No, George Soros is not a globalist puppet master

WEF/CC photo

By

Rupen Savoulian

George Soros is a lot of things: a currency speculator, a financier who made billions by taking advantage of adverse conditions in Britain and Europe, a hedge fund manager whose only activity is buying and selling money, and an objectionable figure.

He is a hypocrite, promoting the “Open Society” as a value-free, purely democratic non-ideological societal vision. In fact, the underlying motivation of the supposed ‘Open Society’ is a deep commitment to neoliberal capitalist ideology. However, is he the puppet master, the Jewish entrepreneur at the hub of a vast globalist conspiracy, bankrolling fake revolutions and bringing down national economies? No, he is not.

In the last article, we examined the role of anti-Semitism in shaping and motivating George Soros conspiracy theories. Naming Soros as the ultimate puppet master recycles long-standing prejudices about Jews being the malevolent masterminds of social dissent, funding protests and social unrest to upset the white, Christian status quo.

But repackaging anti-Semitism is not enough. Anti-Semitism, while crucial to the world view of the ultra-nationalist right, is not sufficient to provide an alternative to the growing anti-capitalist mass movements.

We need to go further in our analysis, and examine how the far-right – the main purveyors of such conspiratorial thinking – serve to obscure the underlying causes of immiseration today, and helps to misdirect outrage onto the victims of neoliberal capitalism. The notion of globalism – which predates the election of Trump – has deep roots in American political culture. This is the label which the Alternative Right, and its mainstream supporters, use to attack all its favoured targets, including George Soros.

Globalism

The term globalism, as used by the ultra-right, has seeped into popular discourse since the early 1990s. With globalisation becoming a hot-topic with the growing reach and operation of transnational corporations, issues surrounding unchecked corporate influence, national sovereignty and human rights rose to the fore. The Left made an economic and political critique of the capitalist system; the white supremacist Right substituted globalisation with the word globalism, to redirect the debate to ground that is conducive to the ideology of the anti-immigrant ultra-right.

Liam Stack, writing in the New York Times, explains that globalism has its origins as an anti-Semitic slur term with the beginning of the Cold War. It referred to a secret, powerful cabal of super-rich individuals who manipulate social forces to undermine American national sovereignty. The term, rather than elaborating a strong anti-capitalist analysis, perceives the world as run by secretive groups of conspiratorial elites (usually Jewish) to overturn white, Christian nations such as the United States.

This far-right conspiratorial world view has evolved, especially since the early 1990s, to incorporate all the elements to which the Alternative Right is opposed. As Liam Stack explains:

Globalism is often used as a synonym for globalization, the system of global economic interconnection that has been critiqued for decades by liberal groups like labor unions, environmental organizations and opponents of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. But for the far right, the term encapsulates a conspiratorial worldview based on racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism, according to Mark Pitcavage, a researcher at the Anti-Defamation League.

This conspiratorial world view has developed into a generalised anxiety about what the ultra-right regards as the New World Order (NWO). The latter is a fictional objective of the allegedly globalist elites, who intend to create one world government through international bodies such as the United Nations. The racist John Birch Society began the conspiratorial theorising of the NWO, alleging that the UN was a tool of the Communists and Jews. Similar tropes are trotted out about various international bodies, included the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg group.

What has this got to do with Soros?

As the typical example of an all-powerful Jewish financier, Soros fits the bill for our times – an updated version of Shylock, Soros represents the ultimate liberal globalist, and thus becomes the perfect bogeyman for the ultra-right. No longer is the economic debate about poverty, inequalities, structural racism or neoliberal capitalism. The conversation is transformed into a denunciation of mass immigration and elite influence – supposed tools of the globalist conspiracy to undermine American (and white Western) national sovereignty.

The enemy is no longer the capitalist billionaire, but the immigrants, the refugees, ethnic minorities, feminists, Muslims, atheists, the LGBTQ community – in short, the favoured targets of the Alternative Right. Globalism has, in many ways and forms, continued and extended the old Right’s Cold War-era thinking, and adapted it to our times. Globalism, rather than Communism, is the new demon against which to rally American civilisation (and there is always Islam). Discussions regarding the injustices of capitalism become transformed into anti-immigrant and xenophobic outbursts – working class people become mini-Enoch Powells.

Alex Jones, the shouting conspiracy theorist, regularly screamed his opposition to the fictitious New World Order creeping totalitarianism – his main target being immigration, which is regularly denounced as a tool of the globalist elite. Attacking any kind of protest movement as funded by George Soros, anti-capitalist opposition is delegitimised and written off. If the Walmart protesters, the anti-Kavanaugh protests, Black Lives Matter and anti-corporate groups can all be dismissed as paid puppets of the globalist Soros, then the only alternative oppositional outlet is that of the white supremacist Right.

Soros – hedge funds and philanthropic capitalism

George Soros is one of the wealthiest people in the world, having made his fortune through managing hedge funds. They are a type of pooled investment structure, designed to derive maximum returns for its main investors. Soros is also a currency speculator – the buying and selling of foreign currencies in order to profit from the ever-fluctuating prices of those currencies. Soros Fund Management is one of the most profitable entities in the business.

This economic activity is quite typical of the present day – the financialisation of capitalism; the economic workings of finance capital, as opposed to industrial capital. The domination of finance capital in the operation of the capitalist system produces figures like George Soros – hedge fund managers who make billions without actually producing anything. The shift in gravity from traditional industrial capital – factories, assets, manufacturing and so on – over to finance capital, has led to a fundamental shift in the current stage of the capitalist system.

Of course finance capital, and its domination of the system, is international in scope. Transnational corporations, operated purely for profit and increasingly owned by large banks and hedge funds, increase their scope and size across the globe. Soros, ever willing to exploit an opportunity, made his money by rising through the world of financial speculation.

No, Soros is not the ‘man who broke the Bank of England’, but he did take advantage of the tensions between the UK and Europe in the early 1990s to short-sell the British pound and make billions in the process. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir accused Soros of being responsible for the 1997 Asian economic crisis, a claim for which he later apologised.

Soros engages in corporate philanthropy, providing money to organisations such as the Democratic Party in the US, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others long-derided by the Right as bastions of left-wing ideology. His fellow billionaires also engage in philanthro-capitalism. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Richard Branson – all participate in an economic system that enriches them at the expense of others, and then provide a portion of their wealth to grant-making organisations to salve their consciences.

Most of their money remains hidden away in tax havens. Ironically, with all the talk of globalisation and weakening of states, the billionaires have used the laws passed by nation-states and national governments to provide a veneer of legality to their dubious activity.

Soros promotes his Open Society Foundation, as an instrument to further the values upon which his career and wealth depend. Ideologically and politically committed to ‘free-markets’, Soros worries that if liberal capitalism is collapsing, then the activity of financial speculation will cease with it.

Finance capital has impoverished the lives of millions of people, devastated environments, and demolished the living standards of working class people. This is not the result of the evil workings of a cabal of Jews, or immigration, or refugees, or Muslims, or single mothers on welfare. Finance capital and its attendant social misery is the direct outcome of the billionaire class, and the decisions they make. It is time to identify the cause of immiseration, so we can consciously fight the system that depletes all of us.

Also read ‘George Soros conspiracy theories – anti-Semitic paranoid fantasies move into the mainstream‘

Rupen Savoulian

Australian correspondent for Tuck Magazine, Rupen Savoulian is an activist, writer, socialist and IT professional. Born to Egyptian-Armenian parents in Sydney, Australia, his interests include social justice, anti-racism, economic equality and human rights.