Patrick Gaspard on George Soros and Anti-Semitic Tropes

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Why do you think and on what basis is George Soros kind of Exhibit A in the enemies or rather in the allies of President Trump?

PATRICK GASPARD, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO SOUTH AFRICA: It’s a great question, Christiane. And unfortunately, I think that the response to that compels me to talk about a long history of attacks not just against George Soros, but against figures like George Soros. We have George Soros’s Jewish ancestry, who have survived the worst horrors of the 20th Century and who have attempted to make a contribution to opening society. George Soros, as you said, Christiane, is of Jewish descent. He survived the Holocaust. And there is a long history, as Fiona Hill pointed out, in her testimony, a long history of anti-Semitic tropes that lean into the notion that somehow there are these invisible Jewish protocols and a group of leaders who are owning and corrupting elements in government in the private state. It’s the worst kind of anti-Semitism. Regrettably, it is not a new thing. But it’s unfortunate to see it being transmitted in the highest corridors of office in the most important elected office in the world, which is the presidency of the United States.

AMANPOUR: So let’s take bits of this — of what you’ve just said. First, the anti-Semitic tropes, and the anti-Semitism that you say is behind all of this. You mentioned Fiona Hill. She, during her congressional testimony a few weeks ago, said she was called a Soros mole. Were there any — and she said also Marie Yovanovitch, the Ambassador to Ukraine had also been sort of smeared by being in the quote, “Soros camp.”

AMANPOUR: Were there any ties between the Open Society Foundations, George Soros, that might even have excuse this kind of connection?

GASPARD: Not in the least, Christiane. Like all propaganda, there’s a way that authoritarians will take a thread of information and twist and distort it to meet their own political means, and too often their own corrupt interests. George Soros and the Open Society Foundations have been engaged in work in Ukraine for 30 years now. At the end of the Cold War, George Soros made a determination that he was going to support the transition from communism to open and robust societies where the average citizen can hold their governments accountable by launching a series of philanthropic initiatives in the region that would enable civil society to create vehicles to push back against corruption, vehicles to create equal access to justice and to healthcare and to education as well.