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 the 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.

US President Donald Trump promoted a conspiracy theory when responding to the protests against Supreme Court nominee (now confirmed) Brett Kavanaugh. The latter’s nomination to a judgeship has been strenuously opposed by women’s groups, because Kavanaugh faces claims of perpetrating sexual assaults. Trump, in dismissing the protesters, claimed that they have been paid by Hungarian-Jewish billionaire and philanthropist, George Soros.

It is interesting to note that Trump chose to deploy a George Soros conspiracy theory when defending his preferred nomination to the Supreme Court. Such conspiracy theorising, with Soros at the centre of a multifaceted sinister plot to manipulate global events, has been doing the rounds among the feverish swamps of the white supremacist Right for decades.

Trump was not the first Republican politician to use the “Soros paid them” trope to malign his critics. The conservative camp attacked the protesters who attended the March for Science, the feminist women in pink demonstrators – among others – as paid dupes of Soros-owned organisations.

Writing in the Al Jazeera article entitled “Who is George Soros?”, Patrick Strickland writes:

Alexander Reid Ross, author of Against the Fascist Creep, explained that “Soros conspiracies have always been a marker for the radical right as opposition to mainstream conservatism”.

Strickland says that:

Today, the 87-year-old billionaire, philanthropist and founder of the Open Society Foundations (OSF) NGO, is the favourite obsession of right-wing and far-right politicians, conspiracy theorists, white supremacists and neo-Nazis across Europe and North America.

From Charlottesville to Budapest, Soros has loomed in the rhetoric of leaders and controversial figures, replete with accusations placing the philanthropist behind everything from Black Lives Matter to migration.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a right wing anti-immigrant politician, blamed Soros for the influx of Syrian refugees in recent years, and accused Soros of orchestrating mass Muslim migration into Europe to dilute its Christian character. Orban has run anti-Semitic campaigns in Hungary, and has targeted Soros as the central villain in attempting to undermine Budapest’s authoritarian government.

In his election campaigning, Orban has spoken of immigration – particularly from Islamic nations – as an existential threat. Soros, Orban believes, is responsible for increasing such immigration in an effort to subjugate Hungary to the globalist New World Order. Orban has cleverly deployed Islamophobia and anti-Semitic themes in one hit. He compared his government’s struggle against the alleged Soros (Jewish) conspiracy as a defence of Hungarian sovereignty, similar in intent to the nationalistic struggles against the former Ottoman Turkish empire, the Hapsburgs, and the USSR.

Extreme right wing figures throughout Eastern Europe have advocated the Soros-puppet master conspiracy theory. Shaun Walker of the Guardian newspaper highlights that Soros has become a lightning rod for the conspiratorial-obsessed far right:

Not just in Hungary. In Romania, the chairman of the ruling Social Democratic party, Liviu Dragnea, said Soros and his organisations have “fed evil” in the country; while a Polish MP from the ruling conservative government has referred to Soros as “the most dangerous man in the world”. The US right has also joined in: in a semi-coherent rant, radio host and Donald Trump supporter Alex Jones claimed Soros heads a “Jewish mafia”.

How did George Soros become a lightning rod for conspiratorial theorising, and why is the white supremacist Right – known today as the Alternative Right – targeting him?

George Soros – the updated version of the anti-Semitic Rothschild conspiracy

The demonisation of Soros has its roots in the historic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that have been recycled and promoted by the white conservative Right over the centuries. The template of a rich Jewish figure heading up a vast tentacular conspiracy, manipulating current events for direct profit is an old and long-standing tactic of the Right, particularly in times of economic and political crisis.

Spencer Ackerman, writing in the Daily Beast, states that the idea of an all-powerful Jewish financier manipulating political and economic events for financial profit has its origins in the atavistic European hatred  – anti-Semitism. Soros is just the latest incarnation of this particular template of hate. In the nineteenth century, the role of Jewish manipulator was taken – in the anti-Semitic imagination – by Nathan Rothschild.

The latter, allegedly present at the Battle of Waterloo (he never was), rushed back to England, and deliberately lied to the London Stock Market that Wellington had been defeated. The stock market crashed, and Rothschild took advantage of the ensuing chaos to turn a profit. This fiction was put forward in an anti-Semitic pamphlet years after the events, and Nathan Rothschild had passed away. But the slur stuck, and it has been circulating for many years.

The nefarious Rothschild banking conspiracy has been debunked numerous times. All the elements of what has been a long-standing pattern of anti-Semitic theorising – a wealthy Jewish financier, using insider knowledge to manufacture a crisis, and leveraging that crisis to make a profit. Since the rise of European Christendom, the Jewish presence was regarded as alien – the eternal outsider taking advantage of cosmopolitan toleration in order to make money.

Anti-Semitic hatred evolved to respond to the changing political and economic circumstances of capitalism – the financial power of the everlasting Shylock could be used not only to explain the crises of capitalism, but also the rise of socialist and communist doctrines. The Russian Revolution of 1917 has attracted its fair share of conspiratorial fanatics – the Tsarist regime, undergoing a crisis, looked to its traditional scapegoat to blame, the Jews. As the Bolsheviks succeeded in Russia, the propaganda of anti-Semitic fanatics evolved to adapt their hate to the new circumstances, connecting Bolshevism to the universal bogeyman, international Jewry.

No less a figure than Winston Churchill, a scion of the English ruling class, believed that the Russian Revolution was the result of the sinister machinations of Jewish manipulation. He helped to provide credibility to the notion of an international cabal of Jewish financiers masterminding a vast conspiracy – only this time, it was not to strengthen capitalism, but to overthrow it. The Jewish financial conspiracy has metastasized from one of domineering capitalism to one of a Judeo-Bolshevik mutation.

Not every person who circulates George Soros conspiracy memes is a hateful bigot. In this day and age of social media, it is easy to share content that we do not necessarily fully understand. But make no mistake, the language, imagery and pattern of targeting George Soros are steeped in the bile of anti-Semitism. Portraying a powerful Jewish individual as a malign puppet master who manipulates the naive, and unsuspecting population for their own profit gives credence to the ancient prejudice.

Philanthropy and liberal capitalism

George Soros is well known for his philanthropy, and his Open Society organisation has promoted a version of liberal capitalism, primarily in the former Eastern bloc. Soros is not the only billionaire philanthropist – Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Elon Musk – billionaires promote their self-image by engaging in philanthropic endeavours around the world. They buy political influence, push their agendas in the corporate media, buy multi-million dollar advertising to spread their messages, and influence public political debates.

None of the aforementioned billionaires is targeted with such viciousness from the Alternative Right. It is Soros in particular who attracts the ire of the conspiratorial far right because of his Jewishness, and promotion of allegedly ‘left-wing’ causes. Soros has written books and articles advocating a ‘liberal capitalism’ of free markets and easier immigration within Europe. His criticisms of unrestrained capitalism, and his stance against what he sees as authoritarian regimes, has made him a particular hate figure of the ultra-right.

The current article has gone on for long enough, so it is time to conclude. However, the exploration of this subject is far from over.

In the next part, we will examine the role of Soros, the Open Society organisation, corporate philanthropy and how that relates to the financialisation of capitalism. The operation of hedge-fund capitalism, and the role of billionaires, can be examined without any reference to malign Jewish conspiratorial influence. Stay tuned.

We have all heard or seen the following claim before, especially when wading through the cesspit of the Internet – “Islam is not a race, so how can I be racist?”  This meme is usually deployed by those trying to answer, and deflect, accusations of racism. It is worth examining this claim in further detail, because it provides us with a window into the state of cultural and political debate in our own society.

First, let us be clear – Islam is a religion, not a race. But Islamophobia is a form of racism mixed with cultural intolerance. Demonising an entire religious community on the basis of a stereotypical and allegedly shared racial identity is racism.

The title of the current article comes from an article by Miqdaad Versi, the assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain. Versi correctly observes that claiming ‘Islam is not a race’ is a semantic game, to provide an escape clause for a person espousing racist viewpoints.

We all recognise the dictionary definition of the term Semitism. That refers to a linguistic and cultural groups, including Arabs and Jews. However, we also have a clear definition of the term anti-Semitism – bigotry and hatred against Jews. The anti-Semite does not care for semantic definitions – we can recognise the anti-Jewish racism directed against an ethno-religious group.

Sociologist Dr Craig Considine calls Islamophobia a form of racism based on cultural intolerance. His work, examining the racialisation of the Islamic identity, provides a necessary antidote to the purely dictionary distinction between race and religion. Religion has been used and abused as a basis to construct a fictional racialised identity, as has happened with the Jewish community in the past.

Orientalism rejuvenated

Islam is not a race, but Muslim people have been racialised. Orientalism is the historical source of the modern-day incarnation of Islamophobic prejudice. Islamophobia is the updated version of the old Orientalist bigotry; we are the ‘civilised’ West, and our mission is to control and uplift the Muslim outsider.

Khaled Beydoun, law professor and author of the book American Islamophobia, has noted how the United States has defined Islam, along with being black, as the perpetual outsider, incapable of assimilating and inherently opposed to ‘Americaness’. While Muslims have been present in American society since the earliest days of European settlement – there were West African Muslim slaves in the south of the US – Muslims were banned and excluded from the political and cultural life of the Americas since the 16th century.

Long before September 11 and the so-called ‘war on terror’, the American ruling establishment adopted a racialised exclusion of Muslims from the life of the emerging nation. Beydoun states that today’s Islamophobia has its roots in the perspective of Orientalism. The latter, discussed at length by the Palestinian Professor, the late Edward Said, is the cultural and historical lens through which the imperialist powers defined and perceived the Muslim Middle East.

Islam, according to the Orientalist view, is inherently violent, regressive, incapable of change and fixated on sabotaging the West. African blackness became the racial antithesis of American whiteness; the Islamic world was transformed from a religion into a racialised enemy – the eternal Arab/Muslim outsider. In this regard, we should note that from the late 1700s until 1952, the Naturalisation Act stipulated whiteness as an essential criterion of American citizenship.

Using the pathetic excuse of “Islam is not a race” is the standard preface to a racially-charged tirade demonising the Islamic community. It is perfectly true that Islam is not a race, but a faith-based religious group, whose followers share a set of beliefs and philosophy. But the Muslim identity has been racialised, and the ubiquitous “Middle Eastern appearance” is a loose, flexible descriptor that stigmatises a wide cross section of  Muslim and non-Muslim non-Anglo communities.

Let us avoid trotting out the simplistic and deceitful semantic exercise of “Islam is not a race” to evade any allegations of bigotry. In a decidedly similar way to anti-Semitism, the Islamic community has been categorised as a racialised identity, imbued with social characteristics that allegedly makes the religion’s practitioners unassimilable and unresponsive to the societies they inhabit.

While the adherents of Islam come from a diverse range of ethnic and racial backgrounds, it is the conflation of Arab-Muslim and the narrow racial framework of ‘brown’ persons that has dominated definitions of Islam. The multiracial and ethnically diverse reality of the American – and Australian – Muslim community is lost amidst this racially-exclusive categorisation of the Muslim as the perpetual outsider and potentially treasonous element in Western society.

Religious discrimination occurs when a particular group is targeted because of their religious beliefs. Racialisation occurs when that is identified and stigmatised based on what the racist wants to see – and then behaves according to that viewpoint. Cultural intolerance evolves into a form of racist practice.

The Islamophobic brand of hate is unconcerned with dictionary distinctions between religion and race. In the United States, hate crimes against Muslim persons has increased, especially since the initiation of the ‘war on terror’. The saddest part of this increase is that non-Muslims have been victimised. Sikhs, a group that practices a religion entirely different from Islam – have been the targets of Islamophobic hate crimes. Bigoted rhetoric from political candidates have real and dramatic consequences for ethnic and religious minorities. Racist attacks are motivated, not by an opposition to a religion, but by what the racist views as the racialised ‘Other’.

Travelling while being of Middle Eastern appearance

At this point, I have a confession to make. I am guilty of a crime. I have been committing this crime for decades, and will continue to do so into the future. What is my crime? Traveling while being of Middle Eastern appearance. It does not matter that I am not Muslim, or that Christianity can be a portal into whiteness. Traveling while possessing a Middle Eastern appearance is a serious offence in Australia.

Randa Abdel-Fattah, writer and lawyer, and academic at Macquarie University in Sydney, wrote about this precise subject. Being Australian and Muslim (or perceived as a brown person) are often viewed as mutually exclusive. This dichotomy is not confined to Australia – in the United States, being a ‘patriotic’ American and being Muslim are viewed as diametric opposites. Muslims – and by racialised extension, people from the Middle East – are the new enemy on the streets. Never matter that, for instance, Muslim Americans have served in the US military for decades. They have fought in all of America’s wars, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is not so much a clash of civilisations, but a clash of racialisations. Islamophobia is not a distaste for particular Muslim beliefs, rituals or cultural practices. It is a a pervasive, mainstream racism that targets the Muslim community, and reduces them to racially distinctive, Orientalist stereotypes.

Yes, we are all aware of the human rights abuses and repression in Saudi Arabia. Yes, we know about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Yes, we know about the repressive regimes in the Middle East, the harsh punishments carried out in the name of Sharia, the problems of patriarchy. If you want to help Muslim women, just listen to them here.

It must be made clear that Islamophobia does not include criticism of religion, disagreements or arguments about the role of religion in public life. It is equally important to note that the term secularism does not provide an escape valve for the regurgitation of racially-charged tirades against the Muslim communities. It is dishonest to pretend that anti-Muslim racism does not exist because ‘we focus on cultural or religious practices’. While the Islamic faith consists of many colours, Islamophobia has one unmistakable racial colouration.

There is a well-known quote which originated from the early days of the socialist movement in Germany – ‘Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools.’ This was a response to anti-Semitic smears doing the rounds among the workers movement. Using this quote as a template, we can update it by stating the following – Islamophobia is the secularism of fools.

Do I regard Muslim people as super-fantastic worthy of special privileges in the society? No, I do not. Am I unaware of the atrocities committed by fundamentalist groups such as Al Qaeda and Islamic State? I am very aware of these groups and condemn them in the strongest possible terms. Do I intend to write screeching denunciations of the burqa or the hijab? No, I do not – because that is none of my business. Muslim women are standing up for themselves, and do not need idiot-men like me to speak on their behalf.

I strongly agree with Rabia Siddique, when she writes that we must stop the normalisation of relentless Islamophobia in Australia. The first step on the way to confronting Islamophobia is to stop playing semantic games in order to fool ourselves into thinking that the problem of racism does not exist.