George Soros has published a state of the world letter at Project Syndicate, which I recommend you read. His analysis shares several important features with Donald Trump’s, and gives insight into a man who otherwise consistently misapprehends what is the real threat to an open society, of the type to which every reader of this blog is committed, I can say without fear of contradiction.
First he shares the concerns of Karl Popper for the preservation of what Popper called “the open society”, the kind we live in, and the defence of same against closed societies, such as Russia, and other tribal or mafia states.
Second, he adverts to the liberalization of the flows of capital after the fall of Communism in 1989.
The major development since then has been the globalization of financial markets, spearheaded by advocates who argued that globalization increases total wealth. After all, if the winners compensated the losers, they would still have something left over.
As with Trump, Soros feels that the losers were not compensated adequately, a point they share in common. Soros continues:
Because financial capital is an indispensable ingredient of economic development, and few countries in the developing world could generate enough capital on their own, globalization spread like wildfire. Financial capital could move around freely and avoid taxation and regulation.
Soros should know whereof he speaks.
Globalization has had far-reaching economic and political consequences. It has brought about some economic convergence between poor and rich countries; but it increased inequality within both poor and rich countries. In the developed world, the benefits accrued mainly to large owners of financial capital, who constitute less than 1% of the population. The lack of redistributive policies is the main source of the dissatisfaction that democracy’s opponents have exploited.
In particular, Soros observes that the European Union has stopped being a relationship among peers and has become an arrangement between creditor and debtor countries. Institutional rigidity in the treaty uniting Europe, and the inability to fix what is wrong with the Maastricht Treaty, have compounded the trouble.
So far so good. Globalization has been bad for certain groups, and the European Union is dysfunctional. At this point Soros steps off the mesa and starts walking on air, à la Wiley Coyote. Enter the archvillain Vladimir Putin.
“At first, he [Putin] tried to control social media. Then, in a brilliant move, he exploited social media companies’ business model to spread misinformation and fake news, disorienting electorates and destabilizing democracies. That is how he helped Trump get elected.”
“With economic growth lagging and the refugee crisis out of control, the EU is on the verge of breakdown and is set to undergo an experience similar to that of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Those who believe that the EU needs to be saved in order to be reinvented must do whatever they can to bring about a better outcome.”
With the exception of his demonization of Putin, I am not sure there is much to distinguish his views of what is going on in Europe and the world from those of Trump or Nigel Farage. So why the hostility to both from Soros?
What I find ludicrous in all the ravings of the anti-Trumpists, is their total and complete misperception of Trump, who is the least right-wing, least ideological, least establishmentarian, most centrist, most pragmatic Republican President since Eisenhower. The guy is a positive leftie compared to Hillary, in terms of economic intervention. He only appears “conservative” because he does not give a damn for political correctness. This in turn shows how far leftism has strayed from an economic agenda of wealth redistribution to a values agenda of redistribution of victimhood.
The political positions which anti-Trumpists take in consequence, of supporting the arch-globalizer Hillary Rodham Clinton, against the conclusions of their own analysis, is incomprehensible.
Yet there is some element of Jewish political hysteria at play here in Soros and other neo-conservatives. Those who are always sniffing for Nazis are quick to perceive it in any popular movement of ordinary people to reject the terms of governance laid down by the political classes. Thus Soros can talk of a refugee crisis but not of an Islamic invasion crisis. Soros can observe the destruction of faith in the European Union but is reluctant to see any merit in those who oppose its plans for further integration into the politically irresponsible morass of the European pan-state.
I cite David Goldman, who channels Spengler, in his latest analysis of the mess that Jewish neo-conservatives have got themselves into by opposing Trump. It is relevant to the claims about Jewish political hysteria that I made above.
Goldman cites Irving Kristol:
“Jews to this day continue to combine an almost pathologically intense concern for politics with a seemingly equally intense inclination toward political foolishness, often crossing over into the realm of the politically suicidal,” wrote the late Irving Kristol, the original neoconservative. His son Bill Kristol proved the Jewish proclivity for political hara-kiri remains undiminished in his generation by doing everything he could to prevent the election of Donald Trump—along with such high-profile Jewish conservatives as pundit Charles Krauthammer and Commentary Editor John Podhoretz.
I find that Soros, Krauthammer, Kristol , Podhoretz and others, though different in their politics, are alike in being highly intelligent and completely unable to understand the Trump phenomenon. Indeed, they are barking up the wrong tree. They are not alone in their folly, as many a goyish Democrat will attest, but when all you have is the hammer of anti-Nazidom, everyone is suspected to be Nazi nail. It is time to stop looking for Hitler in every goy.
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If there were any further evidence needed that the enemies of the Jews are now on the left, look at the lead article in the National Post today. Alan Dershowitz now realizes that Obama has betrayed the Jews. A little late, don’t you think, Alan? This is why every ignorant 18 year old will trust an experienced sergeant to lead them in battle in preference to an officer whose only military education has been to read books. And this is why the cunning of Trump has been preferred to the vapidity of his former rival, Hillary Clinton.
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Trump’s victory, like Brexit, came because the left had left the white working class behind. Its vision of the future as glamorous multicultural city states was overturned in a single night. The idea that Soros had committed so much power and wealth to was of a struggle between populist nationalists and responsible internationalists. But, in a great irony, Bush was hardly the nationalist that Soros believed. Instead Soros spent a great deal of time and wealth to unintentionally elect a populist nationalist.
Leftists used Soros money to focus on their own identity politics obsessions leaving the Dems with little ability to interact with white working class voters. The Ivy and urban leftists who made up the core of the left had come to exist in a narrow world with little room for anything and anyone else.
Soros turned over the Democrats to political fanatics least likely to be able to recognize their own errors. His protégés repeated the great self-destruction of the Soviet Union on a more limited scale….
George Soros spent a fortune to turn a national party favorable to the left into an organization that has difficulty appealing to anyone not on the left. He wanted to control a country he did not understand. And, as the left so often does, he achieved his goals and in doing so destroyed them.