Topic: Media Research Center
After spending the summer hating George Soro's son for the offense of being, well, George Soros' son, the Media Research Center returned to its usual obsessive hatred of Soros himself. We've already noted that the MRC made a point of highlighting that Soros has given money to the Southern Poverty Law Center in bashing the SPLC for pointing out the extremism of the right-wing Moms for Liberty, as well as its cheering of Ron DeSantis for taking a shot at Soros during the first Republican presidential debate. It has had other anti-Soros freakouts as well from late August through September, largely of the guilt-by-association variety:
- Soros-Funded Group Pressures Big Tech to Silence So-Called ‘Election Disinformation’
- Soros-Aligned, Soft-on-Crime Texas D.A. Resigns to Avoid Removal Hearing – then Announces Run for Senate
- Pardoned Father to Fox News: Soros-Backed Prosecutor ‘One of the Most Evil People I've Ever Met’
- George Soros Deploys ‘TikTok’ Army Against Republicans
- Minister of Truth: George Soros Poured $14.8M Into Leftist Vendetta Against ‘Disinformation’ (there was no explanation of why "disinformation" was put in scare quotes)
- Soros-Funded Media Press for Online Censorship and Shill for Commie-Tied TikTok
- DeSantis Promises to Unleash Justice Department on Soros-Backed Prosecutors
- Bodega Worker Sues Soros-Backed NY DA After Damning Univision Report (also in Spanish)
The main target of the MRC's manufactured outrage, though, was again Alex Soros, George's son who is poised to take over his empire of philanthropy. Tom Oholan raged in a Sept. 6 post:
Leftist billionaire Alex Soros warned that his Open Society Foundations is not done with Europe, promising to remain active there and even increase aid in some cases.
In an August 31st op-ed titled “No Soros retreat from Europe,” the Open Society Foundations chairman responded to claims that the leftist group would scale back its work in Europe under his leadership. Soros discussed promoting expansion in the E.U., Ukraine, the Roma and a variety of projects he continues to fund in Europe.
The article also made clear that Soros idolizes the E.U., as he wrote that “the European Union still stands as a global beacon of the values that shape our work.” He even went so far as to say that “like my father, I regard the E.U. as one of modern history’s great triumphs.”
[...]
During the same panel, Alex Soros compared Trump to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, saying that Orban was “much tamer” the first time he served as prime minister than during his present term. " But when they come back, they know where the bodies are buried,” Alex Soros claimed of Orban and presumably Trump, He added that Trump had been working to win over the military and referenced “what the Heritage Foundation is trying to do by purging things.”
Surprisingly, Olohan did not dispute Soros' description of Trump's second-term plan as "purging things"; indeed, he linked to the right-wing Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 plan, which is specifically designed to make the federal government "more friendly to the right" by, yes, purging many federal employees -- a largely non-political workforce that has long been immune from partisan politics -- and replacing them with political loyalists more interesting in pushing right-wing Christian agendas than making government work for all Americans. Olohan also described Soros as "anti-American" without offering any evidenceto back it up; perhaps he believes that not supporting an amoral, credibly accused crimninal and serial adulterer is somehow "anti-American."
Speaking of whom, a Sept. 11 post by Joseph Vazquez touted Trump's nasty yet childish insult of Alex Soros:
Former President Donald Trump blasted leftist billionaire George Soros’s extremist heir for pledging to use his father’s ungodly fortune to interfere in the 2024 election.
Alex Soros wrote an op-ed for Politico refuting any notion that his major shakeup at the Open Society Foundations meant there would be any “Soros Retreat from Europe.” In fact, Alex, who described himself as “more political” than his father, heaped praise on the dystopian European Union as a “global beacon of the values that shape our work.”
But a 2024 win for Trump, claimed Alex, would mean doom for the EU. “As someone who spends up to half their time working on the Continent and thinks former United States President Donald Trump — or at least someone with his isolationist and anti-European policies — will be the Republican nominee," Alex mourned. "I believe a MAGA-style Republican victory in next year’s U.S. presidential election could, in the end, be worse for the EU than for the U.S.”
To that end, Alex pledged, “We are adapting OSF to be able to respond to whatever scenarios might emerge, on both sides of the Atlantic.” Trump didn’t mince words in his Sept. 10 response on Truth Social. “We can’t let this spoiled little degenerate win.”
“[Alex’s] daddy controls the D.A.’s and A.G.’s in America. They are destroying our Country. Mitch McConnell is helping them do it by doing NOTHING! An EMBARRASSMENT to the Republican Party. GET TOUGH REPUBLICANS,” Trump continued.
Olohan returned for more rage in a Sept. 26 post:
Open Society Foundations (OSF) Chairman Alex Soros bragged about how his father has funded the legalization of illicit drugs while speaking to an audience of globalists.
During the Clinton Global Initiative 2023 Meeting last week, Alex opened up to The Washington Post Associate Editor Jonathan Capehart on a number of issues, including his father’s radical agenda on drug policy, which Soros dubbed “harm reduction.” Soros claimed, “If you look at what the foundation invested in, in its beginnings, we made a lot of things that weren’t, let’s say ‘sexy’ at the time, we brought them into the mainstream,” before adding, “but one of the reasons why we are attacked the way we are is because we are supporting harm reduction in drug policy all across the world, which was a huge, and still is a huge stigma.” Soros went on to discuss how his father had upset religious groups by supporting abortion and contraception, before providing a specific example of his father’s legacy on drugs. This legacy includes giving over $3 million from 2016 to 2021 to Harm Reduction International which advocates for “needle and syringe programmes” and “drug consumption rooms,” and pushing for the legalization of marijuana.
Olohan offered no evidence that anything Soros is proposing is ineffective, let alone "radical."
Olohan also spent a Sept. 13 post complaining about that other people don't obessively hate Soros the way he does (or, more accurately, is paid to do):
A leftist MSNBC host smeared Republicans as anti-Semitic for daring to call out radical billionaire George Soros for using his ungodly fortune to reshape society to match his open society worldview.
MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan stepped on a rake by attacking critics of Soros. Hasan’s X post read, “The same Republicans who love billionaires, big money donations, dark money, etc, but now indignantly insist that their obsession with Soros isn’t antisemitic, really have to explain what it is about Soros that they so object to. It can’t be his money or donations.” In the words of The Daily Wire host Michael Knowles, “Isn't there a difference between donating to good things and donating to bad things?” Of course there is.
Hasan is not the first lazy media talking head to make Soros’ vendetta to “bend” the “arc of history” seem innocent and his critics seem racist. But since Hasan asked for an explanation, the Media Research Center would be happy to provide the answer.
Olohan didn't explain why an agenda that merely disagrees with right-wing ideology must be smeared as "bad things." He then offered a rehash of its anti-Soros freakouts over the past few years, though without the anti-Semitism of earlier efforts. He then huffed:
If a man who thinks like this puts $32 billion into influencing media, education, criminal justice and other fields, it behooves Republicans, Americans, and people throughout the world to be as interested in him as he is in them.
MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider weighed in on the irony of Hasan’s accusations, “The only reason Hasan is defending Soros is because they are birds of the same radical feather. It is absurd to claim that someone is antisemitic simply because they oppose the radical views of somebody who happens to be Jewish. It is in fact Hasan, who has advocated for policies that harm the sovereignty of Israel.”
Of course, Olohan and Schneider didn't mention how the MRC has invoked the anti-Semitic "puppet master" trope against Soros.If Schneider doesn't want the anti-Soros attacks from the MRC and other right-wingers to be dismissed as anti-Semitic, they should stop making anti-Semitic attacks and withdraw and apologize for the ones they have made. But because the MRC doesn't believe in acknowledging past mistakes, let alone apologizing for them, Schneider will never do that.
