Big money can buy big media influence. Project Syndicate, an international media outlet claiming to be nothing less than “the world’s opinion page”, was founded and is financed by billionaire and self-appointed “philanthropist” George Soros to feed his ultra-leftist agenda into the opinion pages of the world’s newspapers. The principle of operation is very simple and clever: the syndicate invites a huge number of widely-known personalities to write commentaries on various issues, for which they get a generous honorarium. These commentaries are then translated into many languages and offered for free or at a low cost to newspapers around the world, liberal and conservative ones alike, to fill their op-ed pages. Since most of the world’s papers, which not so long ago took pride in their independence and individuality, are struggling for economic survival since the internet has begun to eat away their market, they are grateful to fill their pages at a low cost with pieces written by prominent public intellectuals such as Ian Buruma, Joseph Stiglitz, Kenneth Rogoff, or elder statesmen like Joschka Fischer or Javier Solana. Those pieces can at times be intelligent, at times they just exploit the prominent names name of their authors – but generally they are there to transport a particular world view, which has aspirations to become the “pensée unique” of the western world’s political and media establishment: the left-leaning and radically de-constructivist ideology of George Soros.
The most interesting pieces promoted by Project Syndicate are therefore those of which Soros himself is the author. Not because these pieces are, in an objective sense, thoughtful or informative (which usually they are not), but because they are intended as performative acts through which the billionaire-“philantropist” wants to exert influence. When he writes on economic matters (such as, e.g. the measures he thinks should be adopted to “save the Euro”), one has good reason to think that he is seeking to influence politics in a way that will further his personal business interests. When he writes on social and political matters, one can bet it is to undermine democracy and push a neo-leftist agenda. One has reason to ask why Soros is seeking publish attention in this way when he is far more effective through his string-pulling behind the scenes. The reason is is self-love: not satisfied with his wealth and influence, the one thing he craves is public recognition as an intellectual and great political thinker. Unfortunately, however, his thinking is more cunning than philosophical. In a way, Soros’s political philosophy might be compared to the singing skills of Florence Foster Jenkins, the rich heiress who thought of herself as an opera diva. Similar to Mrs. Jenkins, whose wealth rather than talent allowed her to use Caregie Hall as the stage for her appearances, Soros is using his wealth to buy himself a place on the world’s editorial pages.
One such piece in which Soros puts himself on display has been published on the American independence Day, the 4th of July, and bears the title “US Democracy Under Concerted Attack”. The title is pure irony, but it remains unclear whether that irony is unwitting or intentional: Ostensibly, Soros is warning against democracy in the US being attacked by “domestic enemies of democracy”, by which term he means “the current Supreme Court, which is dominated by far-right extremists, and Donald Trump’s Republican Party, which placed those extremists on the Court”. But in reality, it is George Soros himself who, through his writing as well as through all his involvements in domestic and international politics is waging a “concerted attack” against democracy – not limited to the US, but worldwide.
Two observations impose themselves, one of a formal and one of a more substantial nature.
With regard to substance, it is notable that for Soros “what qualifies the majority of the Court as extremists” is – in the very first place – “their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that recognized a woman’s right to choose whether to give birth”. The abortion issue is indeed a litmus test: tell me what you think about this issue, and I can draw conclusions on your stance on human rights and democracy in general. Soros, self-styled the “human rights defender”, apparently thinks that one class of human persons (=women) should have a constitutional “right” to kill another class of human beings (= their unborn children) whenever and for whatever reason they see fit. What does this tell us about his views on equal rights and equal dignity of all?
Interestingly, Soros does not even purport to make any constitutional argument on why the Supreme Court, in overturning this “right to choose whether to give birth”, might have erred. He seems blithely unaware, or just doesn’t care, that the task of a law court is to apply the law. To him, the role of a constitutional court is apparently not to correctly apply the Constitution, but simply to make political decisions, to fabricate and uphold “rights”, including such that the Constitution (as shown in Justice Alito’s masterful analysis) does not provide for. Never mind what the Constitution really says, never mind what laws have been adopted by the legislator, what he wants is a “right” for women to have their babies killed. What does this tell us about his concern for democracy? What does it tell about his understanding of the rule of law, or of the separation of powers?
Equally interesting is his framing of the issue. He bemoans that women have lost their “right to choose whether to give birth”, pretending that abortion does not involve anyone else than the pregnant woman. In this way he negates the obvious and uncontestable fact that each abortion kills an innocent human being. He seems to think that simply omitting any mention of this fact will be sufficient to cancel out the human rights and dignity of the unborn child that is slaughtered. What does this tell us about his attitude towards objective reality? What does it show with regard to his acceptance of universally recognized scientific facts?
Upholding the right to life for all human beings without exception is already sufficient, according to Soros, to qualify a two-third majority of current supreme court judges as “extremists”. Except that they have not even affirmed the unborn child´s right to life, dignity, or human rights, nor said that the US Constitution actually protects unborn children – they have merely found that the Constitution does not provide for anyone a “right” to kill them, essentially leaving the matter to be decided by democratically elected legislators. But this is apparently far too much democracy for George Soros, the self-styled defender of worldwide “open democracy”…
As Soros rightly understands, if one fake “right” can be overturned, all can. This is indeed so, and it is obvious that many of the fake “rights” the US Supreme Court has “discovered” within the 14th Amendment are unlikely to survive for long: in particular this concerns the “right” to same-sex “marriage”, fabricated out of thin air just six years ago in a highly controversial ruling, at a time when 38 States had adopted specific laws and constitutional amendments, often corroborated by popular referendum, to protect the natural meaning of marriage. One cannot feel anything but shock and amazement at the cavalier way in which Soros qualifies as “extremist” a point of view that less than ten years ago prevailed whenever the question was put to a popular democratic vote. How does this reflect on the respect he has for other people and their views, a pre-condition for a functioning democracy?
But in some respect, the Soros pies also engages in mere fear-mongering based on deliberate misinformation. For example, he writes that “carried to its logical conclusion, this line of reasoning could even allow states to ban inter-racial marriage, as some did until 1967.” This is complete b-s, and Soros knows it of course. The Supreme Court has not cancelled out the 14th Amendment, nor thrown out of the window all the case law based on that provision. Contrary to the alleged “right to abortion”, the right to marriage clearly is “deeply rooted in the nation’s tradition”, which is why the 1967 decision of Loving v. Virginia will survive any challenge, as it was correctly decided under the 14th Amendment, whereas Roe v. Wade clearly wasn’t. George Soros knows this perfectly well. The man is intellectually dishonest down to the marrow of his bones, and only logical conclusion that can be drawn from his writing is that he is seeking to manipulate public opinion through disinformation.
The Soros piece goes on and on, whining about all decisions in which the Supreme Court has recently dared contradict he increasingly radicalized Democrat Party’s political orthodoxy. Once he is done with the Supreme Court, he turns to the legislative and executive branches of government wherever Republicans are in charge. The irony is that – thanks to a rather dubious electoral victory in 2020 – Democrats currently are in control of the White House and both Chambers of Congress – a position of powers that does not occur too frequently in the United States. But this is apparently still not enough: the opposition must be crushed and annihilated.
The only institution that, thanks to the wise judicial appointments by President Trump, is not controlled by Democrats, is the Supreme Court. They cherished it as long as it produced activist decisions that sidelined due legislative process (Roe v. Wade and all the other radical judgments that Soros holds dear are prime examples), but now, having lost control over it, they hate it, cast doubt on its legitimacy, and seek to destroy it. Yet the Court was never more legitimate than precisely now, when it re-establishes a healthy judicial restraint and hands back to elected legislators the powers that judges had usurped through decisions such as Roe. By contrast, what Democrats (and Soros) want is a Court that is controlled by a stable leftist majority, takes its cue from a carefully curated “public opinion” (such as:”a majority of Americans want abortion to be legal according to opinion polls”), and does not care for what the Constitution really provides.
Soros’s attack on the Supreme Court and on Republicans at federal and state level reveals that what he really wants is not democracy unfettered one-party rule. Checks and balances, be it through the Supreme Court or, equally despised by him, the federal build-up of the US political system, must be removed. This is why he is so strongly in favor of centralizing political power at the federal level, placing it into the hands of unelected bureaucracies (such as the EPA) or, provided the judges are “progressive” as they used to be in the Roe-era, the judiciary. He wants to give power to the media and the “civil society” that he is able to control through his money, but not to voters.
It is quite ironic that a man of Soros’s ilk is able to posture, and possibly even to think of himself as, a defender of democracy. In actual fact Donald Trump, whom he so despises, has far better democratic credentials, having run for office and won the Presidency in a spectacular and completely unexpected electoral victory. Trump has stood for election twice, winning in 2016 and losing (under questionable circumstances) in 2020 – but when did the electorate ever get a chance to vote for or against George Soros?? Soros shirks away from participating in the electoral process; he just uses his enormous wealth, accumulated through clever and risky speculations on the stock and currency markets, to create dependencies: he buys media (e.g. through Project Syndicate), the “civil society” (through his Open Society Fund and the plethora of radicalized activist groups it (co-)finances, and certain elected officers (such as the radical-left District Attorneys whose electoral campaigns he funds and with whose help he is systematically transforming certain parts of the country into “no-law-enforcement zones”). Never having obtained even a shred of democratic legitimacy for any of his political activities, he has invested millions and millions to buy himself influence in international bureaucracies such as the UN, where he hand-picks left-leaning “Special Rapporteurs” and dictates their agenda, or the EU, where he is a frequent visitor at the European Commission headquarters.
This man is not a defender of democracy, but democracy’s worst opponent. Fortunately this is increasingly understood by the wider public. Soros’s summary attack on the perceived or real opponents of a Democratic Party that is increasingly under the control of a radicalized minority looks like an indication of a sentiment that he is running out of time. The world has become aware of him, his evil agenda, and the means he deploys to implement it. This already is important, as it neutralizes him.
Go on writing, creepy old man. As people are increasingly informed about you and your agenda, they will not take any of your writing seriously.
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