Mention of George Soros conjures diverse emotions, depending on who is asked. He is without doubt the favourite bogeyman of the hardright like French ultranationalist Marie Le Pen, Hungarian authoritarian Viktor Orban, Israeli hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Turkish ultraconservative President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, British Brexiteer-conservative Nigel Farage or more recently Donald Trump and his latest troubleshooter, Elon Musk.

Conversely, Soros has been a funder of the Democratic Party in the US and has self-confessedly supported causes that are inherently liberal and pro-democracy, through his muchbandied Open Society Foundation that operates in over 120 countries. But as the world turns hard-right, conspiracy theorists attribute much of the ‘DeepState’ allusions to the 94-yearold who has already donated nearly $35 billion, and is believed to be only worth about $6 billion now. Former President Joe Biden recently conferred the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Soros recognising the philanthropist for, “supporting key pillars of open societies: rights and justice, equity and equality, freedom now and in the future.

Advertisement

His inspiring generosity reminds us of all of our capacity and our obligation to stand up to the abuse of power and to be guardians of democracy and all people yearning to be free”. A completely contrarian impression, even to the one getting increasingly asserted in India, is due to the prevailing political dynamics, polarisation and partisan preferences. That Elon Musk is called the ‘George Soros of the Right’, given that the co-billionaire funded the decidedly right-wing Donald Trump’s campaign is often missed, as the side of the media with the ‘monopoly on truth’ naturally triumphs over the other.

Partisan and ideological moorings conveniently make one side the villain and the other the hero. The double standard becomes apparent when a Deputy Leader of Reform UK, Richard Tice, laments about Soros, “He doesn’t live here, he doesn’t pay taxes here, what right has he got to interfere with our democracy and try and overthrow the government? He has no right at all”. Yet he saw no element of unwarranted interference when it came to possible funding by Elon Musk, “If Mr. Musk can legally donate and he feels that’s the appropriate thing to do, then obviously we’d be delighted.

It would be a fantastic endorsement of our policies to save Britain and get Britain growing again”. Basically, one side’s ideological peeve (even terrorist), is the other side’s freedom fighter! Musk recently waded into German politics by insisting, “Only the AFD can save Germany”, with reference to Alternative for Germany ~ a party currently classified by the German intelligence as a suspected extremist organisation. Ironically, Musk recently slammed Soros by noting the nonagenarian supposed, “hatred for humanity including Israel” ~ this for Soros, a Holocaust surviving Jew himself, something that Musk isn’t. Forever mired in conspiracy theories with scant support of facts, Soros first emerged as the pun – ch ing bag of the right-wing when he opposed Trump in his first campaign.

An incident involving neo-Nazis and opposing protestors had resulted in a whi te supremacist driving into the crowd and killing a person ~ almost immediately rightwingers sprung the narrative that Soros had orchestrated the incident to make Trump look bad. Nothing emerged to stick to Soros and soon thereafter, a letter bomb targeting him reached his home (but didn’t explode). Again, rightwingers claimed it was a ‘falseflag’ intending to derail the Trump campaign.

Even Trump condemned Soros’s purported attempt as a ‘de spicable act’. Later, a right-winger pleaded guilty to attempting to target Soros with the intent to kill and was dished out a 20 years prison sentence, but the ‘Soros is behind the incident’ narrative had gained large traction. Hungarian ultranationalist Victor Orban was to devise specific ‘Stop Soros’ laws as he claimed Sor os was behind the opposition (read, pro-democracy and pro-liberal for ces). Similarly, Turkey’s Erdogan who faced NGOs supporting the pro democracy movement was to castigate Soros as a Jewish conspirator whose desire was to ‘divide’ and ‘shatter’ Turkey.

Oddly, today Musk accuses Soros of the exact opposite i.e., hating Israel. In an overtly simplistic and binary world of partisan politics of either with us or with them narrative, Musk wrongly equates anti-Zionism (anti-bigotry or anti-extreme religionism) with anti-Israelism. That there are a host of Jews who support Israel but not its fanatic strain of Zionism under the banner of ‘Not in our name’ to denounce the xenophobic and exclusionary politics of Benjamin Netanhayu is lost on the likes of Musk.

Soros was to nuance that he “always identified firstly as a Jew”, and his philanthropy was ultimately an expression of his Jewish identity, in that he felt solidarity with other minority groups, and also because he recognized that a Jew could only truly be safe in a world in which all minorities were protected. But for many right-wingers he remains a ‘self-hating’ Jew like Noam Chomsky, Thomas Friedman etc., who are incapable of blind valourising of Israel irrespective of what it does.

The fact is that Soros is a capitalist who probably earned his billions with tactics like ‘short-selling’ or other questionable means, but his political/ personal ideology is just his preference, plain and simple, like Trump’s or Musk’s, nothing less or more. His questioning and interfering nature can understandably affront many in India too, but should only be seen in the context of partisan differences, and not as some outsized conspiracy theory.

(The writer is Lt Gen PVSM, AVSM (Retd), and former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)