Criticism
Left-wing critics of Soros and the Open Society Foundations argue that these institutions serve primarily to reinforce the existing social order. Nicolas Guilhot, writing in Critical Sociology, connects the Soros charities to the history of capitalist philanthropy maintained by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others. Guilhot argues that control over the social sciences by monied interests has depoliticized this field and reinforced a capitalist view of modernization. He argues that despite critiques of malfunctioning free markets, Soros is actually a neoliberal who believes that competitive markets are the best way to organize society. According to this view, the apparent radicalism of Soros' "open society" serves as cover for the capitalist order, the basic rules of which are never actually questioned or 'opened'.
Right-wing critics—notably Fox News host Glenn Beck—have criticized Soros for using his Open Society Foundations to intentionally undermine societies with the intention of establishing a unitary global government. Beck has argued that the Open Society Foundations have too much control over academics and media, and in some countries have obtained political power that qualifies them as "shadow governments". Supporters of Beck's theory have argued that Soros buys good press by funding Media Matters and Huffington Post.
Read more about this topic: Open Society Foundations
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)