No, George Soros Wasn't A Nazi

By now, you're probably aware that Roseanne (the show) has been cancelled because Roseanne (the person) played to type and compared Valerie Jarrett, an former aide to Barack Obama, to an ape -- an act of such unambiguous awfulness that even Fox News called Barr out for being a racist, despite Fox News' long-standing insistence that racism was solved forever in 1968.

What was left out of most reporting, however, was the fact that she also tried to start shit with Chelsea Clinton, accusing her of being married to a relative of George Soros, the billionaire playboy philanthropist whom many on the right believe is responsible for everything from Black Lives Matter to Antifa to Keurig, the official coffee maker of the radical left. Barr later doubled down, saying that whilst Clinton might not be a relative, George Soros is definitely a pretty bad dude.

Yeah.

This isn't just the product of Barr's confused mind, however. It's a popular belief among conspiracy wingnuts like Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Dinesh D'Souza, and, um, James Woods that Soros amassed his wealth by collaborating with the Nazis and stealing "hundreds of millions of dollars" (says Infowars) from Hungarian Jews. It's sick, awful, and hilariously wrong, not least because Soros was nine years old when the war broke out. We can't speak for everyone reading this, but we spent our early teenage years playing video games and getting bullied, not aiding and abetting genocide (and there were quite a few to choose from).

There's also an image "proving" that Soros was a member of the SS, but even if he wanted to join (which is a stretch in itself), he wouldn't have been old enough, didn't have the correct "Aryan" heritage, wouldn't have passed the medical examination (think about it), and, oh right, isn't the guy in the photo. That's Oskar Groening, a Nazi who was found guilty of helping to murder at least 300,000 Jews at Auschwitz.

The most "damning" "piece" of "evidence" against Soros is an interview with 60 Minutes in which he talks about how during the war, he went to live with an actual collaborator who had a side gig inventorying property already seized by the Nazis. Soros' father (himself a rich man) paid a Hungarian bureaucrat named Baumbach to pretend that George was his Christian-as-they-come godson ... a plan that went swimmingly until Baumbach was asked to inventory an estate abandoned by a wealthy Jewish family, under the watchful eyes of the Nazis.

As one biography describes, it wasn't exactly a vacation for Soros:

Rather than leave his "godson" behind in Budapest for three days, he took the boy with him. As Baumbach itemized the material, George walked around the grounds and spent time with staff. He collaborated with no one and he paid attention to what he understood to be his primary responsibility: making sure that no one doubted that he was Sandor Kiss . Among his practical concerns was to make sure that no one saw him pee.

A child who was frightened of going to the bathroom because he knew that he'd be killed if anyone found him out? Yeah, this guy sounds like a real fucking menace, better watch his ass.

Adam Wears is on Twitter and Facebook! He also has a newsletter about depressing history, but that's only for the coolest kids.

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