George of the Jungle - a response t

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Subject: George of the Jungle - a response to Soros hysteria in Malaysia

[The following article was featured in the August edition of Men?s Review,
an English language monthly magazine produced in Malaysia, in response to
the Soros hysteria whipped up by Dr Mahathir.]

GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE
Venturing into the unknown, in search of the S-Files featuring the shadowy
profile of George Soros is SHERYLL STOTHARD. Don?t take it personal.

Dr M has spoken ? the new foreign devil of the month is one George Soros,
the capitalist who would be God. Though the perpetrator is a new face on the
ASEAN block, the Plot reads wearily as the much-regurgitated and tired old
"Jealous Westerners undermine our phenomenal economic success" line. Or does it?

Who is Soros ? and is the fact that his name is a palindrome of any sinister
significance in the discussion of ASEAN?s latest conspiracy theory?

Like all conspiracy theories ? in the style of the fin-de-siecle X-Files ?
the Soros Factor is redolent with all the necessary trappings of speculation
(pardon the pun), intrigue and Alice In Wonderland-like farce. Here are the
highlights:

On July 2, after weeks of war between Thailand?s central bank and various
currency speculators, the former announces that it would no longer defend
the baht. The baht?s devaluation starts a domino effect among other
Southeast Asian currencies ? notably the Filipino peso, Malaysian ringgit
and even the Singaporean dollar. Malaysia?s Bank Negara defends the ringgit
up to July 14 before throwing in the towel and giving in to malevolent
market forces.

On July 22, Dr M returns to Malaysia after long leave, smack into the middle
of the ASEAN tea-party of the year at the Sunway Lagoon Resort ? a bizarre,
yet strangely appropriate location ? with rhetoric guns blazing about a
foreign plot to undermine years of economic stability and success in the
region. This echoes Foreign Minister Badawi?s earlier reference to the ASEAN
currency speculation issue as an "unholy" coordinated attack on Southeast
Asia?s stable economies. 

Nothing new ? so far. Ironically, even as Central Banks around Southeast
Asia jumped on the evil foreign speculator bandwagon, Asian pundits quietly
acknowledged that most of the selling pressure had come from local players,
who ? shock, horror! ? had also bet against their own home currencies to
make quick profits: "Many sellers of Asian currencies have been local
players, either banks or corporations. International bankers in Singapore
say, for example, they were constantly being approached by Thai banks
offering to sell baht?" the Far Eastern Economic Review, July 24, 1997.

Then Dr M throws in the mother of all agendas to stir up more excitement
with his barely veiled reference to a billionaire speculator?s politically
motivated plot to punish ASEAN for admitting Burma into its hallowed halls.

The media then goes into a tailspin. Dr M then comes out to name Soros as
the speculator who would be Robin Hood, linking the billionaire?s interest
in the ringgit to human rights in Burma. Everywhere in Malaysia, Mak
Datins*, forced to postpone annual forays to summer sales in the US because
of the ringgit devaluation, ask themselves, "Who is Soros? New NGO, ah?" The
stage is set for Plot, Conspiracy and More Intrigue.   

Consider a few seemingly unrelated facts about George Soros. Mix it up and
voila! ? we have an Oliver Stone movie, ASEAN-style.

$ Soros spelt backwards spells Soros. Insignificant coincidence, you say?
Well, it must have been a coincidence sinister enough for The Economist ?
leading Western defender of free-market capitalism - to pick up in its
strongly anti-Soros editorial "Palindrome Repents" early this year.

$ As a child, Soros believed he was God, a delusion that has persisted into
late adulthood: "It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some
kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable now since I
began to live it out."

$ Like all God wannabes, Soros suffered periods of exile, escaping the Nazis
and then Communists respectively in his native Hungary, before escaping to
the London School of Economics?

$ ...where he came under the evil influence of its Professor of Logic and
Scientific Method, Karl Popper, notably by the latter?s 1945 publication The
Open Society and Its Enemies. (Incidentally, Popper should now officially
replace Huntington as the new intellectual bete noire in Asia after all this?)

The concept of Popper?s and subsequently, Soros? utopian Open Society is a
"form of social organisation based on the recognition that nobody has a
monopoly of truth, that different people have different views and interests,
and that there is a need for institutions to protect the rights of all
people to allow them to live together in peace." (from the official Soros
homepage, no less: http://www.soros.org.

The obviously sinister connotations of this message (in direct confrontation
with the fundamental belief in the establishment of various monopolies of
truth in ASEAN nations), have foreshadowed the July crisis of currencies in
ASEAN and the Soros reign of terror?

$ ...to subvert the decades of hard work put into the establishment of
Monopolies of Truth around the Southeast Asian region, as is happening?

$ ...in Burma, for instance. The Burma Project, which operates out of New
York (which, according to Rehman Rashid, is the real Babylon of the Book of
Revelations) and is supported financially by Soros? Open Society Insititute,
doesn?t even bother to conceal its sinister plot to assist Burma?s
transition from a closed, military regime to an open democratic society.

To pay for all this subversive activity, Soros draws upon his hugely
successful Quantum Fund, the investment fund that enjoys the dubious
reputation as having the best performance record of any investment fund in
the world since it started 27 years ago.

In the last three years, Soros has contributed at least US$ 1 billion to his
varied causes, notably South Africa, Eastern European democracy causes
(including Bosnia), American inner-city problems, people with fatal diseases
and now, Burma. A capitalist with a heart? Hardly, which brings us to the
latest Soros outing?

$ ?in his long and incoherent anti-capitalism treatise in the February issue
of the Atlantic Monthly, a self-flagellating exercise that drew horrified
reactions across the world at the author?s very public biting of the very
hand that fed him all these years.

Soros? "The Capitalist Threat" argued for his much-flogged Open Society
ideals against laissez-faire capitalism rampant in the world today. (For the
whole unexpurgated text, go to
http://www.theatlantic.com/97feb/capital/capital.htm.)

The basis of this excruciatingly protracted article is the argument that
capitalism is as much a voodoo science as Marxism and has replaced fascism
and communism as the biggest threat to mankind...

$ ...to which the firmly capitalist Western world has responded with the
necessary contempt: "Mr Soros can only be hallucinating?" shrilled The
Economist; "The danger in Soros? ranting is that it will win undeserved
attention because of who he is. A billionaire ? a speculator, no less ? who
trashes capitalism," groaned Fortune; "Littered with incomplete arguments,
passive verbs and infuriating vagueness, ?The Capitalist Threat? is more
memo than manifesto," complained Salon?s Media Circus columnist.

And yet, as all mad men are given to inspire, Soros has touched a
sympathetic nerve among trendy anti-capitalist humanists around the world:
"The very illogic and obscurity of Soros? diatribe may, ironically, enhance
its appeal. It panders to a fashionable anti-capitalist chic," Robert
Samuelson in Newsweek.

Which brings us back to the original ideology of Popper?s Open Society,
which was, actually first coined by French philosopher Henri Bergson, who
was also, notably, an influence on?

$ ...TS Eliot, the right-wing conservative poet-critic (whose name,
incidentally is an anagram for ?Toilets?, as cannily pointed out yet again
by Rehman Rashid), who was, incidentally, frequently quoted in?

$ ...The Asian Renaissance by Malaysia?s Finance Minister?

$ ...whose concept of a masyarakat madani (civil society) sounds
suspiciously like the Bergsonian-Popper-Soros Open Society concept?

$ ...and whose political career has very much been due to the patronage of
his mentor, Dr M, himself?

$ ...whose own rhetoric against Western capitalism and free market
subversion in this region, strangely enough, is not far different from
Soros? capitalist threat theories?

$ ...and whose recent forays into championing human rights issues in South
Africa and former communist Eastern European nations like Bosnia, oddly
enough, mirror Soros? own interests in these regions?

And consider this: the foreign media which has consistently demonised Soros,
has, in turn, been consistently demonised by our esteemed leaders?

And so, the plot thickens. 

The Truth is Out There (... and it might not be a monopoly after all?)

(Sheryll Stothard, 1997. <sheryll@xxxxxxxxxxxx>) 

*Mak Datin = slang for society matron/high society women