The Soros Slander versus the Cult of Civility

The biggest reason Democrats keep saying it's "anti-Semitic" to criticize an Israel-hating atheist? Because "civil" Republicans let them get away with it.

Contrary to popular belief, the intense vitriol of today’s politics is a direct result of too much civility, not too little. As counterintuitive as that statement may seem, it can be illustrated with a simple example: the persistence of the slur that criticism of far-left billionaire George Soros is anti-Semitic.

Every now and then, Republican officeholders will raise the subject of Soros’s well-documented, openly-acknowledged spending on leftist causes, from activist prosecutors and abortion-on-demand to biased “fact-checking” and racial (in)justice, such as in reactions to New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Donald Trump for hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels regarding an extramarital affair that may or may not have happened. In 2021, Soros funded left-wing Super PAC Color of Change’s million-dollar pledge to Bragg’s candidacy days after the group endorsed him (though it ultimately gave him just half that amount). Soros’s son Jonathan and daughter-in-law Jennifer also directly gave the D.A. $10,000 apiece.

Every time, the grave sin of noticing a controversial contributor to a controversial politician or cause will be met with accusations of Judeophobia—and not from fringe internet bottom-feeders, but from national elected Democrats and their allies in mainstream institutions like the press.

For years, the Anti-Defamation League has claimed that talking about Soros’s prominent role in far-left activism “has the effect of mainstreaming antisemitic tropes and giving support, however unwitting, to bona fide antisemites.” Democrat Jerry Nadler, Chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, claims that commenting on Soros’s partisan donations is an exercise of the “antisemitic trope” of Jewish financial influence. “This is how anti-Semitism takes root and spreads,” declares American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. Washington Post columnist Max Boot advises, “Every time Republicans say ‘Soros’ you should hear ‘the Jews.’” Former U.S. Attorney and current MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissman accuses Ron DeSantis of using a “dog whistle of anti-Semitism” in referring to Bragg as “Soros-backed.”

In September, Time Magazine published an explainer on “The History of Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories,” which could have been a worthy topic if not for the second half of the title: “from the Rothschilds to George Soros.” Last month’s Hamas attack on Israel sparked another round, from Jonathan Chait citing Trump’s invocation of Soros as part of a “record of antisemitism that Republicans have persistently ignored” (in a column that grotesquely declares Joe Biden “a Morally Decent President in a Time of Hate”) to Salon’s Chauncey DeVega invoking the same as part of the ex-president “channeling Hitler for protection” (we hate Trump too ‘round these parts, but we’re not defamatory hysterics about it).

This would be laughable if it wasn’t so nakedly malicious. The idea that it takes ulterior motives to object to an ideological foe’s support of activities that one opposes is preposterous on its face, as is the notion that Soros—who was born to Jewish parents but identifies as an atheist, opposes Israel (in the process supporting groups involved with the actually anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement), declared in 1995 “I don’t want to be part of” any Jewish “national existence,” and infamously said he felt “no sense of guilt” helping inventory the stolen belongings of Jewish families as a teen in Nazi-occupied Hungary—represents Jews, Judaism, or Jewish interests such that criticizing him somehow impugns them.

Indeed, in the real world, actual anti-Semites were protesting against Israeli’s efforts to annihilate Hamas this past month using more than $15 million from Soros’s Open Society Foundations, according to a New York Post investigation.

Make no mistake: none of the political professionals driving this narrative sincerely think that conservatives are bigoted or criticizing Soros is anti-Semitic. No innocent motive or legitimate purpose can explain such attacks. Nevertheless, Democrats and their allies persist in premeditated defamation for one simple reason: “civil” Republicans let them.

Properly understood, civility is essential—it simply means honesty toward all facts, fairness toward all parties, and proportionality toward all infractions. But that’s not the GOP establishment’s working definition. To them, “civility” means unconditional politeness to bad-faith actors in nearly all circumstances, with a special aversion to questioning opponents’ character or motives. Respect need not be earned, and is virtually never at risk of being revoked, no matter what lie one tells or atrocity one indulges.

When “cynical” is the harshest label the average Republican can muster for his opponents, is it any wonder that those opponents feel emboldened to commit outright slander as casually as they breathe? That the President of the United States thinks nothing of accusing half the electorate of “semi-fascism”? That the Attorney General of the United States has the gall to claim that criticizing him is tantamount to undermining democracy?

This climate of hate is a direct result of deciding that degradation is preferable to confrontation, as long as Republicans can feel good about being the “bigger people.” Their calculus might not be so loathsome if not for the consequences of teaching Democrats they can get away with anything: Republicans intimidated into silence or compromise on important issues, voters conditioned to believe vicious lies.

Exasperation with Republican meekness was a big part of what drove GOP voters to Trump, whose bluntness toward their enemies quenched a thirst that had gone unsated for years. Of course, Trump lacked the integrity, competence, or discipline to back up his combative style, leading to Republican losses in subsequent elections and lingering divisions in the conservative movement, but the fact that he got as far as he did in the GOP speaks to the potential of a candidate who can blend moral candor with actual focus and understanding.

The road to more civil politics starts with imposing counter-pressure on the uncivil. Not lies, not threats, not schoolyard taunts (of the kind that the forty-fifth president has conditioned a subset of the Right to confuse for “fighting”); just clear, persistent signaling of the contempt in which the public should hold clear-cut villains.

Would it make them better people? No. But it would begin applying a counterweight not only to their public messaging, but to the comfort in which they spew their hate...and just maybe, if Republicans effectively keep the pressure going, how long they stick around to endure it.

Or Republicans can consign themselves to the demagogic status quo, comforting themselves with the belief that their feeling decent is more important than public officials being decent.