Tag: antisemitism

Soros Killed the Radio Star

Mike Rothschild

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Hungarian billionaire and philanthropist George Soros has been blamed by so many cranks for so many different supposed horrors that his name is on par with Kleenex, Xerox, and Band-Aid: a product that has become shorthand for every version of that product. It’s become so trivially easy to blame Soros for whatever is happening in the world – from student protestors buying coffee to the supposed links between the “Albanian narco-state” and Tim Walz – that it’s essentially lost all its meaning as a right wing canard.

But every so often, the far-right crankery machine can get behind a new Soros conspiracy theory, and it’s happening right now. In this case, it’s the slightly true but mostly false story that Soros is “buying 200 radio stations” in a “fast-tracked” process that “nobody has ever seen before” as a way to “take over the radio market.” And Congressional Republicans are desperate to stop before it swings the election to the Radical Marxist Comrade Kamala Harris. Despite the story having been around since April, it’s really taken off in the last few weeks due to the FCC allowing the purchase (which is real) to go ahead.

As with almost all conspiracy theories, there are kernels of truth wrapped inside layers of lying. And of course, since it’s Soros, those layers are also chock-full of antisemitic lunacy and grandiose accusations. Take a guess as to what the first reply to Elon Musk’s tweet about the FCC “breaking the law” for Soros is:

Without getting into a long digression about the FCC’s complex rules for foreign ownership of US radio stations, some of this is true.

Soros Fund Management, which controls the bulk of the investments made by Soros’ Open Society Foundations, is buying a majority share of the debt held by radio conglomerate Audacy. Despite having 240 stations in more than 40 markets in the US, Audacy couldn’t keep pace with the changes in radio and podcast consumption, and its stock tanked. It declared bankruptcy in January, and re-emerged recently as a private company, with its debt held by various buyers, and its radio licenses in the process of being transferred to the new company

With the FCC approving a deal that’s been in the works since February, Soros Fund Management now owns about 40% of that debt, making his Fund the company’s biggest shareholder, and nothing more than that. He doesn’t personally own the radio stations under the Audacy umbrella – Audacy does. And since he doesn’t personally own the company, Soros will have no say in what the stations owned by Audacy put on the air. Their stations are a mix of news, talk, sports, and music that likely won’t change under a privately-held ownership – even one headed by Geoege Soros.

It’s not even outlandish for Soros to be making investments in radio and podcasting, since he’s already done so, buying stakes or making investments in multiple other major podcasting companies.

Such bankruptcy restructuring deals are the bread and butter of American business – as Donald Trump, the “King of Debt“, could tell you. Moreover, these deals aren’t at all unusual in the bankruptcy-ravaged world of terrestrial radio. Audacy competitors IHeartMedia and Cumulus both went through the same license transfer process and foreign ownership review that Audacy just finished after their bankruptcies in 2019 and 2018, respectively. With their debts bought up, both companies have been restructuring to cut costs and improve efficiency.

(Full disclosure, I’ve appeared as a guest on radio shows or podcasts on all three networks.)

The FCC has insisted that all three radio restructuring processes were the same, that their approvals were routine, and that, contrary to reporting from conservative outlets like the New York Post, there was no “fast track” or “shortcut” with Audacy and Soros. In fact, the FCC review process took longer because of demands for additional oversight from Congressional Republicans who were concerned about George Soros taking over the radio and pumping vulnerable American ears full of leftist filth.

So why are we doing this? Because it’s Soros.

Or to put it another way, do any of the right wing cranks screaming about “George Soros buying 200 radio stations” know or care who bought the bulk of IHeartMedia’s debt? Were there demands for accountability from Congress and right wing influencers? No, because the main holders of IHeartMedia’s debt are the asset management firms PIMCO and Franklin Advisors, not Soros Fund Management. Do you know who they are? Does Glenn Beck do hour-long specials about how PIMCO is the puppet master behind all wars? No, because they aren’t GEORGE SOROS, the “Money-Changing Globalist.”

These are routine transactions in an industry struggling to stay relevant and profitable. Except nothing is routine when dealing with Soros, who is said to be “tightening his grip” on US radio by “controlling 200 stations” in a “scary” move that is nothing less than “an attack of free speech.”

It should also be noted that the bulk of the accusations about the FCC creating a “Soros Shortcut” come from the New York Post, which has consistently attacked Soros with rumors and conspiracy theories for decades, including earlier this year, when they created a fiction about Soros and the OSF funding the student protests against the war in Gaza by buying everyone tents. It’s all nonsense to sell papers and get clicks.

Ultimately, the “George Soros is buying the airwaves” conspiracy theory is the same as all of the other conspiracy theories about him. It uses ancient puppet master tropes to attack one leftist Jewish philanthropist while paying no attention to the inherently evil corporate practices that allow rampant bankruptcies, the easy buying and selling of massive amounts of debt, and the layoffs that come with such massive movement of money.

Criticizing those things would actually require courage and honesty from the far right, not unhinged conspiracism and tired allegations. So don’t expect it to happen anytime soon.

The Rothschilds and the Scofield Bible

Mike Rothschild1 Comment

Greetings! This is the kind of research-intensive content I’ll soon be putting on my Patreon page. If you get something out of this and feel you can, I’d truly appreciate an $8 per month subscription. Thanks

Sometimes a conspiracy theory emerges that you immediately know is absolutely designed with just the right combination of stupidity and malice that you have to drop everything to debunk it.

On July 17th, I got a tip from Ben Lorber, co-author of the new book on antisemitism Safety Through Solidarity (which is great and you should read it) of a clip from Tucker Carlson’s Twitter show of him and country singer John Rich discussing how “the Rothschilds were connected” to the printing and distribution of what’s known as the Scofield Bible, an End Times-focused edition of the Bible published in 1909 that contained extensive notes and references written by American theologian CI Scofield.

One particular clip of the interview features Rich, who is not an expert on the Rothschilds, telling Carlson, who is not an expert on anything, that another preacher named John Darby, who popularized a concept called “The Secret Rapture” was connected to “the Rothschilds.”

“Interesting” Carlson intones, with the two discussing how this philosophy lead to the warping of US foreign policy and the deaths of “a lot of people.”

I am the farthest possible thing from an expert on Christian eschatology, the history of American charismatic movements, the growth of Christian Zionism and its relation to its Jewish counterpart, or the influence of the Scofield Bible on anything. But I am something of an expert on the Rothschilds, as my book Jewish Space Lasers is about the Rothschild myth and its role in antisemitism. And I am definitely an expert on how conspiracy theorists like John Rich and Tucker Carlson say stuff that doesn’t mean anything, put it behind a wall of creepy music and quick edits, and spread it around to their followers as gospel truth.

So why are we talking about the links between a wealthy Jewish family and an End Times Bible? Did the Rothschilds fund the Scofield Bible? Did they control John Darby?

With numerous references to the Book of Revelation and other End Times concepts, the Scofield Reference Bible was the perfect scripture for the upheaval and bloodshed of the Great War and later of World War II. It sold millions of copies and laid the groundwork for the “tribulation industry” of End Times preachers and evangelical personalities like the authors of Left Behind, Late Great Planet Earth author Hal Lindsey, and many others. These apocalyptic concepts continue to be a driving force in American evangelical Christianity, and numerous believers in the idea of a Rapture or dispensationalism (the idea that history is divided into “Eras” in which God has different plans for humanity) have risen to prominent positions in the US government. In this version of Zionism, Israel must belong to the Jewish people – so it can serve as the place where the Tribulation begins, presumably causing the deaths of countless Jewish people.

All of this is hopelessly complex, and could fill entire bookshelves with tomes I’m not educated enough to understand. But the Rothschild link is simple, so I’ll focus on that.

Scofield was an American preacher and author who lived from 1843 to 1921. Darby was a British author who first popularized the ideas of pre-tribulation rapture and dispensationalism that Scofield referred to, and lived from 1800 to 1882. In the research and writing of Jewish Space Lasers, I never saw any reference to Darby or Scofield having worked for or ever come across the Rothschilds. The family had no real presence in America in 1909, and its power in Europe had drastically waned. There’s no reason why the family would have invested in the funding or distribution of a New Testament that, as Jews, they wouldn’t have had any interest in. No edition of the Reference Bible I found had a reference to the Rothschilds, though I confess that I haven’t looked through every edition ever printed. And I can’t find any primary source that connects the Scofield Bible, Scofield himself, or Darby to the family.

Carlson and Rich’s claim that the Rothschilds helped create or fund “Christian Zionism” also don’t carry any kind of evidentiary weight. Many Rothschilds were Zionists, of course. Many also were not. The family is extremely large and varied in its beliefs and priorities, and so simply ascribing “the Rothschilds” as having done something is a meaningless statement that only serves to fuel antisemitic conspiracy theories. And again, we’re talking about Tucker Carlson, here. Similarly, trying to link the Balfour Declaration to Christian Zionism because it’s a letter written by Lord Balfour to Lionel Walter Rothschild is nonsensical.

The sources connecting all of this together are impossibly thin, mostly consisting of blogs and a few podcasts that throw the accusation out without evidence. The closest thing to a primary source connecting Darby to the Rothschilds and Christian Zionism is a reference to the family in a 2002 issue of Executive Intelligence Review claiming that 19th Century British aristocrat and pre-millennial Zionist Lord Shaftesbury “was instrumental in the founding of the Palestine Exploration Fund, which brought the Darbyites and other evangelicals, wealthy Jews like the Rothschilds and Montefiores, together with the highest levels of English aristocracy, to officially claim Palestine for the Empire.”

It should be noted that Executive Intelligence Review is a publication of the crank conspiracy theorist and activist Lyndon LaRouche, and often published incomprehensible and antisemitic nonsense – including a 1996 article that was likely the first to connect the Rothschilds to future conspiracy theory magnet George Soros. So as primary sources go, EIR is firmly in the category of ones that can be ignored.

In digging around for something that connects Darby/Scofield to the Rothschilds, the only real link that makes any kind of sense is that the Scofield Reference Bible was published in 1909 by Oxford University Press, the prestigious academic house that’s been in business since 1586 and has become the largest university press in the world. A number of conspiracy theorists have claimed that the Rothschilds “own” or “control” Oxford University Press, and therefore were critical in the printing and distribution of the Scofield Bible.

But again, none of this is actually true. The Rothschilds don’t “own” Oxford University Press – the University of Oxford does. And Oxford has existed since around 1096, roughly 700 years before Mayer Amschel Rothschild rose to prominence as a banker and court Jew in the Free City of Frankfurt.

Simply put, if there’s a link between the Rothschilds and Darby, Scofield, the Scofield Bible, Christian Zionism, or its influence on American politics; nobody has bothered writing about it, documenting it, or exploring it in any way. But the trick about conspiracy theories claiming “the Rothschilds control ______” is that they don’t require evidence. The people spreading them have no interest in backing up their claims (tellingly, John Rich offers no evidence and Tucker Carlson asks for none), only in spreading them. And in going viral, which the claims did.

This unevidenced nonsense spreads because of generations of the similar spread of past antisemitic nonsense about the Rothschilds controlling banking, finance, politics, media, entertainment, global events, and medicine. Strip away all of the names and concepts unique to this one theory and you’re left with another version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document making grandiose claims of Jewish control while offering no evidence to support them. Over and over, influencers make these claims, spread them around without evidence, and reap the rewards. And Jews suffer the consequences of this hate and mythmaking.

Like The Protocols, the idea that “The Rothschilds” funded an End Times Bible to exert control over American Christianity is just as pernicious – and just as false.

Of Course a Rothschild Would Say That

Mike Rothschild3 Comments

One of the the things that drew me to writing about conspiracy theories in the first place is having the last name of a family involved in some of the most prominent ones in recent history.

The Rothschild banking family has been accused of everything from funding both sides of pretty much every war of the last several hundred years to crashing world economies at will to controlling the weather to secretly being the ancestors of Adolf Hitler.

I am not related to this family. I know of no connection in my family to anyone in the prominent Rothschild clan, nor has any connection ever been presented to me.

And yet, virtually everything I write about or film related to  debunking conspiracy theories gets rebutted with “of course a Rothschild would say that.”

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