Of Course It’s Legitimate to Criticize George Soros’ Spending to Influence American Politics

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass has apparently had his column moved from page 2 “farther back in the print edition” after being accused of anti-Semitism for his column criticizing George Soros’ influence on American politics:

President Donald Trump is sending federal law enforcement into the big cities run by Democratic mayors, where murder and gang shootings are out of control and where once vibrant downtown areas are on their way to becoming ghost towns.

And naturally, the Democratic mayors, backing Joe Biden, are on the defensive, upset that the president might win political advantage, even as the mayors feud with their own police departments, as the violence rises in their towns, as children are gunned down.

But these Democratic cities are also where left-wing billionaire George Soros has spent millions of dollars to help elect liberal social justice warriors as prosecutors. He remakes the justice system in urban America, flying under the radar.

The Soros-funded prosecutors, not the mayors, are the ones who help release the violent on little or no bond….

I can’t speak with confidence about just why the Tribune decided as it did. (The official Tribune statement was that the columnists were moved into an opinion section to “help … maintain the credibility of our news coverage with our online audience, our print readers and our communities amid what is by all accounts a raw and hyper-partisan political environment.”) But the claim that Kass’s column is anti-Semitic—”The odious, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that billionaire George Soros is a puppet master controlling America’s big cities does not deserve a mainstream voice, especially at a time when hate crimes are rising”—strikes me as quite unfounded.

George Soros is trying to play a major role in American political life; according to the New York Magazine (Gabriel Debenedetti) story “Ranking the Most Influential Democratic Donors in the 2020 Race,” George Soros was #3 on the list, right behind Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. People can praise him for that, or can criticize him, just as the Kochs on the right and other such spenders are criticized by people they disagree with. I have nothing against rich people spending money to support speech they like, but it’s perfectly legitimate to fault them for promoting what the author thinks are bad ideas.