roughly 330,000 were murdered in the gas chambers on arrival. ⁴ Budapest's roughly 200,000 Jews were spared the countryside deportations at first, then confined to yellow star houses and eventually two ghettos. ⁴ The Arrow Cross took power that October and ran a reign of terror. ⁴ Soviet forces liberated about 119,000 Budapest Jews in January and February 1945. ⁴

He reached the United States in 1956. ¹ In 1973 he started the private investment company that became the Quantum Fund. ¹ On September 16, 1992, he shorted the British pound and made roughly $1.1 billion when the Bank of England pulled sterling out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which is where the line about the man who broke the Bank of England comes from. ¹ He began giving money away in 1979, starting with scholarships in South Africa and Eastern Europe, and has since put more than $32 billion into the Open Society Foundations, which fund work on rights, equity and justice across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and the United States. ² He also gives to partisan politics and does not hide it: close to $25 million against President Bush's reelection in 2004. ¹

ADL's guide to antisemitic myths calls the underlying structure the "power" myth: the claim that Jews, about 0.2 percent of the world's population, secretly run banks, media, industry and governments. ⁵ It was given its modern script by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first serialized in the Russian newspaper Znamia in St. Petersburg in 1903 by Pavel Krushevan and reprinted in 1905 as an appendix to a book by Sergei Nilus. ³ Journalists took it apart within two decades. Lucien Wolf showed in 1920 that it plagiarized Hermann Goedsche's 1868 novel Biarritz, and The Times of London showed in 1921 that it copied Maurice Joly's 1864 satire Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu. ³

The exposure changed nothing. The Nazi Party published 22 editions of the Protocols between 1919 and 1938, after the forgery had been shown to be one. ³ Joseph Goebbels acknowledged in private that the document was a forgery and valued it anyway, for what it could do. ³

Why it still matters

Hungary ran the genre as government policy. Ahead of the April 2018 elections, the government ran a campaign on television, radio and billboards across the country targeting civil society organizations that worked on asylum and migration, along with Soros as their funder. ⁷ Officials including Prime Minister Viktor Orban referred to civil society groups, opposition politicians and critical journalists as "agents of Soros." ⁷ In August 2018 Hungary imposed a special 25 percent tax on funding to organizations "supporting immigration," exempting political parties and international organizations with immunity. ⁷

The legislation that came with it did not survive review. In 2018 Hungary criminalized organizing activity that helped people lodge asylum applications when those people did not meet Hungarian criteria for protection. ⁸ On November 16, 2021, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union held in Case C-821/19 that Hungary had infringed EU law, finding the restriction could not be justified because it also swept in assistance that was neither fraudulent nor abusive. ⁸

The vocabulary traveled. ADL documents "globalist" functioning as code for Jewish control of government and media, and cites a September 2019 cable news segment describing how Soros's "tentacles reach out into various non-government organizations and nonprofits." ⁵ The same guide describes the myth in its full form as crediting Jews with running banks, media, industry, government and, in its phrasing, even the weather. ⁵

In a 2022 survey of more than 4,000 Americans, ADL's Center for Antisemitism Research found 85 percent endorsed at least one anti-Jewish trope, up from 61 percent in 2019, with 20 percent endorsing six or more, and more than 20 percent agreeing that Jews hold too much power in business and finance. ⁶

The criticism deserves its strongest form before anything gets called a conspiracy theory. A single man has moved more than $32 billion through a foundation network working across six world regions, by that foundation's own public accounting. ² He spends heavily in American elections and says so. ¹ Whether one private fortune should carry that much weight in public life is a real argument, and people who think the answer is no are not bigots for thinking it. Our view is that the argument belongs in the open, with the grant records on the table.

The conspiracy version describes a hidden hand behind events instead of what a foundation funded, which is the move the Protocols invented and the move ADL's guide identifies as the power myth itself. ^{3 5} The test is whether the claim rests on a document a reader could look up or on the premise that the real work is hidden. Saying Open Society funded a particular organization and that the organization is wrong is politics, and the grant is public. ²

The words you'll hear

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A fabricated text presented as the minutes of a Jewish plot for world domination, first published in Russia in 1903 and shown in 1920 and 1921 to be plagiarized from two earlier European books. ³ Goebbels called it a forgery and the Nazi Party printed 22 editions of it anyway. ³

The "power" myth. ADL's name for the claim that Jews, roughly 0.2 percent of the world's population, secretly control banks, media and governments. ⁵

Globalist. Used as code for the power myth, attributing control of government and industry, especially media, to a shadowy group. ⁵

Agents of Soros. The phrase Hungarian officials, including Orban, applied to civil society organizations, opposition figures and critical journalists during the 2018 campaign. ⁷

Open Society Foundations. The philanthropic network Soros started in 1979 with scholarships in South Africa and Eastern Europe, into which he has put more than $32 billion. ²

Black Wednesday. September 16, 1992, when Soros's short position against the pound earned roughly $1.1 billion as the Bank of England withdrew sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. ¹