TEL AVIV — Eastern European leaders have “drawn inspiration” from conservative U.S. media outlets, especially Breitbart News, to crack down on groups financed by billionaire George Soros that are allegedly attempting to meddle in domestic politics, Reuters reported.
The news agency reported on Thursday:
The campaign against Soros in countries formerly dominated by Moscow appears to follow a template set by Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose own crackdown on foreign-funded charities drove Soros’s foundation out of Russia two years ago.
And now, with President Donald Trump in the White House, anti-Soros campaigners in Eastern Europe say they have also drawn inspiration from the United States, particularly from rightwing U.S. media like the website Breitbart, which has long vilified Soros as a liberal hate figure.
Breitbart’s former chairman Steve Bannon now serves as a senior White House adviser to Trump.
“Our inspiration comes from the United States, from the American conservative organizations, media and congressmen with the same views, especially the new administration of President Trump,” said Cvetlin Cilimanov, the editor of the main state news agency in Macedonia, who co-founded a group called Operation Stop Soros in January.
Reuters quoted anti-Soros campaigners in Macedonia, Romania, and Hungary accusing Soros of using his Open Society Foundations to create a vast web of front groups that push a globalist agenda.
The news agency cited Szilard Nemeth, a deputy leader of Hungarian Prime Minister Vikto Orban’s ruling Fidesz party, as saying in January that “fake NGOs of the Soros empire are sustained to suppress national governments in favor of global capital and the world of political correctness.”
“These organizations must be repressed by all means and I think they must be culled altogether,” Nemeth said. “I think there is an international opportunity to do that now.”
As Reuters reported, Orban himself on Friday blamed Soros-funded groups for his government’s loss last week of a lawsuit in the European Court of Human Rights over the expulsion of two migrants who came to the country from Bangladesh.
“It is a collusion of human traffickers, Brussels bureaucrats and the organizations that work in Hungary financed by foreign money,” Orban stated last Friday on public radio.
“Let’s call a spade a spade: George Soros finances them.”
The Reuters article marks the second time in recent weeks that Breitbart News was singled out in the major news media for its influential reporting on Soros.
Earlier this month, Politico reported investigations by Breitbart News into the global network run by Soros have contributed to the negative atmosphere the billionaire has been facing in Europe.
The Hungarian parliament has plans to submit a bill on the manner in which foreign-funded non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, operate within the country. Although the text of the proposed law has not yet been made public, it is widely believed that the bill will seek to require such organizations to make public the amount of money received from foreign sources. Israel passed a similar measure last July.
Breitbart News has featured a large number of stories documenting Soros’s financing of groups pushing open borders in Europe and worldwide, with specific focus on the use of the migrant crisis to achieve policy aims.
In the U.S., Soros has been tied to advocacy for illegal aliens, opposition to immigration enforcement, and, most recently, to activist groups attempting to halt President Trump’s domestic agenda.
Reviews by this reporter of the more than 2,500 documents hacked from the servers of Soros’s Open Society Foundations highlight the undue influence the billionaire financier exerts domestically, from attempting to remake the American electorate to successfully lobbying for changes in U.S. immigration policy to funding initiatives targeting local police forces.
While many of the documents spotlight Soros’s global network, focus on the hacked materials from his Foundations’ U.S. contingent begins to expose the many tentacles of the Democratic party mega-donor’s operation and its deep impact on the policy objectives of the former administration of Barack Obama, often using a slew of U.S.-based progressive groups and activist organizations.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
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