Can We Stop With The Anti-Semitism Nonsense About George Soros?

If you’re old like me, you probably remember the name Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife was a billionaire who spent hundreds of millions of his fortune backing conservative causes, including donations to organizations such as the American Enterprise Institute, GOPAC (Newt Gingrich’s PAC), Reason Foundation, Federalist Society, etc. Everywhere you turned, Democrats and liberals were happy throw his name out as a backer of conservative causes. Over time, those same Democrats and liberals switched their focus from Scaife to the “Koch brothers.” People still say “Koch brothers” even though David died nearly three years ago.

Conservatives have their own boogeyman in the name of George Soros. Soros is a billionaire and a progressive and donates to groups that advance a progressive agenda. It is not a secret. Soros donated nearly $33 million in the 2004 election cycle to defeat George W. Bush. He’s donated hundreds of millions more since then. The Center For American Progress got off the ground with $3 million in seed money from Soros. CAP used some money they raised to launch the far-left website, ThinkProgress.

Soros’s non-profit, the Open Society Policy Center, spent $140 million in 2021, donating it to various progressive political organizations and ballot initiatives. He spent $170 million of his own money on the 2022 mid-term elections. Since 2020, Soros donated nearly $500 million to political causes and groups that align with progressives and the Democratic Party. One would be hard-pressed to find someone who has donated more money to political causes of any stripe in the same three-year period.

Does pointing that out make me an anti-Semite? Of course not. No more so than it makes criticism of Charles Koch, “anti-Dutch.” One cannot be involved in the world of politics, spending hundreds of millions of dollars doing it and escape criticism. That is how our system works.

Still, the perniciousness of people to take up the charge of “anti-Semitism” is nothing more than an attempt to say to people, “Shut up.” Democrats, pundits, talking heads and columnists behave as if the criticism comes with a sprinkle of anti-Semitism and the self-righteousness of their accusations only makes it worse. On Morning Joe today, Joe Scarborough had the following to say:

Now, the explosions of irony you hear is Joe saying this with Al Sharpton sitting on the panel. I could write 1,500 words detailing his blatant anti-Semitism as opposed to the made-up stuff about Soros, but plenty of others have already done it.

The latest bromide comes after Ron DeSantis tweeted about Bragg calling him a “Soros-backed” prosecutor. Somehow, pointing that fact out is akin to anti-Semitism. Here’s the deal:

Alvin Bragg is a Soros-backed prosecutor. 

Less than a week after the progressive organization, Color of Change, said it would spend $1 million to get Bragg elected, Soros donated $1 million to the organization, who then spent $500,000 of that in aiding Bragg’s campaign. To quantify pointing that out as “anti-Semitism” is a crystal-clear example of the bad faith that permeates our politics these days. I certainly do not recall Scarborough or any others rushing to criticize those who pointed out that Sheldon Adelson, a Jew, of anti-Semitism when he spent $90 million during the 2012 presidential campaign or $100 million during the 2016 presidential campaign. I am sure in some partisan corners it happened, but it certainly did not take root in the mainstream press.

Soros’s proclivity for getting what he calls “reform prosecutors” elected is not a secret. He wrote about in the Wall Street Journal! Soros became a naturalized American citizen in 1961. His involvement in U.S. politics does not differ from Charles Koch.

Still, with that, comes the invitation for criticism. Soros exercises his speech by giving millions of dollars to organizations, causes, and candidates that align with his political policy preferences and ideology. Critics exercise their free speech rights by pointing out that there are prosecutors across the country for which he supports, both in spirit and with dollars. And it is fair to argue that some of those prosecutors have had a deleterious effect on crime in the cities where they operate. San Francisco’s former district attorney, Chesa Boudin, got recalled with 55% of the vote, after winning his election with 46% of the vote. While not a prosecutor, Lori Lightfoot lost her mayoral reelection bid because voters were dissatisfied with how she handled crime.

In Alvin Bragg’s first year as a district attorney, he downgraded 52% of felony charges to misdemeanors, a figure that never rose above 40% when his predecessor, Cyrus Vance, held the office. One of those cases included a knife-wielding man who stole $2,000 worth of merchandise from a Duane Reade pharmacy. That’s his call, and George Soros helped him get elected. The narrative spun by some in the press, including a reporter at CNBC, hinges on the silly idea that because Soros never spoke to or met Alvin Bragg, it puts the “Soros-backed” talk into some pocket of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorizing, and that is just bonkers.

George Soros is free to support and financially back whomever he wants. And people can criticize him for it. Any attempt to quell criticism with patently bogus claims of anti-Semitism want is to shut off debate.

Not in America.