World
R Jagannathan
Feb 21, 2023, 01:00 PM | Updated 01:00 PM IST
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George Soros, the speculator-billionaire who claims to be promoting democracy and open societies everywhere, made the headlines in India last week when he openly advocated regime change.
At age 92, he could barely read from a prepared text, but clearly the forces he has funded and unleashed across the world are now in the open.
Regardless of whether you are on the right or the left of the political spectrum, the question to ask is simple: what gives a billionaire the right to play god with his money in countries as far apart as India, Russia, Israel, and even the US, where he wanted Donald Trump ousted in 2020 at any cost.
You don’t have to be a fan of Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu to say simply that who gets to rule in any country is a matter for its citizens to decide.
Unelected billionaires with chips on their shoulders about particular leaders should not be given free rein.
Best known for his bet against the British pound in 1992, he has since used his billions to fund public and political causes in more than 120 countries worldwide.
In 1997, he made huge bets against the Thai and Malaysian currencies, and precipitated the Asian financial crisis that brought down the economies of Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea and Malaysia.
The resulting economic downturns brought regime changes in some of those countries.
Soros is now hoping that the Ukraine war will bring down not only Putin, but the Russian “empire” as well.
Apparently, there is nothing wrong with US or other global hegemons and their military-industrial complexes that have the most to gain from this war.
As a very successful hedge fund manager, Soros’s advocacy of democracy and open societies, including unchecked immigration, actually blends very well with his speculative activities.
You can’t make a killing from speculation if societies and markets are stable; you make your billions only if you unleash chaos all around, which then impacts asset prices in those markets.
And if you want to make another killing by shorting India, either the currency or the stock markets, you can do it best by dethroning Modi or making India ungovernable. Or both.
The recent bear attack on Gautam Adani following the allegations made in a report by Hindenburg Research did not tank all of Indian markets; for speculators like Soros to make money, you need far more chaos than that.
Soros, whose current personal wealth is estimated at under $7 billion by Forbes, can influence politics in many countries because much of his wealth does not show up in this net worth number.
He is said to have shifted more than $18 billion towards Open Society work, which is where the regime change intentions are given wing.
Soros’s larger than life image as a political game-changer has often ended in achieving the exact opposite.
In 2017, he spent a lot of his money to prevent Hungary’s Viktor Orban from returning to power, but the crafty Orban used Soros’s bid for regime change to ensure a thumping victory in 2018.
Even though the attack on Soros was sought to be played up by the Left as anti-Semitism (Soros is a Hungarian Jew), the Israeli government backed Orban in that fight.
In Israel, Netanyahu not only returned to power again last year despite Soros’s efforts, but now heads an even more right-wing coalition.
Netanyahu’s son recently criticised Soros and the global Leftists for trying to destabilise his country and coalition.
The BBC, which is manned largely by Left-liberals and often aligns with Islamist forces, thinks Soros is being targeted by the Right everywhere.
In a 2019 article titled, "Why is billionaire George Soros a bogeyman for the Hard Right?", the BBC tried to give Soros an easy pass on his destabilisation efforts by focusing on some of the more far-fetched conspiracy theories spun by the Right in the US and elsewhere against Soros.
However, one could equally ask, why is Narendra Modi the bogeyman of the Left-liberal media in India and the world?
There are two sides to any story, and if one has to accept Soros’s efforts to effect regime change in some countries as legitimate, surely the other side has an equally legitimate right to bring him down?
Having clearly stated his political antagonism to Modi, Soros has, if anything, made it obvious that there is a foreign hand trying to destabilise India and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government.
This fact, if used politically by the Modi government, can only weaken the opposition in India, as Viktor Orban ensured in 2018.
But one need not underestimate Soros, who funds all of India’s disgruntled elements.
Maybe, just maybe, it would be worth our while to team up with the other targets of Soros’s regime change efforts to bring him down a notch.
Concerted action against all of Soros’s fronts and political affiliates claiming to work for democracy would send a simple message: it is not for billionaires to decide who rules which country.
Jagannathan is Editorial Director, Swarajya. He tweets at @TheJaggi.