Hungarian-American billionaire businessman George Soros is the subject of a number of antisemitic conspiracy theories. Veronika Bondarenko, writing for Business Insider in 2017, said: "For two decades, some have seen Soros as a kind of puppet master secretly controlling the global economy and politics." The New York Times describes the allegations as moving "from the dark corners of the internet and talk radio" to "the very center of the political debate" by 2018. Professor Armin Langer has noted that Soros is "the perfect code word" for conspiracy theories that unite antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Soros conspiracies first emerged in Russian circles involving "Western anti-Kremlin civil society across the Eastern Bloc from Tbilisi to the Baltic". These conspiracies involved inverting Soros's strengths into weaknesses, a common Russian disinformation technique. Soros, a Holocaust survivor, was falsely accused of being a Nazi collaborator. As a supporter of Eastern European democracies, Soros was accused of being behind the European migrant crisis or importing migrants to European countries. Due to his anti-corruption advocacy, he was also accused of "globalist" conspiracies to overthrow governments.

The Soros conspiracies quickly spread across Europe and the United States, carrying antisemitic and Islamophobic overtones. This included efforts by the Hungarian government, under the second premiership of Viktor Orbán, as part of an election campaign demonizing Soros. Soros is cast as part of an international cabal of Jews that includes the Rothschilds, Freemasons, and Illuminati. American conservatives picked up on the thread in the late 2000s, spearheaded by Fox News. Bill O'Reilly gave an almost ten-minute monologue on Soros in 2007, calling him an "extremist" and claiming he was "off-the-charts dangerous." Online news organizations, often connected to Russian state media such as the Centre for Research on Globalization, would also publish and help spread conspiracies.

Background

Antisemitic conspiracies about a Jewish world order or Jewish people as tools of the antichrist have existed for centuries. Scholars agree many of these conspiracies were adapted to a modern era when The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was published in 1905. The fraudulent text was developed by the Tsarist secret police of Russia and claimed to expose a Jewish plot of world domination.

The antisemitic conspiracies that were modernized through the Protocols were then applied to George Soros's narratives. Soros's philanthropic efforts with the Open Society, founded in 1979, supported democracy movements in Eastern Europe and funded liberal causes in Western democracies. After the fall of Soviet Russia, Soros began funding academic and grant programs. In fact, his activity in Russia became so pronounced that Russians developed a word, "Sorosovat", meaning to seek a grant from any quarter. By the mid-1980s, the KGB had sought to discredit Soros's reputation.

Non-governmental organizations became targets of scrutiny in Russia. In 1995, Nezavisimaya Gazeta published a Federal Counterintelligence Service report which accused the Soros-funded International Science Fund of espionage. In 1999, Dmitry Ryurikov, a foreign affairs advisor to Boris Yeltsin, would give a speech at the Nixon Center in Washington D.C. and blame NGOs, and Soros specifically, for being part of the New World Order trying to destroy Russia. In 2015, Russia passed a series of anti-NGO laws. Many of the Soros conspiracies and links to antisemitic tropes are tied to the framing of NGOs as being connected to the New World Order, international bankers, or the antichrist.

1990s

George Soros's conspiracies emerged from disinformation campaigns in the late 1990s. The earliest connection to antisemitic tropes researchers have identified was in 1992 when far-right Hungarian Justice and Life Party leader István Csurka used imagery of Soros as being part of a Jewish global conspiracy.

In the early 1990s, Soros was accused of being involved in an Anglo-French-Jewish-liberal conspiracy against Croatia and Germany.

As Russian Intelligence began to report that American non-profits, especially Soros's Open Society, were undermining sovereignty in Russia and Eastern Europe, conspiracy theories about Soros began to spread. Anthropologist Ivan Kalmar writes that it is "not clear where the Soros Myth began... A likely candidate for the dubious honour of originating it is the Executive Intelligence Review, founded by the far-right American commentator Lyndon LaRouche. An article in the November 1, 1996 edition accuses the financier of manipulating the world's finances in partnership with the Rothschilds, who 'launched Soros's career, citing a piece by writer F. William Engdahl. Similarly, author Michael Wohlraich identifies Engdahl as the first US populariser of Soros conspiracy theories, noting the same text. This has been described by the anti-fascist group Unicorn Riot as "an example of the antisemitic "rootless cosmopolitan" trope.

Soros's conspiracies were often found in the pages of LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review. In 1996, articles were published about Soros's drug legalization conspiracies while Bill Clinton was negotiating a crime bill. In 1997 LaRouche's publication began to cover Soros as a source of destabilization in Central and South America over critical minerals. Soros was also accused of running secret armies on behalf of the British Government in 1997.

In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, the prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for welcoming Myanmar as a member. With a history of antisemitic remarks, Mahathir made specific reference to Soros's Jewish background ("It is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge"), and implied Soros was orchestrating the crash as part of a larger Jewish conspiracy. Nine years later, in 2006, Mahathir met with Soros and afterward stated that he accepted that Soros had not been responsible for the crisis."Malaysian ex-premier Mahathir and billionaire Soros end feud". ABC News. Agence France-Presse. December 15, 2006. In 1998's The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered, Soros explained his role in the crisis as follows: The financial crisis that originated in Thailand in 1997 was particularly unnerving because of its scope and severity ... By the beginning of 1997, it was clear to Soros Fund Management that the discrepancy between the trade account and the capital account was becoming untenable. We sold short the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit early in 1997 with maturities ranging from six months to a year. (That is, we entered into contracts to deliver at future dates Thai baht and Malaysian ringgit that we did not currently hold.) Subsequently, Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia accused me of causing the crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation. We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before the crisis; on the contrary, we were buyers when the currencies began to decline—we were purchasing ringgits to realize the profits on our earlier speculation. (Much too soon, as it turned out. We left most of the potential gain on the table because we were afraid that Mahathir would impose capital controls. He did so, but much later.)Soros, George (1999). The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (2nd ed.). Public Affairs. pp. 208–209. .

2000s

In 2002, CovertAction Quarterly, now CovertAction Magazine, which is known for propaganda and disinformation published a George Soros article by Heather Coffin entitled "George Soros: Imperial Wizard." The article blamed Soros for the 2000 "coup" in Yugoslavia.

Many of the conspiracies tied to Soros revolved around him organizing the Color Revolutions in countries formerly occupied by the Soviet Union. Serbia's Bulldozer Revolution in 2000, Georgia's Rose Revolution of 2003, and Ukraine's Orange Revolution of 2004 all helped spark conspiracy theories about Soros.

In 2004, Richard Carlson, father of Tucker Carlson, former US Ambassador to the Seychelles, and lobbyist for Viktor Orbán, wrote about Soros's Potemkin Village approach to Georgia. These pro-democracy movements began with Otpor in Serbia, and quickly spread across Eastern Europe in countries formerly occupied by Russia.

In 2004, FrontPage Magazine, edited by David Horowitz and published by the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC), began publishing stories featuring Soros conspiracies. This included a two-part series by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Shawn Macomber on Soros, "The Man Who Would Be Kingmaker".

In 2005, Soros's conspiracies about the Color Revolutions spread in Lithuania. The newspaper Respublika published a series of articles that attacked the non-governmental organizations and civil and human rights groups. Activists in Lithuania were labeled "Sorosologists". In 2006, David Horowitz began to write about connections between Soros and a "Shadow Party" controlling the Democratic Party in the United States. By 2008, the Freedom Center was publishing articles by Michelle Malkin connecting criticisms of Soros to globalist conspiracies.

Soros's criticisms connected to conspiracies about globalism also spread in the United States in 2005. Peter Schweizer, who has written other books of debunked conspiracies, published Do as I Say (Not as I Do) in 2005. The book purported to uncover liberal hypocrisy involving Soros. Schweizer made claims, using publicly available documents as evidence, that Soros used tax shelters to avoid bills and also invested in industries he condemned.

Soros became a target of Fox News journalists. In April 2007, Bill O'Reilly included a 10-minute segment on The O'Reilly Factor about Soros, whom he described as "off-the-charts dangerous" and "an extremist who wants open borders, a one-world foreign policy, legalized drugs, euthanasia."

During the 2008 presidential campaign in the United States, Soros's conspiracies were tied to disinformation campaigns about the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN. These were often tied to labeling Barack Obama as a secret Soros-funded communist who utilized the Cloward-Piven Strategy. After Glenn Beck first mentioned this strategy in March 2009, he mentioned it at least 32 times in the next twelve months, connecting Soros and other elites to Barack Obama.

In 2008, Michelle Malkin would publish an editorial in the National Review criticizing Soros. Her article made references to criticism of a "Soros Slush Fund" being the brainchild of Barack Obama.

Glenn Beck was another Fox News host known to spread conspiracy theories about Soros. In 2009, Beck used a hand-written chart illustrating an alleged left-wing conspiracy linking ACORN, the Service Employees International Union and its president, Andy Stern, to Soros and the Barack Obama campaign.

In 2008, George Birnbaum and Arthur Finkelstein worked on the election campaign of Viktor Orbán; deciding that Orbán needed an enemy, they conducted survey research, after which they settled on Soros, because, according to Birnbaum, "enough people in Hungary didn't like the idea of this billionaire behind the curtain, almost like… the Wizard of Oz, controlling politics and policy." Orbán's efforts to redefine Soros as a villain took the Soros conspiracies mainstream.

In 2009, the Canadian online news outlet Canada Free Press, known for making dubious claims, published an article by Jim O'Niell on Soros that accused him of illegal market manipulation, being a felony insider trader, and a villain.

2010s

In the 2010s, conspiracy theories about George Soros grew globally.