Vox Conversations | 1 April 2021 | 0h 58m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Emily Tamkin about her book The Influence of Soros: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for an Open Society. Discusses the life and legacy of George Soros, unpacking the meaning of the smear campaign against him, and the inherent contradictions of a wealthy man trying to use his influence to make societies more democratic.
Profoundly unconvincing. Mr. Beauchamp and Ms. Tamkin acknowledge that in an open society it should be possible to criticise everyone, and that indeed Mr. Soros has made mistakes. So in the end they give examples of what they consider to be fair criticisms, for instance, his organisations shouldn’t have gotten involved in the Baltimore DA race because it’s unfair for a billionaire to have so much influence on local issues. Irrelevant! The important questions are whether the DA candidate supported by the Soros organisations is competent and has good or bad policies for Baltimore, questions they do not even entertain.
An unfair criticism (they say) is to claim that Mr. Soros is a wealthy internationalist trying to push politics to the left — that’s anti-Semitic. But of course Mr. Soros *is* a wealthy internationalist pushing politics to the left. It’s not surprising that a right-wing nationalist like Mr. Netanyahu would be unfriendly; no cognitive dissonance is required for a Jewish person to call a spade a spade.
They also omitted the single most interesting fact about Mr. Soros: his first language is Esperanto.