Conspiracy, Elvis and George Soros

Kirsty MacColl was wrong - Elvis is working in a chip shop, and the photo above proves it. He owns and works in the pictured chippy which is located on Brighton seafront. He is in very good health, and stays looking young by taking long, bracing walks along the seafront and bathing his face in calves' milk. His only worry is that he might be discovered and have to pay back taxes to the US government. His anonymity is guarded by a sinister alliance of the Freemasons, the Women's Institute and George Soros, the multi-billionaire.
Nonsense? Of course it is - but no more ludicrous than the conspiracy theories that have made George Soros a hate figure for the far right in the USA, Turkey, Italy, Hungary and, in nascent form, here in the UK. A BBC TV documentary last night highlighted the horrifying international hate campaign against him by a menagerie of conspiracy nuts, right-wing Republicans, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and a bunch of fascists. The documentary, "Conspiracy Files: the Billionaire Global Mastermind", highlighted the conspiracy theories that the menagerie have cooked up against Soros.
The hate campaign against him in the US began in 2003 because of his opposition to the Iraq war. It rose to the present crescendo when Donald Trump became president. Trump himself has referred disparagingly about Soros. Soros has been blamed for the violence in Charlotteville, Virginia in 2017. The Fash claim that Soros financed the whole thing to discredit Trump. He is also accused of financing the Honduras "caravan" of would-be migrants to the US, and, as the BBC programme says, he is blamed for having been a Nazi collaborator in Hungary during WW2, when Hungary's Jews were being rounded up for dispatch to Auschwitz. As Soros is himself Jewish and was 14 at the time, that is somewhat hard to believe. Worst of all was the attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh, 27 October, 2018, when 11 Jewish people were killed. The killer, Robert Bowers, accused Soros of heading a conspiracy to eliminate the white race in order to achieve Jewish domination of a "mongrelised" (multi-cultural) United States. Soros himself, along with some liberal US politicians, has received a (fortunately dud) bomb in the post. Until the bomber, a white supremacist and Trump supporter, was caught, the anti-Soros coalition accused Soros of orchestrating a fake bomb campaign, in order to win public sympathy. The evidence for this claim, predictably, was shown to be either fake or non-existent.

The hate campaign has spread abroad. In Turkey, President Erdogan has accused Soros of seeking to "shatter" Turkey; the Italian politician, Matteo Salvini, has accused Soros of seeking to flood Italy with illegal migrants. Soros is a philanthropist and has spent millions on welfare and educational projects in his home country of Hungary. but that has not stopped the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Oban, from introducing "Anti-Soros" laws.

Now, the lies about George Soros are absurd and easily refuted. Channel Four, Snopes and Fact Check, as well as last night's BBC documentary and all responsible journalists, repeatedly expose the anti-Soros conspiracy accusations as outrageous and blatantly untrue. The problem, however, is that the people who believe in these conspiracy theories are not rational people. Racists and fascists start with their racism and then look for reasons to justify it. Even when one of their beliefs is proven to be wrong, they carry on believing it anyway. Having said this, we cannot, however much we debunk them, dismiss these people as harmless nutcases. As Time Magazine says:

" In recent years, fringe ideas prompted a gunman to storm a Washington, D.C. pizzeria and may have motivated another to fatally shoot 11 worshippers inside a Pittsburgh synagogue. They are also largely to blame for a worldwide surge in measles cases that has sickened more people in the U.S. in the first half of 2019 than in any full year since 1994."

We must continue to combat these people and their bizarre beliefs.
 The accusation of conspiracy against George Soros and, by implication, against all Jews, is nothing new. The myth of an international Jewish conspiracy has a long and murderous history. At the turn of the 20th century, 1903 to be exact, a truly evil anti-Semitic book was published in Russia. It is thought to have helped inspire a wave of pogroms against Russia's Jews and is beloved of fascists and other Jew-haters even  today: "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion". The book was a forgery, concocted by the Tsarist secret police in Russia for use against Jews and all Russian revolutionaries. Foreshadowing George Soros's vilification, the book claimed to be proof of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Although it was exposed numerous times as fraudulent, the Nazis made extensive use of it in their campaign against Europe's Jews. Some of the charges made today against George Soros might almost have been lifted from the pages of "The Protocols". To my disgust, I have learned that this hate-filled tome is for sale on Amazon.
The mention of disgust leads me to the British dimension to the Anti-Soros hate campaign: the statements of our old friend, Nigel Farage. Nigel has dismissed accusations of anti-Semitism, but what are we to make of statements like these? As The Guardian says, Farage:

"Said Soros "wants to break down the fundamental values of our society, and, in the case of Europe, he doesn't want Europe to be based on Christianity".

Claimed the EU was financed and influenced "by the Goldman Sachs and a particular Hungarian called Mr Soros".

Alleged the work of Soros's foundation could amount to "the biggest level of political collusion in history"

These statements of Nigel Farage closely resemble all the other allegations made by the extreme Right. Anyone thinking of voting for the Brexit Party should bear this in mind.


As the politics of the Brexit Party grow uglier, so does Nigel Farage.