Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [79]
And, thus, the allegory is complete. George Soros is the guy that James Bond goes after. These parallels between cinematic fantasy and O’Reilly’s caricature of George Soros aren’t accidental. O’Reilly’s version of the bogeyman formula has obvious narrative elements that enhance its appeal to his audience. But please put this idea in your pocket for now; we’ll explore its full implications in a later chapter.
“The Shadow of the Court Jew”
In the meantime, O’Reilly’s inclusion of Peter Lewis and Susie Tompkins Buell in Soros’s intrigues raises an important question: why does Soros get to be the boss? Peter Lewis gave just as much money to MoveOn.org and, unlike Soros, Lewis actually donated to Media Matters. 55 Moreover, Lewis, whom friends describe as “weird,” “eccentric,” and “a functioning pothead,” has more radical drug positions than Soros.56 He has donated to an organization that seeks to legalize and tax marijuana, in contrast to Soros’s donations to medical marijuana advocates. In many ways, Lewis seems like the perfect bogeyman. And yet, O’Reilly always headlines Soros, adding Lewis as an afterthought, and few other right-wing leaders even mention Lewis, let alone Buell.
There are some obvious differences that make Soros a more attractive villain to O’Reilly and other conservatives. Soros is considerably richer than Lewis, and he was something of a celebrity even before he got behind MoveOn.org. Both men are Jewish, but Peter Lewis is from Cleveland and his money comes from insurance. George Soros is a Hungarian-born investor.57 He has a strong Eastern European accent, he made billions speculating on financial markets—most famously during the 1992 currency crisis in the UK—and he openly uses his wealth to influence global political affairs. As a Jerusalem Post writer critically observed, Soros is the epitome of Henry Ford’s International Jew.
Soros unwittingly parades the shadow of the Court Jew, the Wandering Jew, and the medieval money lender who for centuries fed anti-Semitism’s sick imagination.58
Thus, Soros’s wealth, nationality, politics, and religion fit perfectly into the anti-Semitic conspiracy fantasies of men like Lyndon LaRouche and F. William Engdahl. And these same qualities also make him a clear choice for archvillain in O’Reilly’s own conspiracy theories.
Does that make O’Reilly an anti-Semite? No, it does not. O’Reilly has never publicly denigrated Jews, either explicitly or using coded language, and he does not mention Soros’s religion in his diatribes. But while O’Reilly never entered Father Coughlin-Henry Ford territory, he nonetheless drew from the ideas that Coughlin and Ford popularized. That is to say, O’Reilly’s caricature of Soros exploited a villainous archetype with deep anti-Semitic roots. American culture offers a number of bad-guy archetypes frequently dished up in Hollywood thrillers. There is the Brutal Russian Spymaster, the Bloodthirsty Arab Terrorist, the Psychotic Evil Genius, and the Amoral Criminal Mastermind with a Somewhat British Accent. The International Jewish Financier is older than any of these. You won’t see him in the movies, but his enduring appeal is demonstrated by his popularity in explicitly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
O’Reilly tapped into that appeal. Like Ford, Coughlin, and LaRouche, he placed the rich Jew at the center of his conspiracy theories. His caricature of Soros emphasizes precisely those traits long associated with the Rothschilds: lack of national identity, violent hostility to Christianity, support for world government, and control of the media. There are some differences. Bill O’Reilly substituted secularism for Judaism to make his caricature of Soros more acceptable to modern Americans. And he replaced the prototypical Jewish profit motive with the pursuit of a radical agenda more commonly associated with the communist revolutionaries of American conspiracy lore. But there is more than enough International Jewish Financier in O’Reilly’s version of Soros for his audience