Photo credit: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung
George Soros
There’s always been something highly suspicious about Republicans vilifying Jewish investment banker and philanthropist George Soros as some sort of evil mastermind behind a diabolical web of international political conspiracies. Sure, Soros is a major financial donor to Democratic Party politicians, but, since when have Republicans ever been opposed to billionaires making enormous contributions to political campaigns? After all, Republicans were enthusiastic supporters of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that unleashed unlimited campaign donations from billionaires allowing a tiny group of ultra-wealthy individuals to gain overwhelming influence over American politics.
Many may be surprised to learn Soros’ super-PAC contributions of $39.4 million to Democrats since 2010 ranks him at the very bottom of the Top-10 list of billionaire political donors. Republicans aren’t complaining about No. 1, because that’s rightwing casino owner Sheldon Adelson, whose campaign contributions of $287.5 million to Republicans are more than seven times what Soros has given to Democrats. Other rightwing Republican billionaires shelling out more to their own favorite politicians than Soros has over the past eight years include Illinois industrialist Richard Uihlein—a major funder of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s career, contributing $59.9 million—and hedge-fund managers Paul Singer ($41.9 million) and Robert Mercer ($40.9 million).
So, if Soros isn’t a satanic demon for contributing to Democrats, which, after all, is still legal in America even under Donald Trump, what is it that makes Soros so nefarious? The media also describe Soros as a major contributor to “liberal causes,” but that, too, is a misnomer.
Paying for Successful Programs
A primary U.S. focus of Soros’ Open Society Foundation is criminal justice reform to reduce mass incarceration. An Open Society grant created the Milwaukee County Day Reporting Center—an alternative to incarceration that’s reduced recidivism for two decades by providing adult education, job training and alcohol and drug treatment to low-level offenders. I know because Kit Murphy McNally, my wife—then executive director of the Benedict Center—received the multi-year grant to organize community support and educate county officials about the value of the successful program.
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Creating more effective and less expensive alternatives to prisons once may have been a liberal cause, but, as prison populations and their financial and human costs have soared, it’s become a bipartisan issue. The “Right on Crime” movement promotes prominent conservatives—the Bush brothers, George and Jeb, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, conservative columnist George Will and others—supporting positive alternatives.
Believe this when you see it: Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and crown prince of the White House, is charged with preparing a bipartisan criminal justice reform agenda for the Trump administration. His first obstacle may be convincing the president to stop leading his hate rallies in chants of “Lock ‘em up!” aimed at Soros and prominent Democrats for engaging in… democracy.
That’s the most bizarre reason for the vitriolic attacks on Soros. The best description of Soros’ political ideology at age 88 isn’t liberal, it’s pro-democracy. Soros survived the Holocaust as a Jewish child growing up in Hungary. After World War II, when his country was controlled by the Soviet Union, he fled to England where he was educated at the London School of Economics, becoming an American citizen in 1961.
After earning a fortune from international investments and currency speculation in the early ’90s, Soros’ first philanthropic concern was democratizing Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. He made large financial contributions to build democracies in Poland and Czechoslovakia and continues to fund opposition to authoritarian governments in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Soros, who admired the anti-communist agenda of Ronald Reagan, calls it promoting American ideals and the rule of law.
Democracy Under Threat
Even before Trump publicly smooched the backside of Russian President Vladimir Putin before the entire world in Helsinki, Finland, the Republican Party was moving away from the principles of democracy to win elections. Voter suppression and corrupt gerrymandering are basically dirty tricks to deny the will of the voters in a democracy.
Then there’s anti-Semitism, and the open hostility of modern-day Republicans toward the democratic ideal of equal rights regardless of race, religion or national origin. Steve King, an eight-term Republican congressman from Iowa, recently endorsed a far-right, neo-Nazi party in Austria, declaring—probably correctly—that the party would be considered Republican if it were in the U.S.
Trump publicly attacked Soros, falsely accusing him of paying a band of Latino immigrants dominated by women and children walking north through Mexico to escape poverty and gang violence. Trump claimed the group somehow endangered American lives. Trump reiterated those attacks even after one deranged supporter mailed a pipe bomb to Soros and another murdered 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue to protect Americans from Trump’s fabricated Jewish-funded threat.
There is nothing dangerous or un-American about the pro-democracy causes Soros supports. Perhaps one day both major U.S. political parties will once again be pro-democracy.
