The “Vast Left-wing Conspiracy”: George Soros’s Democracy Alliance remains a potent force in the 2014 elections

I have an article in the October 2014 issue of Foundation Watch.

It's called The “Vast Left-wing Conspiracy”: George Soros’s Democracy Alliance remains a potent force in the 2014 elections.

It is embedded below:

The “Vast Left-wing Conspiracy” George Soros’s Democracy Alliance remains a potent force in the 2014 electi...

Soros Network Ready to Boost Radical Groups

My article from the July 11, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Soros Network Ready to Boost Radical Groups

By Matthew Vadum

Amidst internal dissent, George Soros’s shadowy political funding powerhouse is planning to execute a $200 million fundraising campaign this election cycle in order to benefit key groups pushing for a permanent radical left-wing Democrat majority.

The billionaire members of the elite fundraising empire known as the Democracy Alliance have reportedly funneled $500 million or more into leftist and pro-Democrat organizations. The goal of the Alliance is to foster a permanent political infrastructure of left-wing nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups.

Among the groups benefiting from the Alliance’s largesse are the John Podesta-founded Center for American Progress, Media Matters for America, America Votes, and Organizing for Action (an outfit that grew out of the Obama campaign and used to be known as Organizing for America).

Much of the money being spent by groups that enjoy support from the Democracy Alliance is being devoted to class warfare and the vilification of right-leaning billionaires Charles and David Koch in order to distract from President Obama’s failed policies. Members of the Alliance are “obsessed with” the Kochs’ funding network, according to Politico‘s Ken Vogel.

“Conservatives, particularly the Koch Brothers, are playing for keeps with an even more pronounced financial advantages [sic] than in recent election cycles,” according to a 62-page briefing book Democracy Alliance donors received before the annual spring of the group at Chicago’s luxurious Ritz-Carlton hotel.

“The briefing book reveals a sort of DA-funded extra-party political machine,” Vogel writes, “that includes sophisticated voter databases and plans to mobilize pivotal Democratic voting blocs, air ads boosting Democratic candidates, while also — perhaps ironically — working to reduce the influence of money in politics.”

As Vogel reports, the Democracy Alliance is embracing a series of projects its leadership believes help to advance the leftist cause.

According to internal documents, at the Chicago meeting the Alliance recommended increasing annual funding of the alleged “conservative misinformation” watchdog Media Matters for America from last year’s level of $2.4 million to $3 million in order to back the group’s “Metis” software for “tracking conservative smears.”

The Alliance also supports training for “acts of civil disobedience” by groups such as the New Organizing Institute, and funding for the Progressive Leaders Network, which has been described as the left-wing counterpart to the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC, which writes model legislation that it promotes in state legislatures, suffered mightily in past years as a result of false accusations of racism that the Van Jones-founded group Color of Change level at it based on ALEC’s previous support for voter ID laws.

Billionaire Leftists Attack Your Gun Rights

My article from the May 28, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Billionaire Leftists Attack Your Gun Rights

By Matthew Vadum

Gun control advocates hoping to capitalize on the tragic incident this weekend in Santa Barbara, California have a powerful asset in their corner this year: Second Amendment-hating billionaires led by George Soros are gearing up for a fresh assault on your constitutional right to defend yourself, your family, and your property.

The Democracy Alliance, a donors collaborative of well over 100 far-left venture capitalists, heirs and heiresses, Hollywood moguls, and unethical bankers, is throwing millions of dollars at left-wing gun-control groups in hopes of preventing the increasingly likely Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate this November.

Soros and other progressive plutocrats plan to send upwards of $175 million to leftist organizations this year to push gun control and the rest of the Left’s agenda, according to documents left behind at a recent Democracy Alliance meeting in Chicago.

Some of the left-wing groups slated to receive hefty donations from Democracy Alliance members include: America Votes ($4 million); American Constitution Society ($1.5 million); Brennan Center for Justice ($2.7 million); Catalist ($750,000); Center for American Progress ($5.5 million); Center for Community Change ($3 million); Center for Budget and Policy Priorities ($2.5 million); Media Matters for America ($3 million); New Organizing Institute ($1 million); Organizing for Action ($1 million); Progress Now ($1.9 million); and State Voices ($2 million).

The mentally unstable head of fake watchdog group Media Matters, former journalist David Brock, himself reportedly has paranoid fantasies that conservatives are trying to kill him. Brock, whose group beats the drum loudly for gun control, also flouts the District of Columbia’s tough gun restrictions. Brock armed his assistant with weapons to protect him from would-be right-wing assassins, a felony in D.C. 

Other groups, many of which focus on the Second Amendment, were listed in a found document called “Democracy Alliance Progressive Infrastructure Map.” The document contains a roster of groups that have previously been approved for funding by the Alliance or that appear to have been deemed eligible for such funding.

Big Labor Taking Over Soros Piggybank

My article from the May 8, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Big Labor Taking Over Soros Piggybank

By Matthew Vadum

An ultra-secretive left-wing money machine for super rich radicals is bringing more representatives of Big Labor into the fold in order to prevent the likely Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate this November.

Thanks to a Democracy Alliance member’s oversight, Americans are getting a sense of what the nation’s wealthy left-wingers have in store for the fall elections and beyond.

As Lachlan Markay of the Washington Free Beacon reported, leftist billionaire George Soros’s son Jonathan left behind a partial membership list of the Democracy Alliance at a meeting in a fancy Chicago hotel last week.

The names on the document suggest that organized labor is becoming increasingly influential within the left-wing plutocrats’ invitation-only club.

New Democracy Alliance members from the labor movement include Noel Beasley, president of Workers United, a textile union affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and Keith Mestrich, president of the union-owned Amalgamated Bank. 

Other new members from Big Labor include Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. CWA senior director George Kohl and Michelle Ringuette, Weingarten’s assistant, also secured memberships in the Democracy Alliance.

But not all new members are professional parasites. Business people joining the Democracy Alliance recently include Adam Abram (insurance and real estate), Rick Segal (financial services), and Paul Boskind (psychology, behavioral health).

Hillary, the Left-Wing Money Machine and a New IRS Crackdown

My article from the April 25, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Hillary, the Left-Wing Money Machine and a New IRS Crackdown

By Matthew Vadum

The Internal Revenue Service has revoked the charitable status of a conservative nonprofit group that disseminated statements critical of Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry a decade ago.

This is President Obama’s unambiguous warning shot calculated to intimidate conservative activists ready to work against Hillary Clinton if she decides to seek the presidency.

And it is the latest outrage committed by an administration that has been on a vindictive rampage in recent years, using the feared tax collection agency to vex and persecute its political enemies, especially those associated with the Tea Party movement. And yet, absurdly enough, President Obama claimed in a Super Bowl weekend interview that there has not been even “a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS under his watch.

All of this is a sobering reminder of how the scales are tipped in favor of the Left. Left-wing nonprofit groups, many of which rely on radical billionaires for funding, vastly outspend conservative groups, which tend to rely more on grassroots donations. Leftist organizations operate with almost complete impunity nowadays, unimpeded as they influence and pervert American politics in an effort to fundamentally transform our republic.

‘Panicked’ Soros Bankrolls Obama Campaign

My article from the October 1, 2012, issue of Front Page Magazine:

‘Panicked’ Soros Bankrolls Obama Campaign

By Matthew Vadum

George Soros is airdropping bushels of cash to the Obama campaign because the preeminent funder of the Left is reportedly “panicked” that Mitt Romney could win in November and halt America’s ongoing slide into socialist chaos and civil unrest.

Soros’s alarm at the prospect of a Romney victory may also have led him to squelch a report in the Soros-funded Mother Jones magazine that revealed his desperate state of mind.

“Is there possibly some panic among the liberal elite that the media are not telling us about? Amazingly, Mother Jones might have accidentally provided a clue – and then quickly covered it up,” opines Big Journalism.

After Romney pulled even in recent national polls –and after pledging for the umpteenth time to get out of electoral politics– America’s anxious would-be undertaker committed to spending an extra $1.5 million on reelecting Obama and helping congressional Democrats. Soros previously bankrolled a leftist scheme called the Secretary of State Project that aspired to rig elections from coast to coast. He also indirectly funded Occupy Wall Street.

A currency speculator and convicted inside-trader, Soros is a practiced hand-wringer who frequently tells gullible reporters he is getting out of electoral politics altogether. This is his mantra between elections even though he never actually follows through on the threat.

Soros openly favors the collapse of the greenback and the decline of America in general. “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States,” he has said. He has also said European-style socialism “is exactly what we need now.” He praises Communist China effusively, saying the brutal totalitarian nation that literally cuts babies from unauthorized pregnancies from the wombs of their mothers and runs over eminent domain resisters with steam-rollers, has “a better-functioning government than the United States.”

Soros also seems to suffer from messianic delusions, describing himself as “some kind of god, the creator of everything.” During World War II, Soros accompanied his guardian around Nazi-occupied Hungary as he confiscated the property of Soros’s fellow Jews. Years later he referred to that time as “probably the happiest year of my life” and “a very happy-making, exhilarating experience.”

Soros will give $1 million to Priorities USA Action, the super PAC that produced the infamous TV ad in which ex-steelworker Joe Soptic falsely blamed his wife’s tragic cancer death on Romney. Soros is splitting $500,000 between Majority PAC and House Majority PAC, both of which back Democrats seeking congressional office, the New York Times reports.

The Obama campaign also appears to be panicking. Chicago’s mayor, the ruthless former Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, is exiting the Obama campaign to help raise money for Priorities USA Action. If anyone can put together an ad more loathsome than the Soptic spot, Emanuel’s the man.

The new donations were announced by Soros spokesman Michael Vachon at a luncheon Thursday hosted by the Democracy Alliance, an invitation-only club for radical plutocrats. (Former President Bill Clinton and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were also in attendance.) Members of the ultra-secretive Democracy Alliance have committed to swamping Democrats and President Obama’s re-election campaign in an ocean of cash this year. Donations could easily reach $100 million or much more before Election Day, especially because other Democracy Alliance members are following Soros’s lead.

The ultra-secretive group, founded in 2005, is a financial clearinghouse that recommends to its wealthy members projects and groups that aspire to dismantle America as we know it, delivering the nation to Greek-style socialist mayhem. The group has directed untold hundreds of millions of dollars to left-of-center causes.

To quell rumors that he was unhappy with Obama, Soros sent an email to other luncheon guests saying, “I fully support the re-election of President Obama.” Soros wrote that he was “appalled by the Romney campaign, which is openly soliciting the money of the rich to starve the state of the money it needs to provide social services.”

This new $1.5 million is over and above the $1 million that Soros pledged to America Votes, a get-out-the-vote group, and the $1 million he pledged to American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC headed by the legendarily sleazy gossip columnist and admitted serial liar David Brock.

Meanwhile, Mother Jones, the media outlet that described Soros as “panicked” because Obama has yet to deliver a knockout blow to Romney, offered what looks like a case study in media corruption. The magazine posted a hard-to-believe retraction of the online story that contained the otherwise perfectly believable description of Soros’s state of mind. (Big Journalism has a screen grab of the article that you may read here.)

Integrity is in short supply at Mother Jones, which recently published the Romney “47 percent” video in an effort to help Obama even though possibly critical minutes of the off-the-cuff speech were missing. 

The magazine was founded by the same Marxists, hippies, and Sixties leftovers who facilitated America’s suicide attempt more than 40 years ago.

The article appeared on the magazine’s website for a while Thursday but was abruptly spiked. A notice 

indicated, “The story was based on information provided by a source; the source contacted us after the story was published and said the information was incorrect.”

The article quoted an unidentified friend of Soros saying, “I was really dumbfounded when I heard his voice on the other end of the phone. He was the last person I ever expected to hear from, given how antithetical he was to the big money slopping around the system. But he said that he was panicked about the fact that Romney could win this.”

An unidentified Democratic strategist –it’s not clear if it’s the same person as the unidentified friend— was described as saying, “What I find amazing about liberals and progressives is that they always wait till the last minute. It hadn’t dawned on this group of people before that this was a tight race. It stupefies me.”

It seems likely that Soros or someone close to Soros complained to Mother Jones and the story was pulled.

I tried to find out what happened.

The author of the article, Andy Kroll, referred my inquiries to Clara Jeffery, the magazine’s co-editor-in-chief. Jeffery denied being pressured. In an email she said:

Not sure what else I can add without repeating the error. Basically a source in a position to know about Soros’ donation (the fact of which has been previously reported far and wide), told us details that they then realized they’d been in error about. The source admitted the fault was theirs, and not Andy Kroll’s. We took the story down immediately upon hearing from source and issued the correction. To do otherwise would, in our opinion, [have] been journalistically irresponsible. We did not hear from Mr. Soros or his representatives.

With that said, it is a fact that the magazine’s 501c3 nonprofit, Foundation for National Progress, has received funding through Soros’s philanthropies, Open Society Institute ($225,000 since 2008) and Foundation to Promote Open Society ($100,000 since 2010).

Democracy Alliance chairman and Taco Bell heir Rob McKay was a member of the magazine’s board. 

Through the McKay Foundation he has given the Foundation for National Progress $165,000 since 1999.

Democracy Alliance member and RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser has given FNP $211,329 since 1999. Another member, Stephen M. Silberstein, has given $117,000 since 2001 through his eponymous foundation. The Soros-funded Tides Foundation, founded by Democracy Alliance member Drummond Pike, has kicked in $126,417 since 2003.

Jeffery suggested the money played no role in the retraction:

The individuals (or their foundations) you mention are among the many people and institutions who have donated money to the FNP over the years; some of those you mention have not donated to the FNP in many years.  Nevertheless, when we’ve had occasion to write about them, or the Democracy Alliance, or OSI, we disclose this to our readers.

When I pressed Jeffery, asking her if the source specifically took back the claim that Soros “panicked,” she refused to answer, writing, “Sorry Matt, [I] just don’t have anything to add past what I’ve told you and what we’ve posted.”

Who knows how many more intrigues, cover-ups, and October surprises the Soros-funded magazine has waiting in the wings.

Soros Opens the Spigot

My article from today's Front Page Magazine:

Soros Opens the Spigot

By Matthew Vadum

George Soros is once again putting his money where his mouth is.

The Left’s favorite Wall Street billionaire and a cohort of his radical confederates are promising to contribute as much as $100 million to help the Democratic Party win this November so it can lay the groundwork for the destruction of what’s left of American civil society.


News of the trust fund tidal wave comes after the Soros-funded Democracy Alliance opted to drown Democrats and President Obama’s re-election campaign in an ocean of cash this year. The ultra-secretive group, founded in 2005, is a financial clearinghouse that recommends to its wealthy members projects and groups that aspire to dismantle America as we know it, transforming the nation into a European-style socialist state. The group has directed untold hundreds of millions of dollars to left-of-center causes.

Leftist War Chest on the Verge of Collapse?

My article from the April 3 Front Page Magazine:

Leftist War Chest on the Verge of Collapse? 

By Matthew Vadum

A serious internal schism has developed that threatens to destroy the Democracy Alliance, George Soros’s financial clearinghouse that funds groups and projects aimed at turning America into a European-style socialist state.

The preeminent funder of the Left in the United States, Soros favors American decline and has said that European-style socialism “is exactly what we need now.” The radical, anti-American philanthropist praises Red China effusively, saying the totalitarian nation has “a better-functioning government than the United States.”

The conflict within Soros’s group has created two factions.

On one side are Democracy Alliance members who believe in the original mission of the donors’ collaborative. Created after Democrats failed to reclaim power in the 2004 election, the group started out funding left-wing political infrastructure – think tanks, activist groups, leadership schools, and media outlets— to help the Left gain and keep power. The idea was to focus on long-term organizational issues as opposed to helping Democrats get elected every election cycle.

Left versus Left

My op-ed in the April 6 print edition of the Washington Times:

VADUM: Left vs. left

Soros club for rich liberals flounders between short- and long-term goals

By Matthew Vadum

George Soros‘ Democracy Alliance, an invitation-only club for billionaire leftist political donors, has decided to drown Democrats and President Obama’s re-election campaign in an ocean of cash this year. Democracy Alliance, founded in 2005, is a financial clearinghouse that recommends to its wealthy members projects and groups aimed at transforming America into a European-style socialist state. The secretive group has directed untold hundreds of millions of dollars to left-of-center causes.

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Soros, he is the pre-eminent funder of the left in the United States. He openly favors American decline and has said European-style socialism “is exactly what we need now.” The radical, anti-American philanthropist praises China effusively, saying the totalitarian nation has “a better-functioning government than the United States.” Mr. Soros already has begun doling out funds for Democrats. In the 2012 cycle, he has given a modest $203,500, but that number promises to rise exponentially.

Democracy Alliance’s original mission was to focus on building political infrastructure - think tanks, activist groups, leadership schools and media outlets - to help the left gain and keep power. The idea was to focus on long-term organizational issues as opposed to the more mundane task of helping Democrats get elected every election cycle.

But political expediency has forced a stunning course correction that is causing deep fissures in Democracy Alliance that ultimately may destroy it. On one side of an internal divide are Democracy Alliance members who believe in the original mission of the donors’ collaboration.

Soros doppelganger Peter B. Lewis, who helped found the group with Mr. Soros, thinks Democracy Alliance has become far too partisan. In a crushing blow to the club, the Progressive Insurance magnate, who spent $25 million in 2004 in a failed attempt to defeat President George W. Bush, reportedly resigned from Democracy Alliance in disgust weeks ago.

ACORN’s Garbage Stunt at Wells Fargo Backfires

Nobody ever said all the criminal street thugs at ACORN were bright.

The left-wing astroturfers of ACORN’s new front group in California, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), were behind a garbage-dumping stunt at a branch of Wells Fargo bank in San Jose, Calif.

News reports consistently depict the players as angry homeowners who spontaneously erupted in a spasm of righteous indignation. As if.

These “homeowners” were reportedly unhappy about the upkeep at a foreclosed property they thought Wells Fargo was responsible for so they decided to dump uncollected garbage at the bank. The problem is that while Wells Fargo is listed as a trustee for the property, it is actually owned by Bank of America, a longtime ACORN ally. (In recent years Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc. has given $5 million to the mortgage bubble generators at ACORN Housing Corp.)

In a still from a TV news report on ACORN’s act of political theater an angry protester can be seen holding a sign that reads: “MAKE THE BANKS PAY! ACCE.” (The full video is embedded below.)

Whoops.

ACORN has long waged a war against Wells Fargo. As I explain in my new book Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, the competitors of Wells Fargo paid ACORN handsomely to blacken the bank's name.

Predatory lenders Herb and Marion Sandler paid ACORN $11 million over the years to attack Wells Fargo, the main competition in California for their lending institution, World Savings Bank. The Sandlers are radical left-wingers who belong to George Soros’s Democracy Alliance, a club of billionaires that funds political infrastructure aimed at pushing America to the left.

The Sandlers are loan sharks whom Time magazine included in its “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis” list. They preyed on the poor for years and paid ACORN, which also preys on the poor, to help them.

Such garbage.

* * * * *

America needs to know that ACORN is restructuring in time to help re-elect President Obama in 2012. Obama used to work for ACORN and represented the group in court as its lawyer. These radical leftists who use the brutal, in-your-face, pressure tactics of Saul Alinsky want to destroy America as we know it and will use any means to do it.

Buy the book Subversion Inc. at Amazon and in Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million bookstores. Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.

Citizen Soros: Manipulating the Media (Part 1 of 3), by Matthew Vadum

He has conquered the world of finance and remains firmly on top of it. He writes bestselling books. He dominates leftist philanthropy. He co-founded the Democracy Alliance, an ultra-secretive billionaires’ club that wants to transform America into a European-style socialist state – or worse. He owns the Democratic Party. Now George Soros, who also fancies himself a philosopher, is positioning himself as a media magnate in order to continue his assault on America’s values and institutions.

Like the protagonist in the classic Orson Welles movie Citizen Kane, Soros can never have enough power. But unlike Charles Foster Kane, the haughty, imperious fictional media mogul, Soros views himself as much more than a mere leader. With a straight face he told reporters, “It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” (The Independent – UK, June 3, 1993)


Although markets have helped make him a billionaire several times over, Soros has declared war on capitalism. He blames markets and something he calls “market fundamentalism”— and not the suffocating regulations and high taxes his funding of left-wing groups promotes – for the current economic slowdown. “The entire edifice of global financial markets has been erected on the false premise that markets can be left to their own devices, we must find a new paradigm and rebuild from the ground up.”


“The system we have now has actually broken down, only we haven’t quite recognized it and so you need to create a new one and this is the time to do it,” Soros told the Financial Times in 2009. In an interview with Der Spiegel the previous year Soros said European-style socialism “is exactly what we need now. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful – but also very harmful to our society.”


Only in the twisted messianic fantasies of this octogenarian billionaire whose demeanor is that of a James Bond villain could such phantom armies of marauding free market fundamentalists wreak havoc on America. Perhaps these were the same laissez-faire legionnaires who brought us Sarbanes-Oxley, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government bailouts of private industry, farm subsidies, ethanol mandates, smart growth, and the disastrous Community Reinvestment Act in recent decades.