Speaker 1: It's it could happen here the podcast where I attempt
Speaker 1: to wrangle jokes that are enough okay that we keep podcasting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with me here to wrangle Robert Evans and also Garrison Davis. Welcome,
Speaker 1: Welcome back.
Speaker 2: My two uses in this series are to make corrections
Speaker 2: on Hungarian history of the Holocaust, uh and talk about
Speaker 2: selling Heroin to children. So proud to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited. You're gonna hear me complain. You're gonna
Speaker 1: get to listen to me very briefly complain about Plato,
Speaker 1: a thing I did not think I was gonna do
Speaker 1: when I started this.
Speaker 2: Like the like the the philosophy guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, all right, okay, So all right,
Speaker 1: why why are we eventually going to talk about Plato? So?
Speaker 1: George Soros is probably best known for a foundation that
Speaker 1: he eventually funds called Open Society. It was O risually
Speaker 1: the Soros Foundation. Then he was like, why am I
Speaker 1: naming this after myself? And it changed to Open Society.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read. So the Open Society is a
Speaker 1: very sort.
Speaker 2: Of Again, I gotta say, exactly twenty percent more self
Speaker 2: awareness than you get from the average billionaire. Like Bill
Speaker 2: Gates is like, well, call it the Gates Foundation. Saurus
Speaker 2: is like, we'll call it the Soros you know, wait, wait.
Speaker 1: You know, no, you know what. Well, And to be fair,
Speaker 1: like Soros has Sorros has a real ideology and it
Speaker 1: it can't work, but if it did, the world wouldn't
Speaker 1: be that bad, Unlike unlike what would happen if you
Speaker 1: let Bill Gates run rampant over the earth? Which is
Speaker 1: the world we live in right now. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to read a little bit from the influenced Soros again
Speaker 1: about like what the open society is. I have lived
Speaker 1: through Nazi persecution and Soviet occupation. Soros later said, Popper's
Speaker 1: book is Carl Popper Open Society and His Enemies, struck
Speaker 1: me with the force of revelation. It showed that fascism
Speaker 1: and communism have a lot in common, that they both
Speaker 1: stand in opposition to a different principle of social organization,
Speaker 1: the principle of open society. So, okay, I read this,
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, so let's go, let's go,
Speaker 1: let's go read Carl Popper's book, which is called The
Speaker 1: Open Society and Its Enemies. And so I assumed, right,
Speaker 1: that's interesting me.
Speaker 2: I was also doing poppers last night.
Speaker 1: You had the superior experience with your poppers. I'm assuming
Speaker 1: I had a bad fucking time. I read this like
Speaker 1: last week.
Speaker 2: She got mears from a gas station too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, instead I got it from the internet for free,
Speaker 1: which questionable results. So okay, so I read this book, right,
Speaker 1: So this is Karl Popper is like normally a philosopher
Speaker 1: of well, he's like a scientist, right, He's most famous
Speaker 1: for like philosophy of science stuff. But he also wrote
Speaker 1: this book, and this is his critique of totalitarianism. So okay,
Speaker 1: I'm expecting, right, it's going to be half of it's
Speaker 1: gonna be about the Nazis and half of it's gonna
Speaker 1: be about the communist right. No, the first half of
Speaker 1: this book is about Plato and the second half of
Speaker 1: this book is about Marks. But he spends like two
Speaker 1: hundred pages yelling at Plato. And to be fair, everything
Speaker 1: he says about Plato and about why Plato is totalitarian
Speaker 1: is completely true. But like his conclusion about what totalitarianism
Speaker 1: is is that totalitarianism is descendant. It's like the product
Speaker 1: of this thing he calls historicism, which is when like
Speaker 1: you have one thing that's the agent of history, and
Speaker 1: so he sees like like I don't know, like a
Speaker 1: great man or like the guy whatever Hegel's geist, or
Speaker 1: like one great nation, or like a great class as
Speaker 1: like those are all examples of his historicism. And if
Speaker 1: you think about history like this, you will this is
Speaker 1: how totalitarianism is born. And I am incredibly skeptical of that,
Speaker 1: of the view of the way you look think about
Speaker 1: history being the origin metal talitarianism. I I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's it's a very very weird book. In a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Paper is trying to do this thing that
Speaker 1: like a lot of kind of liberal philosophers of that
Speaker 1: period is doing, which is that she's trying to reconcile
Speaker 1: sort of like individual freedom but then also sort of
Speaker 1: economic glitarianism. And you know, okay, so if you were
Speaker 1: actually serious about doing both of these things right, like
Speaker 1: the two things you care about on earth are protecting
Speaker 1: individual freedom and it's gieving economic calitarianism, you have two options.
Speaker 1: You either become an anarchist and you sacrifice neither of
Speaker 1: your values, or you become a neoliberal and you sacrifice both.
Speaker 1: And Popper, unfortunately takes a second route, and.
Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of the a lot of
Speaker 2: the conflict between kind of like reconciling, you know, the
Speaker 2: Great Man theory of history with some of these other
Speaker 2: like it comes out of an unwillingness to look at
Speaker 2: systems of power, because the extent to which like individual
Speaker 2: weirdos and their obsessions influence history is largely due to
Speaker 2: or is largely like related to the degree of power
Speaker 2: that like different systems allow to be invested into like
Speaker 2: individual weirdos. Like it's it's less a matter of like
Speaker 2: you've got these sort of you know, in that kind
Speaker 2: of fascist idea, you've got these sort of individuals who
Speaker 2: embody the spirit of a people and more, if your
Speaker 2: system allows huge amounts of power to be invested in
Speaker 2: individual people with their weird hang ups, than those weird
Speaker 2: hang ups of this one guy may wind up defining history.
Speaker 2: I don't know, this is this this is an unrelated rant.
Speaker 1: I think it is related because this this is sort
Speaker 1: of the core flaw of this ideology, which is that
Speaker 1: these people conclude okay, so like they don't okay, the
Speaker 1: the the thing that they have to do, like pop
Speaker 1: rass to do right because he like acknowledges that a
Speaker 1: lot of the Marxist critique is really powerful and that
Speaker 1: like it is in fact not very good that you
Speaker 1: have an entire class of people who like survive off
Speaker 1: of extracting like labor from another class of people. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you accept that, right, you can't actually
Speaker 1: like defend capitalism on the merits of it being an
Speaker 1: economic system. You have to like do this like circle
Speaker 1: run around dance of like defending ideas, and this all
Speaker 1: gets like gets to this point where the problem that
Speaker 1: you're talking about happens, which is that like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: capitalism is also a system where one really weird guy
Speaker 1: and he's like terrible ideas can have an enormous impact
Speaker 1: on how society operates. Like this is this is this
Speaker 1: is this is the thing we're all suffering from from
Speaker 1: like Elon Musk, right or like what what's that guy's name,
Speaker 1: like Robert Moses, right, Like yeah, like you know, like
Speaker 1: capitalism is absolutely assistant that generates just one guy who
Speaker 1: can just fuck everyone's And that's a.
Speaker 2: Perfect example of it because like the fact that Moses
Speaker 2: has these weird personal hang ups around public transportation and
Speaker 2: this love of being driven around influences how tens of
Speaker 2: millions of people live to this day, and influences like
Speaker 2: the global climate crisis. And so it's not like this
Speaker 2: great man didn't like grab the lathe of heaven. It
Speaker 2: was more like, no, our we we our society kind
Speaker 2: of like the system we set up allowed an enormous
Speaker 2: amount of power for this specific thing. How our cities
Speaker 2: are set up to be invested in an unelected weirdo
Speaker 2: because he was the only one interested enough to focus
Speaker 2: on it, and that led to this very bad situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like I think I think Pomper's think of that.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, okay, you do you deal with
Speaker 1: this by like just having elections for everyone? And it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: Like so sometimes you have election. We never vote for
Speaker 1: crazy assholes, thank god. Sometimes sometimes sometimes you get Donald Trump, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, these these are these are these are things
Speaker 1: that are going to haunt both Popper. Popper doesn't live
Speaker 1: long enough to see like the absolute worst this can
Speaker 1: possibly go, But George Sorows unfortunately has lived to see
Speaker 1: exactly how value this this can possibly go.
Speaker 2: But let's call him, let's let's call him by his
Speaker 2: nickname from from now on uh G sizzle. Is that good?
Speaker 2: We're not doing that.
Speaker 1: We're not doing that.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you, Garrison. This is this is this
Speaker 2: is why you're this is why you're here. You have
Speaker 2: power of attorney over what nicknames we call the subjects
Speaker 2: of the episodes.
Speaker 1: I will I will keep it and reserve this power.
Speaker 2: See this is we're We've built assist him to try
Speaker 2: and uh and stop you know, individuals with with weird
Speaker 2: hang ups from influencing history so much. It's that simple, folks,
Speaker 2: you know, devolve powers. Yeah, works great for unprecedency.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, we're you have to talk about Ugoslavia in this episode,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't always work. But all right, so back back,
Speaker 1: back back in sort of the heady days of the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, George Soros like, okay, he has a
Speaker 1: dual thing where he at once has his kind of
Speaker 1: crisis a conscience thing where he's like, I want to
Speaker 1: actually do something with my life that's not just you
Speaker 1: know how, I want to have an impact on the
Speaker 1: world that is positive and not like I made so
Speaker 1: much money that like gods look at it and vomit
Speaker 1: and so and so. Okay, so his solution is he
Speaker 1: sets up a tax dodge, and he's actually very explicit
Speaker 1: about those interviews that his first foundation to do charity
Speaker 1: work was set up as a tax But but this
Speaker 1: is where Soros is very interesting, right, because he has
Speaker 1: you know, for for like a billionaire, right, he has
Speaker 1: some positions that are started only very good. So he
Speaker 1: is anti apartheid and that is like not a thing
Speaker 1: you can guarantee from people in that era, like oh boy.
Speaker 1: He also and this is only I guess gets him
Speaker 1: in trouble like to this day, is he is pro Palestine.
Speaker 1: And this is part of why like net and Yah,
Speaker 1: who absolutely hates him, he's he's not like like okay,
Speaker 1: he's he's not.
Speaker 2: Like a radical pro Palestine by the standards of net
Speaker 2: and Yahoo a radical.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. It was like his you know his
Speaker 1: sort of like like his sort of like liberal humanism,
Speaker 1: like hey, we should not like shoot children with guns.
Speaker 2: Thing is Broadley anti shooting children?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like like that that that makes you a
Speaker 1: like like like enemy number one of the Israeli still
Speaker 1: all yeah, no, I okay, put them in like.
Speaker 2: I mean the number one is those kids.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they haven't wrapped him yet. So oh God,
Speaker 1: speaking of things that the Israeli government didn't do. So
Speaker 1: he gets his start.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to do an ad.
Speaker 1: I don't worry, I have a better one.
Speaker 2: It's kind of good.
Speaker 1: So in that day, his first experience, like doing charity
Speaker 1: work is he decides that he's going to go up
Speaker 1: against like apartheid in South Africa, and yeah, this is good.
Speaker 1: So he what he starts doing. He starts giving scholarships
Speaker 1: to black students to go to the University of Cape Town,
Speaker 1: and then he learns a very very important lesson about
Speaker 1: neoliberalism that he's about he's going to like promptly forget
Speaker 1: after this, which is that. Okay, So what actually happened
Speaker 1: what he thinks is going to happen, right, is what
Speaker 1: he's trying to do is he's trying to make, you know,
Speaker 1: he's trying to make sure there's more money for black
Speaker 1: kids to go to go to university. What actually happens
Speaker 1: is that the state uses his money to pay for
Speaker 1: the existing scholarships and stops paying for any more scholarships.
Speaker 1: And so there's two things going on here, right. One
Speaker 1: is the obvious, this is the this is the apartheid
Speaker 1: racism right, like they don't want more like they don't
Speaker 1: want more non white kids going to school. But then
Speaker 1: two also this is also sort of a classic dear
Speaker 1: liberal failure, which is like if you were, if you
Speaker 1: were when you replace the state with like billionaire philanthropists,
Speaker 1: the state simply instead of like you know, having more
Speaker 1: of the of like the resources of the services provided,
Speaker 1: the state just stops doing it and spends more money
Speaker 1: on cops. And so he sours very quickly realizes that,
Speaker 1: like he figures this out, it is like I fuck this, Like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to help you, like I'm not going
Speaker 1: to help the apartect government do racism. And so this
Speaker 1: makes him kind of weary of this stuff because he
Speaker 1: has sort of he has sort of seen how you
Speaker 1: see what happens when you when you very explicitly try
Speaker 1: to work within a system that is unbelievably fucked up,
Speaker 1: which is that the apartheid government uses your money to
Speaker 1: as a way to like funnel more of their own
Speaker 1: life into their own pockets. And do you know who
Speaker 1: else use the system of aparthid to funnel more money
Speaker 1: into their own pockets?
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I see, I now see what you were doing.
Speaker 3: I think the last I think the previous attempt to
Speaker 3: not break was actually better. I was kind of like,
Speaker 3: you know, you know.
Speaker 1: I.
Speaker 2: Correct that our podcasts are entirely sponsored via a time machine.
Speaker 2: We used to go back to apartheid South Africa uh
Speaker 2: and get their advertising dollars. So please keep the krue
Speaker 2: grands flowing, uh and and purchase these products and services.
Speaker 2: I learned that kruegrands was the South African currency from
Speaker 2: the movie Lethal Weapon two. We're back and I'm sitting
Speaker 2: uncomfortable in the knowledge that I am the only person
Speaker 2: on this zoom call who has watched Lethal Weapon too.
Speaker 2: Have either of you seen any of the Lethal's weapons? No, unbelievable.
Speaker 2: You're missing maybe the best Mel Gibson performance outside of
Speaker 2: that time he got pulled over in Malibu and gave
Speaker 2: a racist brant to those California State Highway Patrol officers. Uh.
Speaker 1: Okay, regarding of people who are about to give racist rants. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the the other thing about Soros, and the thing
Speaker 1: that is sort of blisteringly ironic about how the sort
Speaker 1: of course of anti Soro's attacks go, is that Soros
Speaker 1: is like a vehement, like pretty hardline anti communist and
Speaker 1: this is what he spends most of his time like
Speaker 1: in the eighties doing, is is you'll like give giving
Speaker 1: money to anti communist groups and communist countries. So he
Speaker 1: funds Solidarity in Poland, which is this like very mixed record.
Speaker 1: Well we'll get the we don't need it.
Speaker 2: He's funding anti communist causes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's funny, but you know he's funny. He's
Speaker 1: trying to fund like a very specific kind of like
Speaker 1: liberal anti communist cause, right, And you know this this
Speaker 1: goes badly for him in a number of ways. One
Speaker 1: is that the moment, like the moment the Berlin Wall falls,
Speaker 1: everyone just like suddenly forgets about all of the anti
Speaker 1: communism that he did, because you know, and this is
Speaker 1: something about there's a kind of anti communists that he is, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of anti communists who are like who
Speaker 1: are just like Deak squad guys, right, Like this is
Speaker 1: your like your guy trained by Shan Kai Shek who's
Speaker 1: like shooting peasants in like El Salvador. Right. There's also
Speaker 1: like another kind of anti communists in this era who
Speaker 1: are sort of liberal anti communists who like are anti
Speaker 1: communists but like also anti Pinochet, for example, like Soros
Speaker 1: give somebody to the people, you know, wh when Pinochet
Speaker 1: has this big referendum of his like should I stay
Speaker 1: in power? He gives money to the people who are
Speaker 1: like no, and those are people who, ah, their intentions
Speaker 1: are better than the just like absolutely horrifying right wingers.
Speaker 1: But you know, it doesn't it doesn't go great for him.
Speaker 1: So Soros his initial plan, right is he's gonna you know, okay,
Speaker 1: when you're trying to like start funding anti communist group,
Speaker 1: She's gonna use this things. Like he was gonna go
Speaker 1: into Hungary and he was gonna like give Hungarian students scholarships,
Speaker 1: and the Hungarian students were like, don't do this. Like
Speaker 1: if you if you just show up and give us money,
Speaker 1: the state is immediately going to be able to go like, hey,
Speaker 1: you were like outside funded opposition people doing like regime
Speaker 1: change stuff, and it's gonna like immediately discredit us. And
Speaker 1: so this is the point where he sets up the
Speaker 1: SOUS Foundation, which becomes opens There's a whole thing with this.
Speaker 1: This this stuff changes names like many times, the Open
Speaker 1: Society Foundation stuff. Yeah, yeah, and you know, and so
Speaker 1: you know what we like, we just talked about what
Speaker 1: they actually do because in sort of like that.
Speaker 2: And I can tell you one thing that they do
Speaker 2: because I used to work with when I was a
Speaker 2: teaching classes at Belling Cat my partner, my partner, John Carlo,
Speaker 2: he would go and teach because he he was born
Speaker 2: and for at least a period of time raised in Venezuela.
Speaker 2: He would teach classes in Latin America to local journalists
Speaker 2: who wanted to know open source investigative techniques and who
Speaker 2: didn't have the kind of money to pay what it
Speaker 2: usually costs to do a Belling Cat thing. And that
Speaker 2: program whereby a bunch of journalists in Latin America, particularly Colombia,
Speaker 2: got training, was funded by the Open Society Foundation. And
Speaker 2: so a couple of years ago when there was that
Speaker 2: massive swelling of like the police murdering people and protest
Speaker 2: crowds and stuff in Colombia, the journalists who were like
Speaker 2: doing open source investigation to track down which police officers were,
Speaker 2: you know, killing folks and how this was going were
Speaker 2: a lot of the folks that John Carlow had trained.
Speaker 2: Like that's the kind of stuff that one of the
Speaker 2: kind of things that the Open Society Foundation does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they also do a lot of They do a
Speaker 1: lot of like giving students scholarships. The other thing they're
Speaker 1: really big on that doesn't get talked about much is
Speaker 1: that there were huge on like cultural events basically like
Speaker 1: like paying people money to like put on plays and
Speaker 1: like theater stuff and music and like writing poems and books,
Speaker 1: which is like, I don't know, like I actually think
Speaker 1: that's cool, Like like we as a society used to
Speaker 1: do this, Like we used to like pay people, like
Speaker 1: the government used to pay people to like write things
Speaker 1: and like create art, and then we decided that that
Speaker 1: was bad and I've never done it again.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I'm anti creating art for the record, That's
Speaker 2: why I'm really happy about all this AI stuff.
Speaker 3: Bait bait, yeah, bait post do not engage.
Speaker 1: So Unfortunately for the Sorrows Foundation, one of the people
Speaker 1: they give these these scholarships to is victor Or Braun,
Speaker 1: which is I.
Speaker 2: Victory the Hungarian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, we shall, we shall return to that. This
Speaker 1: is I think maybe the single greatest example of like
Speaker 1: creating young grave Digger I've ever seen in my entire life.
Speaker 1: I I I don't know, like one of the things
Speaker 1: that that comes up about this and this is this
Speaker 1: is one of the things that another one of the
Speaker 1: guys who Sorrows backs, who like betrays him later on
Speaker 1: says that Sorrows is bad at politics, Like he's just
Speaker 1: not he's like not very good at it. Like he's
Speaker 1: not you know, people like the sort of like thing
Speaker 1: about him is that he's the sort of like criminal
Speaker 1: mastermind who can like like bankraill revolutions and stuff. And
Speaker 1: she just like gets out maneuvered by people constantly in
Speaker 1: ways that are like kind of depressing. Yeah, but okay,
Speaker 1: so he's spending the eighties like doing all this, you know,
Speaker 1: like doing this sort of cultural work, and you know
Speaker 1: in Hungary, right, this is there's a sort of interesting
Speaker 1: thing that happens where like he's wealthy enough that like
Speaker 1: even the Communist Party is it sort of like has
Speaker 1: to work with him because he has money and they
Speaker 1: sort of don't. But you know, the other thing that
Speaker 1: that's I think important to understand is that he's not
Speaker 1: like there's a bunch of foundations you do, like exactly
Speaker 1: the same stuff, right, like maybe slightly worse. Like you know,
Speaker 1: there's like the Ford Foundation, there's like the Rockefellers, right,
Speaker 1: or the Rockefeller Foundation, like they all they all like
Speaker 1: at any place where open society is like doing stuff,
Speaker 1: there's like a worse version of it that the Ford
Speaker 1: Foundation and like the Rockefellers are doing. But you know, somehow, stunningly,
Speaker 1: only one of these groups is singled out for being
Speaker 1: yelled at all the time. And I will I will
Speaker 1: leave as an exercise to the reader why specifically they
Speaker 1: picked Soros and not Ford. Huh huh.
Speaker 3: I wonder, I wonder what big mystery. I wonder what
Speaker 3: differences and cultural views might be.
Speaker 1: It might be a yeah, so okay. The other real
Speaker 1: problem that he runs into, which is a cultural problem,
Speaker 1: is that, Okay, this is the problem that all the
Speaker 1: liberal anti communists run into, which is that, Okay, so
Speaker 1: the walls come down, right and the communist governments fall,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that the anti communists in the
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe are almost all right wingers, and their base
Speaker 1: are all like right wing nationalists fanatics. Here's another source
Speaker 1: quote about this. I thought I would blaze the trail,
Speaker 1: I would lead and others would follow. But now that
Speaker 1: I look back, I find that there was practically nobody
Speaker 1: behind me. I asked myself what went wrong, and part
Speaker 1: of what went wrong is like what Soros is doing
Speaker 1: in these places. So for example, you know, he's he's
Speaker 1: involved in funding solidarity, he's involved in some solidarities negotiations
Speaker 1: with the government. And then the other thing that he
Speaker 1: does is he's one of the people who he help
Speaker 1: like do structural adjustment in Poland. And this goes really
Speaker 1: badly because so what we were talking about, Wes just
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what solidarity is, because he
Speaker 1: helps destroy it by accident. Solidarity is this giant sort
Speaker 1: of like social democratic e union that forms in you know,
Speaker 1: in like the early eighties in Poland. That's like the
Speaker 1: first sort of independent union in one of these communist countries.
Speaker 1: And they eventually are able to sort of like knock
Speaker 1: off the government, but they come into power, and you know,
Speaker 1: so they do on sort of so US's advice and
Speaker 1: on the advice of a lot of the sort of
Speaker 1: financial people. They're getting right, all of the people are
Speaker 1: telling them to do privatization, so they do it right.
Speaker 1: They privatize all of these giant state owned like facilities,
Speaker 1: they privatize their docks like stuff like that, and this
Speaker 1: it turns out it just causes massive d industrialization. It
Speaker 1: destroys Solidarity's base because there's suddenly no longer all of
Speaker 1: these union jobs at all these state owned factories, and
Speaker 1: so you know, they lose an excellent actually and that
Speaker 1: solid already like vanishes forever into the midst of time.
Speaker 1: There's like six of those guys left. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: and this is a real sort of sorts problem. This
Speaker 1: that like keeps running over and over again, right is
Speaker 1: you know, he spent all this time being an anti communist,
Speaker 1: but then the actual anti communists who have basses and
Speaker 1: who aren't just like destroying their own bases by like
Speaker 1: doing privatization, which is something stuff he's also pushing, right
Speaker 1: are these right wingers and this is this is just
Speaker 1: sort of a fiasco. And you know, it's like he
Speaker 1: he does, like he tries to do like a very
Speaker 1: similar thing to what he'd been doing in Eastern Europe
Speaker 1: and China, and this goes like even worse because he
Speaker 1: winds up like backing he winds up backing one of
Speaker 1: the CCP factions who gets purged after Tienemann, And so
Speaker 1: you know, sorros like as the sort of nineties go
Speaker 1: on right, Like he's sort of slowly starting to realize
Speaker 1: that like the stuff that these doings not working very well,
Speaker 1: and one of the sort of I don't know if
Speaker 1: consequence is the right word, but okay, one of sours
Speaker 1: are sort of like principles that makes them different from
Speaker 1: a lot of other of these billionaires rights. He doesn't
Speaker 1: do humanitarian aid. His thing is that like he wants
Speaker 1: to produce a society that doesn't need humanitarian aid, which
Speaker 1: is sort of noble. But like then then Yugoslavia falls apart,
Speaker 1: and he winds up doing a bunch of stuff in Yugoslavia,
Speaker 1: Like he winds up building like a water purification plant
Speaker 1: Sarajevo whilside resiege. And the other thing that I didn't
Speaker 1: know he was like really heavily involved with is like
Speaker 1: he's basically the reason why the UN War Crimes tribunal
Speaker 1: that like tries some Miloshevic and stuff like happens, Like
Speaker 1: he funds it. It wasn't really like a UN thing
Speaker 1: he was. He was like, Hey, we're gonna have this tribunal.
Speaker 1: And then the German government like arrested one of the
Speaker 1: war criminals just sort of randomly at like an airport
Speaker 1: or something, and he's able to convince sort of like
Speaker 1: Clinton and a bunch of other people to like actually
Speaker 1: turn and the un to like turn this into a
Speaker 1: real court. And this pisses off a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and like by by a lot of people, I mean,
Speaker 1: like very specifically pisses Melosa Chi cough because somewhat obvious
Speaker 1: reasons that he's trying to try him for war crimes. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I think, gar you're too young for this. Robert,
Speaker 1: do you remember Rock the Vote?
Speaker 2: God? Oh yes, I remember Rock the Vote.
Speaker 1: Okay. So one of the things Soros does is he
Speaker 1: does like a he brings like a rock to vote.
Speaker 1: He's like one of the people who brings the rock
Speaker 1: to vote to like Slovakia great. And you know, and
Speaker 1: this is the first time.
Speaker 2: That this is how we introduce people to democracy by
Speaker 2: showing how cringe it can be perfectly well.
Speaker 1: And the government is immediately immediately This is sort of
Speaker 1: the first time that like a government is seriously like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not okay. This is the first time
Speaker 1: that you've had like a protest movement that starts and
Speaker 1: the head of the country goes like it's George Soros.
Speaker 1: He's the one doing this, even though like the Ford
Speaker 1: Foundation again and the Rockefellers and just like a bunch
Speaker 1: of random people in Slovakia are also doing this. But
Speaker 1: this is this is this is sort of going to
Speaker 1: become like a pattern in in in these things, because
Speaker 1: you know, he he's sort of like like I think
Speaker 1: he's kind of like poking a lot of sort of
Speaker 1: very powerful like increasingly powerful sort of regional right wing
Speaker 1: leaders because he looks at the societies and are like, actually,
Speaker 1: it sucks to have like just dog shit right wingers
Speaker 1: who are like racist and hate everyone running a country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds like it would be bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is this is the thing about worlds,
Speaker 1: like he every once in a while, right, he sees
Speaker 1: something really bad going on and goes, I'm gonna throw
Speaker 1: a bunch of money at it try to fix it.
Speaker 1: And so one of the things that he does this
Speaker 1: for is the war on drugs, like in the in
Speaker 1: sort of the eighties and nineties, Like Saras looks at
Speaker 1: this and it's like this fucking sucks, Like this is
Speaker 1: really bad. And so he starts working in Baltimore, where
Speaker 1: the government is trying to do like something something like
Speaker 1: pretty like something like even now is to consider sort
Speaker 1: of like pretty radical I like harm reduction stuff. So
Speaker 1: I mean they like it. Like Baltimore in the nineties
Speaker 1: has needle exchanges. He's doing like Narcan trainings for people.
Speaker 1: He's you know, he's doing things like funny instead of
Speaker 1: like like giving money to like he's doing he tyes
Speaker 1: these programs to like get people out of like prison faster.
Speaker 1: And he's doing like after school programs for kids and
Speaker 1: this stuff like this just like genuinely good. Like there's
Speaker 1: no like I don't know, it sucks that like it's
Speaker 1: it's billionaire money that's like doing it. But like I
Speaker 1: don't know, like probably there's a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are alive because I didn't get HIV from needles that
Speaker 1: they were able to do exchanges for.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure, that's all. That's all good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And but you know the interesting thing about Storts, right,
Speaker 1: he's he's like not like you know, he's doing stuff
Speaker 1: that's like pretty lefty, right, but he's like not a
Speaker 1: partisan guy until he sees George Bush and he sees
Speaker 1: he's he like the day after nine to eleven, he's like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, this guy is a maniac, and like he's
Speaker 1: just instantly has like the switch flips of like this man,
Speaker 1: this man is an enemy who opens society, which is true.
Speaker 1: And he's like he's he like, guess this braid of
Speaker 1: like I need to bring this man down. So he
Speaker 1: starts getting really for the first time, right, he starts
Speaker 1: getting really really involved in the two thousand and four election.
Speaker 1: He's doing like like these like micro targeting ad stuff.
Speaker 1: He's like throwing money around everywhere, and you know, I
Speaker 1: mean he explicitly like the like the way he looks
Speaker 1: at it, like if he's very explicit about this is
Speaker 1: like he wants to level the like the playing field
Speaker 1: between the Republicans, who are funded by just a trillion
Speaker 1: routling billionaires and the Democrats, who are funded by not
Speaker 1: that many billionaires. The problem with this is that he
Speaker 1: has like a very weird view of what's wrong with Bush.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read from the people the storms again in
Speaker 1: imposing its view of freedom on both the American people
Speaker 1: in a foreign country. Quote, the supremacist ideology of the
Speaker 1: Bush administration, and it is in contradiction with the principles
Speaker 1: of open society because it claims possession of an ultimate truth,
Speaker 1: which I don't know. I don't actually think like claiming
Speaker 1: possession of an ultimate truth is like specifically the thing
Speaker 1: that like is the bason why the Bush administration is bad.
Speaker 1: But simultaneously I don't know, Like I it's hard for
Speaker 1: me to be like too bad about a billionaire seeing
Speaker 1: George Bush and just like going, oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah it didn't it didn't work, but it yeah, good
Speaker 2: that he gave it, gave it the old college try.
Speaker 1: Yeah well. And unfortunately this this has a backlash effect,
Speaker 1: which the Republicans see him start doing this, and they're like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, this is incredible campaign material for us. And
Speaker 1: we start seeing like the sort of the less openly
Speaker 1: anti Semitic like precursors to like all the stuff we
Speaker 1: see today, like Bill O'Reilly goes after him. Oh god, Robert,
Speaker 1: do you remember Dennis Hastard?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Oh look, if I'm my favorite pedophiles who
Speaker 2: were long standing speakers of the House of Representatives, Dennis
Speaker 2: Hastard is easily in the top three.
Speaker 1: She I this is the thing that's been like collectively
Speaker 1: wiped from like America's conscience. Is that like the Republican
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House for like twenty years, was like
Speaker 1: one of one of one of history's most prolific pedophiles.
Speaker 2: He sure was.
Speaker 1: And she also turns out one of the people who
Speaker 1: mainstream the anti Soros stuff. She starts citing a fucking
Speaker 1: Lyndon LaRouche quote n quote report claiming that soroscott is
Speaker 1: money from drugs. So Lynda Laruche is this like fascist
Speaker 1: weirdo who cut his teeth and running this like anti
Speaker 1: communist cult that would like physically fight leftist groups on
Speaker 1: campuses and would like give information on like student leftist
Speaker 1: groups and like other lefist groups or the government like
Speaker 1: they are they are so fedted up that like if
Speaker 1: you start reading about de LaRue sites like they were
Speaker 1: narking to federal orgs like you've never heard of before,
Speaker 1: it's stunningly, stunningly bizarre like conspiracy cult thing. And Dennis
Speaker 1: Hastert was just straight up like reading their anti Semitic
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories like on TV. But you know, and I
Speaker 1: think I think it's something that that's one of the
Speaker 1: things I wanted to emphasize, like in this episode, right,
Speaker 1: is like the anti Soro stuff isn't really like I
Speaker 1: don't know what you call it, like sort of organic
Speaker 1: anti semitism, Like it's not something that like comes from
Speaker 1: the Republican base, right, This is thing that this is
Speaker 1: a deliberate choice by Republican political strategists who are very
Speaker 1: deliberately like this, this is this is a Jewish billionaire
Speaker 1: who's helping who's helping a Democratic party, like we can
Speaker 1: use this to do what to try to do like
Speaker 1: culture warship to win this election, and you know, like
Speaker 1: you we know we can see the results of this.
Speaker 1: And this isn't even you know, we're gonna get this
Speaker 1: in a little bit, but like this this isn't even
Speaker 1: the only time this is gonna happen where like the
Speaker 1: specific like Soros like anti Semtism stuff for dreaming against
Speaker 1: is like it's cooked up by like like very specifically
Speaker 1: cooked up as a targeted thing by political strategists.
Speaker 2: I love it, which it's it's good.
Speaker 1: Anyways, we should we should do ads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of anti semitism, you know, just just speaking
Speaker 2: about it, that's what we're doing here. Anyway, here's the mads. Ah,
Speaker 2: we're back. Got another email from the A d L.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna deal with this, y'all continue talking about George Soros.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, So all right, the other thing Soros keeps doing, like,
Speaker 1: you know, so in going after Bush, right, he has
Speaker 1: now made himself like he's not enemy number one yet,
Speaker 1: but he's going he's made himself like a pretty high
Speaker 1: profile enemy of the Republican like through the shoe. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that guy actually sucks.
Speaker 2: I yeah, yeah, we're not praising him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He starts this sort of like arc of pissing
Speaker 1: off a bunch of really really powerful and important people
Speaker 1: who are anti Semitic right wingers. So remember how I
Speaker 1: a while back, I said I was talking about there
Speaker 1: was a guy who double crossed Soros who was like,
Speaker 1: this guy's bad at politics. So that guy was like
Speaker 1: a uh that that that that guy. That guy was
Speaker 1: a Georgian protest leader who Soros like helped like his
Speaker 1: protest movements overthrow a sort of like kind of pretty
Speaker 1: shitty like pro Russian government in Georgia. But like that guy,
Speaker 1: that guy has like a wild arc that you could
Speaker 1: do his own fucking movie series on. He's now a
Speaker 1: victory a close ally of Victoria Bond. So it's going great,
Speaker 1: how do you actually pronounce his name? For some reason,
Speaker 1: it always just like pings off my brain.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean or Garren. I hear the real
Speaker 2: brain Trust to ask about pronunciation. You've brought together, you know,
Speaker 2: just the goat latest pronunciators. Just send me a list
Speaker 2: of like European cities. That's a free episode idea there
Speaker 2: you go. Yeah, I'm just gonna say the word Binghamton
Speaker 2: like forty seven times. It's gonna be great.
Speaker 1: Okay, So sorrows back to say this gets called the
Speaker 1: Rose Revolution, and you know, this turns out badly for
Speaker 1: Soros in every possible way, which is that like one
Speaker 1: his guy like sucks and turns on him, and then
Speaker 1: two he really like this like really pisses off. Laedimer
Speaker 1: putin a man who is going to hold this grudge,
Speaker 1: like like on his deathbed. He will be holding this
Speaker 1: grudge now, okay. So one of the things that that
Speaker 1: sort of like happens. So he's backing these sort of
Speaker 1: like protest movements in Eastern Europe. Ifuse the sort of
Speaker 1: two thousands, and you know, as the two thousands go
Speaker 1: on and turn in two thousand and eight, thing, the
Speaker 1: world economy goes to shit. A bunch of right wingers
Speaker 1: started taking power, and one of Victor Rabond's like political consultants,
Speaker 1: who's this guy? Who he that through net and Yahoo
Speaker 1: like specifically like this is this is another consultant guy
Speaker 1: very specifically cooks up the idea for how you know,
Speaker 1: he's trying to fend off like a right like a
Speaker 1: sort of another sort of right wing challenge. He trying
Speaker 1: to fend off like the rest of our political establishment.
Speaker 1: And or Bond's consultant like very specifically is like what
Speaker 1: if we go after Soros again? And you know, and
Speaker 1: so he does and this is this is another one
Speaker 1: of those things like this is literally the anti Semitism
Speaker 1: is fucking cooked up in a pr lab in in
Speaker 1: in order for these people to win elections. And I
Speaker 1: don't know that that that just sort of just sort
Speaker 1: of like cynical cold bloodedness of it, like of these people,
Speaker 1: like this political consultant, by the way, like is also Jewish,
Speaker 1: right like, and he just doesn't give a shit. He's
Speaker 1: like a fuck it, like well, you know, like I
Speaker 1: I'm like one of Netanyahu's guys net and Yah, who
Speaker 1: fucking hates this guy too? Like why don't we just
Speaker 1: use him as a punching bag and so they you
Speaker 1: and you know this is this is part of a
Speaker 1: big part of the reason like why Sorows turns into
Speaker 1: the sort of enemy number one is that in two
Speaker 1: fifteen they start blaming him for the influx of refugees
Speaker 1: from Syria. And this bread is like fucking wildfire. Suddenly
Speaker 1: like every single right wing leader on Earth is like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, I can blame all of my refugee stuff
Speaker 1: on this guy. And they start doing it. And you know,
Speaker 1: so suddenly like like air Dowan is blaming him for
Speaker 1: like the gutsy part protests and he does at thirteen,
Speaker 1: like Trump gets on this, and you know, this stuff
Speaker 1: sort of like it's it spreads really quickly, and once
Speaker 1: it's sort of out of the bottle, right like you know,
Speaker 1: like people look like there are the people who sort
Speaker 1: of first start this right are doing this sort of
Speaker 1: like you know, like incredibly cold, cynical political calculus. But
Speaker 1: once once that once this like incredibly high level that
Speaker 1: is sent and he Sentism gets out of the open,
Speaker 1: it starts turning into just like Sorows of Satan shit.
Speaker 1: And you know, and and part part of what happens
Speaker 1: here is is that like this is this is one
Speaker 1: of the things, like that the sort of campaigns against
Speaker 1: Soros is one of the things that he is responsible for,
Speaker 1: like our current like migrant policy, like why it's so bad?
Speaker 1: Like why like half our episodes next week and are
Speaker 1: gonna be about like just horrible shit happening at the border,
Speaker 1: which is that Like Soros in the in the like
Speaker 1: the late the nineties and two thousands found out that
Speaker 1: like Clinton was funding his welfare reform by cutting legal
Speaker 1: immigrants off from food stamps and like SSI benefits, and
Speaker 1: he's like, wait.
Speaker 4: This is fuck yeah, it's just like like he caught
Speaker 4: one point five million people off of his off of
Speaker 4: fucking benefits for just no reason, like unbelievably demonic act.
Speaker 1: And Sorrow finds out about this, is like wait, what
Speaker 1: the fuck what do you mean he's doing this? So
Speaker 1: he like puts a coalition together that like funds a
Speaker 1: bunch of immigrant advocacy groups, and he's able to overturn this.
Speaker 1: But there there's a sort of right with the right
Speaker 1: wing reaction to this, right like par Is partially also
Speaker 1: part of the right wing reaction to Soorros. Two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, there's this very very effective and like unbelievably
Speaker 1: brutal sort of right wing backlash about immigration politics. That is,
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of the things that drives the
Speaker 1: Obama administration.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The Obama administration is like worse than the Bush administration
Speaker 1: on like deportation shit. It's you know, just utter horror,
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff continues, and all of these
Speaker 1: right wing people figure out that if you can just
Speaker 1: pin like like Trump starts with Trump pins the migrant
Speaker 1: caravent on Soros and they figure out, like, this is
Speaker 1: the This is like the specific combination, right It's like
Speaker 1: the the the anti semitism of like the Jewish banker
Speaker 1: bringing immigrants into your country is just like the sort
Speaker 1: of one way shop driving your entire country into like
Speaker 1: a like fascist right wing frenzy. And it works. And now,
Speaker 1: you know, like the cycle that we're in now is
Speaker 1: like anytime something happens, uh, like the right blames h
Speaker 1: for it like this. So the the the the current
Speaker 1: right wing panic is that George Soros was funding some
Speaker 1: like pretty moderate like reform DA people because he's a
Speaker 1: criminal justice reform guy, and the Republicans are now all
Speaker 1: talking about how this is like a scheme by Soros
Speaker 1: to like cause crime and like destroy the entire country,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, like this is just like this is this
Speaker 1: is just this is just reality now all of these
Speaker 1: like really bleakly cynical political leaders and they're like polsters
Speaker 1: and pr consultants, where like we could use anti Semitism
Speaker 1: to win elections and they did and now we live
Speaker 1: in hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but on the up side, you know, uh, the
Speaker 2: you know, have you guys had the uh the new
Speaker 2: uh the new mountain dew zero major melon. It's not tasty,
Speaker 2: but it's in grocery stores, so if you're looking for
Speaker 2: a diet mountain dew flavor, you know, that makes it
Speaker 2: all kind of worthwhile.
Speaker 1: I don't know lism no longer even delivering flavor.
Speaker 2: That's what I had for you. It was that or
Speaker 2: another heroine.
Speaker 3: Why why would they need to deliver flavor when instead
Speaker 3: they can just continue to mainstream anti semitism to get
Speaker 3: right wing politicians elected so they can make say.
Speaker 2: But you know what I've been I've been studying this
Speaker 2: can for a while now, and none of the anthropomorphized
Speaker 2: watermelons look like they could be racial caricatures. So that's
Speaker 2: a win.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Look, if that is, if that is actually that actually
Speaker 3: is a racism wind.
Speaker 2: If Mountain Dew had made a melon version in nineteen thirty,
Speaker 2: it would have been pretty bad. Like we would be
Speaker 2: sharing pictures of those cans on Twitter today and going,
Speaker 2: oh my god. They would have to make a statement,
Speaker 2: they'd have to donate some money to like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: fun to, probably scholarships or something. It'd be a real
Speaker 2: problem for Mountain Dew, is what I'm saying. But today,
Speaker 2: nothing problematic about the melons on their can.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure there's nothing problematic about the soda industry.
Speaker 2: Aspertaine, the health chemical.
Speaker 1: Well is that is that all we had? Me?
Speaker 3: Yo?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's yeah, this is this is endicular apple here.
Speaker 3: Well it's I think now now we finally know why
Speaker 3: George Soros is as bad as Magneto, and and why
Speaker 3: comparing George Soros to Magneto as the one of the
Speaker 3: richest men in the world who owns probably the most
Speaker 3: influential communication app is probably not a good thing.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, one word thing I want to get
Speaker 1: it fine, Like for one second that I forgot I
Speaker 1: realized I forgot to say earlier, is that like Soros
Speaker 1: is not like in the scale of billionaire, Soros is
Speaker 1: not very rich, Like he's like the three hundred and
Speaker 1: so vandieth richest billionaire, Like he's not even in the
Speaker 1: top one hundred. Right. Elon Musk he has like six
Speaker 1: billion dollars. Elon Musk has like one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: four billion dollars or something. So like, you know, the
Speaker 1: the the relative levels of influence that these people have. No.
Speaker 3: I was talking about Elon Musk, Yeah, yeah, one of
Speaker 3: the chest most influential people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just I just I need everyone
Speaker 1: to understand exactly how much more fucking rich it's. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's like fucking it's like when fucking Henry Ford
Speaker 1: was like doing anti Semitic conspiracy series, and it's like
Speaker 1: you literally like like you personally literally control like more
Speaker 1: wealth than like all the people you're ranting about combined. Like,
Speaker 1: shut the fuck up, Oh my god, huh anti semitism, folks,
Speaker 1: it sucks. And also rich people do it even though
Speaker 1: they're they are the actual like the actual yeah, in
Speaker 1: in so far as anything even remotely like what they're
Speaker 1: hypothesizing could even potentially exist. It's fucking these people, so yeah,
Speaker 1: they're bad.
Speaker 2: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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Speaker 3: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.