There are 500,000 negative tweets every day about George Soros
(JTA) — Right-wing conspiracy theorists are increasingly claiming that George Soros is funding recent protests and riots across the United States in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, “aggressive language towards Soros has exploded on social media” this week. Negative tweets about the billionaire Jewish philanthropist rose from 20,000 per day on May 26 to 500,000 per day on May 30.
The posts, according to the ADL, mostly allege (without evidence) that Soros is funding riots across the country, and that he is backing Antifa, a loose network of anti-fascist activists whom President Donald Trump has blamed for the violence, also without citing evidence.
The ADL says that the Soros theories “can serve as a gateway to the antisemitic subculture that blames Jews for the riots.”
People posting about Soros include prominent Trump supporters like Twitter pundit Candace Owens and actor James Woods.
#Antifa is merely a pawn in the plan engineered by Soros and the Deep State. The Obama/Ayers/Alinsky/Cloward-Piven/Clinton strategy has always been to provoke, destabilize, and then rebuild a “socialist nirvana” from the ashes. Stay calm, be prepared, but don’t take the bait.
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) June 1, 2020
Soros, a Hungarian-born financier who funds a variety of liberal causes in the United States and globally, is a favorite bogeyman of the right and conspiracy theorists in particular. Recent Soros conspiracies have alleged that he is driving the spread of COVID-19 in order to profit from a future vaccine and that he pays left-wing protesters.
Trump tweeted in 2018 that Soros paid protesters opposed to Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban also put up a billboard campaign in 2017 opposing Soros that was criticized as anti-Semitic.
The post There are now 500,000 negative tweets about George Soros every day. Many claim he’s funding George Floyd protests. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO