The Hungarian Government’s Failed Campaign of Lies

NEW YORK – In October, Hungary’s government mailed questionnaires to all four million of the country’s households asking for peoples’ views on seven statements describing my alleged plan to flood Europe, and Hungary in particular, with Muslim migrants and refugees. The government made seven assertions about what it calls the “Soros Plan.” I rebutted each and every one based on my published statements or the lack of any published statements that could substantiate them.

Now, the government has released the supposed results of its “national consultation” on my phantom plan, claiming that the exercise was an unprecedented success. I leave it to the Hungarian public to decide whether and to what extent the figure of 2,301,463 participants (out of a population of 9.8 million) was inflated. It should be possible to inspect the list of those who took part and check if they did indeed participate. Instead, I want to focus on the campaign’s substance.

The national consultation and the release of the results are the latest elements of a massive ongoing propaganda campaign funded by Hungarian taxpayers to benefit a deeply corrupt government seeking to deflect attention from its failure to fulfill Hungarians’ legitimate aspirations, particularly in education and health care. The campaign started in the summer by flooding public spaces with posters featuring a close-up of my grinning visage with the words “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh.”

Other posters portrayed me as the puppet-master of opposition politicians. As many have pointed out, the entire campaign carries the unmistakable odor of anti-Semitism.

The government would have you believe that I am an enemy of the Hungarian people. Nothing could be further from the truth. I first opened my philanthropic foundation in Hungary in 1984, when the country was still under the domination of the Soviet Union. Since then, it has provided more than $400 million to strengthen and support the country of my birth.

In the 1990s, as ordinary Hungarians struggled with the transition from communism to a market economy, the foundation funded free milk for elementary school children in Budapest and supplied the first sonogram machines for Hungarian hospitals. More than 3,200 Hungarians have received academic scholarships from the foundation. Many of them have completed their graduate studies at the Central European University (CEU), which I established in Budapest in the early 1990s. CEU now ranks among the top 100 universities in the world in the social sciences – a remarkable achievement for an academic newcomer.

Another element of the propaganda campaign has been to twist the meaning of “open society.” So allow me to clarify what I mean when I use the term. I do not mean open borders and mass migration aimed at destroying the supposedly Christian identity of Hungary, as the government contends.

The open society is based on the idea that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth, and that to live together in peace we must respect minorities and minority opinions. Above all, it is a society based on critical thinking and vigorous public debate about public policies. That is why today my foundation – among many others including the European Union – supports groups such as the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, which protect and promote the values and principles on which the EU was founded.

The government also claims that I control the European institutions in Brussels, and that I am using that control to impose the nefarious “Soros Plan” on EU member states. This is nonsense. Decisions about how to address the migration crisis are made by the EU’s member states, including the Hungarian government. It insults the intelligence of the Hungarian people to suggest otherwise.

I do have deeply held beliefs about how Europe and the rest of the developed world should respond to the refugee crisis, and I have been a vocal advocate of those views. My beliefs are born out of personal experience. I arrived in Britain from Hungary in 1947 as a refugee. I have never encouraged others to become refugees. My parents, together with 200,000 Hungarians, left the country after the defeat of the 1956 revolution, and they received asylum in the United States.

I first published my ideas on the refugee crisis in September 2015, and I have revised them over time, as the facts on the ground have changed. In 2015, I asserted that the developed world should be able to accept at least a million refugees annually; later I reduced that global figure to 500,000, of which I suggested Europe could take 300,000.

My guiding principle is that the allocation of refugees within the EU should be entirely voluntary. Member states should not be forced to accept refugees whom they don’t want, and refugees should not be forced to settle in countries where they are not wanted.

Member states that refuse to accept refugees can make an appropriate contribution in many other ways, but the refugee crisis is a European problem, so it needs a European solution, not 28 separate solutions. It is this set of policy recommendations that the Hungarian government has deliberately distorted and labeled the “Soros Plan.”

Unfortunately, the EU has not adopted my ideas, and the toxic political atmosphere created by Hungary (and Poland) has reduced Europe’s capacity to receive and integrate refugees. I do not blame the Hungarian and Polish governments for refusing to accept refugees they do not want; but I do hold them largely responsible for impeding a European solution.

I remember what happened during World War II, when another group was scapegoated for Europe’s problems. The wounds of the past have left deep scars that have not yet healed, and which today are being reopened. The true purpose of the government’s propaganda campaign is to stoke fear and hatred in the Hungarian people and render them indifferent to the suffering of others.

I am pleased to report that the government’s propaganda campaign has been a dismal failure. Despite the Hungarian government’s concerted efforts, the public was not taken in. My short speech on Hungarian television attracted more than a million viewers, and social media platforms were flooded with outpourings of sympathy and support.

I am greatly heartened by this response. I pledge to devote the remaining years of my life to supporting free thought and expression, academic freedom, and the protection of minorities and minority opinions – not only in my native Hungary, but all over the world.