Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on Thursday morning managed to turn a Fox Business Network discussion about Google and China into a bizarre attack on the right’s favorite bogeyman, George Soros.
Fox Business later apologized for the congressman’s comments.
“You mention Orwell, it also reminds me of another George—George Soros,” Gohmert said, making a clumsy transition during his segment. “Because Google is born in a free country and then they go over and help oppress another country.”
“George Soros is supposed to be Jewish, but you wouldn’t know it from the damage he’s inflicted on Israel and the fact that he turned on fellow Jews and helped take the property that they own.”
That wild accusation—or as Gohmert put it “fact”—went unchallenged by host Stuart Varney, who helped steer the conversation back to China.
Gohmert’s comments echo a common right-wing conspiracy theory that Soros—a liberal, billionaire philanthropist—was a Nazi sympathizer or worse during World War II.
Born in Hungary in 1930, Soros was just nine years old at the start of the war and 14 when it ended. But that hasn’t stopped far-right firebrands like Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza, and now sitting Rep. Louie Gohmert from spreading lies about him. Beck’s comments drew a condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League.
As the fact-checking website Snopes wrote in its piece debunking the myth, “The simple truth is that George Soros neither said nor did anything resembling what he has been accused of. In no sense was Soros, who turned 14 years old not long after the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, a ‘Nazi collaborator.’ At no time did he confiscate (or help confiscate) the property of Jews, ‘identify Jews to the Nazis,’ or help ‘round up’ people targeted for deportation or extermination by the Germans (to answer just a few of the accusations leveled against him).”
In the following broadcast hour, Varney issued an on-air apology for Gohmert’s remarks: “Congressman Louie Gohmert for some reason went out of his way to bring up George Soros and made unsubstantiated and false allegations against him. I want to make clear those views are not shared by me, this program or anyone at Fox Business.”
I did not / do not understand why the right hates this man. He has fought for Democracy. Has a foundation that supports human rights, education and empowerment worldwide. I get why Brits might hate / have hated him, he shorted the pound a couple of decades ago and crashed the currency (and out of possible Euro) - but since they voted to leave the EU anyway, let bygones be bygones.
I mean I get they hate Jews (although they love Israel), but it is an obsession.