Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/29/sandberg-spied-on-soros.html
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Sheesh, no wonder the election-stealing, fair-election-fearing Republicans are trying so hard to demonize this guy.
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Her use of ‘they’ when referring to Facebook comes off as so odd to me.
They turned the antisemites on a holocaust survivor. If only there were a word for people like that.
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“Over the past couple of weeks outlets hare reported on the latest in a string of frankly scandalous issues confronting Facebook and its leadership, the most recent being Facebook’s hiring of an infamous PR firm to spread vicious and frankly anti-semitic attacks on George Soros,” said Peskin on Tuesday.“
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If I were George, I would feel flattered that Sandberg so obviously over-reacted and then compounded the mistake by validating his criticism of their business practices. It sure looks like the fallout of her poor judgement is landing squarely on her. Sometimes justice happens.
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Yeah, I bet he’s just tickled pink over all the bomb threats and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
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I so hope FB doesn’t develop its own nuclear weaponry.
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It’s not just the GOP. He’s describing the world as it is, in a clear-eyed and brutally frank way that goes after every authoritarian regime and corporate monopoly, eschewing sensationalism and hyperbole and suggesting solutions and paths of action in the way that a self-interested investor would.
And that’s why they loathe him. The anti-Semitic canards they use to smear him are for the rubes, but what the right-wing and Libertarian billionaires and the autocrats hate most is that a fellow member of their caste and rarified class is (in their view) betraying them. They’ll tolerate Bill Gates and Warren Buffett talking about giving away their money for the public good, but Soros goes (so to speak) beyond the Pale by talking about “unknown knowns” with the same authority that they’ve attached to all billionaires [ETA: worse, at Davos].
That speaks to Sandberg’s limited conception of what an investment is to Soros. Yes, he’s a ruthless capitalist looking out for the interests of his portfolio. But he also simultaneously and genuinely sees the open society as something worth investing in, even though its value can’t be reduced to quantifiable dollars and cents.
Sandberg can’t really grasp that, and she’s far from alone amongst her industry C-level peers in being unable to do so. So, of course, the financial investigation she commissioned was followed up by the feckless smear campaign that was, at the very least, carried out with her knowledge and approval by the schmoe who just took the the fall for her. For someone incapable of thinking outside the neoliberal consensus view, the slander was the only option available.
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They have already taken most of conventional media advertising. Their astronomical stock valuations are based on expectations of continued exponential growth, but the above suggests they may “hit the wall” in a few years.
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That means the growth isn’t what shareholders expect. The value of their stocks crater. They take the entire tech sector with them in a panic. Next recession. Either that or a tech sector bailout to foist on our debt.
Or maybe my disposition is just a tad too down at one in the morning.
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The headline and block quote don’t tell the story. The information later in the NYT piece does. Facebook didn’t issue a “look into Soros’s finances” order; it issued a “did Soros short our stock after trashing us” order.
Soros held Facebook stock. If he gave a political speech criticizing Facebook’s pernicious influence on democracy and then shorted his stock, he may have committed a felony. This is a man who broke the Bank of England on a short and made a billion pounds, so it’s not like he’s above market manipulation.
We can recognize George Soros’s net positive effect on society while at the same time recognizing that rich financier assholes are still rich financier assholes.
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This is a very interesting theory. Kudos.
Christ, what assholes.
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So, let me guess - standing ovations in Davos after the speech, right?
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I usually go with “Nazi assholes”.
Yes, I’m aware it’s redundant, but then again I’m an engineer.
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Presenting the brand-new MZ-7 intercontinental ballistic missile. Or as we like to call it:
“The Unfriender.”
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