WEBVTT - Who The Hell is George Soros, Anyway? Part 2 0:00:05.160 --> 0:00:10.200 It's it could happen here the podcast where I attempt 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:18.040 to wrangle jokes that are enough okay that we keep podcasting. Yeah, 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:25.560 with me here to wrangle Robert Evans and also Garrison Davis. Welcome, 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:26.880 Welcome back. 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:32.240 My two uses in this series are to make corrections 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:36.960 on Hungarian history of the Holocaust, uh and talk about 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:40.840 selling Heroin to children. So proud to be here. 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:44.640 I'm very excited. You're gonna hear me complain. You're gonna 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:46.880 get to listen to me very briefly complain about Plato, 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:48.839 a thing I did not think I was gonna do 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:49.680 when I started this. 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:52.840 Like the like the the philosophy guy. 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:57.520 Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, all right, okay, So all right, 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:01.279 why why are we eventually going to talk about Plato? So? 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:07.840 George Soros is probably best known for a foundation that 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:10.880 he eventually funds called Open Society. It was O risually 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:12.720 the Soros Foundation. Then he was like, why am I 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:15.600 naming this after myself? And it changed to Open Society. 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:19.560 I'm going to read. So the Open Society is a 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:20.360 very sort. 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:24.440 Of Again, I gotta say, exactly twenty percent more self 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:27.119 awareness than you get from the average billionaire. Like Bill 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:30.280 Gates is like, well, call it the Gates Foundation. Saurus 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:33.720 is like, we'll call it the Soros you know, wait, wait. 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:37.960 You know, no, you know what. Well, And to be fair, 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:43.760 like Soros has Sorros has a real ideology and it 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:48.040 it can't work, but if it did, the world wouldn't 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:51.280 be that bad, Unlike unlike what would happen if you 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.280 let Bill Gates run rampant over the earth? Which is 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:58.800 the world we live in right now. So I'm going 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:01.200 to read a little bit from the influenced Soros again 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:06.160 about like what the open society is. I have lived 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:10.440 through Nazi persecution and Soviet occupation. Soros later said, Popper's 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:13.800 book is Carl Popper Open Society and His Enemies, struck 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:17.040 me with the force of revelation. It showed that fascism 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:19.600 and communism have a lot in common, that they both 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:22.720 stand in opposition to a different principle of social organization, 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:29.799 the principle of open society. So, okay, I read this, 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:32.440 and I was like, okay, so let's go, let's go, 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:35.760 let's go read Carl Popper's book, which is called The 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:39.280 Open Society and Its Enemies. And so I assumed, right, 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:40.160 that's interesting me. 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:42.079 I was also doing poppers last night. 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:46.160 You had the superior experience with your poppers. I'm assuming 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:49.360 I had a bad fucking time. I read this like 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:50.280 last week. 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:52.280 She got mears from a gas station too. 0:02:52.800 --> 0:02:55.840 Yeah, No, instead I got it from the internet for free, 0:02:56.520 --> 0:03:03.000 which questionable results. So okay, so I read this book, right, 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:05.800 So this is Karl Popper is like normally a philosopher 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:07.960 of well, he's like a scientist, right, He's most famous 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:10.440 for like philosophy of science stuff. But he also wrote 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:15.080 this book, and this is his critique of totalitarianism. So okay, 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:16.919 I'm expecting, right, it's going to be half of it's 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:18.600 gonna be about the Nazis and half of it's gonna 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:21.720 be about the communist right. No, the first half of 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:25.280 this book is about Plato and the second half of 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:28.200 this book is about Marks. But he spends like two 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:32.840 hundred pages yelling at Plato. And to be fair, everything 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:35.520 he says about Plato and about why Plato is totalitarian 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:41.760 is completely true. But like his conclusion about what totalitarianism 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.520 is is that totalitarianism is descendant. It's like the product 0:03:45.560 --> 0:03:48.920 of this thing he calls historicism, which is when like 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:54.080 you have one thing that's the agent of history, and 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.440 so he sees like like I don't know, like a 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:02.080 great man or like the guy whatever Hegel's geist, or 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:05.640 like one great nation, or like a great class as 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:07.800 like those are all examples of his historicism. And if 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:09.760 you think about history like this, you will this is 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:15.720 how totalitarianism is born. And I am incredibly skeptical of that, 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:19.240 of the view of the way you look think about 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:25.800 history being the origin metal talitarianism. I I don't know. 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:30.400 It's it's a very very weird book. In a lot 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:32.600 of ways. Paper is trying to do this thing that 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:35.760 like a lot of kind of liberal philosophers of that 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:38.600 period is doing, which is that she's trying to reconcile 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:41.400 sort of like individual freedom but then also sort of 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:46.160 economic glitarianism. And you know, okay, so if you were 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:48.520 actually serious about doing both of these things right, like 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:52.320 the two things you care about on earth are protecting 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:57.040 individual freedom and it's gieving economic calitarianism, you have two options. 0:04:57.480 --> 0:04:59.800 You either become an anarchist and you sacrifice neither of 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:02.560 your values, or you become a neoliberal and you sacrifice both. 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:06.320 And Popper, unfortunately takes a second route, and. 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:09.159 I feel like a lot of the a lot of 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:13.640 the conflict between kind of like reconciling, you know, the 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:15.760 Great Man theory of history with some of these other 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:19.479 like it comes out of an unwillingness to look at 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:24.040 systems of power, because the extent to which like individual 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:29.839 weirdos and their obsessions influence history is largely due to 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:32.880 or is largely like related to the degree of power 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:36.839 that like different systems allow to be invested into like 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:40.719 individual weirdos. Like it's it's less a matter of like 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:42.960 you've got these sort of you know, in that kind 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:45.200 of fascist idea, you've got these sort of individuals who 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:47.960 embody the spirit of a people and more, if your 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:51.240 system allows huge amounts of power to be invested in 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:54.359 individual people with their weird hang ups, than those weird 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:57.479 hang ups of this one guy may wind up defining history. 0:05:57.520 --> 0:05:59.680 I don't know, this is this this is an unrelated rant. 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:02.080 I think it is related because this this is sort 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:03.920 of the core flaw of this ideology, which is that 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:07.760 these people conclude okay, so like they don't okay, the 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:10.520 the the thing that they have to do, like pop 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:14.400 rass to do right because he like acknowledges that a 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:16.719 lot of the Marxist critique is really powerful and that 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:19.680 like it is in fact not very good that you 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:22.280 have an entire class of people who like survive off 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:26.640 of extracting like labor from another class of people. But 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:30.320 you know, if you accept that, right, you can't actually 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:32.760 like defend capitalism on the merits of it being an 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:35.680 economic system. You have to like do this like circle 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:40.080 run around dance of like defending ideas, and this all 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:42.760 gets like gets to this point where the problem that 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:44.680 you're talking about happens, which is that like, well, okay, 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:48.359 capitalism is also a system where one really weird guy 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:51.040 and he's like terrible ideas can have an enormous impact 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:53.359 on how society operates. Like this is this is this 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:55.120 is this is the thing we're all suffering from from 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:59.000 like Elon Musk, right or like what what's that guy's name, 0:06:59.880 --> 0:07:04.080 like Robert Moses, right, Like yeah, like you know, like 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:08.120 capitalism is absolutely assistant that generates just one guy who 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:10.080 can just fuck everyone's And that's a. 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:12.600 Perfect example of it because like the fact that Moses 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:16.720 has these weird personal hang ups around public transportation and 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:20.920 this love of being driven around influences how tens of 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:23.400 millions of people live to this day, and influences like 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:27.800 the global climate crisis. And so it's not like this 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:31.560 great man didn't like grab the lathe of heaven. It 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:34.360 was more like, no, our we we our society kind 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:36.880 of like the system we set up allowed an enormous 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:39.440 amount of power for this specific thing. How our cities 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.280 are set up to be invested in an unelected weirdo 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:44.679 because he was the only one interested enough to focus 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:47.040 on it, and that led to this very bad situation. 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:49.960 Yeah, and like I think I think Pomper's think of that. 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:52.080 I was like, well, okay, you do you deal with 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:56.560 this by like just having elections for everyone? And it's like, well, okay, 0:07:56.840 --> 0:07:59.960 Like so sometimes you have election. We never vote for 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:04.440 crazy assholes, thank god. Sometimes sometimes sometimes you get Donald Trump, right, Like, 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:08.320 you know, these these are these are these are things 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.800 that are going to haunt both Popper. Popper doesn't live 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:15.840 long enough to see like the absolute worst this can 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:20.480 possibly go, But George Sorows unfortunately has lived to see 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:22.480 exactly how value this this can possibly go. 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.000 But let's call him, let's let's call him by his 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:32.959 nickname from from now on uh G sizzle. Is that good? 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:34.920 We're not doing that. 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:35.600 We're not doing that. 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:39.319 Thank you, Thank you, Garrison. This is this is this 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:43.240 is why you're this is why you're here. You have 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:46.800 power of attorney over what nicknames we call the subjects 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:47.600 of the episodes. 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:52.200 I will I will keep it and reserve this power. 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:00.720 See this is we're We've built assist him to try 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:04.400 and uh and stop you know, individuals with with weird 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:09.000 hang ups from influencing history so much. It's that simple, folks, 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:14.559 you know, devolve powers. Yeah, works great for unprecedency. 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:18.160 Unfortunately, we're you have to talk about Ugoslavia in this episode, 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:23.600 so it doesn't always work. But all right, so back back, 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:27.080 back back in sort of the heady days of the 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:32.360 seventies and eighties, George Soros like, okay, he has a 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:35.640 dual thing where he at once has his kind of 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:37.679 crisis a conscience thing where he's like, I want to 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:41.640 actually do something with my life that's not just you 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:43.400 know how, I want to have an impact on the 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:46.400 world that is positive and not like I made so 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:49.600 much money that like gods look at it and vomit 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.400 and so and so. Okay, so his solution is he 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:56.320 sets up a tax dodge, and he's actually very explicit 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:58.959 about those interviews that his first foundation to do charity 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:03.560 work was set up as a tax But but this 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:05.960 is where Soros is very interesting, right, because he has 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:10.000 you know, for for like a billionaire, right, he has 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:13.600 some positions that are started only very good. So he 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:16.520 is anti apartheid and that is like not a thing 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:20.680 you can guarantee from people in that era, like oh boy. 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:23.720 He also and this is only I guess gets him 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:27.079 in trouble like to this day, is he is pro Palestine. 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:28.880 And this is part of why like net and Yah, 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:31.679 who absolutely hates him, he's he's not like like okay, 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:32.520 he's he's not. 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:36.360 Like a radical pro Palestine by the standards of net 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:37.480 and Yahoo a radical. 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:39.640 Yeah yeah, yeah. It was like his you know his 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:42.280 sort of like like his sort of like liberal humanism, 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:47.800 like hey, we should not like shoot children with guns. 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:51.000 Thing is Broadley anti shooting children? 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:55.360 Yeah, and like like that that that makes you a 0:10:55.960 --> 0:10:59.040 like like like enemy number one of the Israeli still 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:01.520 all yeah, no, I okay, put them in like. 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:03.840 I mean the number one is those kids. 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:09.760 But yeah, they haven't wrapped him yet. So oh God, 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:13.040 speaking of things that the Israeli government didn't do. So 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:14.400 he gets his start. 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:16.160 I thought you were going to do an ad. 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:20.720 I don't worry, I have a better one. 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:22.559 It's kind of good. 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:26.920 So in that day, his first experience, like doing charity 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:28.400 work is he decides that he's going to go up 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:32.760 against like apartheid in South Africa, and yeah, this is good. 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:35.720 So he what he starts doing. He starts giving scholarships 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:38.359 to black students to go to the University of Cape Town, 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:40.920 and then he learns a very very important lesson about 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:43.720 neoliberalism that he's about he's going to like promptly forget 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:47.640 after this, which is that. Okay, So what actually happened 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:49.240 what he thinks is going to happen, right, is what 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:50.839 he's trying to do is he's trying to make, you know, 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:52.640 he's trying to make sure there's more money for black 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:55.600 kids to go to go to university. What actually happens 0:11:55.720 --> 0:11:58.320 is that the state uses his money to pay for 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:01.479 the existing scholarships and stops paying for any more scholarships. 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:03.600 And so there's two things going on here, right. One 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:05.439 is the obvious, this is the this is the apartheid 0:12:05.520 --> 0:12:08.280 racism right, like they don't want more like they don't 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:10.840 want more non white kids going to school. But then 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:12.800 two also this is also sort of a classic dear 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:15.200 liberal failure, which is like if you were, if you 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:18.760 were when you replace the state with like billionaire philanthropists, 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:22.000 the state simply instead of like you know, having more 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:24.480 of the of like the resources of the services provided, 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:26.280 the state just stops doing it and spends more money 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:31.880 on cops. And so he sours very quickly realizes that, 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:34.839 like he figures this out, it is like I fuck this, Like, no, 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:36.440 I'm not going to help you, like I'm not going 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:39.439 to help the apartect government do racism. And so this 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:43.800 makes him kind of weary of this stuff because he 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:47.480 has sort of he has sort of seen how you 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:51.360 see what happens when you when you very explicitly try 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:54.520 to work within a system that is unbelievably fucked up, 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:56.880 which is that the apartheid government uses your money to 0:12:57.960 --> 0:12:59.800 as a way to like funnel more of their own 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:02.880 life into their own pockets. And do you know who 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:04.880 else use the system of aparthid to funnel more money 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:05.760 into their own pockets? 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:10.839 Oh okay, I see, I now see what you were doing. 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:13.760 I think the last I think the previous attempt to 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:16.080 not break was actually better. I was kind of like, 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:16.960 you know, you know. 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:17.160 I. 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:24.480 Correct that our podcasts are entirely sponsored via a time machine. 0:13:24.520 --> 0:13:28.880 We used to go back to apartheid South Africa uh 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:32.400 and get their advertising dollars. So please keep the krue 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:37.280 grands flowing, uh and and purchase these products and services. 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:41.160 I learned that kruegrands was the South African currency from 0:13:41.160 --> 0:13:54.840 the movie Lethal Weapon two. We're back and I'm sitting 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:57.600 uncomfortable in the knowledge that I am the only person 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:00.199 on this zoom call who has watched Lethal Weapon too. 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:05.280 Have either of you seen any of the Lethal's weapons? No, unbelievable. 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:09.840 You're missing maybe the best Mel Gibson performance outside of 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:12.040 that time he got pulled over in Malibu and gave 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:19.560 a racist brant to those California State Highway Patrol officers. Uh. 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:25.360 Okay, regarding of people who are about to give racist rants. Okay. 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:27.800 So the the other thing about Soros, and the thing 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:33.000 that is sort of blisteringly ironic about how the sort 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:35.920 of course of anti Soro's attacks go, is that Soros 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:42.600 is like a vehement, like pretty hardline anti communist and 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:46.280 this is what he spends most of his time like 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:48.840 in the eighties doing, is is you'll like give giving 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:51.800 money to anti communist groups and communist countries. So he 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:58.320 funds Solidarity in Poland, which is this like very mixed record. 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:00.000 Well we'll get the we don't need it. 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:01.840 He's funding anti communist causes. 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:03.680 Yeah, yeah, he's funny, but you know he's funny. He's 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:05.360 trying to fund like a very specific kind of like 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:10.120 liberal anti communist cause, right, And you know this this 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:12.720 goes badly for him in a number of ways. One 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:15.480 is that the moment, like the moment the Berlin Wall falls, 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:18.760 everyone just like suddenly forgets about all of the anti 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:23.280 communism that he did, because you know, and this is 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:26.360 something about there's a kind of anti communists that he is, right, Like, 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:29.600 there's a lot of anti communists who are like who 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.440 are just like Deak squad guys, right, Like this is 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:35.000 your like your guy trained by Shan Kai Shek who's 0:15:35.040 --> 0:15:41.320 like shooting peasants in like El Salvador. Right. There's also 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:43.360 like another kind of anti communists in this era who 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:46.160 are sort of liberal anti communists who like are anti 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:49.640 communists but like also anti Pinochet, for example, like Soros 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:53.000 give somebody to the people, you know, wh when Pinochet 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:55.560 has this big referendum of his like should I stay 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:57.800 in power? He gives money to the people who are 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:05.120 like no, and those are people who, ah, their intentions 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:10.760 are better than the just like absolutely horrifying right wingers. 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:15.000 But you know, it doesn't it doesn't go great for him. 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:20.480 So Soros his initial plan, right is he's gonna you know, okay, 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:22.400 when you're trying to like start funding anti communist group, 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:23.840 She's gonna use this things. Like he was gonna go 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:27.400 into Hungary and he was gonna like give Hungarian students scholarships, 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:31.440 and the Hungarian students were like, don't do this. Like 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:33.760 if you if you just show up and give us money, 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:37.120 the state is immediately going to be able to go like, hey, 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:40.880 you were like outside funded opposition people doing like regime 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:45.000 change stuff, and it's gonna like immediately discredit us. And 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:46.960 so this is the point where he sets up the 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:53.120 SOUS Foundation, which becomes opens There's a whole thing with this. 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:56.440 This this stuff changes names like many times, the Open 0:16:56.480 --> 0:17:00.640 Society Foundation stuff. Yeah, yeah, and you know, and so 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:04.159 you know what we like, we just talked about what 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:07.240 they actually do because in sort of like that. 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:09.040 And I can tell you one thing that they do 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:10.639 because I used to work with when I was a 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:15.160 teaching classes at Belling Cat my partner, my partner, John Carlo, 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:19.480 he would go and teach because he he was born 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.440 and for at least a period of time raised in Venezuela. 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:27.720 He would teach classes in Latin America to local journalists 0:17:27.720 --> 0:17:31.640 who wanted to know open source investigative techniques and who 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:33.879 didn't have the kind of money to pay what it 0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:35.840 usually costs to do a Belling Cat thing. And that 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:40.639 program whereby a bunch of journalists in Latin America, particularly Colombia, 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:45.239 got training, was funded by the Open Society Foundation. And 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:47.159 so a couple of years ago when there was that 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:50.680 massive swelling of like the police murdering people and protest 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:53.760 crowds and stuff in Colombia, the journalists who were like 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:57.840 doing open source investigation to track down which police officers were, 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:00.200 you know, killing folks and how this was going were 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:01.960 a lot of the folks that John Carlow had trained. 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:05.240 Like that's the kind of stuff that one of the 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:07.440 kind of things that the Open Society Foundation does. 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:09.680 Yeah, they also do a lot of They do a 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:12.440 lot of like giving students scholarships. The other thing they're 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:16.840 really big on that doesn't get talked about much is 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:21.200 that there were huge on like cultural events basically like 0:18:21.200 --> 0:18:23.639 like paying people money to like put on plays and 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:27.399 like theater stuff and music and like writing poems and books, 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:30.200 which is like, I don't know, like I actually think 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:32.879 that's cool, Like like we as a society used to 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:36.119 do this, Like we used to like pay people, like 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:38.359 the government used to pay people to like write things 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:40.800 and like create art, and then we decided that that 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:42.480 was bad and I've never done it again. 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:47.120 And yeah, I'm anti creating art for the record, That's 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:49.840 why I'm really happy about all this AI stuff. 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:56.960 Bait bait, yeah, bait post do not engage. 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:01.560 So Unfortunately for the Sorrows Foundation, one of the people 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:05.679 they give these these scholarships to is victor Or Braun, 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:09.400 which is I. 0:19:09.280 --> 0:19:12.520 Victory the Hungarian. 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:18.080 Yeah, yes, we shall, we shall return to that. This 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:22.399 is I think maybe the single greatest example of like 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:25.320 creating young grave Digger I've ever seen in my entire life. 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:29.040 I I I don't know, like one of the things 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:30.439 that that comes up about this and this is this 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:32.720 is one of the things that another one of the 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:35.040 guys who Sorrows backs, who like betrays him later on 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:38.080 says that Sorrows is bad at politics, Like he's just 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:39.640 not he's like not very good at it. Like he's 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:42.680 not you know, people like the sort of like thing 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:44.479 about him is that he's the sort of like criminal 0:19:44.480 --> 0:19:48.960 mastermind who can like like bankraill revolutions and stuff. And 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:53.480 she just like gets out maneuvered by people constantly in 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:59.040 ways that are like kind of depressing. Yeah, but okay, 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:01.560 so he's spending the eighties like doing all this, you know, 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:06.080 like doing this sort of cultural work, and you know 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:09.040 in Hungary, right, this is there's a sort of interesting 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:11.040 thing that happens where like he's wealthy enough that like 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:13.360 even the Communist Party is it sort of like has 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:18.400 to work with him because he has money and they 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:20.080 sort of don't. But you know, the other thing that 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:23.080 that's I think important to understand is that he's not 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:25.480 like there's a bunch of foundations you do, like exactly 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:29.320 the same stuff, right, like maybe slightly worse. Like you know, 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:32.120 there's like the Ford Foundation, there's like the Rockefellers, right, 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:34.760 or the Rockefeller Foundation, like they all they all like 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:38.119 at any place where open society is like doing stuff, 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:39.920 there's like a worse version of it that the Ford 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:45.159 Foundation and like the Rockefellers are doing. But you know, somehow, stunningly, 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:50.520 only one of these groups is singled out for being 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:51.920 yelled at all the time. And I will I will 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:54.280 leave as an exercise to the reader why specifically they 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:57.520 picked Soros and not Ford. Huh huh. 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:01.160 I wonder, I wonder what big mystery. I wonder what 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:04.399 differences and cultural views might be. 0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:09.600 It might be a yeah, so okay. The other real 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:11.800 problem that he runs into, which is a cultural problem, 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:14.199 is that, Okay, this is the problem that all the 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:18.280 liberal anti communists run into, which is that, Okay, so 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:22.040 the walls come down, right and the communist governments fall, 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:25.480 and it turns out that the anti communists in the 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:27.840 Eastern Europe are almost all right wingers, and their base 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:32.560 are all like right wing nationalists fanatics. Here's another source 0:21:32.640 --> 0:21:35.520 quote about this. I thought I would blaze the trail, 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:37.760 I would lead and others would follow. But now that 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:40.440 I look back, I find that there was practically nobody 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:45.120 behind me. I asked myself what went wrong, and part 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:47.880 of what went wrong is like what Soros is doing 0:21:47.920 --> 0:21:51.320 in these places. So for example, you know, he's he's 0:21:51.320 --> 0:21:55.919 involved in funding solidarity, he's involved in some solidarities negotiations 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:57.600 with the government. And then the other thing that he 0:21:57.760 --> 0:22:00.160 does is he's one of the people who he help 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:05.800 like do structural adjustment in Poland. And this goes really 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:08.240 badly because so what we were talking about, Wes just 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:11.080 talk a little bit about what solidarity is, because he 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:14.680 helps destroy it by accident. Solidarity is this giant sort 0:22:14.680 --> 0:22:20.159 of like social democratic e union that forms in you know, 0:22:20.200 --> 0:22:23.119 in like the early eighties in Poland. That's like the 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:26.080 first sort of independent union in one of these communist countries. 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:30.120 And they eventually are able to sort of like knock 0:22:30.160 --> 0:22:34.800 off the government, but they come into power, and you know, 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:37.399 so they do on sort of so US's advice and 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:38.800 on the advice of a lot of the sort of 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:41.600