George Soros has had a lifetime of sustained antisemitic tropes

George Soros has seen his share of antisemitic tropes, so the recent spate of nasty attacks in the UK would hardly have been a surprise to him. He was a child during the Holocaust in Hungary. He has been attacked in central and eastern European countries from Macedonia to Poland and Romania to Serbia. Hungary has been leading the pack with last year’s all-too-obviously antisemitic billboard campaign accusing him of conspiring to flood Hungary with migrants.

Unlike his interest in promoting open societies in central and eastern Europe, Mr Soros has not played an active role in British political life. Since Britain has been a vibrant democracy, there was little incentive for him to do so. He had spent hundreds of millions in support of dissidents during the last decade of Communist rule, saved the lives of Soviet scientists when the Soviet Union crumbled, provided water to besieged Sarajevo and, more controversially, promoted membership of the European Union. He has been a vocal supporter of the ideas behind the EU, though critical of its methods in dividing member states into creditors and debtors. At the 2012 World Economic Forum in Davos, Soros was there to warn the assorted gathering of economists, statesmen, academics and assorted pundits of the consequences of a European break-up.

“The situation is eerily reminiscent of the 1930s,” he wrote in The New York Review of Books, blaming the Maastricht Treaty, the structure of the euro, the forced austerity without counterveiling fiscal incentives, and, above all, Germany’s self-centred politics. He went so far as to suggest that if Germany cannot lead the EU out of its woes, it should leave.

Contrary to the accusations of secretive meddling in the UK’s Brexit plans, Mr Soros was very vocal in his support for the Remain faction and very open about his financial commitment to Best of Britain, the anti-Brexit campaign fighting to keep the UK in the European Union.