Facebook Exec Who Commissioned Soros Attacks Is On Holocaust Museum Board
Image by Getty Images
By Josh Nathan-Kazis November 26, 2018
The Facebook executive who ordered a PR firm to paint George Soros as the secret hand behind attacks on the company serves on the board that oversees the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Facebook is facing allegations that its efforts to link critics to the billionaire Jewish financier, revealed in a New York Times story this month, played on widespread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Buzzfeed News reporter Joe Bernstein noted on Twitter on Monday afternoon that Facebook executive Elliot Schrage, who in a Thanksgiving eve post said he was behind the anti-Soros effort, sits on the Holocaust Memorial Council.
The council serves as the board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. President Obama named Schrage to the council in 2016.
A spokesman for the Holocaust Memorial Museum did not immediately respond to a question from the Forward.
In his pre-Thanksgiving post, Schrage said that he had asked a PR firm to research Soros after Soros criticized the social media giant at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. After an anti-Facebook group called “Freedom From Facebook” appeared months later, Schrage asked the PR firm to highlight funding links between Soros and the groups running the campaign “to show that this was not simply a spontaneous grassroots movement.”
Facebook has since ended its contract with the PR firm.
“Our culture has long been to move fast and take risks,” Schrage wrote. “Many times we have moved too quickly and we always learn and keep trying to do our best. This will be no exception.”
Schrage announced in June that he was preparing to leave Facebook. Business Insider reported that the company had not responded to questions about whether it would cut ties with him sooner.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
