Posted on June 4, 2012 at 11:30am by
This is a special report by the Media Research Center (MRC) that’s been cross-posted on The Blaze. The original by Dan Gainor and Iris Somberg appears on the MRC website. You can get a condensed version of the in-depth report by reading the executive summary here.
Say the name George Soros and liberals see dollar signs – literally. The world’s 22ndrichest man, according to Forbes, is now worth $20 billion. But Soros isn’t just noteworthy for the money he has – he’s notable for the money he has given away. Since launching his Open Society Foundations in 1984, Soros has donated more than $8 billion to charities around the world.But instead of gaining a mighty reputation for his philanthropy, or his investment prowess, Soros is reviled abroad and criticized here in his adopted country. Most everywhere Soros, his foundations or his investing have gone, trouble has followed. He’s helped foment revolutions, undermined national currencies and funded radicals around the world. Soros has been convicted of insider dealing in France and fined $3 million, fined another $2 million in his native Hungary. His “foundations have been accused of shielding spies and breaking currency laws” and his investing strategy has been targeted for harming several national currencies.
Even his support for higher education raises huge red flags. Soros has contributed more than $400 million to colleges and universities, including money to most prominent institutions in the United States. He also helped establish Central European University which, in turn, uses its resources to promote his personal goal of an “open society.”
Here in the United States, Soros money provides the foundation for liberal organizations promoting everything from gay marriage and drug legalization to anti-death penalty strategies. While his charitable giving goes to liberal organizations with close ties to the Democratic Party, his political giving goes almost entirely to Democrats.
That’s not the story the broadcast networks have been telling about Soros for the past five years. There were 29 mentions of Soros during that time but only one gave any hint at trouble, and that was merely to mention he was “still known as the man who broke the Bank of England.” But ABC followed it up with: “That was all legal.” Only a sex scandal with a 28-year-old Brazilian actress gave Soros any negative publicity at all.
Soros Indoctrinates Students Around the World
Left-wing donor George Soros spent more than $400 million world-wide to indoctrinate students and teach them to promote liberal, and in some cases extremist, causes. He has even funded his own university that promotes his own unique philosophy of open society. His reach and influence far surpasses that of the Koch brothers, who have been vilified by the left and the media for their grants to universities.
While the left shrivels at the thought of the Koch brother’s donations to universities, their beloved Soros gave more than 50 times as much. Central European University and Bard College received the most from Soros. One professor at CEU praised the Occupy movement combining environmentalism, feminism, the labor movement, and social justice. Grants to Bard College for “community service and social action” included a Palestinian youth group and an initiative to educate prisoners across the country. To top it off, all of the Ivy League universities, along with a variety of state schools, private institutions, and even religiously-affiliated institutions, were also funded by Soros.
Soros funded programs and classes at universities around the world promote his radical ideology. Soros’s Open Society Foundations granted $407,790,344 in gifts and commitments to higher education since the year 2000. The Koch brothers were vilified by the American political left for donating almost $7 million to universities while their beloved Soros gave more than 50 times that amount to the same type of groups. Alternet, funded by Soros complained about a “shady deal” that helped the Kochs fund Florida State University. Colorlines, also funded by Soros, said of the same donation: “FSU Trades Academic Freedom for Billionaire Charles Koch’s Money.”
Both Central European University and Bard College received vastly more money from Soros than every penny the Kochs donated to higher education. CEU has received more than a quarter of a billion dollars from the Soros foundations. And Bard has gotten $76 million from them.
Together, CEU and Bard received roughly 75 percent of Soros’s total contributions. Central European University was founded and endowed by Soros, providing an outlet for his own personal lecture series that was turned into a book for students to purchase. His ex-wife’s pet project, Bard Collect, received a new department for her to lead and supports Palestinian social programs.
Central European University and Bard College received specific donations for some of the most liberal courses and programs in the world. One course at CEU incorporated lessons of the Occupy movement and the teacher proudly described how the movement combined feminism, environmentalism, social justice, and the labor movement all under one roof. Programs at Bard include a Palestinian youth group, an initiative to educate prisoners across the country, and various other groups for “community service and social action.”
Ivy League schools to include Harvard, Columbia, and Yale were also well funded through the Soros foundations. A Harvard documentary on the War on Terror received Soros-funds along with various left-wing projects at other universities to include judicial and journalism initiatives. Programs that teach and promote Soros’s ideology are heavily funded across the board.
Columbia University has been a major recipient of Soros cash.
Soros Gave More than 50 Times as much as Koch Brothers to Universities, Liberals Still Scream Foul
The left shrivels at the thought of the Koch brothers donating to universities even though their beloved Soros gave more than 50 times as much. With more than $400 million given and pledged to higher education around the worlds, the American political left is still terrified that they aren’t indoctrinating enough.
ThinkProgress detailed the Koch contributions to higher education on May 11 2011, with Koch brothers’ contributions totaling nearly $7 million. That’s not even as much as the Center for American Progress, which operates ThinkProgress, has received from Soros.
ThinkProgress went on to criticize the Kochs, even saying that Charles Koch went on a “spending spree” to “buy academic freedom.” Soros, on the other hand, has spent more than $400 million on universities around the world. He’s not only managed to buy academic freedom, but win the hearts and minds of students around the world and train them to become left-wing activists.
David and Charles Koch are the libertarian businessmen in charge of Koch Industries. They have donated to libertarian and conservative groups along with medical research, the arts, and various other causes. Even with billions of dollars in funding from Soros, the left feels the need to criticize many of the Kochs much smaller endeavors.
Even major media organizations have gone after the Kochs for their contributions. The Kochs were described as everything from “the ubiquitous Koch brothers: the Zeligs of questionable funding” by The New York Times to the “implacable ideological foes of organized labor” by the Los Angeles Times.
Soros’s Center for American Progress, which received $7.3 million from his foundations, posted a report on their Think Progress blog titled “Koch Fueling Far Right Academic Centers at Universities across the Country.” In the article, the Koch-hating leftist Lee Fang lists universities that received money from the Kochs to include George Mason University, Utah State, and Brown. Totaling nearly $7 million, grants as small as $100,000 were criticized. A donation of $1.5 million to Florida State University supposedly gave the Kochs “a free hand in selecting professors and approving publications.”
While Charles Koch is referred to as “a dominant player when it comes to meddling with academic integrity,” Soros’s name appears nowhere in the article. Giving 50 times the amount cited by the Center for American Progress is ignored by liberal bloggers that are funded by Soros.
AlterNet, the unhinged liberal blog, reposted Fang’s report. They are part of the “Echo-Chamber” of liberal blogs created by the Media Consortium, which received $425,000. An additional $495,000 went to the Independent Media Institute, which is the parent-group of Alternet. They went on to describe the Kochs as “megalomaniacal mega-billionaires” and even were scandalized by Charles Koch, claiming that he went on “shopping spree for an invaluable bauble that most of us didn’t even know was for sale: academic freedom.”
Soros-Founded Central European University Rakes in the Cash
2011 marked the 20th anniversary of the Soros-founded Central European University. Since its inception, the Open Society Foundations have given more than $250 million in gifts and commitments to this European venture. The anniversary website lays out the mission since CEU’s founding in 1991, “The idea was that a multinational university could be a place to study the principles of open society.”
CEU is the prime example of liberal extremism funded at the university level. One professor even praised the Occupy movement combining environmentalism, feminism, the labor movement, and social justice. Soros has used CEU for everything from promoting his books to hosting an economic conference group (that he of course funds) out to change the global economy. The Soros Lectures is one of Soros’s books, which was created from the lectures he gave at CEU. The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) hosted their 2011 conference at the university.
Charles Koch, half of the famous "Koch brothers" duo. He and his brother, David, are often blasted by liberals for their monetary donations to conservative causes.
Praise for the extreme views of the Occupy movement came from one program director.
Tamara Steger, the Doctoral Program Director for the Environmental Sciences and Policy, visited Zuccotti Park herself to learn about the movement. A video on the CEU YouTube channel showed Steger in front of a class with a slide behind her that said “How to OCCUPY peoples’ heads with your message…” Earlier in the video, she praised the Occupy movement for combining the environmental, social justice, feminist, and labor movements to talk about issues that “really mattered.”
CEU is dedicated to promoting Soros’s idea of an open society and “that professors and students could be recruited internationally to build a new and unique institution, one that would train future generations of scholars, professionals, politicians and civil society leaders to contribute to building open societies and democracies throughout the region and beyond.”
One of the schools “intellectual themes” for 2011 was “social responsibility of academia.” This indoctrination was described as “a university’s obligations to society and their discipline-specific manifestations.” Events were hosted throughout the year, with the goal of Soros’s open society at the forefront. Lectures included one on feminist voice through the Department of Gender Studies and another on global energy emissions to include low carbon output.
CEU hosted a series of five lectures by George Soros that he later turned into a book creatively titled “The Soros Lectures At the central European University.” The lectures and book lay out Soros’s vision for an open society and his view on economics and politics. The first two lectures laid out his theory of reflexivity and financial markets. The third and fourth examined the concept of open society and the potential for conflict with capitalism. Finally, he concludes with a lecture on China’s rising role in the world.
The University also hosted a Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) Conference. INET received $50 million from Soros. The event is bringing together ”more than 200 academic, business and government policy thought leaders’ to repeat the famed 1944 Bretton Woods gathering that helped create the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Soros wants a new ‘multilateral system,” or an economic system where America isn’t so dominant.
CEU even teamed up with Google in September of 2010 to co-sponsor the Internet at Liberty conference which addressed, “the ways in which dissidents and governments are using the Internet; and urgent policy and legal issues of online communication such as privacy and cybersecurity.” CEU’s President John Shattuck described the universities mission as one to promote open societies around the world, “CEU is committed to provide intellectual support for building and strengthening open and democratic societies that respect human rights.”
Departments at the university work hard to promote the Soros vision. László Pinté, Professor of Environmental Sciences, is labeled a sustainability expert that worked with the United Nations. He focused on sustainable development in order to deal with environment problems such as climate change and biodiversity conservation. The Department of Gender Studies description on CEU’s website proudly states, “faculty consider the intersection of gender and sexuality, especially as it relates to feminist theory, queer theory and gay rights activism.”
A seminar called “Promoting Integration Of Migrants And Minorities Through Media” was co-hosted by the Center for Environment and Security along with the Center for Independent Journalism- which ironically received more than $50,000 from Soros. This program described that the media “The media are in a position to play a crucial mediating role between immigrant and host societies” and “enhance social cohesion.”
Soros’s entanglement with the university is blatantly obvious when the Board of Trustees is examined. The Founder and Chairman of the Board is none other than Soros. More than half of CEU’s 20 member board are closely tied to the liberal financier. President of the Soros-funded Bard College Leon Botstein is Chairman of the Board.
Other board members include president of the Open Society Foundations Aryeh Neierand William Newton-Smith of the Open Society Foundation in London. Soros’s son Jonathan Soros is yet another familiar name on CEU’s board.
Other “less notable” connections to Soros on the Board include those affiliated with other Soros-funded universities along with other Soros-funded groups. Harvard’s Patricia Albejerg Graham and Benjamin W. Heineman, Jr. sit on the board with Gerhard Casper of Stanford University. Other groups funded by Soros are represented including Kemal Dervis of the liberal Brooking Institute, which received nearly $250,000. Journalist Kati Marton serves on the board as well. Organizations she has worked at during her career include the Soros-funded Human Rights Watch- $109,239,311, and New America Foundation- $3,831,875, National Public Radio- $1.1 million, International Rescue Committee- $1,267,475, and the Committee to Protect Journalists- $828,766.
Soros’s Favorite U.S. School- Bard College
The “progressive” Bard College in New York is a favorite of the Soros family. With more than $70 million in funding, Bard is the prime example of what Soros aims to achieve with his university funding. He gave an entire department for his now ex-wife Susan Weber to run after she was turned down for the job she really wanted. Bard celebrates left-wing causes and encourages students to go out and become activists for their own favorite causes.
Bard college, a favorite of Soros's.
The grants to Bard College show exactly what type of efforts Soros gives to in order to train student activists. Programs at Bard include a Palestinian youth group, an initiative to educate prisoners across the country, and various other groups for “community service and social action.” The school received $76,792,265 in gifts and commitments from Soros since 2000. From 2000-2010 they were granted more than $16 million with an additional $60 million in funding added to their endowment by Soros in 2011.
Soros was quoted in The New York Times, “as a general rule I do not support higher education in the United States.” Soros continued that the grant will “help Bard in its efforts to transform liberal education and bolster critical thinking worldwide.” While this is inherently false seeing as Soros gave more than $100 million to U.S. universities, it still highlight the fact that the programs at Bard are well representative of his views.
Bard is also the home to a department created by Soros’s now ex-wife for her to run. The Bard College Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture was created by Susan Weber (formerly Susan Weber Soros) after she was turned down for another job. As the New York Times described, “Mrs. Soros was turned down for the job of director of graduate education at the Cooper-Hewitt/Parsons School of Design. So with $20 million of her husband’s money, she started her own school.”
Imagine the hysterical fits from the liberal bloggers and the main stream media if one of the Koch brother’s wives did such a thing! Susan Weber, however, was hailed as savvy woman on a mission. The New York Times even compared her in the same article to “a long tradition of wealthy women who have been instrumental in founding cultural institutions” such as Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s funding of the Whitney Museum and Abby Alrdrich Rockefeller and her contribution to the Museum of Modern Art. The comparison of a graduate program to two groundbreaking museums, however noteworthy, is a bit of an exaggeration.
Described as a “progressive college” by one of their own, Bard’s promotion of left-wing causes surely helped gain additional funds from Soros. 150 years of Bard College is celebrated in the video “Education for the Common Good.” This eleven-minute video describes how Bard is different from other universities. David E. Schwab II, Chair Emeritus of the Board of Trustee described the institution as a “progressive college” and many of Soros’s pet projects are detailed.
Bard’s Institute for International Liberal Education helped found and is partnered with various institutions. Joint degree programs are offered in South Africa, Kyrgystan, Hungary, Russia, and a Palestinian school in Jerusalem. In Russia, they helped found The University of St. Petersburg. Soros directly donated an additional $5,928,599 to the Fund for the European University and St. Petersburg from his Open Society Foundations. In Hungary, they work with the Soros-founded Central European University which received more than $50 million from his foundations.
The Institute is also partnered with Al-Quds University in Jerusalem which provides higher education for Palestinians. Al-Quds is the only Arab university in Jerusalem with close to 12,000 students. They offer a U.S. and Palestinian degree at the Bachelor and Master’s levels to “educate future leaders and foster economic development.” They focus on “educating the whole person: socially, intellectually, and spiritually.” In the about section, Bard is described as a college that “sought to introduce liberal education in ‘countries in transition,’” following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Soros is able to fund student activists through the Trustee Leader-Scholar (TLS). This program enables students to form groups for “Community Service and Social Action.” These programs provide students the ability to not just create your average student group, but ones that promote Soros’s liberal mission in the U.S. and globally.
The Bard Palestinian Youth Initiative, as described by co-founder Rosana Zarza described, is essentially a global non-profit, “We’re basically running an NGO. We’re doing huge things. We’re impacting the world. Going to Palestine and doing all of these things. It’s huge.” Their about us section states that they want “civil engagement, cultural exchange, and education are the fundamental means to building a viable and sustainable Palestinian state.” Below they describe the TLS as a program that “encourages and supports students to do challenging, even brazen acts of world change.”
Another program started by a former student focuses on another issue that Soros has worked on for the past decade. The Bard Prison Initiative, which received $600,000 in individual grants from Soros’s Open Society Foundations, is a degree program held in five New York correctional facilities. They provide degree programs for incarcerated men and women and created the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison to promote similar programs around the country.
Other academic programs prop up issues that are important to Soros himself. The Center for Environmental Policy, as described by Director Eban Goodstein, helps “facilitate national conversations about global warming solutions, clean energy solutions to global warming.” They host a National Climate Seminar via phone twice a month to bring together scientists, filmmakers, policy analysts, and anyone interested in “solving this truly civilization challenge.”
University Funding- Everything from the Ivy League to State Schools and Religious Universities
Soros gives money to a variety of other schools specifically to promote his left-wing causes. In addition to heavily funding Central European University and Bard College, Soros funded programs and classes at universities around the world promote his radical ideology. Soros’s Open Society Foundations granted more than $400 million in gifts and commitments to higher education since the year 2000.
All of the Ivy League universities, along with a variety of state schools, private institutions, and even religiously-affiliated institutions are funded by Soros. These grants went a documentary on the War on Terror from Harvard to studying race and ethnicity at Ohio State University.
Every one of the Ivy League colleges and universities received funding from Soros. More than $15 million was granted since 2000 to promote specific programs that line up with the Soros ideology. Columbia and Harvard were the real winners, receiving more than $8 million and more than $5 million respectively. Dartmouth bottomed out with a mere $3,000 with Princeton following at $36,000. All of the other institutions received over $200,000.
Nineteen schools received more than $1 million from Soros. Central European University and Bard College led the pack followed by Columbia, the European University at St. Petersburg, and Indiana University.
Money from Soros goes to everything from general operating funds to specific pet projects that influence the local community and the world. Whether it’s a top ranked university or a religiously-affiliated one, Soros has managed to find a left-wing cause to back with the help of his foundations.
Harvard received $60,000 in 2008 to “develop outreach program” for the film Secrecy. This 85 minute documentary on the War on Terror, “with homeland security and the war on terror becoming increasingly important issues, the U.S. government has grown more and more secretive, allegedly to protect the country and save lives. But is this culture of secrets at odds with democracy?” The documentary was also shown at the Sundance Film Festival, which received $5,742,000 from Soros, and at the Tribeca Film Festival, which got $85,000 form the Open Society Foundations.
Georgetown received $1,775,055 specifically allocated for the Justice at Stake campaign, whose mission it is to “keep state and federal courts fair and impartial.” Under the issues overview on their website they have three sections: federal court issues, state court issues, and diversity. They diversity section states, “People of color, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons, and persons with disabilities are underrepresented among state and federal judges.” It goes on to say that this can lead to bias and a more diverse bench is needed.
Other notable grants include $ 5 million to Indiana University to establish an “endowment for benefit of American University-Central Asia” in 2005. The American University of Central Asia provides U.S. accredited degrees through the Soros-funded Bard College. Ohio State University received more than $100,000 for their Kirwan Institute for the study of race and ethnicity while New York University received grants to complete a study on counterterrorism policing in Muslim communities.
Left-Wing Financier Spends Millions on 2012 Election
When you like a product, you give it your stamp of approval – whether it’s the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval or the USDA imprint on food. But if you love a product, then you pony up the cash. George Soros knows this as much as anyone. Soros, the moneybags of the left, has spent $36 million in the last several years funding politicians and the left’s political machine. He alsogave $550 million to liberal causes in 2000-2009.
There’s no product the Soros family likes better than Obama. The Democratic president has received more money from Soros and his kin than any other political candidate in the last 11 years – $16,000 and counting. They gave an additional $250,000 to the inauguration fund, with five members of the family each giving the maximum contribution of $50,000.
Given limits on donations, that’s an impressive amount of support. Obama leads a list of the most doctrinaire liberals running for office – all funded by Soros and his family. Those include former comic-turned Sen. Al Franken, lefty Calif. Sen. Barbara Boxer and new “progressive” darling and Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.
Soros has propped up liberal politicians for years in the United States, with more than $4 million in direct funding from him and his family. Well known for funneling millions of dollars to liberal groups in their attempt to destroy President George W. Bush in 2004, Soros has continued to give money to promote causes and politicians on the left.
This campaign season, he’s already donated $100,000 to the Majority PAC and another $75,000 to the House Majority PAC. Both of those are designed to put Democrats in office and keep them there. While Soros initially stayed out of the 2011 Super PAC race by not donating to the pro-Obama Priorities USA, he later came out saying that he was undecided on if he would contribute to or create his own Super PAC.
Ironically, Soros has claimed he tried to stay out of domestic political turmoil, his political donations show otherwise. Soros claimed he tried to remain above internal politics in his opening essay to Chuck Sudetic’s book “The Philanthropy of George Soros.” Soros wrote that he learned, “to keep a greater distance from the internal politics of the countries where I have foundations.” Normal people would say they’d stay out. Soros just wanted to give the appearance of distance.
But he hasn’t stayed out of U.S. politics at all. Through an extensive network of nonprofits, media properties and activist organizations, Soros has become increasingly influential in American elections. His hold over the American political left is especially strong. But just trying to follow the Soros money trail almost requires your own personal accountant. To recap:
He and his family gave more than $36 million to politicians and political groups through the past two decades.
Most of that $36 million came in Soros’s epic battle to defeat President George W. Bush in 2004. Soros alone spent more than $32 million of that total to fund the anti-Bush campaign with liberal grassroots groups MoveOn.org, Joint Victory Campaign 2004, and America Coming Together among the top recipients.
This is only a hint at Soros’s real political funding. He’s given more than $550 million to fund the liberal infrastructure in the United States – pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia, pro-gay marriage, pro-drug legalization, pro-union and pro-government-funded media as well as anti-faith, anti-death penalty and as anti-conservative as they come.
To put that in perspective, he vastly outspent the libertarian Koch Brothers in individual political donations 8 to 1. Promoting left-wing ideology to include everything from electing judges to immigration reform, Soros has exerted his power over the nation’s liberal political elite.
The Kochs have been labeled as everything from “Tea Party puppeteers” by New York Times columnists Charles M. Blow to industrialists that “help keep the Tea Party movement well-caffeinated,” and vilified for their extensive giving to conservatives. But Soros has fondly been described as a philanthropist. The media fail to note that Soros has outspent the Kochs in individual-funded political activity.
An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics’s Opensecrets.org compared contributions by the Koch brothers and George Soros. This review from Sept. 21, 2010 showed Soros lavished more than $34 million on 527s, candidates, and committees. This compared with a mere $4 million from the Koch brothers. The Kochs do surpass Soros in funding to candidates, parties, and committees, but the difference is a little more than $800,000. Opensecrets.org is part of the Soros-funded Center for Responsive Politics. They received $500,000 in grants from the Open Society Foundation since 2000.
All this funding is a key part of the Soros empire with more than $8 billion donated through his Open Society Foundations – and it’s about to help impact another election.
But there’s been lots of negatives in Soros’s past as he’s spread his influence around the world. Soros wears criticism like a badge of honor. “I have now come under attack in several countries: in Hungary from Hungarian nationalists; in Romania from the Vatra Romanesca; in Slovakia from the communist party newspaper Pravda; in the Soviet Union by the organ of the hard-liners Sovietskaia Russiya,” he claimed in “Underwriting Democracy.”
Financial Concerns Persist
Soros’s Open Society Fund was created in 1979 as a charitable lead trust. Even its creator admitted his motives were “basically selfish” and he wanted a “tax gimmick.” He did it as a “trust for his children” The foundation charities themselves claim 1984 as their date of origin.
While Soros has been known worldwide for his investment skills, he hasn’t always managed to stay clear of the authorities. He was found guilty in France of an insider trading case about 20 years ago and has repeatedly failed having it pulled from his record. According to The New York Times, in September 2011, a French panel upheld his conviction because “he had bought and sold shares of Société Générale in 1988 with the knowledge that the bank might be a takeover target.” He was fined $3 million.
His fund ran into problems in Hungary, where Soros was born and lived till his late teen years. At issue was how he handled an investment into the “the country’s largest bank,” OTP. “His fund was fined $2 million by Hungarian regulators last week for having manipulated OTP’s stock price,” wrote The New York Times in 2009.
Even when he has steered clear of legal ramifications, he had some questionable dealings. In 1999, New York Times economist (and now Nobel Prize winner) Paul Krugman skewered Soros in a piece for Slate.com. The story, “Don’t Blame It on Rio … or Brasilia Either,” accused Arminio Fraga Neto of working with Soros in his role as president of Brazil’s central bank. Fraga was upset, saying he “did not have access to any privileged information” and Krugman posted a formal apology saying “Fraga has behaved entirely properly.”
A very positive profile of Soros in The New Republic in 1994 still explained that his investing angered several nations. “The president of the European Community and representatives of the French and Belgian governments have accused him of orchestrating ‘an Anglo-Saxon plot’ to undermine the French currency. The British government blames him for driving sterling from the European Monetary System,” wrote Michael Lewis.
Soros’s currency moves have long been controversial. The magazine Foreign Policy ran a cartoon of the billionaire in 2000 that shows Soros torturing a James Bond character and saying “You saw what my awesome destructive powers did to the British pound and Malaysian ringgit, 007 … Do you think your puny governments can stop me?” reported The Washington Post.
The Soros Foreign Policy
Morton Abramowitz of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace once said Soros became the “only private citizen who had his own foreign policy.” That remains true, though it often conflicts with that of the United States where he is a citizen. He has even helped fund the nonprofit group called Independent Diplomat, with the motto “a diplomatic service for those who need it most.” It represented Kosovo, Somaliland and the Polisario Front of Western Sahara, according to The New York Times. All three were looking for recognition as independent states.
Soros devoted much of his early foundation effort to the former Soviet Union and then its successor republics. The liberal New Republic quoted Soros in 1994 saying, “Just write that the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire.” Soros is “possibly, fantastically, the single most powerful foreign influence in the whole of the former Soviet empire” they added. He gave so much money that “Sorosovat” “became a new verb in Russian, loosely meaning to apply for a grant.”
While Soros has even been nominated for Nobel Peace Prize, many governments have viewed him as the enemy. In 1997, the Soros foundation was fined $3 million by the nation of Belarus “for what the government said were currency exchange violations,” according to the May 2, 1997 New York Times. Belarus complained the organization had violated its tax status “by supporting unsanctioned opposition rallies and taken other actions that Belarus state television had earlier called “an intervention in Belarus’s domestic affairs.” As a result, Soros closed the Belarus foundation in November of that year, claiming the fines were “politically motivated.”
“In Albania, Kyrgystan, Serbia and Croatia, Mr. Soros’s foundations have been accused of shielding spies and breaking currency laws. His employees have been assault and threatened with imprisonment or financial sanction for alleged crimes” wrote The New York Times that same year.
Croatia went on to indict “three senior officials from a local branch” of the Open Society Foundations for tax evasion, according to The New York Times. It became “the first country in the former East bloc to criminalize the work of George Soros’s Open Society Institute.”
He ran into trouble in Thailand in 1997, as well. “The financier George Soros canceled a speech in Bangkok in February when protesters, including some respected local businesspeople, threatened to pelt him with rotten eggs and fruit.” The protesters credited Soros for the “collapse of the Thai baht,” their currency.
The prime minister of Malaysia had a much-publicized battle with Soros in 1997. Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad said “that currency trading is unnecessary, unproductive and immoral,” but his attacks also were laced with anti-Semitism and easily discredited. Soros said Mahathir was “a menace to his own country” and “a loose cannon,” according to the New York Times.
Soros was targeted by anti-globalization protesters at the 2001 World Economic Forum in Brazil. An Argentinian activist called him a “hypocrite and a monster,” reported the BBC. The next day he had to cancel a trip to Thailand “after protestors threatened to pelt him with rotten eggs and excrement.”
In 2004, “two young men threw water and mayonnaise at him” in Ukraine, accusing Soros of trying to push a “velvet revolution” just like had happened in Georgia, reported the BBC. That same year, a critic of that nation’s government said “Georgia does not exist right now, it is only another U.S. state whose governor is George Soros,” wrote Al Jazeerah.
His efforts went so poorly in Russia that they came close to open combat. In November, 2003 Al Jazeera reported, “men in battle fatigues have raided the Moscow headquarters of billionaire investor George Soros.” One of the Open Society executives said the attackers had removed documents as a “climax to a long-running commercial dispute.” Soros’s fund pulled out of Russia that year, after having lost a reported $2 billion.
Soros has enormous and global influence – typically purchased by either his own hand or his Open Society Foundations. At one point, he funded the entire government of the then-new nation of Georgia. “George Soros, the New York financier, helped to establish a special anticorruption fund to supplement the paltry salaries of most government employees, from the president (who gets $1,500 a month) down to border guards ($500 a month), wrote The New York Times in 2004.
In 2008, he gave $50 million to Millennium Promise, run by Soros buddy and economist Jeffrey Sachs. The goal of the project is to get “the world’s 22 richest nations” to increase their foreign aid budgets. He gave another $27 million in 2011 to a related project.
Soros has spread billions around he world – even to helpful projects. But his liberal views and aggressive undermining of governments makes everything he does suspect.
Soros Donates $550 Million to Liberal Causes
It‘s easy to see George Soros’s imprint on most major American left-wing organizations. All you have to do is look at their financial forms. George Soros aids hundreds of left-wing groups in America each year under the auspices of his Open Society Foundations. In just 10 years, Soros has given more than $550 million to liberal organizations in the United States.
And that’s really just a beginning. That total represents about 27 percent of the $2 billion given out by the American branches of his Open Society Foundations from 2000 to 2009. (2010 forms are unavailable and Open Society staff uncooperative.) Overall, he has given more than $8 billion to those foundations since they first started in 1993, as an outgrowth of his “open society” charity efforts dating back to 1979. His foundations credit him as having given that money “to support human rights, freedom of expression, and access to public health and education in 70 countries.”
According to The New York Times, the foundation claims “it is on track to give away about $860 million” this year. If things stay true to form for Soros, much of that money will head toward liberal groups in the United States. How that money is allocated takes on a new dimension as Soros just named criminal justice expert Christopher Stone the foundations’ next president, starting in July.
Stone takes over what The New York Times calls “a sprawling constellation of more than 30 organizations that operate in places as diverse as Baltimore, Jakarta, the Kremlin and Congress.” The Times left out that the Soros network is laughably left-wing: pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia, pro-gay marriage, pro-drug legalization, pro-union and pro-government-funded media as well as anti-faith, anti-death penalty and as anti-conservative as they come.
It’s an important time for the foundations as Soros himself just turned 81 and has decided that he wants the charity to continue after his death. The foundations have focused on influencing America since late in the first term of President George W. Bush, who Soros strongly opposed. “I have to concentrate on what goes on in America. The fight for an open society now has to be fought there,” reported The Moscow Times in 2003.
And fight it he has. Cause after liberal cause gets tens of thousands or even millions of dollars from Soros. According to the foundations, their support goes to “fund a range of programs around the world, from public health to education to business development.” Some of that is true, even in the United States. Soros funds after-school programs, hospitals and the arts. While some of organizations have a liberal spin, they aren’t necessarily left-wing.
But much of it flows to hardcore left-wing organizations. Eighty different liberal groups have received $1 million or more of Soros’s charity in that time. Human Rights Watch, The Drug Policy Alliance, The Tides Foundation, National Public Radio, social justice initiatives and more all join the lefty millionaires club – thanks entirely to Soros.
The Drug Policy Alliance alone has received more than $31 million in those 10 years to oppose the “taboo associated with drug use.“ That commitment has earned Soros the title ”sugar daddy of the legalization movement” from conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. Prominent supporters of drug legalization – Sting, Soros himself, and former talk show host Montel Williams – are featured in a Drug Policy Alliance video that calls the drug war a “war on people.”
Some of Soros’s other donations go to fund his extensive network of liberal media outlets, which have received more than $52 million. Those operations include a wide range of liberal news operations as well as the infrastructure of news – journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations.
All of that is designed to create what Soros has been pushing for decades to achieve – what he calls an “open society.” But what exactly is an open society? In “Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism,“ he wrote that the concept is ”an ideal to which our global society should aspire.” But his influences are more complicated and more twisted.
Soros says he based the concept on works by philosopher Karl Popper, who Soros considers his mentor. “Popper proposed a form of social organization that starts with the recognition that no claim to the ultimate truth can be validated and therefore no group should be allowed to imposed its views on all of the rest,“ Soros wrote in ”The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror.“ ”Open Society denotes freedom and the absence of repression,” he summed up.
In that 2000 book, the current head of Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Aryeh Neier, listed seven conditions of an open society that sounded entirely positive. They included:
“Regular, free, and fair elections”;
“Free and pluralistic media”;
“The rule of law upheld by an independent judiciary”;
And “a market economy.”
It’s a pretty fair description of the United States, the very place Soros is trying to change. Looking at that list, it would be easy to believe in the benevolence of Soros. But he’s been at this a long time and his public description has changed from something monstrous to something palatable.
In “Opening the Soviet System,” which came out 10 years earlier, Soros depicted a much different reality of an open society. In a section entitled “Brave New World,“ he tried to ”carry the concept of an open society to its logical conclusion.” (”Brave New World,” is also the title of Aldous Huxley’s frightening view of a dystopian future where the global government controlled the population through sleep conditioning and drugs.)
Soros said: “in an open society none of the existing ties are final, and people’s relation to nation, family, and their fellows depends entirely on their own decisions. Looking at the reverse side of the coin, this means that the permanence of social relationships has disappeared; the organic structure of society has disintegrated to the point where its atoms, the individuals, float around without hindrance.”
And from there, the description gets worse. “Choices arise which would not even have been imagined in an earlier age. Euthanasia, genetic engineering, brainwashing become problems of practical importance. The most complex human functions, such as thinking, may be broken down into their elements and artificially reproduced. Everything appears possible until it has been proven to be impossible.”
Naturally, this new open society would take its toll on the people living there. “Perhaps the most striking characteristic of a perfectly changeable society is the decline in personal relationships,” wrote Soros. “Friends, neighbors, husbands and wives would become, if not interchangeable, at least readily replaceable by only marginally inferior (or superior) substitutes.“ Even personal interaction is at risk in this ”open society.“ ”Personal contact may altogether decline in importance as more efficient means of communication reduce the need for physical presence,” he wrote.
At least there Soros was a bit honest: “The picture that emerges is less than pleasing. As an accomplished fact, open society may prove to be far less desirable than it seems to those who regard it as an ideal.” The added, however that any society “carried to its logical conclusion” becomes “absurd.” But he adds, “nevertheless, it should be clear by now that, as an accomplished fact, Open Society may prove to be far less desirable than it seems to those who regard it as an ideal.”
The ending of that section specifically mentions Huxley’s “Brave New World,“ along with ”1984,” and More’s “Utopia,” as imagined futures that went wrong. Yet even a casual reader can see many direct parallels between Huxley’s world and the one Soros aspires to.
Point by point, “Brave New World” skewers that future. Huxley wrote about a one-world government – the “World State – where drug use wasn’t just legal, it was strongly encouraged. There, population was restricted and citizens wore “Malthusian belts” with a ready supply of birth control for almost mandatory promiscuity. Abortions were performed in a “lovely pink glass tower” and actual births were done in a lab under direct control of the powers that be. “Brave New World” was written as satire of the other Utopias envisioned at the time. It featured and prominent anti-individual and anti-family themes.
Religion, in Huxley’s world, was one of the “monstrous superstitions” confined to savages only and “positively a crime against society,” replaced by a feel-good drug called “soma.” Soma, readers were told, had “all the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.”
Soros criticized Huxley’s work, but it’s as if he used it as a model for his charitable contributions – pro-one world government, pro-abortion, pro-government controlled media, pro-drug and even pro-euthanasia and against the very institutions that stand for traditional values such as family and faith. Imagine if someone had read George Orwell’s “1984” and then tried to make it happen. That’s what Soros has done, only with another, equally awful look into the future.
Soros has spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding a “Brave New World” for Americans and even he admits it won’t turn out well.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The Business and Media Institute has several recommendations for news outlets on how they can improve their coverage of George Soros and his foundations.
Do Some Genuine Journalism and Investigate Soros: George Soros is the embodiment of media bias. While the American media obsess about almost any action of the libertarian Koch brothers, they all-but ignore his one-man quest for global power. Soros has given more than $8.5 billion to his Open Society Foundations, leaving an imprint on more than 70 nations. Any business, organization or individual with that kind of financing and international reach is ripe for investigation. It’s time journalists did some digging on their own.
Treat Public Figures Equally: If someone on the left squawks about Charles and David Koch, journalists from some major news organizations jump to write about it. But criticisms of Soros, his business practices and even his conviction seldom get noted by the media. Journalists should treat all public figures equally.
Don’t Ignore Soros Connections to Major News Events: Newspaper front pages are filled with protests, complaints and supposedly grassroots initiatives that are easily tied to Soros – through the Center of American Progress and other entities he funds. But that connection is almost never made made. Journalists ignore obvious funding connections and sometimes don’t even check connections openly made on organizational websites. It’s the job of news to show when organizations are blatantly working together toward an end and to show the obvious ties these groups might share.
