The Plot Against George Soros

[FelineOverlord]

It involves the GOP, Netanyahu, and Victor Orban.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[Lonestarblue]

1. We live in a dispiriting world.

Republicans use Soros as an evil man who wants to destroy the world by supporting Democrats. Their voters know about Soros but almost nothing about the right-wing organizations that provide literally billions of dollars to strangle democracy and keep the government running the way the wealthy want it to run—the many Koch Foundation PACs, the Uihleins, the Mercers, the many major corporation that fund ALEC to write anti-democratic laws, the Adelsons, and on and on.

Republicans harp on Soros because he is Jewish, and antisemitism runs strong in that Party, and because they use him to portray Democrats as evil. Why do Democrats never even mention the right-wing forces that are tearing our democracy apart piece by piece?

[wnylib]

6. I think your last sentence is important.

We don't need to become demonizers like Republicans but we do need to publicize what the right is doing, how, and who. Our messaging on this needs to be condensed, though, to short exposures of Republican tactics in terms and imagery that people can relate to. We tend to shun sloganeering, but it can work and does not have to be outright lies like Republican memes. There is enough shocking truth about Republican tactics, goals, and "values" to create accurate, condensed messaging slogans about their hipocrisy and anti democracy positions.

We can also define ourselves in the same way - associated with things that the public values and takes pride in. Positive, proactive self defining instead of reacting to attempts by the right to define us.

[Initech]

9. Oh yes, my MAGA neighbors blame Soros for everything.

And I'm not entirely sure they know exactly what he really does. Of course my one neighbor is such a dyed-in-the-wool Trumpster I'm sure he gets his news from shit sources like Infowars.

[HotRod Deluxe]

2. Gee...

It's amazing how repubs normally love themselves some billionaires; sheldon adelson, koch bros. ect. , but that pesky Soros...GRRR!

[wnylib]

7. According to the first link, the demonization of Soros

began after the election of Orban in Hungary. But I remember much earlier attacks on him in the early 2000s during the Bush years. At a Yahoo political group, Soros was frequently bashed by the RW posters as supposedly a pro Nazi collaborator against fellow Jews when he was 14. Dozens of other claims and attacks on him were made at that site. This was long before Orban's election.

[FelineOverlord]

10. According to the first link, the demonization of Soros

Yes, the Twitter thread mentioned that they have been going after Soros since at least 1992.

Link to tweet

[wnylib]

12. Thanks for making me aware of that.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s I did a lot of debunking of anti Soros BS. It came from RW posters, but I never knew where they were getting it from.

[certainot]

3. like with everything republican, talk radio played/plays a critical part while liberals ignore it

if i had a nickel for every time his name was repeated on the radio as a villain funding stuff like the women's march (somebody had to pay them!) and then the liberal 'deep state' coup attempt starting a year before social media trolls created Q-anon, or the many other liberal/'communist' causes years before that......

[JudyM]

4. K&R

Why can’t we be more effective at our own messaging? Rs control the narrative with their pithy put-down mischaracterizations.

[JHB]

11. Because they have a wall-to-wall, 24/7 repeat and reinforce mechanism...

...and we don't.

Thousands of radio stations, often blaring hours-long harangues, then switching hosts and back to more hours-long harangues.

Commercial stations. Religious stations. They cover the entire country and marinate public opinion in bullshit.

[JudyM]

13. True. And what do we do? May seem trite, but we need to be meeting them with pithy counterpunches.

And engineeering our offense as well.

They sneer memorably and their minions only need to push replay. That’s a recipe for nearly automatic spreading of their tripe. Why aren’t the best minds in marketing being hired by our side? That’s what it’s going to take, IMO, because Dem politicians aren’t experts in messaging. We all talk reason, but we need reason interpreted through a pithy, emotionally adherent filter. Our ideas need to be presented in a more “sticky” way, enough to get more of our voters out.

[JHB]

16. That requires money, and the people on our side with money to spare prefer to...

...send it to (so-called) ex-Republicans cribbing from 20 years of pithy counterpunches from overtly liberal precincts. And who mostly still want to pretend it was all Trump and they themselves had nothing to do with it.

The liberals who made those pithy counterpunches and were ahead of the curve on what the Republicans were turning themselves into have largely had to move on because they need to make a living, and only conservative media invests in conservative media infrastructure. TownHall and RedState have their bloggers and columnists promoted, making appearances on mainstream media, while liberals who were rather pointed in their comments and questions were regarded as "shrill" and consigned to the periphery, with their blogs and some podcasts still alive. Hiring a publicist to get them on wider-market venues is cost-prohibitive for them.

Attention is another thing that follows the money.

[JudyM]

18. Right.

We need to build our brand better by investing in messaging and media. This isn’t something we should leave to blogs and podcasts. Our leadership should be mainstreaming our message, IMO. Polish it and sell it because that’s what it’s going to take to compete in the marketplace of ideas today.

[ShazamIam]

5. The EU attacks against Soros revealed to me the links between the Republicans represented by the

Teaparty types have close ties to the current right wing offensive there, revealed in all those investigations between, Russia, Ukraine and the 2016 and 2020 elections.

The article notes that Soros had been a right winger target for years before Putin organized this effort against democratic leaning nations.

[wnylib]

8. How ironic that the tactics used by Birnbaum and Finklestein

are right out of Hitler's playbook.

[Blue Owl]

14. If you wanna blow a Q-Anoner's mind...

Just ask them to spell George's last name backwards...

[rockfordfile]

15. There's a lot of anti-Semitism against Soros from fascist

[BobTheSubgenius]

17. I think that one of the most important aspects of the Soros story is one of the least-discussed.

The right seems to view him as a super-billionaire with unlimited resources and a completely fanatical lean to the far left. They like to blame EVERYTHING on him that comes from the left, and it's past the point of ridiculous.

No one person could manage everything he is accused of, and, as vast as $8.5 billion may be, the Kochs alone have more than 10 times that much. I'm sure no one would ever claim the Kochs or their interests were or are underrepresented in today's politics. Likewise, other hard right billionaires like Sheldon Adelson, Robert Mercer or Richard Mellon Scaife act, speak and donate exactly the way you think they might.

But their involvement in the political process is not only accepted, but praised and greatly admired for having the "correct" political views and the means to bring them about. They kind of dwarf the abiilty and reach of George Soros, both jointly and severally, wouldn't you say?

[Behind the Aegis]

19. Interesting article, but I don't like the implications of the by-line.

Nothing in the article is all that shocking, except the fact the one person said he would "so it all again". If you can look at the outcome, and still say that, then there is a huge problem.