Former Russia expert on the US National Security Council Fiona Hill said during her widely-cited testimony on Trump’s impeachment hearing this Thursday that “conspiracy theories” linked to Hungarian billionaire and philanthropist George Soros were anti-Semitic in their nature and resembled “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” texts.
The comment was made as Hill was replying to a question by Democratic Representative for Illinois Raja Krishnamoorthi, who quoted Hill’s earlier closed-door depositions that “a conspiracy” had been launched against her by Trump former adviser Roger Stone during an episode of Infowars hosted by Alex Jones, branding her “the globalist leftist [George] Soros insider”. Hill agreed with Krishnamoorthi’s suggestion that Soros-related conspiracies were anti-Semitic in nature, and were being fuelled by Stone and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
“This is the longest-running anti-Semitic trope that we have in history, and a trope against Mr Soros was also created for political purposes, and this is the new Protocols of The Elders of Zion”, Hill said, referring to a 20th century text that originated in Tsarist Russia.
The former White House Russia analyst called theories linked to a controversial billionaire Soros an “absolute outrage”, saying they targeted various diplomats, including her and former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who also earlier testified before Trump’s impeachment hearing.
“When I saw this happening to Ambassador Yovanovitch again, I was furious, because this is, again, just this whipping up of what is frankly an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about George Soros to basically target nonpartisan career officials, and also some political appointees as well, because I just want to say this: This is not indiscriminate in its attacks”, Hill earlier said in a closed-door deposition.
Hill’s testimony sparked a lot of controversy this week, after she said to “refused to be part of an effort to legitimise an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary”, while citing a long-promoted belief that it was Russia that attempted to “attack” the 2016 presidential elections in the US.
Soros-Related Conspiracies
George Soros’ Open Society Foundations has often been mentioned in the context of the 2013 Ukrainian protests, which sparked many controversies around the world and even led to Russia’s ban on Soros-linked organisations.
In 2018, George Soros was accused of funding Central American migrant caravans on the southern US border. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has also criticised Soros for promoting increased migration to Europe and Hungary in particular. The Hungarian government subsequently prepared a “Stop Soros package” plan, calling to limit NGOs work and aid to illegal migrants within the state, provoking the Open Society Foundations to move its office from Budapest to Berlin.
The New York Times, in 2018, reported that George Soros had given $1 million to the Democracy Integrity Project, a civil rights organisation that used the research group Fusion GPS as a contractor to compile a dossier on the alleged Russian meddling into the 2016 US presidential vote and collusion with Donald Trump’s campaign, which has been vehemently denied by both POTUS and Russia.