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: "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...