Fox News' Glenn Beck ignited an emotionally charged feud this week with a scathing expose on Left-leaning financier George Soros that liberal critics are calling anti-Semitic. Beck analyzed Soros' youth as an Orthodox Jew in pre-war Hungary, his career as hedge fund manager, and his emergence as a major backer of liberal causes, concluding that he is a "puppet master" who uses his wealth to push a left-wing agenda and bring down governments around the world. Is Beck smearing Soros with stereotypes, or just shining a much-needed light on a driving force in American political life? (Watch Beck's comments)
Beck is a shameless anti-Semite: Beck went far "beyond demonizing" George Soros, says Michelle Goldberg at The Daily Beast. "He cast him as the protagonist in an updated Protocols of the Elders of Zion," describing him as "the most powerful man on earth, the creator of a 'shadow government' that manipulates regimes and currencies for its own enrichment." Such "a symphony of anti-Semitic dog-whistles" is appalling, even by Glenn Beck's "degraded standards."
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If anyone is anti-Semitic, it is the progressive lynch mob: Glenn Beck did not make a single remark to disparage Jews, says Jeff Dunetz at Big Journalism. In fact, it is Soros who has railed against the "pro-Israel lobby," which is "just a politically correct version of that anti-Semitic stereotype that Jews run American foreign policy." And the "progressive spin machine" is being "anti-Jewish" by making "a false charge of anti-Semitism" against Beck — a strategy that "cheapens" the very word.
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Beck should focus on Soros' politics: "Beck does not hate Soros for being a Jew," says M.J. Rosenberg at Talking Points Memo. "He hates him for backing liberal causes." But "in his (futile) effort" to bring down Soros, Beck depicts him as "The International Jew" who "is robbing real Americans of the homes, their bank accounts, their very ability to feed their children." That, along with his suggestion that, as a boy, Soros helped the Nazis, "crossed a huge line."
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