https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/15/janez-jansa-pushes-far-right-anti-soros-conspiracy-theory-in-twitter-attack-on-mepSlovenian leader Janez Janša has once again courted controversy with a tweet that claims a prominent member of the European Parliament is a “puppet” of billionaire philanthropist George Soros, promoting a conspiracy theory popular with the European far right.
Sophie In ‘t Veld, a Dutch MEP since 2004 and leader of the Democrats 66 political party in Brussels, was pictured alongside 13 others, some of which are no longer MEPs and one of which, Hans van Baalen, died earlier this year.
Janša’s tweet referred to the 13 as “Soros puppets in the EU parlement (sic).”
Soros and his Open Society Foundation have long been a target of the far-right for his philanthropic work and criticism of anti-democratic reforms in countries such as Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Soros, a Jewish Hungarian, is often subject to anti-Semitic slurs and singled out for abuse in Fidesz election material.
