Last year, it was announced that billionaire George Soros gave his first ever contribution to Media Matters, an organization that puts a specific emphasis on criticizing the Fox News Channel. Now we may know the reason why Soros has made this donation public.
On Sunday’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN, Soros took a few shots at the Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of parent company NewsCorp, accusing the media mogul of using Fox News and his media empire to change the direction of government. He reacted to Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck’s assertion that there is a “shadow government” with puppets and puppet masters, and Soros is pulling the strings.
“Well, I would be amused if people saw the joke in it, because what he is doing, he is projecting what Fox — what Rupert Murdoch is doing, because he has a media empire that is telling the people some falsehoods and mis — and leading the government in the wrong direction,” Soros said. “But, you know, by accusing me of doing that, it’s kind of — it makes it rather hard to see that it’s really — he is working for the man who is doing it which is Fox News.”
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Soros’ reaction to Beck’s claim that he was “helping to round Jews up” during the Holocaust was that Fox News is attempting to use Orwellian tactics, just like they used in Nazi Germany.
“Well, look, Fox News makes a habit — it has imported the methods of George Orwell, you know, newspeak, where you can tell the people falsehoods and deceive them,” Soros said. “And you wouldn’t believe that an open society and a democracy, these methods can succeed. But, actually, they did succeed. They succeeded in — in Germany, where the Weimar Republic collapsed and you had a Nazi regime follow it. So this is a very, very dangerous way of deceiving people. And I would like people to be aware that they are being deceived. Now, I — because I saw it as a child, I immediately react that way. But the people in America, they are innocent. They haven’t had the experience. They’re having the experience now. And I hope they wake up and they realize that they are being deceived.”
Host Fareed Zakaria also asked Soros about his thoughts of the Tea Party.
“Look, I think the people in the Tea Party are very decent people, hard-working. They have been hit by a force that they — that comes from somewhere which they can’t fully understand,” Soros said. “And they are being misled. And they are misled by people who are using it for their selfish purposes, namely to remove regulations and reduce taxation. So reduce taxation and regulation and they are being used and deceived.”
As for the claims of being a “puppet master” – Soros said it was up to CNN viewers to decide.
“Well, you just had the experience of speaking to the — to the puppet master and the extreme left-wing manipulator,” he added. “And you — you and the audience can make their own decisions.”