There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

by Fiona Hill

Finkelstein and Birnbaum decided they should create an external political enemy to help Orbán mobilize support for his bid to become Hungarian prime minister. They selected Soros, a prominent Hungarian Jew whose family had fled Budapest during the Holocaust. Soros was both famous and controversial, and still connected to Hungary. He funded a range of nonprofit organizations and educational institutions there and had even provided a scholarship for Orbán early in his career. It was not a complete stretch to suggest that Soros had now turned against Orbán and was trying to pull political strings to control the country from abroad, all for disreputable left-wing purposes. The Soros ploy was successful. Orbán won the ballot and became prime minister. Soros became his permanent political foil, rolled out at every election. Finkelstein and Birnbaum then refreshed the Soros conspiracy for political figures elsewhere, including in the United States. Finkelstein was a political player in Republican Party circles and connected to Roger Stone. By 2016, Soros was also one of Trump’s political enemies.