"Soros wants to destroy Western civilization,” Elon Musk tweeted on June 25. “George Soros and his son should stand trial. They are destroying our country,” Donald Trump wrote on his social media platform a less than a year ago. “Soros is the greatest threat to the Western world,” Reform UK leader Nigel Farage declared in 2019. “Children’s minds have been corrupted by Soros textbooks,” Vladimir Putin claimed in September 2025. Then, in the spring of 2026, libraries across Russia began removing books because they had once been purchased with funding from Soros, who was accused of seeking to “undermine the constitutional order.” The philanthropic work of the nonagenarian Soros has been accompanied by conspiracy theories almost from the very beginning. He has been portrayed simultaneously as a former Nazi and a supporter of the Antifa movement, the creator of COVID-19, and the mastermind behind mass migration. As both a financier known for his aggressive investment style and as a liberal philanthropist known for his opposition to authoritarian regimes, Soros has indeed made enemies around the world. Even after stepped away from active management of his foundation three years ago, handing control of his to his younger son, the political right in the United States, Europe, and Russia continue to portray him as the ultimate bogeyman. Notably, the conspiracy theories surrounding him are essentially a modern continuation of earlier antisemitic conspiracies of the last century centered on the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers.