Speaking outside the White House on Wednesday, President Donald Trump refused to rule out the possibility that George Soros might be behind the migrant caravan.
Trump was first asked if he thought someone was funding the caravan.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Trump replied.
“George Soros?” a reporter pressed.
“I don’t know who, but I wouldn’t be surprised,” Trump continued on. “A lot of people say yes.”
A “lot of people” includes Fox News folks like Lou Dobbs and Laura Ingraham, as well as pro-Trump Congressman Matt Gaetz who tweeted out this:
BREAKING: Footage in Honduras giving cash 2 women & children 2 join the caravan & storm the US border @ election time. Soros? US-backed NGOs? Time to investigate the source! pic.twitter.com/5pEByiGkkN
The conspiracy theory — which apparently dates back to March — may also have contributed to the synagogue slayings in Pittsburgh.
Standing on the White House lawn on Wednesday, Trump gave no further indication about why he would “not be surprised” that Soros was involved, although blaming Soros has proven popular among Trump’s base.
President Donald Trump on Friday briefly tried to strike a conciliatory tone when it came to condemning political violence — but he quickly reverted back to attacking his political foes, including musing about having billionaire Democratic donor George Soros arrested.
Just moments after Trump calls for unity at a WH event, he references "globalists," prompting several audience members shout "Soros" — who was a target of one of the bombs — and others shout "lock him up" to which Trump chuckles, points and repeats "lock him up" pic.twitter.com/IWZR3DRCvk
The anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that George Soros, a wealthy Hungarian-American businessman who has donated millions of dollars to progressive causes, is paying people to protest President Donald Trump is a staple of the conservative ecosystem.
Last week, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham tweeted “SOROS STRIKES AGAIN” after Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) was confronted in a Senate elevator by survivors of sexual assault.
Now the President of the United States is getting in on the anti-Semitic action, claiming that protests against his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who has been accused of sexual misconduct bymultiplewomen, were “Paid for by Soros and others” in a Friday tweet.
The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad. Don’t fall for it! Also, look at all of the professionally made identical signs. Paid for by Soros and others. These are not signs made in the basement from love! #Troublemakers
This was the first time Trump has mentioned Soros on Twitter, per the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale. However, The Atlantic’s David Frum noted Soros was one of the “three identifiable “faces of international finance”” featured in a 2016 Trump campaign ad that was widelycriticized for its anti-Semitic overtones.
The Washington Examiner’s Dave Brown noticed that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) floated the conspiracy theory about Soros paying Kavanaugh protesters during an appearance on Fox Business less than 90 minutes before Trump’s tweet.
Maria Bartiromo asked Chuck Grassley this morning if he thinks George Soros is paying the elevator protesters. "I have heard so many people believe that. I tend to believe it," Grassley said. Trump tweeted the accusation about 80 minutes later pic.twitter.com/az8QtMZwma
Ana Maria Archila, one of the sexual assault survivors who was filmed confronting Flake last week, responded to Trump’s tweet in a statement, saying, “No one can pay for someone’s lived experiences.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League, “The Hungarian Jewish billionaire, Holocaust survivor and philanthropist figures prominently in anti-Semitic tweets, with claims that he directly uses his largess to fund false flag events. One noteworthy allegation claims that Soros was responsible for the deadly ‘Unite the Right’ rally in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Other tweets refer to his Jewish heritage in pejorative terms and claims that he’s trying to undermine Western civilization.”
ThinkProgress’ Casey Michel recently explained the anti-Semitism behind conservatives’ Soros conspiracy theories:
Of course, as with most conspiracies, there’s a far darker reality lurking behind the notion that Soros is responsible for all the ills facing down nationalist movements. While most of those pushing Soros-based conspiracies don’t come out and say that Soros is evil because he’s Jewish, it doesn’t take much sleuthing to discern the anti-Semitism behind the conspiracies. Between the imagery of Soros pulling strings to the fact that Soros has effectively replaced “the Rothschilds” as the go-to for any conspiracy about an international cabal thwarting the people’s will, it’s not hard to catch the bigotry lacing the rising conspiracies about Soros.
Conservatives have a history of attempting to smear survivors of traumatic events as paid “crisis actors.” Sexual assault survivors’ attempts to confront Kavanaugh’s supporters have not been received well by Republicans.
The Washington Post reported in January 2017 that people were paid to attend Trump’s campaign launch announcement.
Trump delivered a vindictive and paranoid speech Thursday in West Palm Beach, Florida where he attacked his sexual assault accusers, his rival Hillary Clinton, and the media who he feels are all coordinating to smear his good name in this election, despite his own previous racist, sexist, and violent speech.
But lost in this speech was a line delivered by Trump that, unless you are member of the white supremacist alt-right movement or studied and are familiar with whackjob conspiracy theories, you wouldn’t have realized that he was also referencing a centuries old debunked conspiracy theory still widely used in anti-Semitic circles, that claims a vast global Jewish conspiracy for world domination.
Trump said:
It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities…
We’ve seen this firsthand in the WikiLeaks documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends, and her donors…
This is a struggle for the survival of our nation. Believe me. And this will be our last chance to save it on November 8. Remember that.
This election will determine whether we’re a free nation, or whether we have only an illusion democracy but in are in fact controlled by a small handful of special global interests rigging the system, and our system is rigged.
At this point you may snicker and scoff at the idea of a candidate for the President of the United States from a major political party was echoing anti-Semetic conspiracy theories, but Trump’s statement was not lost on the Jewish press, the Anti-Defamation League, and his alt-right and other white supremacist supports who are all very keenly aware of his meaning.
This article will explain to you, in very clear language, the story behind Trump’s barely coded words that directly echo one of the most ancient of all anti-Semitic libels.
The Conspiracy Theories
Make no mistake, these are all unsubstantiated ideas and any person who makes any of these claims does so without any evidence and are rooted in a history of hate and ignorance. In this racist perspective, Jews are typically painted as controllers of capital and money, “clannish,” and as having an agenda beyond what is visible. These stereotypes constitute a large part of these conspiracy theories.
The first conspiracy we’ll review is the accusation that Jews have long been controlling the global financial system. This loony conspiracy theory goes back centuries, even before the founding of Christianity, and recently has been attached to the Rothschild family, who during the 1800’s amassed the largest private fortune in modern world history.
Usually, the main accusation made by theorists is that the Rothschilds are playing both sides of every conflict, ever. The Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, World War II, etc. Theorists claim that all sides of each war were merely puppets of the Rothschilds, who would make exorbitant amounts of cash from repeatedly prodding nations into a cycle of endless warfare. People actually still believe this today. Remember when former actor Mel Gibson once said during a 2006 DUI that “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world“? This is the same conspiracy theory he was referencing.
Jews have also long been accused of controlling the Hollywood and the media. For examples see any comedianin the past 100 years make fun of this.
Modern anti-Semitic conspiracy theories depicting an elaborate secret hierarchy of controlling Jewish influences, such as the idea that “the Jews” command the U.S. Federal Reserve System and in effect control the world’s money, largely take their cue from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a 1903 tract purporting to be the manual of a Jewish secret society planning world domination. It is still widely circulated and occasionally cited as “evidence” by various clueless anti-Semites despite being exposed as a fraud as early as 1921.
The Conspiracy Pushers
Donald Trump has surrounded himself with people who are true believers in these archaic and long debunked views, and at times quoted them directly in speeches and interviews.
The most famous example would be nutcase right-wing conspiracy theory pusher Alex Jones, an ally of Trump who he once called “amazing” and someone who Trump regularly quotes, who runs the crackpot Infowars.com site and disputes the idea the The Protocols is a fraud while pushing a New World Order fiction that makes Glenn Beck appear comparatively sane.
According to Jones just about every current event can be tied into the New World Order’s nefarious schemes. In short, he’s making money off of really gullible people who will believe anything, no matter the complete lack of evidence.
Jones frequently invokes “globalists” as the villains behind the various conspiracy theories he discusses on his radio show and included in almost every article and documentary on his Infowars.com website has a reference to the Rothschild conspiracy theory, that there is secretive Jewish family controlling all word events for their personal monetary gain. Some examples of these articles include:
The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families (All eight families mentioned are either Jewish or have unsubstantiated conspiracy theories that they are “hiding” their Jewish heritage.)
There is also the alt-right white supremacist site Breitbart.com, whose Editor in Chief Steve Bannon is currently working as the CEO of the Trump campaign. BuzzFeed reported that Trump’s speech was co-written by Stephen Bannon. Breitbart.com has long had an anti-Semetic history since Bannon took charge, writing articles like:
After Jewish editor Ben Shapiro quit the site in protest of its Trump coverage, a piece was written sure to note he was an Orthodox Jew and featured an image of his face with a yellow pointed star.
Reality
These racist sources that push crazy conspiracies are where Trump is getting his information from, he is personally intertwined with its players, he repeatedly quotes it, and it is wildly insane and completely soaked in racism.
You and I may have not picked up on this racist “dog whistle” at first, but now we know more about the story behind when Donald Trump makes a statement like, “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers,” does his anti-Jewish message seem more clear?
