THE SOROS SLANDER CAMPAIGN CONTINUES

We return this week to the conservative crusade to destroy the
reputation of financier and philanthropist George Soros. The
Hungarian-born billionaire has driven Republicans to distraction for
two reasons.

First, after decades of dedicating his fortune to fighting for
democracy and civil society in his native Eastern Europe, he has
turned his attention to the United States, where he is spending as
much as $15 million to help various liberal groups improve their
efforts to expose the malfeasance of the Bush Administration and
defeat it in 2004. Second, in response to some surprise questioning at
a meeting with Jewish leaders last year, Soros offered his opinion
that Israeli foreign policy is in significant measure responsible for
increasing anti-Semitism around the world.

The attacks have been ratcheted up in recent weeks because the
Republicans see his prominent role in funding organizations like
America Coming Together, MoveOn.org and the Center for American
Progress (where I am a senior fellow) as a means to tar John Kerry as
a dangerous radical by association. They'd also like to scare off
others who might be considering such roles for themselves. The
Republican National Committee has circulated a briefing paper on
Capitol Hill in which Soros is referred to as "Lord of the Democrats"
and the "Daddy Warbucks" of the drug legalization movement, and which
highlights what it deems to be his controversial positions on
abortion, gun control and the right to end one's own life. In Richard
Mellon Scaife's NewsMax magazine, a writer named Richard Poe has
extended the attack against the "somewhat loony" Soros, who, he says,
"hates America" and is seeking to engineer a "coup" against George W.
Bush. Poe has been invited out of the Scaife swamp to repeat this
nonsense to millions of people via Bill O'Reilly's Fox program, in
which the host has repeatedly denounced the alleged crimes of the man
he calls "as far left as you can get and not move to Havana," "the
most powerful Democrat in the country" and "the Godfather." Not much
on nuance, O'Reilly describes Soros's position on immigration as
follows: "Come on in, Al Qaeda. We'll get bin Laden a condo.

If he doesn't have the money, we'll income-redistribute and get it to
him." Mr. "No Spin" alleges that the mainstream media present Soros as
if he were "Little Bo Peep" in order to protect the Democrats "because
most Americans don't buy into his agenda."

O'Reilly also heaps scorn on Soros for being a "committed atheist,"
characterizing him as "definitely anti-Israel in the sense that he
believes...that the Palestinians are the aggrieved and the oppressors
are the Israeli government." But even he does not go as far as Tony
Blankley, editor of the editorial page of Sun Myung Moon's Washington
Times, former spokesperson for Newt Gingrich and a frequent guest
panelist on cable and network chat shows.

Using unmistakably anti-Semitic tropes and metaphors, Blankley
appeared on Fox's Hannity & Colmes to call Soros a "robber baron" and
"pirate capitalist." "This is a man who blamed the Jews for
anti-Semitism," he continued. "This is a man who, when he was
plundering the world's currencies, in England in '92, he caused the
Southeast Asian financial crisis in '97. He said that he has no moral
responsibility for the consequences of his financial actions.... He is
a self-admitted atheist; he was a Jew who figured out a way to survive
the Holocaust." As blogger Josh Marshall pointed out, "You have to
hand it to [Blankley], pasting together a rant which manages to weave
together accusations of anti-Semitism and most of the key anti-Semitic
slurs and motifs." Moreover, Blankley implies that Soros should
somehow be blamed for surviving the Holocaust.

Along with others, I called attention to this incredible outburst on
my website, Altercation (www.altercation.msnbc.com), and a reader
contacted Blankley about it. Blankley responded with an e-mail that
was then passed on to me with no promise of off-the-record protection.
The pundit made his meaning plain: "Soros and his family converted
from their Jewish faith and survived the Holocaust (there was
speculation that they may have collaborated with the Nazi's [sic])."
When I both called and e-mailed Blankley to ask him to defend this
slander, he did not deny he sent the e-mail, nor did he specifically
address its contents, though he expressed "regret" that his statement
on Hannity & Colmes was "both incomplete and pregnant with a malicious
implication I did not intend." He claimed that, having read an
assertion on the Internet that Soros collaborated with the Nazis, he
"started down that path and thought better of it in mid-sentence" in
his appearance on Fox. What's unclear is why he continued to circulate
this outrageous tale--as he did in the e-mail he sent to my
Altercation correspondent--long after he had time to rethink the
comments he made for which he now expresses regret.

It is hard to imagine a more immoral strategy to use against a Jewish
opponent than to insinuate that his family were Nazi collaborators
(not that a teenage George Soros would have had much say in the matter
at the time).

All of the above bespeaks the desperation that Republicans and their
punditocracy shock troops apparently feel at the prospect of being
challenged by someone with the resources to make a difference in an
election in which polls show that a majority of voters disapprove of
George Bush and that a plurality plan to vote for his opponent.

And while they cannot be held responsible for the poisonous rhetoric
of Blankley and others, mainstream Jewish organizations like Abe
Foxman's ADL have sought to stigmatize Soros because they cannot
countenance the view--openly stated by Jewish leaders in Europe--that
Israel's harsh treatment of the Palestinians under Ariel Sharon
contributes to worldwide hatred of, and violence against, diaspora
Jews.

Soros tells me that none of these ugly slanders of his good name will
in any way deter him from his task of helping to save the nation and
the world from the Bush Administration. "The more I am attacked, the
more I am ready to stand up for what I believe in. But I am frustrated
by the reach and influence of the RNC propaganda machine. They are
presenting a totally distorted picture of who I am and what I stand
for."

about
Eric Alterman
Columnist

Eric Alterman currently writes the "Stop the Presses" media column
for The Nation and the "Altercation" web log
(www.altercation.msnbc.com) for MSNBC.com. In recent years, he has
been a contributing editor to, or columnist for: Worth, Rolling
Stone, Elle, Mother Jones, World Policy Journal and the Sunday
Express (London). His Sound & Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy
(1992 2000), won the 1992 George Orwell Award and his It Ain't No Sin
to be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen (1999,
2001), won the 1999 Stephen Crane Literary Award.