Here Are the Conservatives Who Pushed Soros-Caravan Conspiracy That Apparently Inspired Synagogue Shooter

Caleb EcarmaOct 29th, 2018, 4:30 pm
 

Fox Business wiped an entire episode of Lou Dobbs‘ show after a guest, Judicial Watch’s Chris Farrell, pushed a conspiracy theory alleging that liberal billionaire George Soros is funding the “migrant caravan.” Yet he isn’t the only conservative figure to push the baseless theory that appears to have enraged Saturday’s synagogue shooter.

Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania synagogue on Saturday, has a long history of pushing anti-Semitic claims online. His most recent obsession, based on social media posts, was the conspiracy theory that the caravan of Central American migrants bound for the U.S. border is funded by wealthy Jews and Jewish groups.

For many on the alt-right, Soros, a Hungarian Jew who was recently targeted by the “MAGA bomber,” is the sum of their anti-Semitic conspiracies: an ultra-wealthy member of elite society who is supposedly funding a global cabal hellbent on ending national sovereignty, so as to create a one-nation world. For this reason, terms like “Soros money” are often used by the alt-right as a discreet way to describe something that they think is being funded by Jews.

The billionaire does spend much of his wealth on funding liberal initiatives in the U.S. and abroad, but his organization, the Open Society Foundation, donates to standard political causes, not globalist revolutions or migrant caravans like the alt-right claims.

Just before carrying out his mass shooting, Bowers took to Gab — a social media site popular among white supremacists — to claim that the Jewish refugee aid group Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society “likes to bring invaders that kill our people.”

“I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” he added. “Screw your optics. I’m going in.”

On Thursday night’s airing of Lou Dobbs Tonight, the baseless, bigoted conspiracy theories that Bowers espoused were given a platform when Farrell claimed the “the Soros-occupied State Department” was funding the caravan.

It was a line suspiciously similar to the popular racist term “ZOG,” an acronym for “Zionist occupied government.”

“This is a criminal involvement on the part of these leftist mobs. It’s a highly organized, very elaborate sophisticated operation. I have that from the highest levels of the Guatemalan government,” Farrell said in a segment that was re-aired on Saturday night, hours after the Pittsburgh shooting. “A lot of these folks also have affiliates who are getting money from the Soros-occupied State Department, and that is a great, great concern.”

Fox Business condemned Ferrell’s comments after they were criticized during the episode’s post-shooting rerun and announced he will no longer appear on the network.

His comments may have garnered the most outrage, but he was just one of many people to push the conspiracy.

Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida took to Twitter on October 17 to suggest that Soros may be funding the caravan, making him the first national Republican lawmaker to do so.

“Footage in Honduras giving cash 2 women & children 2 join the caravan & storm the US border @ election time. Soros? US-backed NGOs?” Gaetz tweeted in a post that has over 45 thousand retweets and nearly 60 likes. “Time to investigate the source!”

Gaetz’s video supposedly shows migrants in Honduras being given cash to “storm the US border,” but it is actually footage from Guatemala shot on October 16. According to the fact-checking site Snopes, the migrants in the video weren’t being paid to join the caravan, as they were already part of it. Additionally, they were given extremely small amounts of cash to help them get by — not the kind of money someone would risk their lives traveling across a continent for.

Soros’ Open Society Foundation responded to the conspiracy in an op-ed published by the Tampa Bay Times where the group’s president accused Gaetz of being “confused” and “making a lot of false and misleading claims about George Soros and the Open Society Foundations.”

“We would encourage Rep. Gaetz to get his facts straight and try not to fuel the climate of fear and hatred that is emboldening extremists and stoking threats of violence,” he added — just days before the Pittsburgh shooting.

While President Donald Trump is often at the front end of creating right-wing conspiracies against political opponents, he followed Gaetz’s lead on the caravan claims and tweeted the same video, along with a less Soros-specific caption: “Can you believe this, and what Democrats are allowing to be done to our Country?”

She didn’t use Soros’ name, but Fox News host Laura Ingraham raised similar conspiratorial questions over the funding of the caravan on the same day that Gaetz and Trump did. Her Fox News colleague Jeanine Pirro explicitly tied Soros to the caravan.

Conservative media fixture and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich used a similar approach as Ingraham — not naming Soros, but allowing his right-wing audience to do the work for him by raising questions of shady funding.

On October 22, another Republican lawmaker, Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas, parroted Gaetz’s Soros theory during an interview on Fox News.

“Well, I can’t help but think the Democrats — perhaps Soros — may be funding this thinking it’s going to help them,” Gohmert said while on America’s Newsroom. “They’re going to be surprised because the president, his number one thing is we’re going to build a wall, we’re going to stop illegal immigration, and he’s going to have a chance to show that he actually means what he says, which indicates that he’s not a real politician.”

On the same day, conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza tweeted “I smell a Soros” while suggesting the philanthropist was providing food, shelter, medical care, and security for the migrants in the caravan.

During a CNN segment on October 22, American Conservative Union head Matt Schlapp asked who is paying for the caravan just after anchor Alisyn Camerota joked that, “George Soros doesn’t meet you at the border handing out millions of dollars.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy went all out against Soros too, tweeting a campaign ad last Tuesday that included a caption calling out the liberal donor: “We cannot allow Soros, Steyer and Bloomberg to BUY this election!”

He deleted the post after Soros was sent a pipe bomb by a Trump supporter, but when contacted by BuzzFeed News for comment on the deletion and anti-Semitic undertones of his tweet, his office did not apologize for the post.

“McCarthy has and will always condemn in the strongest possible way violence or any acts of attempted violence. The video simply points out the enormous financial contributions a select few have made in this year’s midterm campaigns. Any suggestion that content condones or incites violence is wrong,” stated McCarthy’s office. “Understanding the particular sensitivity of the past 24 hours in the political climate today that has led to specific threats on both sides of the aisle, we will redouble our focus on our agenda of results.”

Follow the author on Twitter (@calebecarma).

 

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Caleb Ecarma

Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. Email him here: caleb@mediaite.com Follow him on Twitter here: @calebecarma