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No need to speculate. Wikipedia is quite helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Society_Foundations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Society_Foundations
by peoplewindow 9y ago
No need to speculate. Wikipedia is quite helpful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Society_Foundations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Society_Foundations
its founding in 1993, OSF has reported expenditures of over $11 billion
The Open Society Foundations reported annual expenditures of $827 million in 2014.[17] Its $873 million budget in 2013, ranked as the second largest private philanthropy budget in the United States, after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation budget of $3.9 billion
In 2017, Soros transferred $18 billion to the Foundation
It's fair to say that they're unlikely to be budget limited. Whether or not that's enough for Soros to achieve his goals is hard to say. I tend to think money has less impact in politics than many like to imagine. There are quite a few examples of lesser funded politicians beating much better funded politicians in elections e.g. Trump v Clinton.
But it doesn't have no impact either, that's for sure.
As for funding academic sociologists, well that's essentially the same as paying for lobbying. I don't think sociology is really a robust area of science: I've seen too many nonsensical papers and research results to believe it's much more than the researchers own opinions projected back at them. So by funding researchers who share Soros' world views, he gets a steady supply of "science" that can be used to sway policymakers.
maybe you can also understand why people felt that spending public money on such posters was reminiscent of 1930s Europe.
Oh look, you just implied people you disagree with might be Nazis. What a surprising and unexpected tactic that I never see these days at all.
The Hungarian government's beef with Soros is that he's rich, he supports the EU's efforts to take away Hungary's voting rights (i.e. making it formally a vassal state of the EU with no power in it at all), he funds political causes that the elected government opposes and so on. It has nothing to do with him being a Jew. This sort of debating tactic is crying wolf and I find myself already ignoring most accusations that someone or some group are "Nazis" because it's almost never true.
- Dumbdo 9y ago> he supports the EU's efforts to take away Hungary's voting rights (i.e. making it formally a vassal state of the EU with no power in it at all) Do you have a source for that claim? I am member of the EU as well and wonder that I never heard that claim before. It sounds exaggerated to be blunt.
- Boothroid 9y agoI guess either he's genuinely seen as a threat by the current leadership, or he's a handy punching bag for them. Either way I feel the antisemitism explanation is just as lacking in evidence as any other.
- pavlov 9y ago> As for funding academic sociologists, well that's essentially the same as paying for lobbying. You greatly overestimate the influence of academics in present-day politics. > The Hungarian government's beef with Soros is that he's rich, he supports the EU's efforts to take away Hungary's voting rights (i.e. making it formally a vassal state of the EU with no power in it at all), he funds political causes that the elected government opposes and so on. It has nothing to do with him being a Jew. Come on. If he were a white guy from Kansas named Smith, the Hungarian government would just ignore him. He makes a highly convenient lighting rod for various nationalist angsts in Central Europe by filling the outlines of a centuries old stereotype. The talk of Hungary becoming a vassal state is nonsense. When Hungary joined the EU, its government accepted a binding treaty to uphold certain values. The current government is free to walk away -- that same treaty contains a termination article which Britain is currently exercising. Of course Hungary doesn't actually want to leave the EU because they're major net winners both in terms of direct EU funding and in having access to the internal market.
- test87587578 9y ago>If he were a white guy from Kansas named Smith, the Hungarian government would just ignore him. Now that is a ridiculous claim with no basis in reality. If Kansas billionaire Smith spent huge sums trying to remove Hungary's national sovereignty and force policies down their throat that the population doesn't want, they'd dislike him almost as much. The fact that Soros is originally Hungarian just adds insult to injury.