Monday, July 23, 2018

CRC's Deceptive Soros Video

The Capital Research Center has come out with a strange Youtube video. 




A comment posted under the video reads: 
Wow, this is propaganda taken to another level... First of all, Crăciun and ...that other guy (where did you even find him?) were NOT by any means „leaders” of the people that had taken to the streets after the Colectiv fire (I was one of them, as were most of my friends). Crăciun is a well-known left-wing activist and his attempts to urge the crowd to do as he pleaded were generally met with hostility, as most of the young people that flooded the streets in 2015 and the hundreds of thousands that have done the same in 2017 are what you would call classical liberals, which is considered right-wing in Europe. Also, Ponta is a socialist and he was prime-minister as president of the Social-Democrat Party, so trying to say that the (allegedly) socialist Soros supported the toppling of a socialist government is beyond the pale. In this light, the fact that a the conservative Capital Research Center is practically supporting a socialist is... weird, to say the least. Secondly, more than 100,000 people protested all throughout the country, not just 30,000 in Bucharest. The figure was unprecedented and people felt a true, non-partisan, non-political thirst for justice. Third, Ponta did not resign due to the pressure of the street. The people would have been satisfied if the district mayor and a few other low-level party-supported public servants would have been sacrificed. Ponta was pushed out by Liviu Dragnea, the second in command in the Socialist Democrat Party, who saw this unfortunate event as an opportunity to take over the party. Fourth, CSCI, the opinion polling institute whose survey you mention in the video is owned by Dan Sultănescu (and his family). Sultănescu was, coincidentally, I'm sure, Victor Ponta's image counselor. You know what is CSCI's claim to fame? They screwed the exit-polling for the 2014 presidential elections so bad that their results were out by 2,000,000 votes in favor of Victor Ponta (who had actually lost the elections). That's 2 million votes, an error margin so bad they were publicly laughed at. Also, I looked up the quote by Florin Bădiță (no idea where you dug this dude up from) and it is painfully obvious that he was being sarcastic when he stated that „Soros manipulated me and...” That's some Bible-class level cherrypicking. You also fail to mention that Dacian Cioloș was not only appointed by the president, but also voted as prime-minister through a majority vote in the Houses of Parliament, where 389 of 506 representatives voted him in. He was also voted by most members of PSD, the party previously led by Victor Ponta. Cioloș was not made prime-minister though a presidential coup, but was democratically voted by elected representatives of the people. In conclusion, the perspective you present in this video is a ideologically-driven perversion of reality. Shame on you. Do you research next time.

At about one minute and 25 seconds the video quotes Romanian activist Florin Bădiță, attributing to him the words: “Soros manipulated me and taught me how to question the state.” A very strange thing to say indeed. The problem is not that the quote is false. It was something Bădiță said in an interview, which can be found here. However, it is apparent that his words have been seriously taken out of context. A Romanian Reddit-user translated the passage in question as:

I also had a good relation with the Soros Foundation. I attended a hackaton organized by the PSD (Social Democratic Party) government together with the Soros Foundation in 2014.
I also visited the Soros Foundation in 2013 for a training session, during which Soros manipulated me and taught me how to question the state, how to find out if a municipality is stealing public funds and or not. I also found out how to send requests according to Law 544/2001 [the law regarding the right of citizens to free access to public interest information].

Bădiță does not seem to have been talking about his relationship with Soros without humor. To make sure, I also ran the Romanian interview through Google Translate to make sure this Reddit-user wasn't being deceptive either, and, indeed, it seems they weren't. 

Perhaps it's not right for someone with far fewer credentials to come out throwing around accusations when the trigger is a Youtube comment. But the fact that CRC or Jacob Grandstaff allowed this to pass says something bad about their integrity. Maybe they owe George Soros an apology?