The billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros makes an easy and a useful enemy: he is a liberal, a generous promoter of democracy, human rights and open borders, the 29th-richest man in the world, and Jewish.
The Hungarian-American hedge fund owner first hit the headlines in Britain in 1992 after he earned a reported $1bn – and the title “the man who broke the Bank of England” – by betting on Black Wednesday.
He returned to the front pages this year after it emerged that his foundation was funding the Best for Britain group, which aims to stop Brexit. He announced on Tuesday that the campaign for a second referendum would start “within days”.
The Daily Mail and Telegraph have called the public, well-advertised campaign a plot, with the Telegraph labelling Soros “a rich gambler … accused of meddling in nation’s affairs”, prompting accusations it was dredging up antisemitic slurs.
Reinforcing the trope, the pro-Brexit campaign Leave.EU has tweeted drawings portraying the Labour MP David Lammy as a puppet with his strings controlled by Soros, and labelled the financier’s philanthropic operations “the Soros web”.
The philanthropist’s Jewish roots and successful career as an international financier mean he fits easily in the role of what the Jewish rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center called the “global, manipulative Jewish monster who can be blamed for all evils and problems”.
But it is in central and eastern Europe and the US that Soros has become a true hate figure for nationalists and populists. Soros was born in Budapest in 1930, survived Nazi-occupied Hungary, emigrated to the UK in 1947, then settled in the US and made his fortune on Wall Street.
His Open Society Foundations (OSF) have funded NGOs advancing human rights, the rule of law, education, public health, LGBT and Roma rights and a free press across central and eastern Europe and in more than 120 countries, giving away more than $14bn.
But the tide turned against the financier during Europe’s 2015 refugee crisis, when his generous backing for charities helping migrants, and support for the EU’s resettlement plan, brought him into direct conflict with ultra-conservative, rightwing governments including that of Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
Orbán, who calls Soros “an American financial speculator attacking Hungary” who has “destroyed the lives of millions of Europeans”, based his successful re-election campaign this year on attacking a supposed “Soros plan” to flood Hungary with Muslim migrants.
The Hungarian government’s planned “stop Soros” law, which would enforce a 25% tax on foreign donations to NGOs that “back migration to Hungary” and allow the interior ministry to reject groups that work on migration issues for “national security” reasons, last month forced the OSF to close its Budapest office.
In the US, Soros’s support for groups protecting gay and lesbian rights and campaigning to reduce police violence has also made him a target for rightwing attacks, fuelled by donations to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and a $10m donation to the fight against hate crime following the 2016 election of Donald Trump.
