That right-wing people in the US and Europe have made George Soros the answer to so many troubling questions is not very surprising: he’s a billionaire, he’s Jewish and, unlike most of his cohort, he is an actual intellectual who spends much of his money on substantively progressive causes. Daniel Bessner’s essay on him in n+1, however, not only sketches out the right’s obsessions but also offers a detailed analysis of Soros as a thinker and philanthropist—coming to the conclusion that Soros’ hope for an open and pluralistic society will be forever doomed if we continue to live under the very capitalist system that made him so spectacularly rich. Here’s Soros’s response in The Guardian.

Live recording of The Dig coming up in New York City. Friday, August 17, 7 PM at Verso Books (20 Jay Street in Brooklyn). It’s called Blockadia and Beyond: Left climate politics for the 21st century https://www.facebook.com/events/2042636042656908/?active_tab=about

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out The Amateur: The Pleasures of Doing What You Love by Andy Merrifield versobooks.com/books/2765-the-amateur

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