Soros Pumps $81M to Censor Election Speech Online
A media group funded by billionaire leftist George Soros is seeking to implement a global plan to pressure Big Tech social media platforms to censor more content before November's presidential election.
The group called Free Press is leading the charge to restrict free speech online, the Media Research Center reported Tuesday. MRC described Free Press — not to be confused with The Free Press media outlet helmed by former New York Times editor Bari Weiss — as an activist organization disguised as a journalism operation that uses its sizable resources to push the federal government and Big Tech to silence conservative speech.
Free Press, which MRC said claimed responsibility for helping to get former President Donald Trump banned from Twitter, bragged in a news release about a letter sent by a coalition of more than 200 "civil-society organizations, researchers, and journalists" to the heads of Big Tech companies such as Google, Instagram, Discord, X, and TikTok. In it, the groups called for the companies to reduce "interventions necessary to keep online platforms" allegedly "safe and healthy" and demanded "swift action" to protect "democracy."
MRC said its research unveiled that Soros packed the coffers of at least 45 of the signatories with $80.7 million combined between 2016 and 2022.
The letter attempted to justify that it was written with reducing "real-world harms" and "the rise of extremism and violent attempts to overthrow democratic governments." But it appears its true design was to pressure Big Tech companies to silence speech the left despises as 60 countries across the globe gear up for elections in 2024, the MRC reported.
"Even more disturbing was the letter's implication that its primary target is interfering in the 2024 U.S. election," the MRC reported. "This development is directly in line with Soros' brand, of which he has dedicated millions of his ungodly fortune to groups looking to interfere in elections by stifling online speech."
The letter made six demands of the Big Tech companies, the first of which called for investment "in greater platform integrity by reinstating election-integrity policies, inclusive of moderating content around the Big Lie," defined by co-signatory Brennan Center for Justice, which has received funding from Soros, as the idea the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
The MRC reported the signatory that received the most Soros funding was Global Witness, which MRC said is on record for pressuring Facebook and TikTok to increase censorship operations before the 2022 midterm elections. Global Witness hauled in $20.3 million from Soros between 2016 and 2022, the MRC said.
Strategic Dialogue, another signatory that received $3.1 million from Soros between 2017 and 2022, was recently exposed by a House Judiciary Committee investigation for co-authoring a "hate groups" blacklist with the Soros-funded Global Disinformation Index targeting "conservative" and faith-based organizations, the MRC said.
"The fact that Free Press is at the tip of this Soros-tied spear should concern every American," the MRC said. "Free Press' obsession with censorship and gaining control of the Internet cannot be overstated.
"This is the same group that boasted how it was 'involved in direct talks that pressured Google and Amazon' to boot the 'dangerous' pro-free speech platform Parler from their platforms because of so-called 'election lies.'"
