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Still being so hated at 91 is a world record George Soros would gladly give up. Even Berlusconi at 85 begins to be tender. Instead, the Hungarian-American financier remains the favorite punchball of the planetary right: from conspiracy theorists to fascists, from noeuro to novax, there is no more targeted character in the social subculture. Just the word: Soros, possibly written with the two Ss in SS.
“Scum of Soros”: this is how Turkish President Erdogan now defines his opponent Osman Kavala, who has been in prison for four years without trial. Same epithet for the ambassadors of the ten countries (the most civilized in the world, all Scandinavians) who dared to ask for his release, thus obtaining their own expulsion from Istanbul. How much ingratitude. Because “scum of Soros” Erdogan could also call his daughter, who in a Soros association was accepted for an internship, and even himself. In fact, in 2003 he met him cordially in Davos, asking him to help him enter the European Union. And two years later he hosted him with all honors in Turkey.
The billionaire with the palindrome surname reciprocated. He enlisted various European political heavyweights to plead the cause of Istanbul in Brussels, including former French premier Rocard and our own Emma Bonino. Mission failed, and perhaps also for this reason the ducet of the Bosphorus turned against him. Now he calls him contemptuous “Hungarian Jew”.
And this is precisely the problem. Gigantic. Because until a dozen years ago only neo-Nazis dared to brandish the word ‘Jew’ as an insult. Then to re-Hitlerize the political debate came another benefited by Soros: the Hungarian premier Viktor Orban, sent in 1989 to study liberalism in Oxford at the expense of the neighboring tycoon. Then, confident and generous, once Communism fell, he financed the then liberal party Fidesz founded by Orban, and even established the largest university of his Open Society in Budapest. Expelled by the ungrateful Orban, who blamed Soros for the migration wave of Syrian refugees in 2015.
Open Society, an open society. This is the concept that drives all the fascists crazy, from Trump to Putin, from Milosevic (dropped by Soros) to Xi Jinping, from Salvini to Meloni. Young George learned this from the philosopher in London. Karl Popper, when he landed at the London School of Economics after escaping Nazis and Communists (the ‘liberators’ who raped his mother). Popper’s ‘open society’ represents the ABC of liberalism, but also of globalism, cosmopolitanism, humanitarianism: all black beasts of the right (and of some authoritarians on the left).
Is Soros a speculator? Of course, like all financiers. But also like each of us, when we invest our savings looking for the maximum return. Did Soros ditch the lira in 1992? Probably. But only one who came down with the flood or a Di Battista can accuse him of having done it alone, and not together with the dozens of multi-billion dollar funds from New York to Tokyo, from London to Shanghai. Because no single financier has the critical mass to attack a sovereign currency: at most, the best and most insightful start the avalanche by betting at their own risk.
Soros took a risk, won (a lot), and then decided to be a philanthropist. Thus, being passionate about politics, he invested a tenth of his fortune by financing first the anti-Soviet dissidents, then the antiprohibitionists on drugs (I remember in 1988 a conference in Brussels of the LIA, the Italian antiprohibitionist League of the radical Marco Taradash), then the groups of basis for democracy that liberated Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine from their dictators (the famous orange peaceful revolutions).
All meritorious causes and in the light of the sun, in the financial statements of the Open Society Foundation, including Bonino’s contribution to + Europe. Unlike the attempted bribes on Putin’s oil from some Northern League fixer, or like the funding of a Russian tycoon to Ecr, the far-right European group of which Fratelli d’Italia belongs.
Anyone can check his donations online on the Soros website. The most contested are those for the integration of migrants. Warning: not for the recovery of illegal immigrants, the NGOs specialized in rescues already receive abundant microdonations from a wide audience. But once we arrive in our countries, every euro of assistance provided by Soros for asylum seekers is a euro saved by the treasury. So it should be well seen on the right.
Nothing to do: the sovereignists accuse him and Kalergi of an obscure maneuver to ‘replace’ the white (Aryan?) Population with people of other colors. For some years now, Soros himself has been replaced in the conspiracy paranoia on the web by another character, as rich as he is, but more passionate about vaccines than democracy: Bill Gates. Too bad he’s not Jewish.
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