The progressive left has been revising the definition of anti-Semitism for some time. It’s already old news that it no longer considers it anti-Semitic to attack pro-Israel Jews for their Jewish identity. But this process has recently taken a new twist. Not only has the definition of anti-Semitism been narrowed to exclude attacks on pro-Israel Jews, but it has also been broadened to cover all attacks on progressive leftists who happen to be Jews, even if the attack relates solely to the target’s left-wing activism.
Consider, for instance, the uproar over the recent Hungarian campaign against George Soros, a leading left-wing activist who also happens to be Jewish. As part of his reelection bid, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban plastered the country with anti-illegal immigration posters featuring a smiling Soros bearing the slogan “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh” and a statement that 99 percent of Hungarians oppose illegal immigration. Orban, who accuses Soros of funding progressive groups in Hungary that lobby for “settling a million migrants” in the country, has also called Soros himself a “billionaire speculator” and an “American financial speculator attacking Hungary.”
The campaign has outraged many people, ostensibly out of concern for anti-Semitism. The head of Hungary’s Jewish Federation protested to Orban, saying that despite not being “openly anti-Semitic,” the campaign could spark anti-Semitism. So did Israel’s ambassador to Hungary, using language which strongly implied the campaign was anti-Semitic without actually saying so, until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (correctly) ordered a retraction. A senior European Union official termed Orban’s use of “speculator” anti-Semitic. The Associated Press even ran a story in May headlined “Demonization of Soros recalls old anti-Semitic conspiracies.”
Some attacks on Soros are anti-Semitic, like when someone at an anti-refugee rally in Poland in 2015 set fire to an effigy of an Orthodox Jew which he said represented Soros. That’s classic anti-Semitism; it implies both that the real problem is Soros’s Jewishness rather than anything he did, and that all Jews are responsible for Soros’s actions.
The Hungarian campaign, however, targets Soros not for his Jewishness, which it never even mentions, but for his actions; specifically, the fact that he is one of the main financial backers of pro-immigration organizations in Hungary.
According to data provided to the Associated Press by Soros’s Open Society Foundations, he has so far donated $12 billion worldwide, of which $400 million has gone to Hungary. I doubt Hungary has many other donors providing funding of that magnitude for progressive causes (the only kind Soros funds). So if you believe it’s problematic for outsiders to pour huge sums of money into a country to promote agendas most of the country considers detrimental to its well-being—a position I sympathize with, given the damage similar tactics have caused Israel—then Soros is a legitimate target for reasons having nothing to do with his Jewishness.
Moreover, while the word “speculator” is often used as anti-Semitic code for “Jew,” in Soros’s case, it’s the literal truth. Soros didn’t make his fortune by producing better widgets. He made it by speculating on the markets, where he’s especially famous for having raked in $1 billion in a single day by betting against the British pound, thereby earning the nickname “the man who broke the Bank of England.” So if you believe that financial speculation is detrimental to society, then Soros is the ultimate embodiment of this particular economic evil. That, too, has nothing to do with his Jewishness.
Hungary: 'Government campaign against Soros on immigration has nothing to do with anti-Semitism'
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