And the ripples start rippling across...
George Soros NGOs to face crack down in Hungary thanks to Donald Trump's victory Bold move, or just batshit insane? Orban seems to have ganked a few lines out of Putin's book, including his paranoia about the Bilderberger/Illuminati global conspiracy. Or could there be a grain of truth in all these accusations? I mean, as much as Soros has been demonized and presented as the face of evil incarnate and the standard-bearer of everything that is bad and corrupt about globalization, it's not like he has exactly stayed away from manipulating markets, crashing national currencies, and all in all, exploiting situations to his own benefit.
Some are already arguing that the move is apparently part of a global trend, an end of the "Clinton-Obama era", whatever that's supposed to mean. I'd argue there's no such "era", it's just the Pax Americana working its work for decades (we've all heard of the Economic Hit Man scheme already).
Others are rather eager to defend Soros as a brave man who has taken up causes that are outside the nice PR type of philanthropy, like promoting actual open democratic society and values that he generally endorses.
So what do you make of this move? Is this the beginning of the end of this sort of philanthropy with a political agenda, or it's just a tempest in a teacup, a minor Central European wannabe-dictator trying to emulate his Big Brother mentor from the East, and pandering to the conspiracy-theory prone crackpots that happen to constitute the core of his base? In other words, mostly a move for domestic consumption?