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Handelsblatt refused to publish my letter and the reason they gave will make you pull your hair out

Last week, I wrote a letter to the editor of Handelsblatt in response to an editorial, “In defense of Soros,” by its own editor-in-chief, Andreas Kluth, in which he claimed that “conspiracy theories about George Soros are spreading from Hungary,” and then linked them to the “vilest forms of European anti-Semitism”.

In my letter, I pushed back on this nonsense, but Handelsblatt refused to publish it, saying that, as an opinion piece, Mr. Kluth’s article falls under the category of press freedom. If my response is not taking issue with a factual error but simply expresses a different opinion than the editor, then they will not publish it.

Read the text of my letter below and let that explanation sink in for a moment. My response is simply a differing opinion, you see. In no way does it call attention to the misrepresentation or distortion of facts. And as a differing opinion, mine is not worth publishing. Because press freedom.  Got it?

Here’s the letter:

Dear Editor:

Handelsblatt recently published an editorial, “In defense of Soros,” in which Editor-in-Chief Andreas Kluth claims that “conspiracy theories about George Soros are spreading from Hungary,” and he “traces their origins to the vilest forms of European anti-Semitism” (“THE OUTSIDE VIEW: In defense of Soros,” November 16).

As a defense of Mr. Soros, this one is trite and pathetic. Let’s begin with his most vapid, overused point: anti-Semitism. Haters hate Soros, according to Mr. Kluth, because “Soros is a Jew.”

Ironically, the only ones who talk about George Soros’ Jewish origins are people like Kluth. Why is that?

Prime Minister Orbán and his governments never refer to his Jewish roots. Interestingly, Soros himself talks little about it, emphasizing instead his American identity. Kluth and the liberal, Soros apologists play the Jewish card in a desperate effort to smear those who dare to oppose Soros’ undemocratic, pro-immigration agenda.

It’s nonsense and it needs to stop. It’s a tired, empty argument that intentionally ignores – or attempts to distract from – the real issue at stake.

And that real issue is respect for the will of the people. There’s a difference between working to bring down communist dictatorships, as Soros’ foundations once did, and actively working against democratically elected governments, as Soros and his network do today.

The Soros apologists like to refer to him as a philanthropist who, as Kluth puts it, “gives away a lot of his money,” but they consistently ignore that Soros, by his own very frank admission, is a political actor with a radical, political agenda. “We are actively engaged with everyone, particularly in my native Hungary,” said Soros in an interview in the Wall Street Journal, “where our approach is in direct opposition to the one advocated by the current prime minister, Viktor Orban”.

The man is, of course, entitled to his own views, but he and the network of NGOs that depend on his funding have no democratic legitimacy to push his ideologically driven agenda in Hungary, especially when it concerns big, national security issues like immigration.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been such an outspoken critic and staunch opponent of George Soros because Soros and his network have moved aggressively into the political arena to push an open-borders, pro-immigration agenda that is grossly at odds with the will of Hungarian citizens.

Sincerely yours,

Zoltán Kovács