Who is George Soros?

Click here for the Wikipedia biography, which is a reasonably balanced account. Much of what you read about him, including claims about what he believes in, will have come from sources which despise him because of his support of "liberal" candidates and programs. Soros has become a lightening rod for the right-wing in America, and there is probably no charge against him too scurrilous for conservatives to repeat.

How?

Are there any reports out where he, personally, tells us where he stands on issues?

How what?

Did you read the article i linked? It quotes him, and it links further information on Mr. Soros.

I read that article. And actually, already had before you posted it. It's pretty vague. There is no section titled "political opinions" or "agendas".

Just curious what he stands for.

check out this article and let me know what you think of it:
http://www.insightmag.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=5D3B38F8A2584DB5A77BA05660C6045C&nm=Free+Access&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=346CF94D8F6C442FB25AC38AD486013C

I'm sure that this article is extremely biased, but is it TRUE? Is the information in it true? If so, pretty scary stuff. Wouldn't you agree?

If you have already read the article, than you must have seen the section entitled "Philosophy." I have never seen a Wikipedia heading entitled "Agenda," so i think it is more than a little unrealistic for you to be looking for that. That article has a link to Soros' web site, which includes his blog, and a link to the Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundation network. You can go to those sites and read for yourself, and decide for yourself. I don't intend to do your thinking for you, nor to do your online legwork. If you doubt the validity of the claims made about Soros, do the work yourself to find out if they are true. Try FactCheck-dot-org as a start.

As for the article which you linked, which i don't intend to read (you're the one looking for information, not me), it comes from "Insight," which bills itself as: "Conservative current events magazine published by Washington Times." In their "about us" statement, they write:



If that doesn't tell you a lot about their bias, i doubt that anything i can do further will enlighten you.

This is a site at which people who have other pursuits and who are not paid offer to the other members information which they possess or can reasonably be expected to find. It is not a place where you can command someone to run off and find for you what you can easily find for yourself by exerting a minimal effort.

I agree. Democracy is a scary and horrifying concept. It should NEVER be encouraged.

heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee . . .

Thanks for the help Setanta. I'm an understanding person so I'll take your response with a grain of salt - knowing that most grown folks don't have the nerve to talk to one another that way face to face.

I was simply curious what people here thought about an article that I read online about someone who was made out to at least look pretty socialist / totalitarian.

I will do my homework. I agree, I probably should have done a little background checking myself before I posted. Sorry for wasting your time, but, if you really didn't want to waste your time, why the did you even reply to my post?

And, to ehBeth regarding the comment made about me being afraid of democracy - read the article that I posted a link to. I am not afraid of democracy. I embrace it. I do however have a healthy fear (if in fact this article is factual) of stalinist leadership ideals / totalitarianism and censorship. Even if the people that are being censored are people that I wish would shut up.

I'll read up on George Soros.

Thanks for your help?

I'm a grown man, and have been for several decades. If i met you on the street, and you asked for directions and i gave them to you, and you then whined that i had not lead you by hand to your destination, you'd get just about the same tenor of response from me. I didn't consider it a waste of my time to have responded, but at the point at which you appeared to be seeking someone to do for you the legwork you can so easily do yourself, i lost any interest in putting further effort into the subject. If you had read the Wikipedia article, and had checked out the links provided in that article, you were well on your way to the answers you seek, which makes me wonder why you ask your question here.

I see no reason to automatically associate socialism with totalitarianism. The first members of the Labour Party to sit in the House of Commons in England were considered socialist, but there is no good reason to claim that any government which ever ruled England was totalitarian, including the Labour government. Sweden has had socialist governments in the past, and likely will in the future. There is no reason to assume that Sweden has ever been a totalitarian state (a least, since the death of Charles XII). France has had socialist governments, and in recent times (c.f., François Mitterand)--do you assume that that made France a totalitarian state? What is truly amusingly ironic here is that Soros was a Hungarian refugee who fled the implementation of "Stalinist" totalitarian socialism in Hungary, and who long funded anti-Soviet movements while the Soviet Union still existed.

When you take your grain of salt to read this post of mine, set aside a large bowl of salt to use when reading any articles at the Washington Times and the Insight web site they sponsor.

Might want to read the description of George Soros on the site of the Open Society Institute, an international NGO with manifold programs that he funds: http://www.soros.org/about/bios/a_soros

Just browsing around the site of the Open Society Institute itself ( http://www.soros.org ) should also give a pretty good idea about the range of projects and intiatives he funds. It's a wide range, from promoting the rights of the Roma minority in Eastern Europe to supporting dissidents in (neo)communist dictatorships in the Former Soviet Union to fighting AIDS in Africa to promoting solutions to combat environmental pollution to etc, etc.

Promoting censorship, as you suggest in your first post, is definitely not something he does; in fact, through the Open Society Institute (OSI) he's supported critical journalists who face repressive regimes around the world.

To give you a brief impression of where Soros spends billions in charitative funds on: right now the frontpage of the website of OSI highlights projects and publications about:

• Violence against gays and lesbians
  
• The future of Turkmenistan after the death of dictator Turkmenbashi
  
• Ensuring that more Americans have access to drug addiction treatment
  
• Grants for photographers who undertake projects on social justice or human rights
  
• Developing a treatment program for people with drug-resistant tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS in poor countries
  
• Police treatment of ethnic minorities in Bulgaria, Hungary and Spain
  
• HIV-related legal services in Kenya
  
• Stemming corruption in post-conflict countries like Afghanistan and Sierra Leone

All subjects that George Soros funds projects, activities, publications and forums about.

How the US right has managed to reduce his work to the caricature provided in the Insight Mag article you link in, I will never understand.

There's a series of interviews in various media with Soros available online here: http://www.georgesoros.com/interviews

On a wholly unrelated note, the Insight Mag article included this turn of phrase:


Seriously - anyone who blithely groups together, in any context, Soviet dictators Lenin and Trotsky with Franklin D. Roosevelt has neither shame nor honesty.

1. Open borders are not necessarily a bad idea, providing certain criteria are met regarding the agenda of those immigrating, AND, America ceases to be the 'most hated nation' by which we are sometimes described. (for obvious reasons)

2. Legalized drug use is not the issue as much as the farcical 'war on drugs' has been just that, a farce. Legalize hemp for industrial purposes and save the planet. Who cares if somebody wants to smoke the stuff.

3. Legalized euthanasia is more for those performing the procedure than for those receiving the procedure. I, for only 1, can not believe that death is better than life under ANY circumstances.

4. Legalizing abortion is legalizing murder. The 'choice' they often refer to is made BEFORE conception NOT after.

5. Anybody who wishes to silence conservative talk radio only wishes to quiet the truth.

Just my humble opinion.

Just want to point out that that is your opinion about a set of positions that seemed to be rather randomly ascribed to George Soros by the original poster. Do not assume these to actually be Soros's positions.

Mr. Soros is a far left wing ideologue. He is the sponsor and financier of a number of far left organizations, Moveon .org and Media Matters being two of them. He is a billionaire who keeps his fortune hidden in off shore locations to avoid paying income tax while advocating higher taxes here in the US. He is a naturalized citizen.

If you are politically in tune with the agenda of the far left, ( to find out what that is check out the Socialist Party website) you will think he is great. If you are a student and believer of the Constitution of the United States, you will not think is is great.

This is ridiculous. If you look into the many projects that he sponsors around the world, you will find that he has always been an opponent of authoritarian regimes, including the post- and neo-communist ones in the former Soviet Union and, previously, Southeastern Europe. As a result, his mainstream-liberal politics have made him as fiercely hated by the various leftwing authoritarians around Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as by their nationalist conservative and far-right counterparts. (The two often make common cause in fact.)

Basically, the national conservatives consider him an American Zionist stooge of Western, atheist, liberal cosmopolitanism, and the postcommunist populists consider him, well, an American Zionist stooge of Western, capitalist and imperialist cosmopolitanism.

As an illustration of the consequences, employees of Soros organisations are sufficiently at risk for travel policies to countries like Belarus, Russia and Uzbekistan to be very restrictive.

Since the same kind of antipathy-from-both-sides goes on in much of the countries he works in in Asia and Africa, that puts Soros squarely in the centre. The radical centre, if you like.

On a sidenote, the equation of Moveon.org with the (practically defunct) Socialist Party in the US is off-kilter as well. I am aware of the tendency of American conservatives to label everything left of Lieberman as "far left", but there are clear differences between the liberals of Moveon.org, not to mention Media Matters, and proper socialists.

Yes, but then again ---

a) most grown folks don't walk up to a group of strangers to relay "information" about a liberal billionaire they found on conservative newssite to ask whether it's true. The point here is that real life conventions do not completely map to online conventions, and that goes both ways.

b) even without ever having met Setanta face to face, I'm willing to bet that he would react the same way if the same request was put to him in real life.

c) As you say earlier, the question is, is he right? As someone who has been discussing with Setanta for about four years now -- as often as not on opposing sides of debates -- I can attest that information he links to is almost always well-grounded in fact.

Just some background from an old community member to a new. Welcome to A2K.

Nimh,

Not ridiculous at all. He is everything I said he is. He finances the the organizations I mentioned and is a far leftist. He is a socialist if not a communist. He hides his money and doesn't pay his fair share of taxes while financing causes of the far left.

You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, however I know who Mr. Soros is.

Mr. Soros is most definitely not a socialist. Now I wouldnt care if he were, I have nothing against socialists myself, but fact is he isn't, and its silly to pretend otherwise.


Ah yes, far left causes such as <checks current soros.org frontpage> developing a blueprint for a national AIDS plan for the US.


Well I brought several examples to buttress my opinion. We all have opinions, but it would make yours more credible if you'd actually argue it with some persuasive examples of your own.

For now your argument seems to consists in its entirety of Soros being a socialist because a) you say so and b) he supports Moveon.org and Media Matters.

"Power Givers"

From: Time
May 14, 2007

These donors blend generosity with thoughtful activism to make contributions that count

[..]

George Soros
Global financier

Cause: Supporting open societies across more than 60 countries through philanthropic organizations and foundations within the network of his Open Society Institute.

The efforts and donations of the Hungarian-born businessman and his network encompass a breadth of philanthropic work, from $100 million for an Internet infrastructure for regional Russian universities to $50 million for the Millennium Promise initiative to eradicate extreme poverty in Africa.

Impact: Soros` network has spent $742 million in the U.S. alone, and Soros, 76, has given away more than $6 billion during his career.