Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [81]
Somebody ought to look at the organizations and ask the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, Time, Newsweek, AP why they’re spending all these resources they are, who they talked to . . . are they collaborating with all these organizations that are funded by George Soros and his heavy hitters, and do these organizations ever talk to each other? Of course they do, they have people that are on the same boards.67bn
The Republican Party backed up DeLay by distributing to the press “detailed research” showing links between Democrats and Soros. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), the man who shouted, “You lie!” during Obama’s State of the Union address, charged “radical liberals, such as George Soros” with mounting a “desperate smear campaign” against DeLay.68 Award-winning journalist Richard Poe jumped at the opportunity for yet another Soros conspiracy:
The pattern of the attack suggests that DeLay may be confronting a political machine far wealthier, more ruthless and better skilled at media manipulation than the Democratic Party itself. When the hysteria subsides and the facts are examined, we may learn that DeLay’s foe all along has been the Shadow Party—a murky and inscrutable entity controlled by leftwing billionaire George Soros.69
But fanning Soros paranoia didn’t protect DeLay from ethics indictments, and he ultimately resigned to pursue his dream of competitive ballroom dancing.bo Since then, anti-Sorosism has gone into decline. When the Democrats returned to power, right-wing leaders were finally able to look for conspirators inside the government, an opportunity that they have pursued with great relish. The anti-Semitic diehards on the fringe are still obsessed with Soros, of course, and they theorize that Obama is a Soros puppet. Lyndon LaRouche, for example, calls Soros “Obama’s Godfather.” (LaRouche also conjectured that the two conspired with the British to exploit the conflict between Russia and Georgia in order to launch World War III—still pending.)70 Rush Limbaugh half-heartedly explored the Obama-Soros connection on a couple of occasions, but he also speculated that Obama’s puppet master might be John Podesta or even King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.71 Richard Poe also continues to try to milk his Soros routine. The day after Obama’s election, he wrote: “[Soros] created Obama. An Obama presidency will be a Soros presidency.”72
But this time, Bill O’Reilly did not invite Poe into the no-spin zone. In general, O’Reilly has treated Obama in a manner that could almost be called respectful, and he has left the president out of any more grand conspiracy narratives. Is O’Reilly trying to rebrand himself as a journalist? Does he feel that the Fox-brand paranoia that he pioneered has gone too far? Does he secretly approve of Obama? Or did Dr. Evil steal his mojo? It’s not clear.
But where O’Reilly hesitated, others have charged ahead, most notably a man named Glenn Beck.
9
A GOAT FOR AZAZEL
How Good Ol’ Anti-Semitism and Witch Burnings
Evolved into the Grand Conspiracy Theories
of Persecution Politics
The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
BEFORE TURNING TO MR. BECK, we have another analytical question to answer. We’ve seen that George Soros is a convenient bad guy because he resembles the archetype of the International Jew, but what is it about the International Jew that presents such an appealing villain in the first place? Is it another example of intolerance and cognitive dissonance?
The tendency of Henry Ford and other American anti-Semites to project their obvious feelings of intolerance onto Jews suggests that cognitive dissonance may well have played a role in their paranoia. But anti-Semitism is much less prevalent in contemporary