The populist war on George Soros and the rise of the flexians
By Péter MARTON
Emily Tamkin offers a really good overview here (FP, 10/10/2017) of the recent hateful discourse about George Soros (the imaginary), as well as the record of George Soros (the real person) and his open society movement over the last decades, with special regard to Central/Eastern Europe.
I will not reproduce that overview here to introduce in detail the hysteria surrounding Soros and how his distorted larger-than-life image is used by governments in several countries these days to blame everything from feminism and immigration to unfavourable demographics, economic problems and international sanctions on him.
I assume this is common knowledge.
I will highlight just one paragraph from Tamkin's article:
That's a clever reference to Wedel, even as it is not entirely in overlap with Wedel's original concept of the "flexians." It is rather a narrower interpretation of it, or could pass for such. (See this summary of Wedel's work here; or read from Wedel in original here, PDF).
In short, in my own words: Wedel thought largely about how elite networks began to increasingly transcend and by consequence blur the boundaries between public and private, state and non-state, official and civic, corporate and non-profit spheres from the 1990s -- their members walking through revolving doors there and back (or around and around), taking up positions moving from government to civil society organisations, to consultancies, to company supervisory boards, and so on.
In the process, accountability was lost or significantly decreased to say the least. Conflicts or "coincidences" of interests became the norm for this "omni-managing" elite that often paid only lip service to any ideology -- it may have seemed like a monolithic "neoliberal elite" to some but it came together with an army of opportunists more or less convinced but not particularly concerned about being on the right side of history (in as vague a sense as that tends to have).
Soros is certainly not free of ideology -- he has a very clear set of ideas -- but he himself may be a "flexian" when he shifts between his roles as investor and philanthropist even as he tries to dissolve any contradictions between the two with rationalisations of various sorts. The point is that he is present in both roles and makes distinct contributions in those roles to global governance.
But "flexian," used differently, is not a bad term for those who change opinions, chameleon-like, according to how external actors' expectations structure opportunities in a comparatively resource-scarce environment, either.
So now, as one interpretation may have it, the liberal flexians of the old establishment are faced with the new populist flexians.
It is ironic then that in some cases, especially in Central/Eastern Europe, there is overlap between the two groups, as the flexibility of some of the "new" flexians may in fact stretch back a long time. In the past some have been beneficiaries of Soros' intiatives themselves, such as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary (who briefly studied at Oxford with an Open Society scholarship in the late 1980s), or, up till recently, prominent members of Macedonia's governing circles under Nikola Gruevski's government (to quickly point out two examples).
Those who think this is an easy point to score against those concerned are, however, mistaken. These people can always say (and they often do) that they have genuinely changed their opinions, views, preferences, or -- even better from their point of view -- that back in the day there were objective reasons for them to hope for better results out of integrating with the West, and creating open societies, and that by now disappointment over unmet needs and expectations objectively warrants a different stance.
What this doesn't even begin to explain -- obviously -- is all the crazy conspiracy talk about Soros, presented therein as no less than a superpower of a non-state actor.
Update (October 18, 2017): It may be relevant to mention, with a view to the above, the George Soros has just taken steps to further harmonise his role as investor with his philanthropy. As the WSJ reports, this is part of "an ongoing process of migration from a hedge fund toward a pool of capital deployed to support a foundation:"
Emily Tamkin offers a really good overview here (FP, 10/10/2017) of the recent hateful discourse about George Soros (the imaginary), as well as the record of George Soros (the real person) and his open society movement over the last decades, with special regard to Central/Eastern Europe.
I will not reproduce that overview here to introduce in detail the hysteria surrounding Soros and how his distorted larger-than-life image is used by governments in several countries these days to blame everything from feminism and immigration to unfavourable demographics, economic problems and international sanctions on him.
I assume this is common knowledge.
I will highlight just one paragraph from Tamkin's article:
"In the ’90s, the idea that Open Society and Soros held some political influence, albeit indirectly, was not strictly a figment of rulers’ imagination. Those given funding were local elites, sometimes opposed to those in power, and often what Stubbs, borrowing from the U.S. anthropologist Janine Wedel, calls “flex actors” — people who can say the right things to whomever they’re speaking if it means they get more power and influence."
That's a clever reference to Wedel, even as it is not entirely in overlap with Wedel's original concept of the "flexians." It is rather a narrower interpretation of it, or could pass for such. (See this summary of Wedel's work here; or read from Wedel in original here, PDF).
In short, in my own words: Wedel thought largely about how elite networks began to increasingly transcend and by consequence blur the boundaries between public and private, state and non-state, official and civic, corporate and non-profit spheres from the 1990s -- their members walking through revolving doors there and back (or around and around), taking up positions moving from government to civil society organisations, to consultancies, to company supervisory boards, and so on.
In the process, accountability was lost or significantly decreased to say the least. Conflicts or "coincidences" of interests became the norm for this "omni-managing" elite that often paid only lip service to any ideology -- it may have seemed like a monolithic "neoliberal elite" to some but it came together with an army of opportunists more or less convinced but not particularly concerned about being on the right side of history (in as vague a sense as that tends to have).
Soros is certainly not free of ideology -- he has a very clear set of ideas -- but he himself may be a "flexian" when he shifts between his roles as investor and philanthropist even as he tries to dissolve any contradictions between the two with rationalisations of various sorts. The point is that he is present in both roles and makes distinct contributions in those roles to global governance.
But "flexian," used differently, is not a bad term for those who change opinions, chameleon-like, according to how external actors' expectations structure opportunities in a comparatively resource-scarce environment, either.
So now, as one interpretation may have it, the liberal flexians of the old establishment are faced with the new populist flexians.
It is ironic then that in some cases, especially in Central/Eastern Europe, there is overlap between the two groups, as the flexibility of some of the "new" flexians may in fact stretch back a long time. In the past some have been beneficiaries of Soros' intiatives themselves, such as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary (who briefly studied at Oxford with an Open Society scholarship in the late 1980s), or, up till recently, prominent members of Macedonia's governing circles under Nikola Gruevski's government (to quickly point out two examples).
Those who think this is an easy point to score against those concerned are, however, mistaken. These people can always say (and they often do) that they have genuinely changed their opinions, views, preferences, or -- even better from their point of view -- that back in the day there were objective reasons for them to hope for better results out of integrating with the West, and creating open societies, and that by now disappointment over unmet needs and expectations objectively warrants a different stance.
What this doesn't even begin to explain -- obviously -- is all the crazy conspiracy talk about Soros, presented therein as no less than a superpower of a non-state actor.
Update (October 18, 2017): It may be relevant to mention, with a view to the above, the George Soros has just taken steps to further harmonise his role as investor with his philanthropy. As the WSJ reports, this is part of "an ongoing process of migration from a hedge fund toward a pool of capital deployed to support a foundation:"
"A new chief investment officer at the Soros firm is less a trader than an allocator of capital to various internal and external asset managers. Unlike past investment chiefs, the official, Dawn Fitzpatrick, doesn’t report to Mr. Soros or others at his firm but to the philanthropy’s investment committee. (...) Though the $26 billion Soros Fund Management was a pioneering hedge fund (once), it returned outside investors’ money several years ago and became a family office."
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