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Let's talk about George

lomiller said:
Shrug. If the right doesn’t like them debunking their smear campaigns against the Clintons perhaps the right should stop conducting smear campaigns against the Clintons.
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New York Times = "the right."

Yeah, big thanks for checking in.
 
lomiller said:
So they don’t just after hard right wing media outlets? Wow that totally proves how partisan they are. :rolleyes:
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Yeah they absolutely are, as I just explained, I mean within the last couple of hours I explained in this very thread:

Media matters is a 501c3 that claims to be an educational group, but in fact is a ridiculously partisan group that lines up directly with the interests of the Clinton campaign and attacks any media that criticizes her.

Oh man...
 
lomiller said:
It seems to come very close to the OP’s point. He’s specifically arguing that there IS a meaningful difference between supporting dangerous pseudoscience and supporting media fact checking that exposes systematic dishonesty in the right wing media.
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Does the OP even mention psuedo science? It looks like a list to of things Soros does that are hard to argue against followed by why do American conservatives dislike him? I have argue that its simple, he spends money on political compaigns in the US in favor of Democrats and other liberal causes. I then went on to say it basically the same as the Kochs or Adelson in that they spend a lot of money on conservative/libertarian causes.

Essentially, I think its the tall poppy syndrome for politics.

Edit to add, supporting media fact checking that exposes systematic dishonesty in the right wing media is clearly partisan, it doesn't mean they're dishonest but they do clearly aim their efforts at the right, which would naturally annoy the right.

for reference:

uke2se said:
George Soros is behind every evil in the world. That's the idea you get when reading some conservative posters. But why is he being portrayed as such a boogeyman?

As a normal Swede, I don't hear much about George Soros from domestic sources. Last time anyone discussed him in the mainstream over here were in the 90s, when there were lots of complaints against him shorting the Swedish currency, leading to a financial crisis. Of course that wasn't exactly the case; the currency fell because of disastrous policies when it came to privatizing public companies and corporate malfeasance, but Soros was one of several speculators, and he received a lot of the blame back then. Since then, it's been rather quite about him.

Unless you're a Nazi. For the Swedish extreme right, Soros has remained a target of hate, and with the rise of the populist extreme right over the last 20 years, he's become a target for them too. That seems to be the case all over Europe, including his native Hungary - where he's blamed for just about everything by the right wing populist government - and Russia. But what is it he does that's so damn evil to these right wingers?

As far as I've been able to read about him, he's a holocaust survivor, and what he saw during the German dominance of Hungary during World War II made him very distrustful of nationalism. He saw what he perceived as the ultimate form of nationalism in the Nazi purges of Jews and other "undesirables", and that affected him for the rest of his life. The money he made as a broker and speculator have been to a large part funneled into his various projects, especially his Open Society Foundations. These organisations, as well as those he funds but aren't under his direct auspice, all work towards liberal democracy, human and civil rights and the strengthening of democratic institutions. They have worked especially in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism, in order to help bring the nations who suffered under Communism into a modern democratic Europe.

So what's objectionable about this to a conservative? I understand why extreme right wingers in Europe propagate against him, and why he's such a pariah in Russia, because those people don't want to see increased democracy or civil or human rights. But can an American conservative really say the same?

What has George Soros done that's so bad? Try to answer without resorting to conspiracy theories.
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I seriously doubt you find a Soros hater in the US that says, "I hate him for supporting democracy and human rights!" You will find a lot of, he support those dirty Dems/liberals in a sneaky way!

Most of the hate for the Kochs I'd seen prior to this questions was similarly coherent.
 
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The Big Dog said:
Yeah they absolutely are, as I just explained, I mean within the last couple of hours I explained in this very thread:

Media matters is a 501c3 that claims to be an educational group, but in fact is a ridiculously partisan group that lines up directly with the interests of the Clinton campaign and attacks any media that criticizes her.

Oh man...
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Again, perfect example of what I was talking about. This time it’s not Soros specific, but once again we see the same pattern. Sources are good/bad based on whether the conclusions they reach line up with right wing ideology.

This remains distinctly different from criticism of the Koch’s where the pseudoscience they are peddling re: climate change is established as such beforehand, and only after that are they criticized as being a major source of this misinformation.
 
lomiller said:
Again, perfect example of what I was talking about. This time it’s not Soros specific, but once again we see the same pattern. Sources are good/bad based on whether the conclusions they reach line up with right wing ideology.
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This is endlessly fascinating to me.

The Soros/Clinton/Brand combination was NOT contradicting "right wing" ideology. In the 2016 time frame, it was attacking any opponents of Clinton whether they be from the left or the right.

Really amazing stuff going on here.
 
ahhell said:
Does the OP even mention psuedo science?
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He specifically mentions the Koch’s funding climate change denial in post #80, so that would be a yes.

ahhell said:
Edit to add, supporting media fact checking that exposes systematic dishonesty in the right wing media is clearly partisan, it doesn't mean they're dishonest but they do clearly aim their efforts at the right, which would naturally annoy the right.
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As long as the points raised are valid and accurate there is inherently nothing wrong with focusing on the misinformation spread by one political affiliation.
 
The Big Dog said:
This is endlessly fascinating to me.

The Soros/Clinton/Brand combination was NOT contradicting "right wing" ideology. In the 2016 time frame, it was attacking any opponents of Clinton whether they be from the left or the right.

Really amazing stuff going on here.
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See? No mention whatsoever of validity of what they are saying. Instead we get “they must be dishonest because they don’t agree with me”. Conversely criticism of the Koch’s and they things they support flow the other way, that is to say establish the pseudoscience, show that they are peddling it and then criticize them for doing so.
 
lomiller said:
See? No mention whatsoever of validity of what they are saying.
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Fascinating.

Have you at least come to realization that media matters isn't a left v. right issue, but rather a Clinton v. any critic issue, and that their 501c3 is a scam?

And the fact that Soros funded these dark money groups is one of the reasons why the right does not like him?
 
lomiller said:
He specifically mentions the Koch’s funding climate change denial in post #80, so that would be a yes.
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That's a bit different than the original post in my opinion. Which really seemed to be, why do american conservatives dislike soros so much. Which is adequately explained by, "he supports american liberals and their chosen policies!" Which is very similar to why american liberals dislike the Kochs so much. Which again is not a moral equivalence argument so much as a functional equivalence.

As long as the points raised are valid and accurate there is inherently nothing wrong with focusing on the misinformation spread by one political affiliation.
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Not saying there's anything wrong with it, just saying, its understandable why the right wouldn't like it.
 
lomiller said:
The CT he brought up is a real thing but the form isn’t different between from how Soros is, MO, typicaly brought up by conservatives. eg:
Students from school where mass shooting occurred support gun control
Right wing response “Soros is behind it, so there”

Media Matters for America documents dishonesty in the right wing media
Right wing response “Soros is behind it, so there”

This is distinctly different from the criticisms made against the Koch bro’s for climate change denial. They are justifiably criticized for peddling pseudoscience, but no one is trying to argue it’s pseudoscience based on the Koch’s support.
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Technically, my 14 year old did just that the other day. I wanted him to watch this: http://www.pbs.org/video/nova-the-fabric-of-the-cosmos-the-illusion-of-time/ ...and he saw "Funding for NOVA is provided by David H. Koch...Original funding provided by the David H. Koch Fund for Science" and he immediately snapped to "IT'S CLEARLY RIGHTWING PSEUDOSCIENCE, MOM!" (He was already a little dubious of the mind-bending premise of the episode as I'd described it to him, and seeing Koch Bro funding just pushed him right over the edge.)

Of course, he's 14. A couple of years ago he was still playing with legos and watching PewDiePie videos. The end result of his objection was a detour discussion about the mechanisms behind known cases of vested interests corrupting scientific research, and how unlikely it is that the Koch tentacles are all up in theoretical physics, warping the research there for nefarious ends. :)
 
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The Big Dog said:
Have you at least come to realization that media matters isn't a left v. right issue, but rather a Clinton v. any critic issue, and that their 501c3 is a scam?
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Only a tiny fraction of the Media Matters media pertains to Clinton.

Also, education vs biased materials are not mutually exclusive categories.
 
kellyb said:
Only a tiny fraction of the Media Matters media pertains to Clinton.

Also, education vs biased materials are not mutually exclusive categories.
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Biased materials being defined as materials a biased organization deem are biased.

Like the New York Times.

Such education
 
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