Controversial George Soros’ Open Society Foundations plan to significantly curtail their work in Europe and lay off much of their staff on the continent, the foundations’ leaders told staff in Berlin, according to an internal email and several current employees, who say the decision is painful and perplexing.
An AP report said:
The planned European cuts, as described in an internal email viewed by The Associated Press, would represent a historic break with the roots of billionaire philanthropist George Soros’ support for civil society through education, human rights work and policy research, which started in his native Hungary more than three decades ago.
The strategic change coincides with Alex Soros, George’s son, announcing a shift to a new operating model the board adopted at the end of June, its first major move since he took over as head of OSF’s board of directors in December. Grantees in Europe say OSF has not directly communicated the proposed strategy change to them, contributing to a sense of disbelief.
“The Open Society Foundations is changing the way we work, but my family and OSF have long supported, and remain steadfastly committed to the European project,” Alex Soros said in a statement.
An OSF spokesperson said the foundations remain committed, “to the promotion of democracy and the fight against authoritarianism in Europe, and to the civil society sector that is crucial to those causes.”
Grantees told The Associated Press that a withdrawal of support for human rights, political participation or digital protections in the European Union would be a strategic mistake and questioned whether the foundations had made a final decision to do so. They also said the lack of communication and uncertainty is damaging to OSF’s reputation. OSF supports work on a wide range of issues that touch on vulnerable populations, democracy and independent media among other topics.
80% Berlin Staff Cut Proposed
The report said:
An email from Thorsten Klassen, director of OSF’s Berlin office, which was sent to Berlin staff on July 20 and was seen by The Associated Press, said, “the new approved strategic direction provides for withdrawal and termination of large parts of our current work within the European Union.” The email continued that the shift was made in part because the EU has provided public funding for human rights and pluralism and OSF wants to reallocate its resources elsewhere.
The foundations have proposed to cut 80% of staff in their Berlin offices, the email said, though all the proposed layoffs are subject to negotiations with labor unions. OSF also proposed to cut at least 60% of staff in Brussels and an unclear number in London, several employees told the AP. The staff members spoke on the condition of anonymity as the foundations have told them not to speak with the press and because they fear repercussions.
In January, OSF told staff in Barcelona that their office would close and most of the staff there have since chosen to leave. OSF’s leadership plans to complete the planned layoffs by January.
OSF did not dispute these figures when asked for comment.
The “recalibration of our work in the European Union” is part of larger organizational changes, an OSF spokesperson said, adding they will continue “to fund civil society groups across Europe, including those working on EU external affairs,” along with support for European Roma communities.
‘Opportunity Model’
The AP report said:
The new “opportunity model” was adopted by OSF’s board on June 28 and is laid out in a 12-page document that offers some clues but little clarity about the foundations’ immediate future plans. The foundations will reorganize around “opportunities” rather than programs, with opportunities defined as “bodies of work organized around clear ambitious goals.”
What those opportunities will be has not yet been defined — another source of bitterness for some staff about the proposed cuts to their programs. How can OSF be sure they do not want to continue their work in Europe if they have not decided yet what their future priorities will be, staff members asked?
Feeling Of Disenfranchisement
The AP report added:
Grantee organizations shared the feeling of disenfranchisement.
“Here we are, probably hundreds of groups around Europe, and we have no idea why this decision came to be,” said Márta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights group and longtime recipient of OSF funding. “When we look at the European Union, we really do not see a justification for even decreasing support for human rights and democracy and for support for marginalized groups.”
She and others pointed to the war in Ukraine, the erosion of the rule of law in Hungary and Poland, the election of a far-right government in Italy and almost in Spain, as reasons to question the future of democracy in Europe.
The new European law regulating social media platforms is another example of pressing and ongoing work that involved OSF, staff said, as well as proposed legislation about artificial intelligence. A June report from the European Artificial Intelligence & Society Fund found OSF provided core support to a significant number of nonprofits working on the regulation of AI in the EU, along with two other foundations.
“This leaves the landscape vulnerable to any change of priorities from those funders and several grantees raised the current strategic discussions in some of these foundations as a cause of concern,” the report said.
It said:
Unlike other major donors or the European Commission, OSF often provides nonprofits fast and flexible funding rather than project-based grants. That is in addition to strategic support, legal research, communications advice, networking and the staff’s own expertise. OSF itself has a strong voice within the EU advocating for policies and engaging decisionmakers, staff and grantees said. In that way, it is far more than a simple source of funding and also more difficult to replace, they said.
Part of what sets OSF apart from other philanthropies is contained in its name, Pardavi said, “It is called Open Society Foundations. It is not called George Soros or Alex Soros Foundations anymore.”
She and others like Alberto Alemanno, professor of law, HEC Paris, worry that OSF’s withdrawal from civil society in Europe will open the door for philanthropies supporting conservative social movements to gain ground.
“All of a sudden you will see that there are many more opportunities for different forms of philanthropy to enter into the European space by basically supporting organizations that at the moment are very marginal, like those pushing anti-abortion rights or pushing against LGBT rights,” he said, adding that those donors, “will find much easier access in Europe because there would be a lack of countervailing forces.”
Fund Elsewhere
An earlier report by Reuters said:
Open Society Foundations will shut down much of its EU-based operations and fund liberal causes elsewhere, citing an internal email. While it remains unclear where Soros will direct his efforts, the aging billionaire has agitated for regime change in China in recent years.
An Open Society Foundations spokesperson told Reuters that the NGO would continue to hand out some grants in Europe, including in Ukraine, Moldova, and the western Balkans. These grants will be doled out to national-level foundations, at a scale “to be determined over the coming months,” the spokesperson said.
Soros’ NGO relocated its Budapest headquarters to Berlin in 2018, as the Hungarian government passed its ‘Stop Soros’ law, criminalizing foreign organizations aiding illegal immigrants.
China
The report said:
In recent years, Soros has become increasingly vocal in his criticisms of China’s Communist government, with the elderly billionaire issuing a call for regime change in Beijing last year.
Ousting Chinese President Xi Jinping, he said, “would remove the greatest threat that open societies face today and they should do everything within their power to encourage China to move in the desired direction.”
Prior to setting up the Open Society Foundations, Soros funded pro-Western demonstrators in 1980s China. Beijing claimed Soros’ Chinese operations were a front for the CIA, and shut them down after fatal clashes between rioters and government troops in Tiananmen Square in 1989.r
Whether or not the NGO turns its attention to East Asia once more will depend on how Soros’ son manages his father’s empire. The Open Society Foundations announced in June that 37-year-old Alex Soros would take over control of the organization from his 93-year-old father, and while George Soros has made headlines condemning the Chinese Community Party, Alex has zeroed in on the Republican Party in the US.
Alex Soros told the Wall Street Journal that he intends to keep funneling money to Democratic politicians, prosecutors, and activist groups in a bid to keep former President Donald Trump from winning next year’s election.
Musk Vows To Sue Soros-funded NGOs
Another media report said:
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has pledged to take legal action against NGOs funded by tycoon George Soros over their alleged attempts to suppress free speech.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday, the American billionaire reacted to an article by journalist Ben Scallan, who claimed that NGOs backed by the Open Society Foundations, a grant-making network founded by Soros, are pushing a “censorship agenda” in Ireland and Scotland that includes police searches of homes and personal electronic devices.
In his piece, Scallan pushed back against claims by Irish leaders that hate-based crimes in the country have been on the rise. He argued that local police and authorities have encouraged citizens to report this type of misconduct, leading to an uptick in the statistics, but not the actual number of crimes, claiming those policies also triggered a cultural shift in the perception of what can be considered hateful. According to the journalist, this gives the country’s authorities an excuse to push for stricter laws that restrict free speech.
“Exactly. X will be filing legal action to stop this. Cannot wait for discovery to start!” Musk wrote, referring to the alleged NGOs’ activities to support this type of agenda.
Musk had already directed a barb at Soros in May, when he compared the Hungarian-born billionaire to supervillain mutant Magneto from Marvel Comics’ X-Men series, who like Soros, was a Holocaust survivor.
“Soros hates humanity,” Musk said at the time, adding that he “wants to erode the very fabric of civilization.” His comments came after it became known that the Hungarian-born tycoon had dumped his stake in Tesla, selling about 132,000 shares of the company.
According to a study by the Media Research Center, Soros has financial ties to more than 250 media outlets worldwide.
Soros Junior’s Access To White House
According to visitor logs seen by the New York Post, Alexander Soros, the son of billionaire and longtime Democratic Party donor George Soros, has made at least fourteen visits to the White House since Joe Biden took office.
The younger Soros, 37, a noted Democratic Party fundraiser, met with Biden administration officials a minimum of twelve times last year, according to recently updated logs. He also visited twice in 2021.
Alexander Soros is the chair of the Open Society Foundations, whose remit, it says, is to provide grants to causes that promote “the growth of inclusive and vibrant democracies.”
His father George Soros set up the foundation, which has distributed more than $32 billion to various causes since 1998. He is a deeply controversial figure within some conservative sections in the US and abroad, who argue that his ‘philanthropy’ is merely political meddling.
He has done “tremendous damage to our country,” said Mike Howell of the Oversight Project at the Conservative Heritage Foundation told the New York Post on Saturday.
The nature of Alexander Soros’ White House visits include a meeting last December 1 with Nina Srivastava, an assistant to former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain. Later that same evening, Soros was among 330 attendees at a state dinner to honor French president Emmanuel Macron, records show.
A day later Soros Jr. met with Mariana Adame, who advises the counselor to President Joe Biden, as well as Deputy National Security Advisor Johnathan Finer, according to the logs. The content of the meetings remains unclear, and the White House did not respond to inquiries made by the New York Post.
“All through the White House, there is a Soros hold somewhere,” a critic of George Soros, Matt Palumbo, also told the Post. Alexander “is his father’s new ambassador.”
The elder Soros has again recently come under fire from right-wing critics recently after it was revealed he donated $1 million to a political action committee that later backed Alvin Bragg – the Manhattan DA pursuing a criminal conviction of Donald Trump. Soros denies directly funding Bragg or even knowing who he was.
U.S. State Department Explains Cutting Ties With Soros-funded Group
An earlier media report said:
The U.S. State Department said it has pulled funding from the George Soros-backed Global Disinformation Index (GDI), after it was revealed that the organization was working to deprive conservative media outlets of advertising revenue.
GDI is a UK-based nonprofit that describes its mission as “disrupting the business of disinformation.” It does this by compiling lists of “high-risk” news and information outlets – predominantly right-leaning and anti-liberal – and passing these on to advertisers, which in turn refuse to run ads on the sites.
According to a recent investigation by the Washington Examiner, GDI received more than $200,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy and around $100,000 from the Global Engagement Center, both are entities of the U.S. State Department. The funding is in addition to undisclosed amounts from billionaire financier Soros and the UK Foreign Office, both of which are listed as donors on its website.
GDI’s ‘dynamic exclusion list’ features more than 2,000 websites, and the organization’s CEO, Clare Melford, claims that the blacklisting has “had a significant impact on the advertising revenue of these sites.”
When GDI analyzed U.S. news sites for potential targeting, Republican lawmakers were outraged to discover that conservative and libertarian sites were considered the “ten riskiest online news sources,” and demanded that the State Department pull its funding.
The National Endowment for Democracy told the Washington Times on Tuesday that it “will no longer provide financial support to GDI,” as it “cannot fund anything that focuses on the United States.”
A spokesperson for the Global Engagement Center said that its role is to “identify foreign state and non-state disinformation narratives, trends and techniques aimed at undermining the policies, security and stability of the United Statws.”
Both of the U.S. State Department offshoots remain formidable implements of American soft power. In recent months, the National Endowment for Democracy sponsored a gathering of anti-China officials and delegates in Taiwan, and promoted anti-government news outlets during protests in Iran. The Global Engagement Center, meanwhile, has funded video games to warn children about the dangers of so-called “disinformation,” releasing the games in the UK, Ukraine, Latvia, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
In the runup to the 2020 election in the US, the Global Engagement Center also played a key role in pressuring Twitter to censor accounts linked “to the Russian government,” despite being unable to prove any ties.
