‘Boogeyman’: Why Republicans invoke Soros to defend Trump

World
By William

Washington, D.C. – Just hours after Donald Trump’s historic indictment of criminal charges in New York, the former president’s 2024 campaign issued an urgent call for financial contributions to bolster his bid for the White House.

Donations are desperately needed, the Trump team said in an email Tuesday, as liberal donor George Soros attempts to “bleed our campaign dry by dragging us through witch hunt after witch hunt.”

A Hungarian-born businessman who has donated millions of dollars to liberal causes, Soros has long been portrayed in conservative circles as the ultimate villain.

As the New York criminal case progresses, Trump and his allies have suggested — and often said explicitly — that Soros is behind the former president’s latest legal troubles, a false claim that critics say perpetuates conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic tropes.

Right-wing politicians and commentators have said Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan (DA) district attorney overseeing the case, is backed by Soros.

Joseph Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami, said that if someone wants to be a villain, they must have some power.

Soros is indeed wealthy and has donated a lot of money to liberal groups, “so it’s not shocking that people have chosen him to be the boogeyman,” Uscinski told Al Jazeera.

But to make an all-powerful political opponent blamed for everything that goes wrong would have to greatly exaggerate that person’s influence, he added.

“It gets…insane when we start ascribing superhuman powers to one person, when we give them the ability not just to speak or speak in conversation, but to control everything,” Uscinski said.

“It’s when we make the jump from ‘Oh, there’s a connection between George Soros and the D.A.’, which seems kind of tenuous, and it becomes ‘He’s supported by Soros,’ or ‘He’s controlled by Soros. ‘ There is no evidence for those claims.”

The “Soros-backed” claim

Since Trump announced last month that he could be arrested before the 2016 election in New York for paying hush money to an adult movie star, many Republicans have pushed to label Bragg — an elected Democrat — as “Soros-backed,” by Soros supported.” -funded” and “Soros-controlled”.

Even Trump’s biggest potential rival in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — who has yet to officially announce his candidacy — relied on Soros when he dismissed charges against the former president.

“The Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney has consistently bent the law to downgrade felonies and excuse criminal misconduct. But now he’s stretching the law to target a political opponent,” DeSantis said in a social media post last week.

Soros has refuted claims that he supported Bragg, insisting that he never communicated with the prosecution or donated to his campaign.

A spokesman for Soros has said that “many on the right are trying to shift focus from the accused to the accuser” to distract from Trump’s indictment.

“George Soros has never met, spoken to or otherwise communicated with Alvin Bragg,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Al Jazeera.

“Neither George Soros nor Democracy PAC (a PAC to which Mr. Soros contributed money) contributed to Alvin Bragg’s campaign for Manhattan District Attorney.”

A PAC is a “political action committee,” an organization that raises money to influence elections and politics.

However, Soros donated money to a civil rights organization whose political arm supported Bragg’s bid for the Manhattan DA office.

In recent years, liberals and progressives have focused on local prosecutors’ policies to address the issue of excessive charges for non-violent crimes, which disproportionately affect people of color. With almost two million inmates, the US has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Soros has been outspoken about his support for “reformist” prosecutors.

In 2021, Soros donated $1 million to the Color of Change PAC, a civil rights group that had pledged to independently spend $1 million in support of Bragg in the DA race.

The Soros spokesman said the liberal billionaire and Democracy PAC donated $4 million to the Color of Change PAC between 2016 and 2022, none of which was specifically earmarked for Bragg.

The Color of Change PAC, which had supported many candidates in other races during the election cycle, also rejected the alleged link between Bragg and Soros.

“Color Of Change PAC has many funders who invest in our broad strategy of eradicating injustice in our criminal justice system,” a spokesperson for the PAC said in a statement.

“Independent of these funders, Color Of Change PAC conducts a review and interview process to support reformist prosecutors each election cycle.”

Anti-Semitic tropes

Despite that indirect connection, there is no evidence that Soros influenced Bragg’s decision to indict Trump. And the indictment was approved by a grand jury — a group of randomly selected citizens.

On Wednesday, Bragg countered allegations of political attacks against Trump, saying the charges in the indictment — falsifying business records to hide the hush money payment — are a crime in New York “no matter who you are.”

Yet allegations of involvement from Soros, who is Jewish, remain.

Many rights advocates have expressed concern that the unwarranted right-wing focus on Soros promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about wealthy Jewish people pushing for global control.

“In the least surprising news ever, a Republican Party that protects and lauds anti-Semites and white nationalists is once again falling back on their anti-Semitic George Soros conspiracy theories,” J Street, a liberal-Jewish advocacy group, said in a sarcastic tweet last week. “It’s as tired as it is dangerous.”

Uscinski, the professor, said it is difficult to determine the intent of those who claim Soros controls Bragg, but nevertheless the conspiracy theory promotes anti-Semitic tropes.

“Are there anti-Semitic overtones? Most certainly — because of who they blame, and the fact that much of this language is connected to longstanding conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish people,” Uscinski told Al Jazeera.

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