Soros and Gates, Breeders of Coronavirus: Is this conspiracy theory antisemitic?
Conspiracy theories about George Soros have been around for a long time. The American right-wing scaremonger Lyndon LaRouche blamed the Hungarian-Jewish-American for the Asian financial crisis back in the nineties, an idea that was enthusiastically propagated by the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahatir Mohamad. More recently, Soros has been blamed on everything from a coup in Macedonia to the fall of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and the migrant caravan that tried to enter the US from Central America. (In that case, President Trump mentioned Soros himself.) During the 2015-16 so-called refugee crisis in Europe, Russian propagandists and Alex Jones’ Infowars in the US both broadcast, on practically the same day, the idea that Soros was paying Muslims to illegally enter the European Union. Two American political advisors who heard this advised Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel as well as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary to use the Soros conspiracy theory in their political propaganda. Orbán, in particular, did so and still does, with a vengeance.
Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world, who made his money at the head of Microsoft, has for several years turned his attention to charitable work. This has included providing vaccines for children who need them, including in poor countries. That work has apparently earned the ire of the anti-vaccine crowd across the globe, who have developed conspiracy theories about Gates with a virulence that approaches those about Soros.
In one of the conspiracy theories about coronavirus, Soros and Gates meet as co-owners of the lab in Wuhan that has supposedly manufactured the virus and released it to infect millions. Perfect! Why did they do it is anyone’s guess. Perhaps Gates wants to make more money selling vaccines. Perhaps he’s just evil. Soros is, of course, an evil Jew, and Jews have been blamed on epidemics since they supposedly poisoned wells during the Black Death.
But then, many conspiracy theories would deny such extreme thoughts, or even being antisemitic at all.
Soros is a rich Jew who uses his money to support left-wing causes. Attacks on him fall right within the antisemitic tradition of “discovering” connections between Jewish money and Jewish liberals and socialists. The class source for those is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian forgery from more than a hundred years ago, which once graced the desks of people from Henry Ford to Colonel Gadhafi. The Protocols speak of a Jewish-Freemason conspiracy led by Jewish elders who include the financier Rothschild. (The current Rothschilds are often connected by right-wing social media posters to George Soros.) In our research, we have found countless social media entries where Soros is openly attacked as a Jew. Yet at the same time, the more “respectable” anti-Soros conspiracy theorists deny that they’re antisemitic. In Israel, they are even Jewish themselves. Bill Gates is not Jewish, although some mistakenly believe that he is (he is very rich, after all!).
These facts may give the impression that the Soros + Gates conspiracy theory about the origins of the coronavirus is not necessarily antisemitic. Not necessarily may be right. However, what all this reveals, is the nature of antisemitism as it has been since the late nineteenth century. The Protocols’ ultimate target was not Jews as such, but rather two figures of modernity opposed by conservative populists: the international financier and the left-wing agitator. Antisemites managed to associate both with the little understood and already, for religious reasons, much disliked Jew. The Nazis, fatally, did elevate the Jew and indeed the entire “Jewish race” to the cosmic enemy. But before and after them, it is well known that some of the antisemites’ best friends were Jews. It is possible to hate rich supporters of the left without being literally an antisemite; after all Gates is not even Jewish. But not being antisemitic according to the letter does not mean you’re not an antisemite in spirit. This is why even a Jew and, certainly, some of a Jew’s best friends, can be antisemitic.
The Wellington Review 