By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Open Society Foundation’s George Soros may appear to have similar goals.
They have each spent massive amounts of their personal fortunes in pursuit of their political objectives through networks of shadowy cutouts, foundations and nonprofits. Both champion big government and abhor personal freedoms – especially gun rights – but it is their methods that separate their madness.
Bloomberg funds a half-dozen Astroturf (they’re certainly not grassroots as he claims) anti-gun groups, which focus primarily on policy and legislative issues. If pro-gun legislation appears anywhere in the country, Bloomberg will dispatch his red-shirted Demanding Moms to snuff it out. Their activism is overt, well publicized by the legacy media and somewhat episodic. There’s a sense of immediacy to Bloomberg’s efforts.
Soros, by comparison, seeks to influence society as a whole. He wants to control what people think by modifying their behavior. He’s a woke globalist and not much interested in local issues. While Bloomberg seeks to control the media narrative, Soros actually controls the media.
If Bloomberg’s efforts can be viewed as tactical, Soros’ are strategic, and at the age of 92, he’s pumped enough money into his gun-control empire to ensure it will continue long after he’s gone.
‘Most generous giver’
Born György Schwartz in pre-World War II Hungary, Soros was educated in England, emigrated to the United States and opened his first hedge fund in 1969. A year later he opened his second, Soros Fund Management.
Today, his personal wealth is estimated at nearly $26 billion, and he has donated more than $32 billion to his Open Society Foundations and other left-wing causes, which led Forbes Magazine to call him the “most generous giver.”
The Open Society Foundations, or OSF, consist of 20 smaller foundations, has branches in 37 countries and operates in more than 120 countries. It is financially capable of continuing its founder’s efforts into perpetuity. Soros’ son, Alexander Soros, currently chairs OSF’s board of directors.
In 2000, OSF’s Center on Crime, Communities & Culture and the Funders’ Collaborative for Gun Violence Prevention, released “Gun Control in the United States,” which is one of the most radical gun-control documents ever produced.
The researchers who prepared the document found differences, of course, between state gun laws. Obviously, states such as California and New York had far stricter gun laws than Louisiana or Florida.
“The most striking results of this survey are (a) the lack of uniformity in firearm regulation across the country; (b) the enormous differential between the top and bottom of the spectrum; and (c) the poor scores achieved by most states. 42 states fall below minimum standards for public safety, since they lack basic gun laws such as licensing and registration. The lowest ranking states have almost no firearm regulation of their own; instead they rely entirely on the federal government’s NICS background check at point-of-sale by licensed dealers,” the document states.
The researchers believe all state gun laws should be the same, and they called on the federal government to remedy this “problem” by forcing the freer states to conform with the more restrictive ones.
“All states should move toward consistent regulatory frameworks based on licensing of firearm owners and registration of guns,” the researchers wrote. “States should implement basic anti-trafficking measures, in particular one-gun-a-month laws.”
In addition, the report calls for bans of “assault weapons” and “Saturday Night Specials,” mandatory waiting periods, registration of all guns, permits to purchase firearms and more.
The report quickly became the template for all of Soros’ gun-control efforts.
Media control
In January, MRC Business, which is part of the Media Research Center, revealed that from 2016-2020 Soros gave more than $131 million to various media groups, some of which include NPR, ProPublica, Free Press, Project Syndicate and the Poynter Institute – a Tampa-based media think tank which, I should disclose, spent at least some of the money on a hit piece about me.
“Soros understands something American conservatives have never fully grasped: media outlets are essential to influencing people,” the MRC authors wrote. “The media influence that Soros bought was enough to insulate him from being seriously investigated by most journalists.”
Soros certainly got what he paid for. ProPublica’s archives are chock-full of anti-gun stories and NPR has even more.
Through his OSF, Soros also offers two types of lucrative media fellowships – one designed for new reporters and the second for “more experienced individuals with a proven record of achievement and expertise.” The beginner fellowship offers a grant of $100,000. The second comes with a staggering $140,000. In addition to the fellowships, OSF offers all-expenses-paid bootcamps for young reporters. While Soros’ sponsorship of these bootcamps is somewhat hidden, his attempt to indoctrinate the young journalists is not.
None of the media outlets ever mentioned Soros’ generosity, and they never probed his finances or his multiple foundations. Nearly all of the coverage of Soros or his businesses has been glowing. The legacy media has never once bitten the hand that feeds them.
‘Soros-backed DA’
Last June, after a mass shooting on Philadelphia’s South Street left three dead and 11 wounded, Soros-financed Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner blamed the National Rifle Association.
“The terrible crimes last night on South Street tell our Pennsylvania legislators it’s time for real action,” Krasner wrote in a social media post. “Boycott NRA lobbyists, boycott NRA donations, and bring real common sense gun regulation to Pennsylvania. Now.”
Of course Krasner never mentioned how his failure to aggressively prosecute gang members, gun crimes or repeat offenders who commit gun crimes had led to a record number of homicides in the City of Brotherly Love.
Krasner is certainly not the first Soros-funded prosecutor to do their benefactor’s bidding in front of the TV cameras. In fact, the list is long.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner, another Soros-backed prosecutor, was elected after promising to “reform” the criminal justice system, which was code for allowing crimes to go unpunished – unless they involved a defensive gun use.
Gardner went gangbusters after Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who famously stood their ground while protestors invaded their gated community.
Gardner described their actions as a “violent assault,” and filed felony weapon charges, despite Missouri’s Castle Doctrine, which says a homeowner has “the absolute unmitigated right to protect his or her castle or family while on their property.”
Ultimately, the McCloskeys pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and both were pardoned by Gov. Mike Parson. However, Gardner’s relentless hounding of the couple forced even a few liberal commenters to question her motivations, but they’re not difficult to find. Gardner’s election was financed by a super PAC, to which Soros donated $30,000.
Perhaps the most infamous Soros-backed DA, Los Angeles County Prosecutor George Gascón, tried to strong-arm American Express, Visa and Mastercard into prohibiting their customers from purchasing homemade firearm kits.
“Our purpose in writing to you today is not to recruit you in a legal debate on the merits of these legal cases or the enforceability of these laws. … [T]here is a difference between what may or may not be technically legal and possible and what is most assuredly wrong. It is to your company’s sense of right and wrong to which we now appeal,” Gascón wrote, according to a news story by the NRA.
While Gascón was busy writing letters, Los Angeles slid further into the crime cesspool. Gascón barely survived a recall effort, which sought to replace him with a prosecutor who would actually enforce the law.
In a column published last year by The Wall Street Journal, Soros wrote that he funds progressive prosecutors because they promote safety and justice and are “popular and effective.”
Chaos theory
It cannot be argued that Soros-funded prosecutors have allowed crime to surge in their jurisdictions, which creates the very same “gun violence” the Soros-funded media love to cover, and the Soros-funded gun-control groups can then exploit and use in their messaging.
Whether this three-pronged cycle is purposeful or coincidental is open to debate, but Soros certainly controls members of all three groups. It’s a type of vertical syndication never seen before – and one with deadly consequences.
Soros’ woke progressive socialism leaves blood and bodies in its wake. Normally, this would draw the attention of prosecutors and/or the media, but in this case, they’re paid participants, and as fellow woke progressive socialists it fits their narrative.
Compared to Soros, Bloomberg and his Demanding Moms are nothing but an irritant. Soros, his woke prosecutors and the lapdog media he bought and paid for, combined with the anti-gun groups he endowed for decades, pose the more significant threat to our civil rights, and it’s one that will not end anytime soon.
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