But it hasn’t been Soros’s financial buccaneering or even his political giving that have featured most prominently in the conspiracies about him. It’s been his philanthropy. Soros has long been one of the leading donors to progressive causes in the United States and is the most generous financial supporter of pro-democracy organizations around the world. And his giving will likely only increase in the years to come. In October, Soros disclosed that over the last few years, he has turned over around $18 billion to the institutions through which he has channeled his philanthropy, the Open Society Foundations (OSF). The enormous gift was met as a confirmation of all the darkest fears stoked by his antagonists. Pointing out that Soros’s foundation would now rank as the second largest behind the Gates Foundation, the right-wing website Breitbart announced the news by referring to OSF as the “Death Star.”

Stories of Soros as philanthropic bogeyman are clearly symptomatic of the current political moment. The vastness and the viciousness of the partisan divide, coupled with the general suspicion of financial “elites,” can make it tempting to focus ideological frustrations on a few munificent individuals who belong to the opposing political team. If conservatives do so with Soros, progressives have their own set of donors whom they demonize—such as the Koch brothers, and more recently, Robert Mercer—though, in general, progressive conspiracies involving conservative benefactors tend to be more closely tethered to reality.

What’s less well understood is how narratives that pit scheming benefactors against “the people” can work against the values of a democracy. Not only are conspiracy theories often deliberately employed by authoritarians to undermine grassroots activism, but they also muddle discussions about the immense power philanthropists actually do wield, crowding out valid concerns about the role mega-donors now play in shaping society.

The philanthropist has always been a figure fit for abuse—the term was coined by an ancient Greek dramatist to describe Prometheus, whom the gods tortured for the crime of bringing fire to mankind. Early-modern uses of the word philanthropy referred not to large-scale giving but rather to promoting a set of egalitarian, universal values. As the term became used more widely during the Enlightenment, it became associated with ambitious reformist causes such as abolition. It also absorbed many of the critiques directed at such movements: These philanthropists, critics claimed, spoke in grand terms about the rights of Man but ignored the poor and oppressed in their own communities. The grandiose universal values they promoted threatened to loosen religious and geographical bonds. After the French and Haitian revolutions, whose champions claimed to be marching under philanthropy’s banner and pursued violent means to achieve emancipatory ends, the concept began to carry the whiff of menacing radicalism.