George Soros: “The Gravedigger of the Left” By Dr. Mária Schmidt*
* The full version was posted on April 25, 2017, in English, on About Hungary, and the original Hungarian, A Baloldal Sírásója, on Látószög.http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?m=1101941066390&ca=db7af234-2239-45d6-ae7a-6167894243ce
George Soros, his global Open Society Foundations and the hundreds of other organizations also funded by him are noisily and sometimes violently demonstrating against policies and governments who fail to accede to his agenda. There are lawsuits and Congressional investigations into his activities in the United States. In Hungary, the government is passing new laws to curtail his foundations and his Central European University’s operations.
To balance Soros’s version of what’s taking place in Hungary, read excerpts* from an article written by Dr. Mária Schmidt, the director general of the House of Terror Museum, and the XXI Century Institute, in Budapest:
“When George Soros appeared in Hungary in 1984, the Soviet rule still appeared solid and indestructible. Six years later, in 1990, when the Communists were toppled by God’s grace, Soros had already recruited a broad circle of supporters and proposed to take over Hungary’s complete sovereign debt and, in exchange, asked for Hungary’s industry, that is, the bulk of the country’s national wealth. His offer was turned down by JózsefAntall, our first, democratically elected prime minister.
The pundits, who had by that time been promoted to positions of moral authority by Soros, launched a sweeping media campaign urging the government to repay the substantial debt accumulated by the communists and not even think of requesting a debt waiver or even rescheduling. Meanwhile, keeping debt servicing in mind, those same pundits wanted and urged Hungary to be the only country in the region where no re-privatisation took place. That is, they opposed the idea of returning nationalized property to the original owners. Instead, they favored privatization, a process already launched by communist comrades. That position created a common ground for the former democratic opposition, i.e. SZDSZ and those former comrades who had been the beneficiaries of wild privatization. This is how the fullest and fastest privatization possible became one of the main demands of the post-communist camp. It is an established fact by now that privatization in this wild form, just as in its later incarnations, meant the bargain sale of public wealth.
It was during Péter Boross’ tenure as prime minister that George Soros made an attempt at a bargain buy-off of OTP, Hungary’s largest retail bank. His plans were foiled first by Boross and then by Gyula Horn, his Socialist successor. For when the new government took over, Soros made another bid at getting hold of OTP at a spectacularly low price, and this time he was strongly supported by SZDSZ, which was part of the government coalition. Prime Minister Gyula Horn didn’t let him have his way.
The Hungarian Test
It was in Hungary that Soros tested the kinds of organizations that were worthy of being funded as well as the type of network he had to set up to push his interests as effectively as possible. He soon realized that people committed to the national cause, the likes of Antall or Boross, i.e. the MDF or again the patriotic wing of the Socialist Party as well as Fidesz – after it showed for the first time its opposition to the Democratic Charter – would always hinder his endeavors. He, therefore, built and broadened his network, drawing on opinion-making groups. The latter accepted the opportunities offered to them by Soros – some inadvertently, a few consciously, and many hoping for quick and tangible advantages. Another way to put it would be to say that Soros bought off segments of the intelligentsia – liberal intellectuals, first and foremost, but not only them. Soros grantees occupied important, and even, dominant positions in Hungary’s cultural life as well as in the humanities. They used their media dominance to become for decades the ones who call the shots in determining the canon.
Setting deceptive and seemingly innocent goals like equal opportunities, Roma programs, hospital equipment and, above all, human rights, Soros attracted a great number of people to his orbit. Soros’ activists transformed human rights into a flexible notion that can arbitrarily be expanded and applied to all kinds of situations. Nowadays, his people concentrate on the human rights of migrants, but recently some of them would extend those rights to animals as well. All this only partially masks, if at all, the fact that through his network, Soros intends to directly advance his political goals, which yield him everywhere and at all times business profits that can be converted into money – a lot of money.
It also took a great deal of coordinated effort to build his popularity, that at the sound of Soros’s name, today’s young generation think of a selfless philanthropist fighting for noble causes rather than the currency speculator who tried to ruin and then acquire France’s largest bank in 1988 and crushed the pound sterling in 1992. In addition to the superb gains he made, that latter operation also made him a kind of celebrity – a status he enjoys brandishing. In 1998, he also knocked out the ruble, causing significant collateral damage to Hungary’s economy. In an open letter published by
The Financial Times, he argued that the Russian economy was overvalued and was nearly bankrupt; Thus the national currency should be devalued by at least 15 to 20 percent. As a result, the ruble crumbled and lost 61 percent of its value, while Russia became insolvent. Millions of Russians lost their retirement pensions and of course their savings as well, similarly to what had happened half a decade earlier in Great Britain.
Anyone curious about why the activity of Soros himself and the organizations funded by him have become unbearable in Russia, this is where the roots are to be found. However, one year before, he launched a speculative attack on Malaysia, Thailand, and Japan as well. Malaysia’s president called Soros a criminal who destroyed what Malaysians had built for forty years. “When I make money, I do it without considering the social consequences,” he explained in a fully philanthropic way. Oh yes, since we are talking about Soros, the philanthropist, who apparently feels especially committed to us Hungarians, it is not irrelevant to recall that in 2008, in the gravest hours of the financial crunch, Soros and his associates launched a hostile takeover attack against the forint and OTP. These attempts were repelled, and the Financial Supervision Authority imposed a record half-a-billion forint fine on Soros’s company, which he easily paid of course.
We should never forget however what we can expect from him and who he really is: a speculator, who ruthlessly represents the interests of a specific group of global business and financial circles, playing on a thousand instruments and shrinking from no obstacles.
Quite naturally, the “authoritative” press sponsored by him presents Soros as a friend of mankind, a philanthropist
. But what kind of philanthropist is a serial ruiner of European and Asian currencies, who wiped out the savings, retirement pensions and salaries of masses of ordinary citizens in order to reap huge profits for himself? His wealth is charted in offshore tax havens in the Cayman Islands, and the Dutch Antilles. In other terms, the main bulwark of left-wing foundations that are so deeply worried about poor people is a tax evader. In our region, at the price of investing relatively small amounts, he acquired huge influence, the dimensions of which he himself characterized by saying that he had managed to transform the Soviet empire into a Soros empire.
Skyfall
Soros reminds me of Silva, the wicked but hugely smart, leading character in the 23rd James Bond movie
Skyfall. Played by Javier Bardem, Silva’s obsession and mission are to grab world power. Soros is led by a similar obsession. As he put it himself, he is driven by “some rather potent messianic fantasies” in trying to implement the kind of global world order, the kind of global society that runs a global economic order. All this sounds very familiar to us. Yes, we have lost almost half a century thanks to a similarly utopian redemption project that was imposed upon us by similarly messianic people.
Soros thinks he has enough money not to be bound by any rules and also to change the ones he doesn’t like. “I am interested in change,” he said. He also proudly declares: “I like subversive actions and often resort to them as well.” And he is perfectly right in saying so. It is clear to everyone that the people behind the color revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia were those of Soros’ NGOs and network, but he also contributed to Yanukovich’s fall and the Arab Spring.
He has also intended and continues to intend to topple Orbán and of course Trump as well. The methods are always the same. He buys influence in the world of the intelligentsia, among opinion makers in academia and the financial world, as well as in the media. He builds and takes over political parties, NGOs. He organizes them into a network and uses them as covers. He creates chaos and apprehension. He weakens incumbent powers by all available means. He cries electoral fraud if necessary, economic hardships whenever possible or finds some other pretext. He has large demonstrations organized, or if they are organized by others, his people join them immediately and take over the lead. Through Facebook, Twitter and mobile phones, huge masses can be mobilized, making his job easier than it used to be. He has been educating and raising his activist network and his media for 25 years now and uses them to take those demonstrations as starting points in order to try and destabilize the system. He provokes disturbances with his radical street fighters to create chaos. It is also important in this project to create the impression that the incumbent powers are about to surrender or have already been overthrown and have lost control of the situation. What is at least equally important is the message that the demonstrators are not alone. They have the whole society and even the entire world behind them. Especially the most “advanced” and the most “authoritative part.” They think and act just like you because you and your ilk are on the good side of history and represent progress.
In our country, such arguments only have an impact on the young. We, the older generation, have become too thoroughly acquainted with “progressives” and those who preach about historical necessity. Once they produce fratricidal wars, religious wars, border clashes, economic crises, financial collapse and disorder, Soros appears in the role of the one person who can restore order. He distributes aid, bandages, medicine while telling people what to do. He invests(!), buys property, stabilizes and, most importantly, opens an opportunity for a new political team of the kind that follows the noble goals of “open society,” one that plays from Soros’s music. Those are the times when he’s really in his element. As he put it himself, “the world very much needs to have a conscience, and I want my foundation network to be the conscience of the world.”
Destabilizing Europe, disintegrating the European Union is a tough challenge for him, but that is precisely what is on the agenda. In the wake of the financial crunch of 2008, economic and financial growth came to a halt and, as a result, a sense of insecurity became pervasive. The European political elite has been showing signs of fatigue.
All this in itself was hard enough to bear, but the migration crisis supported by Soros and organized by his network is a real test of the breaking point. Understanding the recipe described above, it is not at all difficult to detect what Soros’ goal must be: split the European Union by maintaining and increasing migration; destabilize Western Europe by flooding it with masses of Muslim migrants whose integration is impossible while drying out the eastern half of the continent financially…
Fortunately, however, Soros and his activists are not the only players in the field. Those who are not seduced by progressive and redemptive siren-songs know perfectly well that the slogans of democracy, checks, and balances, human rights, free speech and freedom of education when pronounced by them are worth exactly as much as they were when uttered by our communist rulers. Nothing.
They are phony and hypocritical. They don’t tolerate debate, open speech or arguments. I feel sorry for left-wingers. They invested all their remaining heritage into their marriage to Soros. They abandoned the desires and the aspirations of the ordinary people and gave up representing and protecting their interests. What they got in exchange from Soros is just money, nothing else. Money is never there in sufficient quantity, and there are always more people who want to share it. And once it runs out, they will be left with nothing- including their self-respect.
Fidesz’s victory in 2010 erected unexpected obstacles to the previously unhindered expansion of the Soros Empire. The headwind blowing in Hungary is of particular importance because as I have mentioned above, this is where Soros’ philanthropist operation was originally launched, and this is where it runs the school – CEU – that provides it with a fresh supply of human resources
. Once CEU is compelled to abide by the same laws that apply to the other universities, people will get the message that George Soros is, after all, not omnipotent nor invulnerable. That news is as great for us as it is intolerable for him and his activists.
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