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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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As George Soros said back in 2004:

If we re-elect Bush, we are endorsing the Bush doctrine. And then we are off to a vicious circle of escalating violence in the world. And I think, you know, terrorism, counter-terrorism, it's a very scary spectacle to me. If we reject him, then we are effectively rejecting the Bush doctrine. Because he was elected on a platform of a more humble foreign policy. Then we can go back to a more humble foreign policy. And treat this episode as an aberration. We have to pay a heavy price. You know, 100 billion dollars a year in Iraq. We can't get out of that. We mustn't get out of it. But still, we can then regain the confidence of the world, and our rightful place as leaders of the world, working to make the world a better place.

I think it deserves a top-level post in itself: one of the reasons American right started to hate Soros was that he opposed interventionist policies of Bush. Now Tucker and co, who supported invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, declare people like him to be warmongers.

Yeah, sure.

Soros, whose institutes have been at the forefront of funding revolutions since.. well, probably longer than most of posters here have been alive, is for a "more humble foreign policy".

Right.

Even a stopped clock may be right once in a while.

But OK, I'll push back on a more object-level, without sneering. On forefront of which revolutions was he? Velvet revolution? Singing Revolution in Baltic countries? Orange Revolution? Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan? Euromaidan? Rose Revolution in Georgia? Because it's a nice narrative concocted by Russian propaganda, Orban and pro-Ru types, about CIA or Soros, but it just doesn't hold and betrays both ignorance and conspiratorial thinking.

I doubt he was very involved with the '89 revolutions on accounts of pervasive intelligence agency presence in those regimes.

He's given a total of 19 billion $ in grants over the past 30 years.

To quote their webpage:

To help build 'vibrant and inclusive' democracies, whose governments are 'WHOSE GOVERNMENTS ARE ACCOUNTABLE TO THEIR PEOPLE.'

(Unless, of course, it's the people who are wrong, as when they vote for AfD, Trump, or the Farmer's Party in the Netherlands.

That's money going towards funding professional activists whose values Soros likes.

What are those values ?

Free flow of capital, no borders, de-industrialization, liberation of man from all unchosen bonds, thus consequent societal atomization..

How 'great' these values work out can be seen in the UK, Germany, etc.

Russian propaganda, Orban and pro-Ru types,

You forgot to include Israel in the list of baddies who don't like Soros.

A cancer can attack anyone, even bad people. That doesn't make it good. It's pretty easy to understand why people have reservations about him, for me.

Soros, whose institutes have been at the forefront of funding revolutions since..

Good for him for developing democracy in those countries by funding libraries, scientists and free media. Unfortunately, despite all efforts Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria slide back into corruption and their elites keep pocketing EU money, of course Soros is a good scapegoat for their failures. Gullible people there love this Soros shit, makes them feel smart.

Gullible people fall for bait.

That doesn't make what Soros is doing good.

Gender ideology kills populations. Abolishing criminal justice destroys law and order, a necessary prerequisite for a functioning society.