Naming the Puppetmaster is Unmentionable

Daily Beast:

During a Wednesday night interview with right-wing provocateur Michelle Malkin, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs smeared liberal Jewish financier George Soros with an anti-Semitic trope, claiming Soros’ “tentacles reach out into various non-government organizations and nonprofits.”

Dobbs brought on Malkin, who recently told Fox News that Soros is funding the “illegal alien lawyers lobby,” to hawk her latest anti-immigrant book, and it didn’t take long for her to portray Soros as a “globalist” bent on destroying America’s sovereignty.

“And George Soros himself… explicitly says the idea of sovereignty, something that so many of us who are children of legal immigrants, for example, respect as a fundamental precept for the survival of a country, sovereignty to George Soros is quote-unquote an obstacle,” she said. “And he has created an entire infrastructure of tax-exempt nonprofits to do his bidding.”

Dobbs then took Malkin’s comments a step further.

“It is extraordinary and I think most people, I’ll include myself, cannot conceive of why a man would fund efforts that would work against sovereignty,” Dobbs said. “Work against our laws—there are laws against illegal immigration—and to see his tentacles reach out into various non-government organizations and nonprofits that are working with everything from the Koch Brothers to the Southern Poverty Law Center, as you document through this book.”

“It is stunning to see how pervasive and how successful he has been with his strategy,” he added.

Last year, the Anti-Defamation League commented on the anti-Semitism behind many of the Soros-related conspiracies the right has spread for years, many of which have recently made their way into the mainstream.

“Even if no anti-Semitic insinuation is intended, casting a Jewish individual as a puppet master who manipulates national events for malign purposes has the effect of mainstreaming anti-Semitic tropes and giving support, however unwitting, to bona fide anti-Semites and extremists who disseminate these ideas knowingly and with malice,” the organization noted.

Even Fox News hosts have orders to block criticism of Soros:

Newt Gingrich: "The number one problem in almost all the cities is George Soros-elected, left-wing, antipolice pro-criminal district attorneys…"

Fox host: "I’m not sure we need to bring George Soros into this."

Newt: "Okay… So, it’s verboten?"

Some have pointed out that Soros grew up speaking Esperanto and is not a practicing Jew. Nevertheless, the Jewish organizations identify him as Jewish.