Those who spent years attacking Sheldon Adelson see no problem crying ‘antisemitism’ whenever Soros faces similar scrutiny for his donations.
Those who spent years attacking Sheldon Adelson see no problem crying ‘antisemitism’ whenever Soros faces similar scrutiny for his donations.
I n 2020, a U.S. senator’s presidential campaign took out a full-page newspaper advertisement, promising voters her administration would target a specific Jewish man’s personal fortune. The advertisement highlighted the Jewish man’s considerable net worth, listing the dollar amount he’d be forced to surrender to the common good under the senator’s proposal.
He “can’t buy us,” the senator had previously boasted.
In 2017, a different U.S. senator’s presidential campaign produced a video asking what that same Jewish man planned “to do with all that money.” It added, “It doesn’t sound like he’s going to use it to help other people.” The video, which was produced for a series titled “The Faces of Greed,” likewise listed in dollar amounts the Jewish man’s personal wealth.
CNBC called the newspaper advertisement a “bold move.” One reporter claimed it showed “chutzpah.” As for the video attack, it went almost completely unnoticed by the press, just another ho-hum episode in the senator’s crusade against the donor class.
If you guessed the Jewish man is Democratic megadonor George Soros and the critics Republican lawmakers, you’d be wrong. The senators are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and their target was the late Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson. The senators’ opposition to Adelson’s political engagement, and the press’s oftentimes sympathetic coverage of their opposition, is relevant even two years after his death because we are being told — once again — that it is antisemitic even to notice Soros’s political activity, let alone question it.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis tripped this specific defensive reflex on March 30 when he noted, correctly, a connection between Soros and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who indicted former President Donald Trump last week on 34 charges of falsifying business records.
“The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head,” the governor’s office said on social media. “It is un-American. The Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney has consistently bent the law to downgrade felonies and to excuse criminal misconduct.”
The statement adds: “Yet, now he is stretching the law to target a political opponent. Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda.”
The corporate press’s reaction to DeSantis’s use of the term “Soros-backed” was fast and furious, with straight-faced newsrooms alleging a larger antisemitic conspiracy.
“Behind Trump Indictment, the Right Wing Finds a Familiar Villain in Soros,” reads a New York Times headline. The subhead reads, “Conspiracy theorists have long attributed wildly varied events to George Soros, in attacks often viewed as antisemitic.”
“Trump, DeSantis and other Republicans push antisemitic ‘Soros’ smear after Bragg indictment,” reads a Yahoo! News headline.
MSNBC declared in a headline, “GOP resort to anti-semitic, racist attacks to defend Trump prosecution.”
For the record, on May 8, 2021, Color of Change PAC endorsed Bragg, pledging “over one million dollars on an [independent expenditure] campaign” in support of his candidacy. On May 14, 2021, Soros cut a check to Color of Change PAC for $1 million. The PAC ultimately spent $420,000 on independent expenditures for Bragg, according New York election records.
Then, there’s Soros himself, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal in July of last year: “I have been involved in efforts to reform the criminal-justice system for the more than 30 years I have been a philanthropist.” He went on: “I have supported the election (and more recently the re-election) of prosecutors who support reform. I have done it transparently, and I have no intention of stopping. The funds I provide enable sensible reform-minded candidates to receive a hearing from the public.”
These details are relevant insofar as evaluating DeSantis’s remarks is concerned, and the details suggest Bragg is indeed backed by Soros. But it’s antisemitic to point this out, according to our esteemed commentariat.
“You have to just look at the ‘Soros-backed,’ it’s just Jews,” alleged MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. “They’re attacking Jewish international bankers. It’s what antisemites have been doing for hundreds of years, attacking Jewish international bankers. That’s what they do. They try to blame everything on Jewish international bankers. It’s Germany, 1933.”
Ironically enough, Scarborough was joined for that segment by fellow MSNBC anchor Al Sharpton, who infamously whipped up antisemitic riots in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, in the early 1990s. Sharpton is also responsible for instigating the deadly attack on the Jewish-owned Freddy’s Fashion Mart in Harlem. The incident began with Sharpton’s radio addresses targeting “white interlopers” in the largely black neighborhood. Sharpton’s National Action Network then led protests outside the Jewish-owned business, with demonstrators shouting “bloodsuckers” and “We’re going to burn and loot the Jews.” The episode ended abruptly when an armed protester stormed the shop, burning it to the ground and killing seven store employees, then killing himself.
Elsewhere at MSNBC, Joy Reid accused DeSantis of using “dog whistles” to promote a “meme, this idea among the right that African Americans, that black folks in positions of power are controlled by some Jewish overseer who is pulling the strings.” As a reminder, it wasn’t so long ago that Reid called Sheldon Adelson an “American oligarch” who owns “a political party” and whose “greed literally knows no limits.”
At the New Republic, an opinion article is titled, “Why the Right Can’t Quit Its Antisemitic Attacks Against George Soros.”
This is absurd. It’s absurd to claim it is antisemitic to notice Soros’s political activity. It’s absurd to deny, against all facts, evidence, and statements by Soros himself, the connection between the hedge-funder’s criminal-justice-reform efforts and Alvin Bragg. It’s absurd to pretend that it’s antisemitic to point out said connection. It’s especially absurd considering the Left regularly and legitimately scrutinized Adelson’s political influence, and all without so much as a sniffle from the press.
Indeed, what did our press have to say about the Left’s constant questions and criticisms of Adelson’s involvement in Republican politics? As it happens, media were all too happy to join in — questioning, investigating, and criticizing Adelson’s bankrolling of conservative policies and candidates.
New York magazine, for example, warned in 2015 that Adelson was prepared to “buy the presidency.” The article included a photoshopped image, superimposing the GOP donor’s face onto Marlon Brando’s from The Godfather.
The Nation warned in 2014 that Adelson wanted “to be the Koch Brothers for Israel.” Even after he died, the magazine complained that Adelson’s political donations are still “undermining democracy.” Wherever the wealthy Jewish donor went, in fact, “corruption — be it moral, legal, political, or cultural — was never far behind.”
The New Yorker published an exposé in 2008 titled “The Brass Ring,” with a subhead that read, “A multibillionaire’s relentless quest for global influence.”
NBC News referred to Adelson specifically as a “GOP kingmaker.”
Prior to his death in 2021, the Washington Post, CNBC, the New York Times, and Politico all published articles detailing the GOP donor’s involvement in state and federal politics and his donations to various candidates. Adelson was indeed a big-wheeling megadonor who poured oceans of cash into Republican and conservative causes. The reports were therefore legitimate: The media served the public interest by covering his motives, his influence, and his beliefs.
Know what else? Adelson’s activities were fair game for Sanders’s and Warren’s criticisms. Warren’s ad for her proposed “wealth tax,” which she placed in a Nevada-based newspaper owned by Adelson, wasn’t antisemitic. Sanders’s “Faces of Greed” video wasn’t antisemitic. Above, my framing of the newspaper ad and video was meant to mimic the press’s framing of DeSantis’s remarks. It’s instructive to look at such things with the parties reversed.
Soros and Adelson: both influential, ideological, wealthy, willing to commit billions of dollars to political causes — and Jewish. Yet the message we’ve received these past several years is that it’s antisemitic to treat Soros the same way Adelson was treated.
Why is it antisemitic to apply the same standards used on Adelson to Soros? As conservatives sometimes like to joke, it’s just (D)ifferent.