The MRC's Dirty War Against George Soros: The Next Generation
In addition to spewing its usual hate of George Soros for the sin of not being conservative, the Media Research Center also targeted Soros' son for the sin of taking over his father's philanthropic efforts.
By Terry Krepel Posted 12/11/2023
George Soros
When it wasn't melting down over "Soros-funded" prosecutors holding Donald Trump accountable for his crimes and helping Elon Musk frame him as the Jew conservatives are allowed to hate, the Media Research Center was continuing its dirty war on George Soros in all the usual ways:
The MRC served up more detailed attacks as well. Clay Waters complained in an April 20 post that it was pointed out how right-wing attacks on Soros lean into anti-Semitism:
The House Judiciary Committee held an unusual “field hearing” in Manhattan to hear from local victims of violence -- a bank shot against Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is prosecuting a dubious case against former president Donald Trump while being accused of being soft on actual violent crime.
New York Times responded with haughty defensiveness, rallying around both the city and prosecutor Bragg in “Republicans Attack Bragg, Spotlighting Crime Victims in New York” Wednesday, as reported by congressional reporter Luke Broadwater and Jonah Bromwich, who covers New York criminal justice.
One Republican bashed him as “pro-criminal.” Another called him a “terrible” prosecutor with a habit of losing cases. A third suggested he was in the pocket of a wealthy Jewish financier frequently demonized by the far right.
That “wealthy Jewish financier” would be billionaire and leading Democratic fundraiser George Soros. After downplaying Soros’s pro-Democratic election funding in an article earlier this month, this Times article never even bothers to confirm the connection between Soros and Bragg, leaving the implication that the Republican mention of him is motivated by random anti-Semitism.
But Soros pledged $1 million to support Color of Change PAC at almost the same time the PAC announced they would put $1 million into Bragg’s successful DA campaign, making Republican criticism legitimate. Isn’t the press usually more curious about political donations -- or is that just for conservatives who receive funding from, say, Charles Koch?
Waters went on to complain that "The Times conflated anti-Soros protestors with anti-Semitism" by noting that " a man held a sign with the name of the financier George Soros, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, along with the image of a Star of David and dollar signs." But rather than actually address the point, he played whataboutism: "Speaking of 'dollar signs,' there was no comment from Democratic Rep. Ilhan 'all about the Benjamins' Omar, whose own anti-Semitic comments were aggressively downplayed by the same paper." He then claimed without evidence that "it's possible the sign is being held by a Democrat to help the narrative along."
A May 22 post by Joseph Vazquez cheered how a highly biased right-wing poll demonstrated how relentless attacks against Soros by the MRC and other right-wingers are apparently succeeding in demonizing him:
A majority of Americans are rejecting the media’s attempts to shield leftist billionaire activist George Soros from criticism and cast his opponents as anti-Semites.
A new survey by Rasmussen Reports and Ron Coleman’s ColemanNation podcast of 1,002 U.S. likely voters revealed that “Most American voters have a negative opinion of liberal billionaire George Soros, and nearly half agree with [Twitter owner] Elon Musk’s words comparing Soros to a comic-book villain.” Specifically, 51 percent of respondents reported viewing Soros “unfavorably,” which included 39 percent who had a “very unfavorable” impression of the billionaire. This poll’s release comes days after Musk set Twitter on fire for comparing Soros to Marvel supervillain Magneto, saying Soros "hates humanity" and for Soros for seeking to “erode the very fabric of civilization.”
Despite all the media bluster to make Soros into some kind of a victim, Americans clearly aren’t buying it. “Forty-seven percent (47%) of voters agree with [Musk’s] quote, including 35% who Strongly Agree that Soros ‘hates humanity,’” according to the survey taken between May 16-18, 2023.
Vazquez went on to quote "Bongino Report Content Manager Matt Palumbo" attacking Soros, but he didn't disclose that Palumbo moonlights by writing propaganda for arrested Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui.
Tom Olohan used a June 6 post to tout an anti-Soros book by a right-wing author (whose ideology Olohan didn't disclose):
A “one-eyed King among the blind,” “some kind of god, the creator of everything,” “brilliant” and “clever;” these are just some of the disturbing bona fides a new book analyzes that leftist billionaire George Soros has acquired for himself over his decades-long activist career.
“Soros is right; America is under attack; its Constitution, independence, and democracy are under attack by Soros and his army,” writes American Center for Democracy Founder and President Rachel Ehrenfeld in her new book The Soros Agenda (2023). Ehrenfeld’s work details the ungodly fortunes (over $32 billion) spent by Soros to transform society into his distorted view of an “open society,” a leftist utopia undergirded by anti-Americanism, Marxist economics, climate change extremism, abortion-on-demand and racial strife.
Ehrenfield does not shy away from controversial topics in this work, linking Soros to several color revolutions and to anti-Israel groups, while also providing evidence that Soros lacks compassion and despises his background. She also delves into the lack of transparency that is characteristic of many Soros initiatives.
The main task that Ehrenfeld undertakes with this work is to demonstrate connections that are regularly obscured or ignored by establishment media outlets, while Soros-funded fact-checkers rebuke those who do report on Soros’ actions.
Olohan made no effort to let anyone respond to Ehrenfeld's attacks -- he hates Soros as much as she does, after all.
The next day, Nicholas Schau complained that the right-wing anti-Soros machine was exposed:
NPR ludicrously claimed that the leftist Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) was not influenced by George Soros funding, despite NPR itself being funded by the leftist billionaire.
In an article published June 4, NPR complained about waning support for ERIC — an organization focused on voter registration — in Republican states and ridiculously attributed the ire over its ties to a so-called “far-right misinformation machine.” However, according to the Capital Research Center (CRC), there is real evidence that Soros’ network provided funding for the organization, which was established as a project of The Pew Charitable Trusts. According to CRC investigative researcher Parker Thayer, “NPR’s insistence that there is no connection between ERIC and George Soros is laughable and refuted by their own article.”
Specifically, as Thayer pointed out, “[NPR] admit[ted] several paragraphs into the article that Soros’s private foundation provided money to the organization that created the ERIC but spen[t] the rest of the same article insisting that there is no connection.”
Schau didn't disclose that the CRC has a biased right-wing ideology, nor did he explain why ERIC's mission of encouraging voter registration and modernizing the election process is purportedly a bad thing, let alone "leftist." He also offered no proof that any of the money Soros donated to "the organization that created the ERIC" went directly toward creating ERIC. Finally, Schau didn't deny the existence of a right-wing anti-Soros machine -- hard for him to do when he's obviously part of it.
Targeting Soros' son
The MRC made it clear that it will be transferring its dirty war against George Soros to the next generation. The meltdown started with a June 12 post by Vazquez:
George Soros’ self-proclaimed “‘more political’” heir to his radical empire has his own track record of political activism that reeks of a potentially worse Soros sequel.
The Wall Street Journal released its latest interview with the recently crowned Open Society Foundations Chairman Alexander Soros headlined: “George Soros Hands Control to His 37-Year-Old Son: ‘I’m More Political.’”
According to The Journal’s summary, Alexander is focused on “broadening his father’s liberal aims—‘We think alike,’ the elder Soros said—while embracing some different causes. Those include voting and abortion rights, as well as gender equity.” In addition, “[Alexander] plans to continue using the family’s deep pockets to back left-leaning U.S. politicians.”
If Alexander's mission is to generate a steroids-injected version of his father’s agenda defined by anti-Americanism, Marxist economics, climate change extremism, abortion-on-demand and racial strife, then America is in for a scary ride.
“George Soros wouldn’t have made this move if he didn’t believe Alexander wasn’t just as radical and committed as to making the distorted open society worldview a reality as he is,” said MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Vice President Dan Schneider. “Soros has finally crowned his heir, and Americans should be wary of the enormous left-wing political power that has been dumped into Alexander’s lap.”
It’s not like Alexander has been an innocent observer on the sidelines waiting for his opportunity to make his mark. His leftist bona fides have already been established. His foundation, the Alexander Soros Foundation, has given bulky sums of cash to a litany of leftist causes.
[...]
Attacking former President Donald Trump and the GOP fits directly with Alexander Soros’ brand. After all, he tweeted in 2022 that “the end of democracy and civil war are real possibilities,” if Trump ends up being reelected to the White House again.
Vazquez failed to identify what is purportedly "anti-American" about Soros' political efforts, nor did he disprove Alex Soros' tweet about Trump to be in any way false. Nevertheless, narratives are more important than facts at the MRC, so its target was firmly placed on Soros to smear him like they do his father. Tom Olohan ranted in a July 11 post:
The radical heir to the Soros fortune and Chairman of the Open Society Foundations has found a ready ear at the White House.
According to White House visitor logs, Alex Soros, son and heir of leftist mega donor George Soros, has visited the White House fifteen times and with Biden administration officials twenty times since Biden took office. Alex became chairman of his dad’s Open Society Foundations last year and was recently named as the heir apparent to the elder Soros’ $25 billion leftist organization. Alex had little difficulty in arranging meetings with prominent leaders in the Biden White House as the son of the billionaire activist who has sunk at least $21 billion into leftist causes across the world since 2000. He clearly isn’t wasting time establishing contacts to showcase the enormous influence he wields.
Breitbart News, which reported on Alex Soros’ visits to the White House, provided a breakdown on the specifics of his meetings in descending chronological order:
In other words, Soros is doing what every other wealthy, well-connected person does who wants to have some political influence. Olohan did not explain what, if anything, Soros is doing any different from wealthy conservatives who meet with politicians when Republicans are in power.
All this culminated in a July 13 report by Vazquez and Olohan trying to tar Soros as "even more radically leftist than his father":
George Soros — one of the world’s most powerful and influential leftist billionaires — finally found an heir to his massive empire. Alex Soros was named the new leader of his father’s $25-billion Open Society Foundations. That gives him the resources to be, in his own words, even “more political.”
Alex has shown himself to be even more radically leftist than his father, on issues ranging from supporting abortion and climate change activism to outright anti-American propaganda. He considers the overturning of Roe v. Wade as one of the “worst” days in U.S. history and even sees the Republican Party as “the Confederacy.” Now, he’s been given the keys to a philanthropic giant that funnels hundreds of millions of dollars into organizations promoting extremist causes in the United States and abroad since at least 1984. Alex just took over and already laid off at least 40% of OSF’s staff supposedly for the purpose of launching “‘significant changes to the foundation's operating model.’”
MRC Business extensively researched Alex Soros’s previous radical statements on everything from politics to climate change and social issues for clues about the kind of leader he will become in his father’s place. His own words indicate he will be much worse.
Actually, all Vazquez and Olohan found is that Alex Soros is pro-choice, supports efforts to fight climate change and has criticized conservatives -- all pretty standard (and not "radical") liberal positions. Still, the duo tried their best to pretend otherwise:
Hates the Right: Alex tweeted that the GOP was “the Confederacy” for pushing the repeal of the pro-abortion Roe ruling. He hates both recent Republican presidents. Alex smeared former President George W. Bush by claiming he was a “criminal deserving of impeachment.” He prophesied the possible “end of democracy” and “civil war” should former President Donald Trump get reelected.
Obsessed with Abortion: The younger Soros argued that the Dobbs ruling was “one of the worst days in American history.” In Alex’s view, reversing Roe “would rob women of their right to life, to health, and to equality.” He even promoted the idea that, "‘Gender equality isn’t possible without abortion and contraception’” and offered up his admiration for former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.
Fixated on Climate Change Extremism: Alex is dedicated to climate change radicalism. He called for teachers to inject climate propaganda into lessons “if you teach history, global affairs or science.” He’s also considered global redistribution of wealth as a “compelling solution” to climate change.
Weaponizing Race to Smear Opponents: “There are white supremacists in the White House,” cried Alex Soros in a July 31, 2020, tweet. In another racially charged tweet, he said “Trump is putting Jews in danger to stir up his white nationalist base.” Alex also saluted the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, urging them to “rip structural racism out by its roots” in the American justice system.
Vazquez and Olohan concluded: "George Soros boasted to The Times in 2019 that he was actively engaged in trying to bend “the arc of history” in “the right direction.” However, it looks like it will be the more radical Alex who will be doing the bending in his stead."
Meanwhile, MRC boss Brent Bozell ran to Fox Business the same day to parrot this misleading narrative:
“George Soros has always been crafty and canny and evil — my personal opinion on this. His son is saying, ‘I’m not going to be crafty. I’m not going to be canny. I’m going to throw bombs,’” Bozell told Fox Business guest host Ashley Webster during the July 13 edition of Varney & Co. MRC Business extensively researched Alex’s previous radical statements on social media and other places on topics ranging from politics and climate change to social issues, looking for clues about the kind of leader he will become in his father’s place. His own words indicate he will be much worse.
[...]
“[Alex has] been throwing bombs with the Tweets he’s been putting out. You’re seeing where his priorities are,” Bozell analyzed. “I would say to anybody who loves freedom; anyone who supports the right to life; anyone who believes in a civil society; all these things are suddenly in danger because this man has the power to turn over the apple cart.”
The MRC also got Fox News to write a article for its website, by media reporter Brian Flood, uncritically repeating the attacks and bogus framing. Flood made no attempt to offer balance by referencing anything that didn't appear in Vazquez's and Olohan's hit job.
Vazquez went on Tim Graham's July 17 podcast to promote the overheated report:
Radical-left billionaire George Soros has been plowing many millions of dollars into the American political system for decades now. When conservatives object to it, the liberal media -- which he subsidizes heavily -- denounces the attention as anti-Semitic. Soros has confessed he has a "God complex," so he stunned the world when he announced his son Alex would be taking control over his "Open Society Foundations."
Our Soros expert Joseph Vazquez of MRC Business and Free Speech America explains why that makes things worse for capitalism and free speech. Alex boasts he's "more political" than his father, and where his father has been relatively reclusive, Alex can be found in pictures with Biden and Harris and Schumer and so on.
His statements are sometimes wild. Alex warned the U.S. might be headed to “civil war” if former President Donald Trump were to be reelected, bizarrely compared the GOP to ”the Confederacy," and called the decision to overturn the pro-abortion Roe v. Wade ruling “one of the worst days in American history.”
Of course, the MRC sees any political position even slightly to its left as "radical" and "wild," so its judgment on Soros' views probably shouldn't be taken at face value.
Back to Soros pere
After spending the summer hating George Soro's son for the offense of being, well, George Soros' son, the MRC returned to its usual obsessive hatred of Soros himself. 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, and it cheered 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:
The main target of the MRC's manufactured outrage, though, was again Alex Soros. Olohan 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 generally 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 evidence to back it up; perhaps he believes that not supporting an amoral, credibly accused criminal 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.
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 obsessively 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.
