Hyman "U-Boats" George Soros

There are many things that can be said about Mark Hyman’s commentary in which he participates in the “U-Boating” of George Soros: the appalling claim that he somehow collaborated with the Nazis when he was a child during World War II.

There are many things indeed, from the fact that he does so in defending a book by David Horowitz and Richard Poe that Media Matters for America revealed to be full of unsubstantiated charges and doctored quotes (a charge that Horowitz has claimed for a month or two he would systematically refute, but hasn’t) to the fact that lying about political opponents is something that Hyman has done before.

Then there’s the obvious fact that Hyman doesn’t argue the merits of any actual political position (or lack thereof) in the piece, but relies on attacking the actions of a 14-year-old boy 60 years ago.

But I just want to focus on one thing to avoid it getting lost in anything else: Hyman commits slander in this editorial.

Not slander as in saying something unkind about someone else. Not slander as in only telling a half truth that distorts reality. I mean actual, legal slander.

Hyman charges not only that Soros collaborated with the Nazis but that “he did identify wealthy Jews in hiding so that Nazi officials could confiscate their belongings.”

To my knowledge, even seasoned Soros haters haven’t alleged this. To support his claims, Hyman excerpts part of an interview Soros did with “Sixty Minutes,” in which he describes how his Jewish father hid him from the Nazis, and saved his life, by getting a Hungarian bureaucrat in the occupational government to pass off Soros as his own son. This bureaucrat’s job included serving eviction notices to Jews. When asked if he felt guilty about participating in this, Soros says no, because he was only a child and was not actually participating in the actions. He was simply playing the part of this bureaucrat’s adopted son.

Hyman says Soros “admits” he didn’t participate directly in the confiscations (an odd word choice in this context), but that (and I realize I’m repeating this) “he did identify wealthy Jews in hiding so that Nazi officials could confiscate their belongings.”

Let that sink in for a moment.

There is nothing in Soros’s statements that even comes close to stating this. And notice what Hyman is accusing him of: he paints a picture of the 14-year-old Soros skipping around town happily pointing out Anne Frank (or her Hungarian equivalent) to the Gestapo so they could be shipped off to Auschwitz and gassed. He’s accusing Soros of actively participating in the genocide of his own people.

Perhaps Hyman will say that he simply claimed Soros "identified Jews in hiding" meaning that Soros helped the man protecting him identify homes which could safely be confiscated, since their owners were in hiding. The problem is that this isn't at all what Hyman's words suggest, and even if they did, he would still be accusing the adolescent Soros of actively participating in revealing identities of Jews in hiding (as he himself was), something that is tantamount to physically turning them in.

There are no words to describe how despicable this is. This is a new low, even for Hyman. It is, in the legal and dictionary definition of the term, slander.

One can only hope that Soros will take notice and sue the pants off of Sinclair and Hyman for this. True, Hyman is in insignificant gnat in Soros’s universe, but perhaps Soros will nail him to the wall on behalf of the rest of us who’ve been attacked maliciously and falsely by Hyman.

And that’s The Counterpoint.