George Soros, 92, is a major New York-based billionaire. He has his own concept of “liberal” democracy he pushes aggressively through his Open Society Foundation controlling tens of billions of dollars. However, there are real growing worries, though, that he is way too influential in deciding election outcomes around the world, including the upcoming Indian general elections. Indeed, to put it simply, the popular will of the people in various democracies is being seriously eroded by Soros.
Recently, External Affairs minister S. Jaishankar, at the Indian-Australian forum, identified such efforts by this individual as being very unhelpful to building democracy. He described Soros as, in fact, contrarian to the oligarch’s stated principles of what a government should look like around the world as promoting an open society of governments chosen by the people. Soros does not want people electing parties to government; he can get decidedly pushy to support their removal. A recent article by Vivek Mishra at dailyO underscores this with the heading, “George Soros, the billionaire who ‘funds’ regime change, has his eyes on India.”
It is also telling that the overbearing power of some US oligarchs is described by a Princeton and Northwestern University study as having largely replaced even the will of the US people in their own country. This is according to news.cn/English that also referred to former US president Jimmy Carter as stating that the US is “an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.” Consistently, it is incredible how commanding just a US private individual’s particular brand is. One who seems to extend his oligarchical power worldwide and is even supportive of, if not thoroughly shaping, Washington’s patronizing. It’s like saying: “We have the model concept of governance and know what is best for you India and even everyone else, whoever you vote for.”
Not surprisingly, the Indian foreign minister even described the massively wealthy nonagenarian as essentially “dangerous” to use his exact word regarding the billionaire’s heavy-handed and unconstructive meddling at times. This specifically included the oligarch falsely describing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as not a democrat, combined with the additional falsehood that the Indian leader was to disenfranchise millions of Indian Muslims from voting. Such scurrilous, inflammatory statements, Jaishankar has rightfully called out, as extremist. And he has, as well, called out Soros’ bad mouthing views against India’s own popularly chosen form of democracy in his speeches to major public fora. This included at the Munich conference on defense and security attended by many, but certainly not all world leaders and which Jaishankar participated, as well. No doubt Soros being given such a huge platform by the West, where he uttered his anti-New Delhi remarks, was an insult, not only to the foreign minister present, but Indians in general.
The Hungarian immigrant to the US who escaped Hitler’s death camps of World War II (see his YouTube interview on explaining on how he did this) has made much money through his hedge and investment funds. He even shorted the British pound so heavily when there was a government in London he did not like much. Thus, he caused the British pound to crash and for London to negotiate with him to effectively change their economic policies well beyond what the electorate necessarily wanted. Such hard-nosed tactics over more recent decades has been to push governments with his massive wealth towards forms of governance he personally believes in.
Not surprisingly, given his support for aggressively promoting his form of US “liberal-style” democracy, he is one of the largest donors to the Democrat party. In fact, according to CNBC business news, “Soros personally contributed a whopping 170 million during the 2022 midterm election cycle to help Democratic campaigns and political action committees.”
He was also one of the biggest backers of Hilary Clinton’s failed run to become US president, as fifth largest contributor to her campaign as reported in investopedia.com. Clinton, one may remember, as US Secretary of State became practically notorious for her support of military driven, liberal interventionism, including in Libya, one that led to the brutal removal of that country’s leader, Muammar Gaddafi, and the subsequent chaos that country still faces. And as part result, there has been a major step up of destabilizing, refugee flows to Europe from Africa. Clearly, when Jaishankar states that Soros is dangerous, he is definitely not kidding. A further examination of the oligarch’s friends and who and what he dislikes are a good place to give further focus.
So, not only is Soros down on the Indian Prime Minister, he may be effectively against Germany remaining in the European Union. For he has believed that there should essentially be a movement to isolate it and to take it out of the common euro monetary zone. This is but one example of the “freaky madness” you might say of too many of his key ideas. But by all indications, he has likely even wider ambitions that will undermine European and global stability and basic normative family values and nation state cohesion. Not incidentally, he has at least around twenty billion left in his coffers to do so.
Despite what large numbers of Americans and even Europeans see as his extremely woke and overly politically correct views, he still felt a compelling duty to open a university in Hungary to promote his open society of “my way or the door way”. It became so clear with this initiative and other Soros Foundation drives to undermine the current Hungarian government that his activities there have strongly been put into question. This includes his university based there, unfortunately was seen as effectively made to close as a casualty to all the rancour about Soros’ interference in Hungarian politics.
Soros is after all a dyed-in-the-wool globalist who essentially despises the primacy of the nation-state to maintain many positive traditions, especially socially conservative ones according to some, mostly populists of the right. So, it is no surprise that the politics of Victor Orban, Hungarian PM, to protect Hungarian values overall, including openness to the importance of traditional spirituality, local community and family just does not rhyme anywhere enough with Open Society, post-modernism. One that seems to represent that everything liberal is tolerated and goes, including the nation, too. That does not mean that everything Orban celebrates is perfect. But the Hungarian people should largely be let to decide who runs them, not US-based Soros. Apparent “Silent coup” efforts led by his powerful Open Society organization, indeed, are not appreciated everywhere, and not in India, too. This is especially so as the country moves closer to national elections.
What Soros would do better is to follow other philanthropists working more cooperatively with governments of many different stripes. That includes more emphasis on fighting disease, bettering development at the ground level such as drilling wells for scarce water and making for more sustainable agriculture to feed the many hungry. This appears to be generally far better than trying to “overturn” governments of Hungary, India and others democratically elected, but not to his personal, individual taste.
No doubt Soros is involved in some forms of positive, non-meddling help to the poor and underprivileged. That should likely be where he puts his Wall Street earned mega-wealth; however he earned it—by shorting countries or others, or not. He should especially keep his over-meddling hands off Indian politics and the upcoming national elections as a true act of democracy and support of India’s current real open society. Period.
Peter Dash has been an educator working mostly in developing and emerging countries for over 20 years. He has done extensive volunteer work for NG0s promoting peace and development.