How George Soros Has Become The Ultimate (Jewish) Scapegoat For Europe’s Far Right

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By Daniel J. Solomon April 17, 2017

George Soros became a lightning rod ahead of last November’s presidential election, especially after the Donald Trump campaign ran a commercial linking him to “the global power structure” – a line that many viewed as an anti-Semitic dog whistle.

But as Nick Cohen points out in a recent op-ed for the Guardian, Soros’s appeal as a scapegoat crosses borders, with many in Eastern Europe’s far-right painting him in similarly apocalyptic and problematic terms.

In Hungary, the increasingly authoritarian government of Viktor Orban is attempting to shutter Central European University, a liberal arts school funded by Soros’s Open Society Foundation – an initiative devoted to advancing values of liberal democracy.

In Macedonia, one of the country’s ex-leaders has called for a “de-Sorosisation” of society and threatened street actions to accomplish that goal. Meanwhile, Romania features some politicians claiming that Soros pays demonstrators to air their grievances against the government.

“Listen to the anti-Semitic echoes of the Nazi and communist eras in the vilification of Soros,” he writes. “They are so loud they deafen.”

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter, @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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