The progressive reporters who peddle conspiracy theories about the “Koch Brothers” claim it is a conspiracy theory to accurately point out George Soros’s role in funding progressive groups or lobbying for policy changes. Politico — hardly a right-wing publication — recently pointed out that pro-Palestinian protesters are funded by wealthy left-wing billionaires like George Soros. But when the conservative New York Post earlier reported the same thing, progressive Washington Post reporter Philip Bump depicted the New York Post as pushing an antisemitic conspiracy theory, because Soros happens to be Jewish. Never mind that The Post described Soros as a “billionaire left-wing investor,” and did not even mention that Soros is Jewish.
Bump’s misleading narrative is ironic, because Bump has repeatedly ranted about the billionaire “Koch brothers” in the Washington Post and The Atlantic, making it sound like the Koch brothers controlled America from behind the scenes, and were orchestrating a vast conspiracy — even though the Kochs were much less powerful than George Soros.
The libertarian billionaire David Koch has been dead for five years, but progressive journalists continue to blame “the Koch Brothers” for supporting conservative causes the Kochs had nothing to do with (the Kochs are not even social conservatives). The entire Koch family has spent far less money on politics than George Soros, and far less than several other progressive billionaires. As Open Secrets pointed out in 2010, when the Kochs’ influence was at its zenith, and the Kochs were much more influential than they are today, “Overall, Soros has spent $34.24 million and the Kochs have spent $4.06 million” on federal election campaigns.
By contrast, Soros pours millions into political campaigns every year, as Philip Bump’s own newspaper, the Washington Post, has reported. A single district attorney candidate in Arlington, Virginia received “a staggering sum of money — $583,237 — from a ‘dark money’ group bankrolled by George Soros in 2019. Part-way through that local election campaign, the Washington Post reported that Soros’s group had already pumped over $1 million into just two races in Northern Virginia, seeking to replace incumbent Democrats with leftist challengers.
Yet, despite the Koch family’s much smaller role, the progressive media falsely made it sound like the Kochs had a hand in everything, including making the absurd claim that the Tea Party movement was the product of a conspiracy between Big Tobacco and the Koch Brothers. Progressive journalists falsely claimed the Koch brothers were behind Florida gun-rights legislation, when the only gun-related legislation the Kochs had ever taken a position on in Florida was to oppose rather than support an NRA-backed bill to let employees bring guns onto company parking lots over the wishes of the company.
To many progressives, any mention of Soros by a conservative — no matter how unavoidable — is evidence of antisemitism. When an LU blogger published a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal politely disagreeing with an op-ed by Mr. Soros about criminal-justice policy, a reader accused him of an “anti-semitic dog whistle,” even though the letter did not say anything about Jews (unless you claim beginning the letter with “Mr. Soros writes…” makes the letter about Jews). To the contrary, the letter made the argument that “Innocent black people would be harmed the most” by the policies backed by George Soros, because they involve “releasing vast numbers of dangerous criminals, most of whom preyed on other black people.”
The soft-on-crime policies advocated by Mr. Soros could indeed harm innocent black people most. Half of all murder victims in America are black, according to NPR, even though only 13% of all Americans are black. And although the media doesn’t like to report it, murder is disproportionately a black-on-black crime, so even releasing black offenders could harm black people as a whole: In 2018, 89% of blacks who were murdered were killed by other blacks, according to data from the Justice Department. (As the Bureau of Justice Statistics explains, crimes are committed mostly between members of the same race, and this is true for “rape or sexual assault,” “simple assault,” “aggravated assault,” and indeed, “all types of violent crime except robbery.”)
Mr. Soros provides the lion’s share of campaign funding for many progressive district attorneys, as news stories in the Washington Post have revealed. He also publicly touts his support of those district attorneys, and their soft-on-crime policies, in high-profile ways such as the Wall Street Journal op-ed he wrote, titled “Why I Support Reform Prosecutors.”
But Congressman Dan Goldman (D-NY), and progressive journalists, consider it antisemitic to point out Soros’s influence, or even mention his name in discussing crime policy, even though Jewish law professors such as Eugene Volokh and David Bernstein have done so themselves, and have pointed out that it is not antisemitic to do so, and that it is only natural to discuss Soros’s activitism given the prominent role he plays in this area of public policy. As Professor Volokh put it, “Of Course It’s Legitimate to Criticize George Soros’ Spending to Influence American Politics.”
