After the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the media took note of the shooter’s love of conspiracy theories where George Soros was the “puppetmaster” in running the world. Everyone accepted that the idea of a Jewish puppetmaster was a pernicious, centuries-old antisemitic trope.
From Vox soon after the attack:
Anti-Semitic pamphlets and imagery throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries visually portrayed the Jew as something between a corporate fat cat and a shadowy overlord; someone “cosmopolitan,” urbane (and urban), and dangerous.
This rhetoric reveals the extent to which Jews were seen as scapegoats, responsible for somehow manipulating the current world order in order to destabilize white Christian identity. It’s the exact same story we see today in narratives around Soros: that of the scheming Jewish billionaire, without any real (i.e., blood) loyalty to the country that allows him to be a citizen, actively seeking to undermine white Christian unity.
…Last weekend’s attacks on the Tree of Life synagogue — the deadliest ever attack on Jews on American soil according to the Anti-Defamation League — reveal just how noxious the “Jewish puppet master” trope can be, and just how long it can survive.
Similarly, a cartoon by Ben Garrison that showed Soros as a puppetmaster of US government officials along with the Rothschilds, was vilified across the board as an unquestionably antisemitic, and the Left was correctly incensed that the artist was invited to the White House (an invitation later rescinded: )
Other media were unanimous that calling Soros a “puppet-master” is antisemitic.
The trope is quite old.
Now listen to Roger Waters, in a section of the interview on Hamas-linked Shehab News, where he describes Jewish Sheldon Adelson as literally a “puppetmaster” of the US working together with Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli right. (This was not the section transcribed by MEMRI on Sunday, which included other antisemitism from Waters.)
If the accusation of Soros – who all but rejects his Judaism - controlling the world is antisemitic, then by any yardstick the accusation of a proudly Jewish billionaire as being in cahoots with the leaders of the Jewish state as the puppet-master is even more antisemitic. Especially when you combine it with Waters' characterization of Adelson as believing that all non-Jews are subhuman, another Nazi-era antisemitic trope.
Yet there has been no criticism of Waters from the media or from the Jewish Left at this time. Nothing from Jewish Voice for Peace, nothing from IfNotNow, nothing from Mondoweiss, nothing from Electronic Intifada, nothing from J-Street, nothing from Robert Mackey, and nothing yet from the ADL. The people who screamed about the antisemitism of the Soros puppetmaster meme seem quite forgiving of a washed-up rock star calling Adelson the exact same thing.
Any credibility the Left has in pretending it is against antisemitism is shredded. Anyone who condemned the Soros accusations who remains silent about Roger Waters doesn’t give a damn about antisemitism, and only uses the issue to attack their political enemies.
And using Jews as pawns to attack your enemies while not giving a damn about antisemitism on your own side really is antisemitic.