How two Jewish American political consultants 'started a deliberate plot to smear George Soros'

'The perfect enemy': How two Jewish American political consultants 'started a deliberate plot to smear George Soros to help Hungarian PM and helped to create the world's largest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory'

George Birnbaum and the late Arthur Finkelstein allegedly devised a plan to discredit billionaire as part of work for right wing politician Victor Orbán'

Pair reportedly dubbed Soros 'the perfect enemy' and started their plan in 2008

By July 2017 ads which showed Soros's face and the slogan 'Don't let George Soros have the last laugh!' were published around Hungary

Soon he was demonized around the world - in Italy, the US, Poland, and Russia

'Campaign did not make anyone anti-Semitic who wasn't before,' Birnbaum says

Soros has said he 'is blamed for everything and painted as the devil'

Published: 17:26 EDT, 21 January 2019 | Updated: 17:58 EDT, 21 January 2019

Two Jewish American political consultants are said to have deliberately started a smear campaign against businessman George Soros as part of their plans to help Hungry's Prime Minister Victor Orbán.

George Birnbaum and Arthur Finkelstein reportedly devised the plan to discredit the billionaire and cement the right wing politician's power, according to reports.

But in turn the two men - who both worked under Benjamin Netanyahu - are said to have helped to create the world's largest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

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Two Jewish American political consultants are said to have started a deliberate plot to smear George Soros, left, to help Hungarian PM Viktor Orban, right. He began to claim Soros wanted to weaken Hungary and flood it with refugees

Mr Soros, a major sponsor of the US Democratic Party, is a champion of global liberal causes and has poured thousands into a campaign against Brexit, earning him a controversial status in right-wing circles.

The 88-year-old, born in Hungary, has previously said: 'I'm blamed for everything, including being the anti-Christ. I wish I didn't have so many enemies, but I take it as an indication that I must be doing something right.'

And now Buzzfeed reports how Finkelstein and Birnbaum, Benjamin Netanyahu's former chief of staff, were behind one of the original plots to smear him after dubbing him 'the perfect enemy'.

In 2008 the two men are said to have begun making him their external enemy. Their campaign of hate is said to have resulted in the poster daubed with: 'Don't let George Soros have the last laugh!'

Birnbaum said of Hungary under Orbán: 'There was no real political enemy. There was no one to have a fight with. The perfect enemy is one that you can punch again and again and he won't punch back.

'Soros was a perfect enemy. It was so obvious. It was the simplest of all products, you just had to pack it and market it.'

He added: 'When we planned the campaign we didn't think a second about Soros being a Jew.'

George Birnbaum, pictured, was one of two political consultants said to have started a deliberate plot to smear George Soros

People hold a placard dipicting billionaire George Soros during a demonstration against a deal between Social Democrats and the Albanian Democratic Union for Integration in 2017

A poster likening George Soros is seen as thousands of Macedonian nationalists march to parliament in 2017

How did George Birnbaum and Arthur Finkelstein meet?

The two men worked as political consultants and met when it became Birnbaum's job to bring Finkelstein the latest polling numbers each morning at the the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Finkelstein, who died in 2017, was a Republican Party consultant who advised Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

They would go onto work together for the Likud party in Israel and Birnbaum became the chief of staff for Benjamin Netanyahu after Finkelstein helped him to victory.

Finkelstein's tactics involved polarizing the electorate as much as possible, according to reports. He is said to have told wannabe politicians to destroy their opposition rather than focus on their own campaigning.

He is said to have helped on the Trump campaign.

The pair are said to have started their smear campaign with an article attacking NGOs said to be controlled by Soros.

Orbán then began to claim Soros wanted to weaken Hungary and flood it with refugees.

And if an organization got money from Soros' Open Society Foundations it was labelled 'Soros controlled'.

By July 2017 ads which showed Soros's face and the slogan 'Don't let George Soros have the last laugh!' were published around the country.

Some of the posters were defaced with graffiti reading 'stinking Jew' and a spokesman for Soros said it harked back to 'Europe's darkest hours'.

Soon Soros was being demonized around the world - in Italy, the US, Poland, and Russia.

There have been inaccurate claims by Vladimir Putin and others that he chose to help the Nazis.

And Soros, who survived Nazi occupied Hungary as a teenager, was one of those to be mailed pipe bombs by a Florida-based Trump supporter in October.

Soros has said he 'is blamed for everything and painted as the devil' and online people regularly spread hate about him

Soros has said he 'is blamed for everything and painted as the devil'

Orban runs an increasingly authoritarian regime in Hungary and Soros has funded pro-democracy groups in the country.

Soros has previously said: 'I have been painted as the devil. The fact that extremists are motivated by false conspiracy theories about me to kill hurts me tremendously.'

Even Donald Trump has spoken of conspiracy theories about Soros, including that he funded the caravan of Central American migrants that have been trying to enter the US.

The president also claimed he funded protesters to disrupt Brett Kavanagh's Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

Birnbaum now says: 'Our campaign did not make anyone anti-Semitic who wasn't before. Maybe we were just drawing a new target, not more. I would do it again.'

WHO IS GEORGE SOROS?

Mr Soros was born in Budapest on August 12, 1930, and by the Nazi invasion in 1944 was living a life of middle-class comfort with his father Tivadar, mother Elizabeth, and brother Paul in an idyllic home on Lupa Island in the Danube.

To escape the Gestapo death squads, the young Mr Soros was given the name Kiss Sandor, along with a set of Christian papers. He was then taken in by a man called Baumbach, also known as Baufluss, whom Tivadar paid to protect his son.

Baumbach was an official at the Ministry of Agriculture who had worked with Soros' father. He was also a Nazi collaborator, and sometimes took the young boy on visitors to write up lists of confiscated property.

This experience, which Soros had no control over, would later lead to inaccurate claims by Vladimir Putin and others that he chose to help the Nazis. Soros managed to survive the rest of the occupation, which cost the lives of 500,000 Hungarian Jews.

Aged 17, Soros fled to London and worked as a porter and waiter before enrolling in the London School of Economics.

He moved to America and became a naturalised citizen in 1956, spending time as a trader before setting up his own hedge fund, Soros Fund Management, in 1969.

A ruthless speculator, in 1992 he became known as 'The Man Who Broke The Bank Of England' after he shorted the pound to send Britain crashing out of the ERM. The move earned him a billion dollars in a day.

Some of Soros' earliest political work was helping pro-democracy groups in the Soviet Union, an action that has gained him the hatred of Putin, who pines for the former USSR.

A key landmark in his political career was the establishment of the Open Society Foundation in 1984.

Soros made a $18 billion donation to his philanthropic organization, the Open Society Foundation.

This has invested money in a wide variety of causes including migration, drugs policy, and the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar.

He has also inserted himself into the polarized world of US politics, earning the ire of Trump by becoming one of the largest donors to Hillary Clinton's 2016 US presidential campaign.

Among the many slurs issued by the president was that Soros funded protesters to disrupt Brett Kavanagh's Supreme Court confirmation hearing on October 5.

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'The perfect enemy': How two Jewish American political consultants 'started a deliberate plot to smear George Soros to help Hungarian PM and helped to create the world's largest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory'