Did George Soros say "Those who oppose my agenda are white supremacists"? No, that's not true: There is no verifiable evidence or credible source that supports the assertion that Soros said this or that the statement attributed to him is a close paraphrase of something said by the Hungarian-born American financier, philanthropist and activist, who is also one of the wealthiest people in the world.
The claim appeared in an article (archived here) published by The People's Voice on May 20, 2023, titled "George Soros: 'Those Who Oppose My Agenda Are White Supremacists.'" This is how the article opens:
Far-left billionaire George Soros has declared that any person or institution that criticizes his globalist agenda is guilty of being a white supremacist.
This is what the article looked like on The People's Voice website at the time of writing:
(Source: The People's Voice screenshot taken on Thu May 25 14:52:49 2023 UTC)
Google search
There's no evidence that Soros said these words: "Those Who Oppose My Agenda Are White Supremacists." A Google news search for "Soros" and the quote produced no results. See below:
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Thu May 15:58:20 2023 UTC)
However, the search did produce dozens of results when the quotation marks around the purported direct quote were removed. Many news stories in the search focused on why Soros is the focus of so many antisemitic conspiracy theories.
The article
In apparent support of its case against Soros, The People's Voice cites a paper, "Antisemitism on Twitter Before and After Elon Musk's Acquisition," by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think tank that received more than $2.7 million in direct or indirect funding from Soros' Open Society Foundations between 2017 and 2021. The suggestion in the article is that because of the large sum of money involved any conclusions made in the paper are either endorsed by or heavily influenced by the billionaire.
There is no mention of a Soros agenda in the ISD paper or that those who oppose him are white supremacists but it does discuss how he is a regular focus of antisemitic posts on Twitter. Page 16 in the paper says:
George Soros is - by far - the most mentioned person within antisemitic Tweets, followed by Jesus, Hitler and Trump. The names reflect the array of different themes we identified, ranging from conspiracy theory, race and politics, to Nazism, Ukraine and Kanye West.
The paper on page 2 says antisemitic tweets are up 106 percent since Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter on October 27, 2022.
"Soros" was one of 10 themes of antisemitism covered in the paper (starting on page 11). The list also included "Jewish control of the world" and the "Russian invasion of Ukraine."
In addition, the term "white supremacists," either plural or singular, never appears in the paper. The word "supremacist" was found once.
Lead Stories observed no theme in the paper or direct reference to the idea that those who oppose the undefined notion of a "George Soros agenda" are white supremacists.
About The People's Voice
The People's Voice is among the most prolific online publishers of fake news. It has published numerous fake news articles, so anything it publishes should be taken with a large grain of salt. Its Facebook page, "The People's Voice," lost its verification checkmark, according to a 2018 report from Media Matters For America.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to George Soros can be found here.
