Wiesenthal Center Applauds the End “Laughing Soros" Poster Campaign in Hungary

July 14, 2017

“In advance of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Budapest, the Hungarian government has announced the end to a propaganda campaign of demonizing a 'laughing' George Soros,” said Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Dean and Founder and Associate Dean and Director of the Global Social Action Agenda of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish Human Rights NGO. “This is the proper response to the criticism from the Hungarian Jewish community’s leadership, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and others,” they added.

“It is critically important that officials of Prime Minister Orban’s government understand going forward that a poster campaign which in too many ways closely resembles Nazi, anti-Semitic, poster art— employing memes of laughing Jews and Jews as puppet masters— has no place in civilized society,” Rabbis Hier and Cooper also said.

“Mr. Soros is a highly controversial figure who should not be immune from criticism. But Prime Minister Orban and his Administration should never be involved with propaganda campaigns that encourage--directly or indirectly-- anti-Semitic sentiment in Hungary, sentiments that are never far from the surface,” Hier and Cooper concluded.

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).