The right seems to think George Soros is Evil Incarnate, that he’s a Communist Puppetmaster, and who-know-what-else-bad.
AFAIK, he’s a rich guy who contributes to liberal causes. (You’d think the Right would approve of people spending their own money as they see fit.) I haven’t heard he’s ‘behind’ anything, nor have I heard that he’s part of a grand conspiracy. (I don’t pay that much attention to CTs.)
So what’s the dope? Hy does the Right hate Soros so much?
Same reason the Left obsesses over the Koch brothers.
IIRC, it started somewhere around the 2004 election when Soros donated a lot of money to helping liberal candidates win elections, and the “Either you support the president or you hate America and love Osama bin Laden” meme was still alive enough that Fox News &c. latched onto him as an evil mastermind.
The right is against giving so much power to rich people, who tend to only care about things that will make them richer?
That, at least, is my problem with the Koch brothers. They’re rich, and they only look out for themselves. And yet they have a lot of power.
For billionaires like the Koch Brothers to want to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor is very American, natural, and, some think, Christian. (Don’t forget that Soros was born as a Jew.) Of course these billionaires will support politicians who have the same agenda as themselves — enriching the very rich.
For a poor person to support politicians who want to help the poor is understandable — these poor are just too stupid to understand “trickle-down” economics; the TV stations they watch don’t explain that billionaires need their shoes shined. But for a rich person to support liberal politicians is unforgivable and almost incomprehensible. They’re betraying their class.
Since nobody does anything except out of greed, and liberals, if elected, may raise Soros’ tax bill by millions of dollars, there is a presumption that he must have a nefarious plan to make up these losses in some way. Maybe he’s in cahoots with Russia, maybe it’s the Illuminati, could be North Korea for all we know. His pretense that he wants a better world for his grandchildren must be a scam. No true American can act out of altruism.
For more, Google “George Soros dangerous idiot.” I’d copy some of the hits for you but then I’d have to wash my hands.
Yet they fund non-political programs on PBS.
I think they do that to pander to liberals who buy their products, but I doubt it does them much good. To support PBS and also deny global warming seems a little contradictory to me.
Thanks for the answers; especially Smapti’s, which explains the timing. Since this thread has been moved to IMHO, I wonder if I can change my question? When I read posts or memes from my ‘Conservative’ friends/relatives (actually, they’re Teabaggers), they raise The Spectre of George Soros OMG!!!111! It’s shorthand for them. ‘Of course. Soros is behind it!’ or 'Oh, yeah? What about Soros? :dubious: ’ Now, I prefer loose tea so I don’t hang out with those who dangle Lipton bags from their hats. I don’t know their shortcuts. So what I’d like to know are the ‘charges’ they have against Soros, and since we’re in IMHO, debunking of those charges.
Case in point: the uproar at Wake Forest University over a Koch donation to a academic center on “human flourishing”:
As with Soros, there are political activists who see nefarious conspiracies funded by Big Money under every bush, never mind what the actual activities being funded are.*
*a center on “human flourishing”? I’m sure much will be accomplished. :dubious:
He’s Jewish - so you have that whole segment that believes in the Rothschild NWO/ Gold Standard/ Federal Reserve conspiracies buy into that stuff. Not all people who buy into SOME of that stuff are knowingly anti Semitic
I could be wrong, but I think the Koch brothers contribute a lot more than sonos does, but not sure.
It seems like some of the right will find any connection plausible - the whole stuff where Obama meets with some guy once in a living room and is considered his pal - as well as the Clinton body count stuff.
He certainly has money - and I don’t get why he wouldn’t use MORE of it if he was so concerned, but what do I know.
I haven’t heard as much hatred against him as I have against certain women - I always got the feeling he was supposed to be this vague figure in the background pulling strings for the NWO - vs specifically US Democratic Party goals (or king maker like Koch brothers), but it’s hard for me to listen to people like Alex Jones for too long.
I think after this past election - people like the Koch brothers seem to be less important than they were (or at least not necessary)
It suggests astroturfing, with all the same implications as when the left uses the term against the right – that whatever activism is at issue does not represent a real manifestation of some genuine political belief, but rather is just some rich guy pulling strings to make a pet cause look more widely popular than it actually is.
It’s because he’s, as they like to put it, “(((George Soros))).” Because right-wingers are inveterate anti-Semites, that’s enough for them.
The Kochs donate in order to increase their wealth and expect their purchased congressmen to do their bidding or else. They direct ALEC to draft legislation for them at the state levels, and sometimes said legislation even includes ALEC logos. The Kochs are after perpetual power for the sake of amassing vast riches.
Soros donates to liberal causes, which by definition help all the people. Since there is nothing that conservatives loathe more than helping people, they consider him evil.
Talk about a hijacking of SDMB proportions…OP asks why is Soros considered so evil, and 90% of the responses are about why the Kochs are so evil. :rolleyes:
I think both conservatives and liberals want to believe that their ideas have widespread support among the general population. So how to explain the fact that the opposing side gets so many votes? Simple, you claim there’s some small elite that are using their power and money to fool weak minded voters into supporting the wrong side.
soros is considered evil because some believe he uses (and acquired this way also) his wealth to manipulate and crash entire economies and currencies for personal gain and that his philanthropic activities are simple misdirection and manipulation. They don’t trust him to not do the same to the US and believe his contribution to various politicians and their causes are likely to be him manipulating things here in the US to allow him to be able to crash the economy and the $ for his own profit.
Although Soros is Jewish, he was apparently shielded from Nazis as a teenager by people who helped him hide his Judiasm. This has been co-opted into rumors that he outed other Jews to the Nazis. So you’ll hear rumblings that he is/was a secret Nazi. A secret Nazi who funds lefty causes, which somehow makes sense to the Nazi whisperers.
According to the conservative backlash narrative, most people are hard working, common sense conservatives, unless brainwashed by the rich liberal elite, which pushes a sort of contamination of the mind of vaguely foreign extract, maybe from Europe. Soros funds a lot of liberal causes, so he’s the perfect figurehead for this fear. They blame him for stirring up racial hatred; organizing liberal protests like Occupy, BLM, and the anti-Trump marches; breaking down borders to destroy national sovereignty via mass immigration to form a one world government; destroying the family with abortion, drugs, feminism, and homosexuality; stoking hatred of the police and the military; and whatever else is bothering them that day.
This is a quote from Soros’s 2006 book, The Age of Fallibility:
You can see how this wouldn’t sit well on the right.
This 2007 Bill O’Reilly segment was one of the first takedowns of Soros in mainstream media, AFAIK. Glenn Beck would also criticize him a lot on his chalkboard segments.
Breitbart articles like this are typical. Check out the comment section.
I’d agree he’s basically the right’s version of the Kochs. Both sides have various oligarchs they blame for their side’s inability to win.
The Jewish Nazis are by far the worst kind! *Nobody *can trust 'em. 
From what I can tell a lot of people on the right like to pretend that Soros is just funding all these protests movements and the protesters are just doing it for a paycheck. This lets them discount any validity to protests against Bush or Trump by saying ‘those people are only out there because they are getting paid’. That seems to be a big part of it.