Counter-Currents
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Clash of the Billionaire Comic-Book Supervillains
Jim Goad
1,304 words / 9:19
Audio version: To listen in a player, use the one below or click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link as” or “save target as.”
It all started with a simple five-word tweet Monday night in which billionaire tech titan and current owner of Twitter Elon Musk compared another billionaire to a fictional character in the Marvel comic-book universe:
Soros reminds me of Magneto
I’ve pored over these five words countless times, but I don’t see the word “Jews” anywhere. In a follow-up tweet, Musk clarified that Soros “wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity,” so his original tweet seems intended to paint both George Soros and Magneto in a negative light, but the only thing I could honestly glean from Musk’s tweet is that is he is a virulent anti-Sorite and a rabid anti-Magnite.
Soros is, by his own admission, Jewish. Magneto (pronounced “mag-NEET-oh”), a character created by Jewish cartoon magnates Stan Lee and Jack Kirby back in 1963, is also Jewish. As Magneto’s character developed over the years, he also became, like Soros, someone who had lived through the Holocaust and sought to reshape the world so that such a dastardly event never happens again.
At first blush, one would assume that the world’s avid Jew-defenders feel that surviving the Holocaust and trying to mold the world so that it never happens again are good things, no? So even though Musk intended it as an insult, why did they furiously start shvitzing rather than calm the fuck down and take it as a compliment?
In 2008 — 35 years after Stan Lee and Jack Kirby first introduced Magneto to the world and the character had undergone several iterations that involved flip-flopping from archvillain to righteous avenger of Nazis — Lee told an interviewer:
[I] did not think of Magneto as a bad guy. He just wanted to strike back at the people who were so bigoted and racist . . . he was trying to defend the mutants, and because society was not treating them fairly he was going to teach society a lesson. He was a danger of course . . . but I never thought of him as a villain.
I can’t honestly infer from Musk’s tweet that he was implying that both Soros and Magneto are evil because they’re Jewish, but that didn’t stop those who smell anti-Semitism in their pancake syrup — which is the obsessive flip side to tasting Jews in your sandwiches — to leap to that conclusion.
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In an article titled “Elon Musk Among the Anti-Semites,” Yair Rosenberg at The Atlantic wrote that Musk “echoed paranoid anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.
He painted Soros as a literal comic-book villain.”
At The Washington Post, Avi Selk and Herb Scribner accused Musk of indulging in “long-standing conspiracy theories that paint him as a godlike billionaire Jew who uses his philanthropic foundations to flood Europe with refugees and corrupt American politics.”
CNN wrote that “Elon Musk launched a baseless Twitter attack on George Soros, a frequent target for antisemitic conspiracy theories.”
“The Twitter owner has turned into a full-fledged right-wing conspiracy theorist,” barked Rolling Stone, adding that “Soros is also Jewish and Hungarian and thus has been a main character in a slew of antisemitic conspiracy theories about a globalist new world order that seeks to destroy society as we know it.”
That sure seems like a lot of people talking about “antisemitic conspiracy theories”! It’s almost as if everyone in the world is talking about them except for Elon Musk. Perhaps he was secretly using one of those notorious anti-Semitic dog whistles that only people who are obsessed with anti-Semitism are able to hear.
The virulently charmless Jonathan Greenblatt, head honcho of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), tweeted:
Soros often is held up by the far-right, using antisemitic tropes, as the source of the world’s problems. To see @ElonMusk, regardless of his intent, feed this segment — comparing him to a Jewish supervillain, claiming Soros “hates humanity” — is not just distressing, it’s dangerous: it will embolden extremists who already contrive anti-Jewish conspiracies and have tried to attack Soros and Jewish communities as a result.
The ADL has definitely changed the tune that they’re blowing on their shofar in the past 20 years. Back in 2003, when Soros suggested that Jewish behavior was partially responsible for anti-Jewish sentiments, then-ADL helmsman Abe Foxman said that Soros had “blamed the victim.”
Musk, who obviously has a far better sense of humor than Soros, responded to Greenblatt with a curt, “Hey stop defaming me.” In a subsequent tweet, he said, “ADL should just drop the ‘A.’”
Musk’s comparison of George Soros to a Jewish comic-book character so inflamed Israel’s Foreign Ministry that they kvetched out the following tweet:
The phrase “The Jews” spiked today on the list of topics trending on Twitter following a tweet with antisemitic overtones by none other than the owner and CEO of the social network, Elon Musk. . . . [It] immediately led to antisemitic conspiracy theories on Twitter.
Just like the ADL, Israel’s Foreign Ministry has recently taken to smelling far more anti-Semitism in their pancake syrup than they smelled in the past. In 2017, they denounced Soros by claiming that he “continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself.”
So is anti-Semitism actually on the rise, or are the people who smell it in their pancake syrup getting touchier? The obvious answer is, “You’re an anti-Semite for even asking that question.”
On Wednesday, Musk doubled and tripled down on his shameless impenitence by tweeting that his original comparison of Soros to Magneto was “really unfair to Magneto.” It reminded me of my own joke, of which I’m so proud that I keep repeating it whenever I get the chance, that whenever black people get upset about being compared to monkeys, no one ever asks the monkeys how they feel about being compared to black people.
When confronted by CNBC’s David Faber about whether he was an anti-Semite, Musk denied it: “I’m a pro-Semite, if anything.” So not only is he an anti-Semite, he’s also a liar.
Speaking of liars, the whole ridiculous kerfuffle dredged up old rumors accusing Soros of being a traitor to his own people during the Second World War. These rumors were, predictably, dismissed as “lies” and “anti-Semitic conspiracy theories” and the whole ball of wax and bar of human soap. But during a 1998 profile on 60 Minutes, Soros said he pretended he was a Christian during the war and admitted that he “helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.” He also expressed zero remorse for doing so. The crucial part of the video interview is here, the relevant quotes were entered into the Congressional Record here, and the entire 60 Minutes profile is here.
So unlike the fictional Magneto, the real-life George Soros enabled the persecution of Jews during the Second World War. Can you say the same thing about anyone being smeared as a “Nazi” or an “anti-Semite” these days?
Sure, despite describing himself as a “free-speech absolutist,” Musk’s version of Twitter has routinely banned several high-profile accused “Nazis” and serial Jew-namers. But as the world’s second-richest man, Musk is the highest-status billionaire willing to clap back at free-speech antagonists such as the ADL. In doing so, he has become a comic-book supervillain to humorless Leftists just as George Soros is the cartoonish bête noire for the modern Right.
What we’re witnessing may be an epochal circulation of elites, a once-in-a-lifetime changing of the guard. I’ve learned not to get my hopes up too high about anything anymore, but let’s close our eyes, click our heels, and pretend just for a moment that the newer elites might have a better sense of humor and not be so ruthlessly censorious and obnoxiously mendacious as the elites they’re replacing.
* * *
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22 comments
Aside from a better sense of humor, will they stop the invasion of the homelands of the people of European ancestry and the indigenous people of Europe and the pontic steppe?
A better sense of humor would be good. Stewardship of nations and the people that this implies would be nice. I will say that the Feinstein and Fetterman Senatorships are pretty damn humorous here in the gallows.
Soros looks like a toad with the amphibian version of myxomatosis that is melting before us.
Svengali, Shylock, Soros. Soros DAs overseeing Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Cook County, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Detroit, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas, Jackson, Memphis, Nashville, Philadelphia. St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner finally resigns. How many must die in our urban centers before the rest of these malignant tumors are excised from our body politic? The rotting corpse of Karl Popper is clawing his way out of the grave. Soros dances a horah on top of our collapsing society.
I fail to see why any white person should care about the demise of ‘our’ cities and the nonwhites within them. If ‘Soros’ somehow has all of this power directed at the cities, then perhaps we should give him even more power to finish the job that nonwhites are doing to each other.
Of course, many millions of whites live in this nation’s cities. (Including many of the ‘red-pilled’) I consider myself a right-winger because I believe in the principles of an orderly and peaceful society. That once great cities have become dysgenic shitholes is a disaster. Recognizing that humans will always have a need to form urban centers, I want those cities to be safe and hygienic, beautiful and prosperous. If we don’t care about those things, no-one will.
I wonder who Cuckservatives will blame once ‘Soros’ goes to heaven? I really question how much Soros actually directs or even affects anything. It’s never just one person. He is really just an excuse for Cuckservatives to not blame his tribe: ‘Soros is a Nazi who sold out his own people! He bankrolled that one DA in Chicago, therefore Soros controls everything.’
It’s no different than incels blaming the mythical meme of ‘Chad’ for the behavior of women. ‘Soros’ and ‘Chad’ function as the ‘shadow people’ in the half-conspiratorial mind of weak people who simply will not allow themselves to see the rest of the conspiracy.
He bankrolled that one DA in Chicago, therefore Soros controls everything.
That’s a ridiculous oversimplification, as is the hyperbolic straw-manning about Soros “controlling everything.”
The fact is that Soros is the biggest donor to the Democratic Party, contributing $178,810,550 in 2021-2022 alone. That’s more than three times as much as the runner-up in Democratic contributions, Michael Bloomberg.
Is it though? I actually expected your numbers to be even more disproportionate. How is it that I (and probably nearly everybody else here) has literally never even heard of Richard Uhlein? Shouldn’t he have gotten an honorable mention somewhere before this? Nope, instead it’s only GEORGE SOROS the NAZI collaborator behind all of this. We just need to get rid of Soros and then we will have our utopia! I’m certain of it because Glenn Beck said so in 2010.
Before I saw your reply, I had modified my comment. Uhlein is the biggest donor to Republicans. The runner-up to Soros regarding Democrats is Michael Bloomberg.
Sure, people (not everyone) over-amplify his power in a cartoonish way. That’s why “Comic-Book Supervillains” was part of the article’s title. But saying “he bankrolled that one DA in Chicago” seems like an attempt to downplay his influence.
He got billions on forex speculation, profiting from massive poop-n-scoop plays that crashed the economies of entire countries. Then he took a big amount of that swag and put it into the Open Societies Foundation – to be a nice guy and improve the world, of course. Those are some interesting folks – you should read up on them.
Magneto being destructive but not evil sounds a lot like the mutant cries out in pain as he strikes at you.
Isn’t Elon Musk himself Jewish? I don’t hold it against him, but it sort of puts an entirely new layer of “meta” on all this.
No, I don’t think so. Wikipedia lists English and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.
This differs:
https://blaugh.com/is-elon-musk-jewish/
All these “PC” articles about Musk’s ethnicity dance around the religious vs ethnic issue. They keep averring that he’s not Jewish because he isn’t religious (I saw something that said – pregnantly – that he once had “converted” to Christianity). He also apparently once had attended a Jewish primary school as a child.
Based on four factors – his Jewish name; his having attended a Jewish school in South Africa (Jewish youth in Western or Christian-majority nations often attend Christian schools; I’ve never heard of the opposite, not once); his outsized commercial success, which in his case had a huge “PR” aspect to it, in addition evidencing high raw-IQ; and finally and personally, my having once had a friend who greatly resembles Musk (side by side pics would suggest they’re brothers), and who was similarly mixed Jewish/Gentile – I conclude that Musk is ethnically part Jewish.
This would seem another example of the Random Blogger Problem – a staggeringly low quality highly speculative article containing virtually no information at all by some nobody with no credentials and no sources is nonetheless taken with deadly seriousness by others either on its face or as ‘proof’ of their own exotic theories.
There’s commenters on this site – of all places, who actually entertain the idea that the moon landings didn’t happen and nukes don’t exist based on this sort of thing.
What is blaugh.com anyway ? It looks like an internet marketing junk spam site to me.
Then there’s the ‘This person must be a Jew!’ thing: Bill Gates, Stalin, etc because….
Also note Jews themselves can lie on this topic. They can say, “Did you know X is actually a Jew?” to get goys to doubt this person, to not trust them.
But whether we should trust Musk or not seems an irrelevant question. If he can do some good, however far that goes or doesn’t fine, we’ll take it. We don’t need to trust him. Although it hasn’t looked so great on Twitter in terms of our people getting banned again, but I assumed that was Musk caving into pressure around advertising.
I did not mean to imply that I’m in any way hostile to Musk. I hope he’s turning Right. He could be an asset to the (traditional) America I cherish. I was only offering my opinion as to why I think he’s part Jewish (and always have). In fact, the first time I saw his picture I actually thought for a second that my former (half-Jewish) friend had made it into the Wall Street Journal!
Always a sensitive topic but Goad and select others can get at the subtleties here. Unfortunately the left and ADL are energized by cartoonish rants along the lines of “Soros spearheads globohomo Jewish world domination open border white genocide vaccine barcoding mind control. Rise against Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God”
Just when someone gently and politely asks if someone could explain why the various western countries should have open borders but it should be okay for Israel to restrict immigration to preserve its identity, someone rudely gabs the mic and starts barking about “Jews control everything! I must exist without jews”. At which point Soros’s handlers point out, “That’s what we’re up against Mr. Soros. Did I mention it’s ‘Giving Tuesday’, let’s go get your checkbook. We accept Paypal too, Mr. Soros. [Ouch, faux pas, we won’t tell him who founded paypal, click here].” Less spitting on the microphone and ask Soros to be accountable for the homicide rate in the black community with all those progressive DAs he funds. If they require fewer coffins they will be able to save the wood for more Black Lives Matter signs.
Even more Comic-Book Supervillainny: Movie version of Iron Man (a character also created by Stan Lee) was based at least partially on Elon Musk.
Iron Man is Tony Stark, a billionare induistrialist active in several high-tech industries. Tony Stark actor Robert Downey Jr hung out with Musk as research, and toured SpaceX with Musk.
What never ceases to amaze me is that the first people to bring up Soros’ Jewish origins are usually Jews themselves. The second and more brazen thing is that the things Jews say are a conspiracy theory are more often than not the literal truth. There’s the boilerplate script about the timeless anti-Semitic trope about Jews, power, and influence and how ascribing those things to Soros harkens to these tropes and are therefore bad. The thing is, here’s Soros, a Jew, who has a lot of money and uses his money to peddle influence which in turn makes him powerful. If anything, Jews are doing a disservice to themselves by pointing out Soros’ Jewish origins.
Soros looks like the minor Star Wars character Nien Numb. Tell me I’m wrong. Laughing.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Nien_Nunb/Legends
The story about Soros the “Nazi-collaborator” is incredibly lame and overblown. Soros was 14 years old at the time and if anything he was forced to act that way by the circumstances and or was just saving his ass. His whole career is that of a dedicated stereotypical “globalist”. He may be ruthless or opportunistic but he is anything but a Nazi.
On 60 Minutes, he admitted that he “helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews” and felt no guilt for it. “Just saving his ass” is one thing; saying he felt zero remorse about it on national television more than 50 years later is quite another.
If you want to deflect and say that doesn’t technically make him a “Nazi,” fine, knock yourself out. It does, however, take the wind out of any accusations that merely criticizing him is part of some Jew-hating conspiracy theory. And my point—that he actively enabled the persecution of Jews during World War II more than anyone who’s getting called a “Nazi” these days did—still stands.
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