When one looks at lists of the largest donors to global political causes in the last 15 to 20 years, one name continues to pop up again and again, especially when it comes to large contributions to progressive and Democratic organizations and political action committees: George Soros.
As the world’s 27th-wealthiest individual, Soros has a net worth of nearly $25 billion, most of it located offshore. Much of that wealth has come from currency speculation and big bets in international markets that have been affected by one of Soros’ biggest side interests — politics.
In fact, given the amount of money Soros has given to progressive and liberal groups in the last 20 years — from MoveOn to Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter — it seems disingenuous of Wikipedia to refer to Soros as a “philanthropist”; “global manipulator” is a more apt title.
As one of the planet’s most affluent citizens, Soros hasn’t been shy about flexing his political muscles, as atrophied as they likely are at his age of 86.
Born Jewish, Soros began life prior to the outbreak of World War II in Budapest, Hungary. When the Nazis had designs on his birth country along with the rest of Europe, Soros might have thought he could escape destiny by declaring himself an atheist.
In 1944, when the Germans occupied Hungary, Soros’ father hid him with the family of a German-Hungarian official, who Soros accompanied to work some days. The official’s job? Deporting Jews to concentration camps and seizing their property.
After the war, the Soros’ family moved to England where the young Soros attended the London School of Economics (LSE). It was there where he became a disciple of Professor Karl Popper, who advocated societal change through violence and Marxist doctrines.
From Popper’s book, “The Open Society and Its Enemies” Soros would later draw much of his ideals, and the book’s title even influenced the name of Soros’ largest political action group, the Open Society Foundations (OSF).
After graduating from the LSE, Soros started working for investment banks, first in England, and then in New York. He began making his fortune via hedge funds including what later became known as “The Soros Fund” and “The Quantum Fund.” Much of Soros’ early investment bets were in defense industry-related stocks and companies.
Living in Greenwich Village in the 1960s, Soros went on to meet many students and radical leaders of the time, including Aryeh Neier, one of the founders of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a radical socialist group that sought to overthrow the U.S. government.
After leaving SDS, Neier joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) where he eventually became its national executive director. In 1978, after his stint at the ACLU, Neier went on to found a group called Human Rights Watch (HRW). At both the ACLU and HRW, Neier promoted the idea that the United States was one of the worst violators of human rights in the world.
Apparently, despite Soros’ early financial investments, thinking like this had become appealing to the financier, and he eventually made Neier the leader of the OSF, which Soros originally established in 1979 in Hungary but brought to New York by 1993.
OSF then turned around and gave over $8 million to the ACLU and more than $100 million to HRW. OSF now operates in 37 countries and has given $11 billion to progressive and liberal causes and organizations since 1993.
Another member of the radical left that Soros met with was Beat poet Allen Ginsburg, who doubtless had an impact on Soros’ approach to drug policies. Soros has admitted to smoking and enjoying marijuana in the past.
The relationship between Soros and the global drug trade remains murky, but it’s known that a number of Soros’ companies are based in offshore havens that are known money-laundering capitals for the drug trade, such as the territories of the Dutch Antilles. One drug culture publication, called Heads, refers to Soros as “Daddy Weedbucks” and said that Soros “drops the bucks exactly where they’re needed.”
While Soros claims to be an open advocate of drug legalization, it may be more accurate to say that he’s interested in influencing various countries’ national drug policies, as opposed to pure legalization.
In the United States, Soros has claimed that “harm” to drug addicts would be “reduced” if the government took over the business of drug sales and distribution. Of course, what’s not stated is that the government would have to buy drugs from some entities, somewhere.
Soros is in favor of federal regulation of local police forces, and one area of encroachment Soros would like to push is drug policy. Soros would like law enforcement to give far more leeway to addicts and dealers, providing the former with government-funded paraphernalia and the latter with more legal space in which to operate. Soros would essentially like the U.S. to surrender in the war on drugs, which would be almost certain to result in more American citizens experimenting with them.
Soros funds a group called the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), whose executive director, Ethan Nadelmann, was queried about his relationship with Soros and Soros’ desire to put his stamp on the Supreme Court in the early 2000s via the billionaire’s funding of Democrat John Kerry’s presidential campaign.
“Are we going to get some Supreme Court justices out of this?” Nadelmann was asked at the 2004 National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) conference. “We will see,” was Nadelmann’s response, adding that delivering “all the goods” might be difficult.
The DPA was effective in defeating incumbent Albany, New York District Attorney Paul Clyne in the Democratic primary of 2004. At the time, Nadelmann said that he was proud of what his group had “contributed to this race” and “what happened in Albany” had “national resonance.”
In California, the DPA and other groups attempted to overturn the state’s “three strikes” law via the Proposition 66 referendum, which had serious implications for drug dealers. Had the law been overturned, more than 25,000 dangerous criminals would have been put back on the streets.
Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was against the initiative and appeared in radio and television ads fighting it. In the end, voters rejected the measure by 52 percent to 47 percent.
In the meantime, the DPA has given grants to “marijuana clubs” that dispense the drug, including California-based “Cannabis Consumers,” whose director Mikki Norris said, “we honor George Soros.”
In the wake of these efforts, the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA) released a report in which it said that since the mid-1990s, “incremental changes in state drug laws have continued at an alarming rate across our nation” which are designed to “ultimately legalize drugs.”
The report named Soros as one of the wealthy individuals behind a “very well-financed” legalization movement, which is “highly adept at manipulating the media.”
The NDAA was correct; Soros’ OSF indeed supports many independent and progressive press organizations, such as the Independent Media Institute, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, The Media Access Project, The Media Awareness Project, Investigative Reporters & Editors, MediaChannel.org and the Association for Progressive Communications.
In 1995, Soros made a large donation to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which later released a paper entitled “Rethinking International Drug Control.” Writer A.M. Rosenthal in The New York Times wrote at the time that the paper was “so negative in substance and tone about United States efforts to stem drug use, production and distribution that it amounts to an invitation to drop those efforts.”
Since the 1990s, Soros has become far more aggressive in his approach to alter the political landscape. Soros pushed Wisconsin Senator Feingold and Arizona Senator John McCain to reform campaign finance laws with their 2002 McCain-Feingold Act, which then allowed Soros to give “the most money donated by an individual in an election cycle,” according to the Washington Post.
Soros transformed the way donors give to Democratic Party causes by forming “527” and “501c” tax-exempt nonprofit corporations that would be the recipients of largesses rather than the candidates or the party itself. This was a way of going around former campaign finance laws that restricted special interests.
Some of the organizations Soros and his OSF have funded include:
The Arab-American Institute
The Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund
Progressives for the American Way
Democracy for America
Project VOTE
Media Matters
The Feminist Majority Foundation
National Public Radio
The Center for Constitutional Rights
The National Abortion Federation
Catholics for Choice
The Council of La Raza
The New America Foundation
The Institute for Policy Studies
The Tides Foundation
The Urban Institute
Soros is committed to the causes of globalism, in which bodies such as the UN would dictate countries’ (including the U.S.’s) laws. Soros has made it known that he would like the U.S. to play less of a role in the world’s affairs, leading to a likely devaluation of the U.S. dollar. In the early 1990s, Soros famously made a bet against the value of the British pound, allowing him to profit to the tune of $1 billion in a single day.
Prominent Democrats such as Hillary Clinton (to whom Soros donated $2 million in 2015) have praised Soros, with the former Secretary of State saying, “we need people like George Soros, who is fearless and willing to step up when it counts.”
Bill Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot called Soros “a national treasure,” and brought Soros on board a team helping Russia transition to a market economy. Later, Soros admitted to insider trading involving a Russian oil company. Soros boasted, “I have great access in the Clinton administration. We practically work together as a team.”
In 2008 and 2012, Soros was a major donor to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama, calling Obama “someone with the charisma and vision to radically reorient America.”
Only days after Obama was elected, Soros was quoted as saying, “I think we need a large stimulus package which will provide funds for state and local government to maintain their budgets, because they are not allowed by the Constitution to run a deficit. For such a program to be successful, the federal government would need to provide hundreds of billions of dollars… In total, the cost would be between $300 billion and $600 billion range.”
What was one of Obama’s first acts as president? A $787 billion stimulus bill. Who was responsible for the crafting of the bill? A group called The Apollo Alliance. Where did The Apollo Alliance get most of its funding? From The Tides Foundation, which in turn is funded by Soros.
The above examples and connections are only a small fraction of the total number that can be cited. To really be given justice, a full article on these subjects would need to be 10 times as long. Suffice it to say, however, that the long tentacles of George Soros and his OSF beneficiaries can be felt throughout today’s Democratic government and its globalist policies.
The only way to ensure that the stranglehold influence of Soros does not continue to corrupt American society is to vote for conservative, anti-globalist forces such as GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in November. Eventually, like fellow globalist and billionaire David Rockefeller, Soros will pass away. But for now, his corrupting clout can be strongly felt in the heart of the country’s politics.
