By Matthew Vadum, (FrontPageMag.com)
Radical left-wing billionaire George Soros developed a strategy five years ago to publicly disparage, delegitimize, and marginalize conservatives like David Horowitz who go to great pains to warn Americans about the threat posed by political Islam and the ongoing Islamization of the U.S.
It is part of the Left’s push to create an alternate reality in which world temperatures claimed to be rising at an imperceptibly slow rate pose more of a threat to mankind than militants flying commercial jetliners into skyscrapers.
Soros is a foreign-born atheist who as a 14-year-old collaborated with the Nazis in occupied Hungary, describing that time as “probably the happiest year of my life” and “a very positive experience.” He has described himself as “some kind of god, the creator of everything,” and has said his “goal” was “to become the conscience of the world.”
He is an enabler of Islam which has been expanding by conquest and deception for 1,400 years. To put things in Islamic terms, Soros’s proposed mass importation of Muslims would expand the ummah, or community of Muslims, by means of what Muslims call hijrah, or jihad through emigration, from the Islamic world, the Dar al-Islam (house of peace), to the Dar al-Harb (house of war).
Soros’s affinity for Islam makes perfect sense. Nazi sympathizers and Islamists have much in common. It is fair to say that Islamic terrorists are the last of Adolf Hitler’s World War Two coalition partners that have yet to be vanquished.
The Islamic world aligned with the Third Reich, and this alliance “has largely been whitewashed from the pages of history,” Pamela Geller reminds us:
Many Muslims fought on the German side during World War II. The Wehrmacht had six legions with a Muslim majority and the SS had three Muslim divisions, a brigade and a Waffenbrigade. Each Muslim unit got a mullah as an adviser. In November 1944, an SS mullah school was established in Dresden, founded by Himmler.
The end goal for Soros, long the preeminent funder of the Left, is to weaken America by making the country safe for Islam, a fascistic, religion-like ideology founded by Muhammad in the seventh century after the birth of Christ. Soros urges the dissolution of borders and demands that the U.S. accept unlimited immigration, including from regions that produce people who hate America and its values and founding principles.
A constellation of well-heeled funders are part of a long-term campaign aimed at making the tenets of Islam acceptable in American society and glossing over the problems associated with importing terrorism-prone Muslims. The 86-year-old Soros, whose estimated net worth is now at a record $24.9 billion, is by far the wealthiest of these funders.
Secret internal documents from Soros’s primary philanthropic vehicle, Open Society Foundations (OSF), were hacked by DCLeaks and published on the group’s website last weekend.
One memorandum dated Jan. 12, 2011, bears the subject line “U.S. Models for Combating Xenophobia and Intolerance.” It is included in the document bundle labeled “Extreme Polarization and Breakdown in Civic Discourse.”
The memo identifies a plan that calls upon the Center for American Progress (CAP), founded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, to combat a phantom the Left calls “Islamophobia.” This neologism is wielded as a cudgel against those who dislike Islam and those who are merely skeptical of it. Leftists are determined to stamp out criticism of Islam, and they have an army of nonprofit organizations, foundations, academics, media outlets, and name-calling activists to help them.
The 57-member state Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is onboard with attacking Islamophobia. It wants to outlaw all criticism of Islam in every country on planet Earth. Such criticism is not only blasphemous but also defamatory, according to Islamic thinking.
The memo states:
We need a clearer understanding of what by all indications is a well-orchestrated and well financed system by which right-wing think tanks, pundits, and politicians are able to introduce false narratives and flawed research into the media cycle and use their misinformation to manipulate public opinion and thwart progressive counterterrorism policies.
It describes the “Examining Anti-Muslim Bigotry Project” espoused by the Center for American Progress. The project would:
(1) study anti-Muslim bigotry in the public discourse and respond on a rapid response basis throughout the 10-month grant period using CAP’s state of the art communications platform; (2) conduct investigative research on the Islamophobia movement and issue a major report on its findings in the first quarter of 2011; and (3) convene in the first quarter of 2011 two dozen experts, including representatives of progressive organizations and the Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian-American (AMEMSA) community, to formulate strategies for combating anti-Muslim xenophobia.
It also indicates that CAP “will research and track the activities of the most prominent drivers of Islamophobia,” including “David Horowitz’s Freedom Center,” Stop Islamization of America led by Pamela Geller, Foundation for Defense of Democracies led by Cliff May, and Liz Cheney’s group Keep America Safe. CAP will also examine “the role played by right-wing media, the Tea Party movement, prominent politicians, pundits, and conservative donors in spreading anti-Muslim hysteria.”
CAP took Soros’s money and did his bidding. Even today CAP is working hard to convince Americans that this make-believe mental illness of Islamophobia is a threat to American democracy and pluralism. CAP claims a $57 million network “is fueling Islamophobia in the United States.” The group created a sophisticated, flashy website (Islamophobianetwork.com) that identifies leading alleged Islamophobes. The site draws upon “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America,” a 2011 CAP report, and “Fear, Inc. 2.0: The Islamophobia Network’s Efforts to Manufacture Hate in America,” a CAP report from 2015.
CAP warns that there is “a small, tightly networked group of misinformation experts guiding an effort that reaches millions of Americans through effective advocates, media partners, and grassroots organizing.” These people, particularly a handful of key individuals and their organizations, spread “hate and misinformation.”
The Podesta-founded Center’s top six targets for vilification are: David Horowitz, founder and CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC); Robert Spencer, co-founder of Stop Islamization of America, director of the DHFC-affiliated Jihad Watch, and vice president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative; Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy (CSP); Steven Emerson, founder and executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT); Daniel Pipes, founder and president of the Middle East Forum (MEF); and David Yerushalmi, founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), and general counsel for CSP and Stop Islamization of America.
The site also directs fire at author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born ex-Muslim who is a fierce critic of Islam.
Although political correctness dictates that Hirsi Ali’s opinions should be given greater weight because she is female, black, an immigrant, and a victim of violence (female genital mutilation), she is too important a target to ignore. The CAP-created website notes disapprovingly that she calls Islam “a destructive, nihilistic cult of death” and says we will lose the fight against terrorism “unless we realize that it’s not just with extremist elements within Islam, but the ideology of Islam itself.”
The website tries to discredit its targets by stating or implying, often without offering any proof, that they are “radical right-wing,” ignorant, misinformed, paranoid, or bigoted. It smears CSP’s Gaffney, for example, claiming he “makes unsubstantiated claims,” and publishes commissioned papers whose authors knowingly arrive at “exaggerated and incorrect conclusions.”
The site claims Robert Spencer “is the primary driver in promoting the myth that peaceful Islam is nonexistent and that violent extremism is inherent within traditional Islam.” It quotes Spencer saying Islam “is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.”
The site attacks David Horowitz, approvingly quoting the Southern Poverty Law Center which has dubbed him “the godfather of the anti-Muslim movement.” The site also pillories Horowitz for saying that “virtually every major Muslim organization in America is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fountainhead of Islamic terror,” and for amplifying the voices of “fellow anti-Muslim bigots and their schemes of conspiracies and threats.”
And it claims the DHFC, which publishes FrontPage, “promoted the myth that Muslim extremists infiltrated an array of political organizations on both the left and the right.”
Soros’s “U.S. Models for Combating Xenophobia and Intolerance” memo is both an important leftist document and a window into the thinking of Soros operatives. It shows their preference for far-left talking points over the dispassionate analysis of facts. It also ought to disabuse any readers of the notion that OSF, formerly known as the Open Society Institute, is bursting with good people with good intentions. Many of these people viscerally hate those who disagree with them, viewing them not merely as ignorant or misguided, but as evil.
The memo is also a character assassination roadmap that enlists the assistance of disreputable left-wing groups including Media Matters for America, Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Addressed to OSF president (now president emeritus) Aryeh Neier, the memo is from OSF staffers Ann Beeson, Nancy Chang, and Raquiba LaBrie – all lawyers and veteran social justice warriors – plotting to smear those who dare to tell the truth about Islam. It lays out a plan “to counter xenophobia and intolerance in the U.S.”
ACLU alumna Beeson replaced current Democracy Alliance president Gara LaMarche in 2007 as U.S. Programs director at OSF. She now runs of the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin, Texas. Chang managed OSF’s National Security and Human Rights Campaign but it wasn’t clear at time of writing if she still worked at OSF. She was previously senior litigation attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a virulently anti-American public interest law firm. Harvard-trained LaBrie is director of philanthropy at L+M Development Partners in New York City and a board member of the Urban Justice Center.
The 2011 strategy memo is a template for a well-funded smear campaign against critics of Islam, associating them with the shooting that January of then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). The attack “provides a grim backdrop to U.S. Programs’ consideration of rising xenophobia and intolerance.” The shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, turned out to be a paranoid left-winger.
The memo sets the stage by repeating the long ago debunked Daily Kos-originated smear that Sarah Palin, “the most visible Tea Party leader,” somehow caused the mass shooting in which Giffords was severely wounded because she supposedly contributed to the “extreme and violent rhetoric [that] pervades our political discourse.”
It regurgitates the leftist article of faith that “prejudice against Muslims, Latinos, African Americans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and other minorities is growing in a climate of fear, anger, and economic uncertainty.” It blames “anti-Muslim bigotry” for opposition to the construction of an “Islamic community center” at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. It claims that “[c]able television channels, talk radio and political blogs pander to people’s fears and privilege expression of extreme views.”
America is a fetid hellhole of racial and religious hatred, the memo continues.
There is “growing intolerance and fragmentation in U.S. society” and it is important to examine the “full range of actions from rhetoric to harassment to violence perpetrated by government officials and private individuals, or embodied in laws or policies.” More money “should be devoted to uncovering the connections between individual actors, hate groups and extremist ideologies.”
The memo authors recommend that Open Society Foundations contribute $200,000 of the project’s $225,000 budget. It states that as of that point in time OSF had given a total of $6,759,991 to CAP. However, IRS filings show that if OSF grants and grants from Soros’s other philanthropy, the Foundation to Promote Open Society, are combined, the total amount given to CAP rises to $10,541,376.
The OSF grant to CAP does not appear in philanthropy databases. Three separate $200,000 grants – two in 2011 and one in 2013 – to CAP for an “anti-Muslim bigotry” project do appear but they come from the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Another OSF memo from April 26, 2010 (“Strategic Opportunities Fund – May 3, 2010 Docket Recommendation”) urges funding for the absurdly named Free Exchange on Campus Coalition which it states was created three and a half years earlier “to counter vigorous assaults on freedom of expression.”
OSF acknowledges it approved a $150,000 grant for FECC in 2009 and planned to give an additional $110,500 to its apparent fiscal sponsor, the American Federation of Teachers Educational Foundation. “Because FECC does not have its own 501c3 status, the coalition members decided to house the staff coordinator position at the American Federation of Teachers Educational Foundation,” the planning document states.
FECC was founded after an OSF-hosted meeting in 2006 “following which leading faculty, student and civil liberties organizations launched Free Exchange on Campus Coalition (FECC) as a joint effort to counter conservative activists and their allies’ ideological assault on higher education.”
At that time “assaults on free exchange on campuses … included public relations efforts to undermine popular support for the academy, on-campus student campaigns, and efforts to pass state and federal legislation, based upon the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s ‘Academic Bill of Rights’ (ABOR) proposal, to place restrictions on higher education.”
FECC began to organize students and faculty in key states to roll out a public communications strategy” and “played a major role in organizing students and faculty to oppose proposals to restrict the free exchange of ideas in Pennsylvania, Montana, Missouri, Virginia, Iowa, Arizona, Georgia and Texas.”
In fact the Academic Bill of Rights was drafted to protect students from abusive, indoctrination-oriented professors with the goal of returning the academy to traditional principles of open inquiry and true academic freedom that puts students and teachers on an equal footing.
Horowitz is also mentioned in an article from the OSF document dump called “9/11 at 10: Lessons Learned from Anti-Muslim Haters,” by Faiz Shakir, at the time vice president of CAP. According to his LinkedIn profile he left CAP in June 2012 to become “New Media Director & Senior Adviser” to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, and In March 2013 he became “Senior Adviser” to “U.S. Senate Majority [sic] Leader Harry Reid[.]” (The article is one of several in a PDF file called “tab-7-usp-board-articles-oct-2011[.]”)
Shakir describes Horowitz as one of “a host of grassroots organizers and activists” who disseminates the work of “anti-Muslim experts.” After that, “[m]edia voices on the right—Fox News, National Review, and hate radio hosts like Michael Savage—then amplify the Islamophobic rhetoric. Ultimately, right-wing political actors like Newt Gingrich and Rep. Allen West (R-FL) help mainstream the ugly prejudice.”
Shakir adds:
The lesson is simple: We need to isolate the Islamophobia network. That means demanding the media not give a platform to this small cadre of voices. That also means demanding that politicians divorce themselves from the network’s propaganda. It’s possible.
Shakir’s right. It is possible to smear and intimidate people who want to speak the truth.
The Left, surfing on a tidal wave of Soros money, does it every day.
Matthew Vadum, senior vice president at the investigative think tank Capital Research Center, is an award-winning investigative reporter and author of the book, “Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.”
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