And so, as we take stock after this latest news, it’s time to face three uncomfortable truths. First, despite his claims, Giuliani’s comments are unmistakably anti-Semitic. Second, this anti-Semitism is not merely vile but dangerous: The anti-Soros tropes like those evoked by Giuliani may tacitly encourage those prone to violence, resulting in Jewish bodies on the streets. Most disturbingly, we can’t write this off as the inebriated ravings of a single man. Everything Giuliani said had been repeated, over and over, by President Donald Trump, by Republican lawmakers and by Fox News hosts.
But the proliferation of anti-Semitic tropes in the GOP is so worrying precisely because it’s widespread and systematic. By now, there’s enough evidence to say that, in much of today’s Republican Party, anti-Semitic tropes are not an irregularity but a feature.
Giuliani’s attack runs the anti-Semitic gamut, from medieval accusations of Soros not being truly religious (similar
slurs were used during the Spanish Inquisition, which led to the torture and forced conversion of Jews) to claims that Soros controlled a US ambassador and “elected” district attorneys — which builds on the classic anti-Semitic trope of powerful Jews controlling the government.
Giuliani’s baseless accusation — indeed, the GOP’s obsession with Soros — is the embodiment of modern anti-Semitism, which is, at its root, a conspiracy theory: the belief that Jews are secretly undermining white nations by manipulating ideology, media, money and immigration.
Over the past 300 years, anti-Semites on both sides of the Atlantic have tirelessly spread this deadly lie, tweaking it to suit their needs. To the Russian czars as well as American anti-Semites like
Henry Ford and
Joseph McCarthy, the Jews were responsible for bringing communism in order to destroy their nations.
The Nazis used this conspiracy to blame Jews for orchestrating Germany’s loss in World War I; today’s white
terrorists like the Pittsburgh shooter use it to claim Jews are bringing in immigrants to turn America into a white-minority state.
Every conspiracy theory needs a “them,” the shadowy
puppet master pulling the strings. In the 1800s, it was
Baron Nathan Rothschild, the original Soros, a businessman accused of manipulating European currency.
Henry Ford focused his anti-Semitic tracts on the Warburg family and their advocacy for the Federal Reserve system.
Today’s Jewish bogeyman of choice is Soros. And, according to a number of prominent
Republicans,
Soros is
everywhere.
In the wake of the horrific Parkland school shooting,
NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre exploded in an entire dog-whistle concerto, accusing globalists and Soros of plotting to take away
Americans’ guns. Congressman
Steve King stated that Soros is bringing immigrants to America; the same conspiracy theory was given by the
Tree of Life shooter as his motivation for massacring 11 Jews in Pittsburgh. Theories of Soros being behind
Black Lives Matter, Trump’s
impeachment, and
protests against the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation to the Supreme Court have proliferated in the past several years.
The embrace of anti-Semitism posing as anti-Soros conspiracies has gone
far beyond the fringe. It’s easy to dismiss the Pittsburgh terrorist or even King and Giuliani as outliers. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has also propagated the Soros theory,
tweeting out a lie about Soros and other Jewish Democratic donors attempting to buy elections.
Rep. Louie Gohmert, like Giuliani,
accused Soros of not being truly Jewish. A prominent Republican lobbyist repeated unfounded
claims that Soros had ties to the former US ambassador to Ukraine. President Donald Trump has
promoted the theory of Soros bringing migrants to America.
Fox News, in particular, has been a bastion for Soros conspiracy theories. Earlier this year, host
Tucker Carlson devoted an entire segment to claims that Soros is “hijacking” our democracy and “
remaking” the United States. Last month, another host,
Laura Ingraham, blamed Soros for GOP losses in Virginia’s state election.
Indeed, earlier this month Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League took the unusual step of calling out Fox’s role in the proliferation of Soros theories in an NBC
op-ed with the blunt headline “Fox News is normalizing anti-Semitism even as violence against Jews surges.”
This, then, is the state of the Republican Party as we enter a new decade as well as what will surely be a tense election year: An anti-Semitic theory has been embraced by the President of the United States, members of Congress and the No. 1 conservative cable network.
This is not simply an obsession with a prominent billionaire. It’s no longer a fringe theory. It’s not drunken ramblings by the
ever-bumbling Giuliani. It is the world’s bloodiest anti-Semitic belief that has now become a tenet and a rallying cry for some of the biggest names in one of the two political parties in the United States.
