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George Soros speaking in Malaysia during a 2006 book tour in Southeast Asia. In the 1990s, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad accused Soros of having caused the Asian financial crisis, but the two reconciled while Soros made his first trip to the country in 2006.

Many conspiracy theories exist about Hungarian-American financier and philanthropist George Soros. Many of them deal with the intersection between his political beliefs and his financial wealth; author Michael Wolraich has deemed the phenomenon "Anti-Sorosism".[1]

The theories have come under increasing scrutiny due to the growing political currency of anti-Soros conspiracy theories in conservative and nationalist circles, with Wolraich comparing them to long-running conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family in 19th century Europe.[1]

Malaysia [ edit ]

According to Mahathir bin Mohamed, Prime Minister of Malaysia from July 1981 to October 2003, Soros—as the hedge fund chief of Quantum—may have been partially responsible for the economic crash in 1997 of East Asian markets when the Thai currency relinquished its peg to the US dollar. According to Mahathir, in the three years leading to the crash, Soros invested in short-term speculative investment in East Asian stock markets and real estate, then divested with "indecent haste" at the first signs of currency devaluation.[2] Soros replied, saying that Mahathir was using him "as a scapegoat for his own mistakes", that Mahathir's promises to ban currency trading (which Malaysian finance officials hastily retracted) were "a recipe for disaster" and that Mahathir "is a menace to his own country".[3] In his book The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered, Soros accuses Mahathir for conspiracy against financial capitalists.[4]

The two traded angry barbs against each other in various newspapers and broadcast interviews over the next nine years. The nominal US dollar GDP of ASEAN fell by US$9.2 billion in 1997 and $218.2 billion (31.7%) in 1998.

In 2006, during a visit by Soros to Malaysia on his book tour in the region, he met with Mahathir for the first time, and Mahathir conceded that he did not view Soros as responsible for the financial crisis.[5]

Glenn Beck's conspiracy theory [ edit ]

On November 9, 2010, American conservative television host Glenn Beck aired an hour-long television program, titled The Puppet Master, dedicated to Soros (which he had announced as “D-Day for George Soros”).[6] Accusations he made during this program, specifically that Soros collaborated with the Nazis as a child and that “many people would call him an antisemite”, have met with condemnation from groups including the Anti-Defamation League and The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.[7][8] Beck continued discussing Soros in his programs of November 10, 2010, and November 11, 2010, making additional claims including that Soros, with the help of others, is attempting to collapse the United States economy in order to help create a new world order.[9]

Beck's statements also drew ridicule from The Daily Show host Jon Stewart in a November 18, 2010, skit titled 'The Manchurian Lunatic',[10] taking aim at Beck by utilizing many tropes which often appear in segments of Beck's eponymous television broadcast. Beck replied on November 25, 2010, by insinuating that Stewart and fellow Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert are keeping people as "sheep".[11]

LaRouche's "drug trade" conspiracy theory [ edit ]

Perennial American presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche and his movement have also published a body of literature which claims Soros is a leader of the international illegal drug trade. LaRouche's anti-Soros stance dates back to the 1990s, with Michael Lewis of The New Republic citing an anti-Soros protest by members of the LaRouche movement in a January 10, 1994, profile;[12] the charge has been repeated in the years since by the longest-serving Republican House Speaker and convicted child molester Dennis Hastert[13] and Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid.[14]

Other countries [ edit ]

The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán accused Soros of complicity in endangering democracy in Europe through his ongoing aid to migrants in the European migrant crisis.[15]