Media Matters’ Attack on The Shadow Party

by Richard Poe
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
4:10 pm Eastern Time

Return to previous page here.

Media Matters’ Attack on The Shadow Party (Continued)

by Richard Poe, FrontPageMagazine.com, October 30, 2006

Appendix: 21 Points Which Media Matters Apparently Concedes

The 21 points set forth below encapsulate the major arguments and allegations made in our book The Shadow Party. An ancient principle of law holds that “Qui tacet consentiret” or “silence gives consent”. Media Matters’ silence on the 21 major arguments of The Shadow Party would seem to indicate that it cannot refute — indeed does not dispute — our claims and thus concedes them.

In The Shadow Party, we argue the following:

ARGUMENT #1: George Soros and Hillary Clinton jointly control today’s Democratic Party.

We present evidence that Soros and Senator Clinton, working together in a coordinated effort, managed to gain effective control over the Democratic Party between 2002 and 2004.

ARGUMENT #2: Soros controls the official party through a private “Shadow Party”.

Mr. Soros exerts his influence over the Democrats through a network of private groups which he organized. This network raises and disburses campaign funds outside the control of the official Democratic Party. Soros’ groups raised more than $300 million for Democrat candidates in 2004. Together they have the power to make or break any Democrat candidate by choosing to fund him or withhold funding from him. We call this private network the Shadow Party.

ARGUMENT #3: The Shadow Party operates in violation of the law.

The Shadow Party routinely plays fast and loose with state and federal election law. For instance, Shadow Party groups frequently coordinate their activities with elements of the official Democratic Party. Moreover, many Shadow Party communications — including its websites — clearly indicate to potential donors that money contributed to the Shadow Party will be used to defeat Republican candidates.

For example, the now-inactive Shadow Party group ACT (America Coming Together) displayed on its website during the 2004 campaign season this message:

“America Coming Together is the largest voter mobilization project in American history. Knocking on doors and speaking the truth, ACT canvassers are laying the groundwork to defeat George W. Bush and elect Democrats in federal, state, and local elections in 2004. Because close elections are won on the ground, it takes each one of us.” (44)

Private non-profit groups such as those which make up the Shadow Party are expressly barred from such blatant electioneering, yet no controlling authority seems willing to hold the Shadow Party to account.

ARGUMENT #4: The chief liaison between George Soros’ Shadow Party and Hillary Clinton’s political machine is notorious mob lawyer Harold Ickes.

Harold Ickes serves simultaneously as the unofficial CEO of Soros’ Shadow Party and as a top advisor to Hillary Clinton. Before joining the Clinton White House as deputy chief of staff in 1994, Ickes ran a New York law practice which represented corrupt labor unions controlled by Mob racketeers. In the Clinton White House, Ickes escaped prosecution for his illegal fundraising methods only because then-Attorney General Janet Reno blocked requests from her own Justice Department to move against Ickes.

ARGUMENT #5: The Shadow Party is fundamentally anti-American.

As chief ideologist of the Shadow Party, Soros has formulated an explicitly anti-American agenda. For instance, in his new book The Age of Fallibility, Soros writes, “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.” (45) He announced in 2004 that it is necessary to “puncture the bubble of American supremacy.” (46) In the Atlantic Monthly of February 1997, Soros wrote, “The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat.” (47)

Soros has stated that he wants America to lose the War on Terror. In an updated preface to the 2003 edition of his book The Alchemy of Finance, Soros admits that his greatest fear is that the Bush Doctrine might succeed — that Bush might crush the terrorists, tame the rogue states of the Axis of Evil, and usher in a golden age of what Soros calls “American supremacy”. While insisting that “the concept” of “American supremacy” is “flawed” and bound to “fail in the long run,” Soros nevertheless admits that it might succeed in the short run, and he dreads the possibility. He writes, “What I am afraid of is that the pursuit of American supremacy may be successful for a while because the United States in fact enjoys a dominant position in the world today.” (48)

ARGUMENT #6: The Shadow Party is purging moderates from the Democratic Party.

The Shadow Party is using its newly-acquired power to purge the Democratic Party of all moderate, level-headed and responsible elements — in particular, all Democrats who support U.S. victory in the War on Terror (such as Joseph Lieberman).

ARGUMENT #7: The Shadow Party seeks regime change in America.

The Shadow Party’s ultimate goal is regime change. Its opposition to the War on Terror is merely an adjunct of this larger strategy. In order to set the stage for regime change, it must destabilize America, which it plans to do by engineering U.S. defeat in Iraq; impeaching President Bush and forcing the U.S. economy into crisis.

Argument #8: Destabilization is the key to Shadow Party victory.

The purpose of this planned destabilization is to shake Americans’ confidence in our constitutional system of government, instilling fear and panic among the populace, and rendering Americans susceptible to the allure of radical solutions.

The use of destabilization to effect regime change is a familiar and time-honored tactic of the left. Saul Alinsky — a radical activist who served as an influential mentor to young Hillary Rodham during her college and law school years — once wrote, “The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization.” (49) George Soros concurs. In his 2000 book Open Society, he wrote, “Usually it takes a crisis to prompt meaningful change in direction.” (50)

Argument #9: The Shadow Party’s goal is a world government run on socialist lines.

Among the radical solutions which the Shadow Party offers is,

1) to rewrite the U.S. Constitution so as to promote a socialist form of government;

2) to surrender U.S. sovereignty to a global authority whose laws will supercede our own;

3) to impoverish America by obliging us to provide social benefits to an ever-growing flood of illegal immigrants;

4) to further impoverish America by obliging the U.S. taxpayer to fund a global war on poverty, whereby America’s wealth will be taxed and redistributed to the poor nations of the world, under the auspices of the United Nations Millennium Project, currently directed by Soros operative Jeffrey Sachs.

ARGUMENT #10: George Soros has long experience in forcing regime change.

Soros is one of the few men in the world with the financial power, the on-the-ground experience and the network of powerful allies required to force regime change in America. Indeed, what he now attempts in America he already accomplished long ago in several other countries, including the former Soviet Union.

ARGUMENT #11: Soros helped overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 1991, Soros offered a privatization plan to then-Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev rejected the plan, angering Soros. Thereupon, Soros turned against Gorbachev, hastening the Soviet president’s ouster by opposing Gorbachev’s efforts to obtain critical foreign aid loans from the G-7 nations.

ARGUMENT #12: Soros helped destroy the Russian economy.

After Gorbachev fell, Soros and his operatives allied themselves with the corrupt Boris Yeltsin regime. They presided over the privatization of Russia’s state-owned enterprises. The ensuing orgy of corruption came to be known as “Russiagate”, a term coined by Washington Post correspondent David Ignatius. In an article of August 25, 1999, he decried, “the lawlessness of modern Russia and the acquiescence of the Clinton administration in the process of decline and decay there.” Ignatius also wrote:

“What makes the Russian case so sad is that the Clinton administration may have squandered one of the most precious assets imaginable — which is the idealism and goodwill of the Russian people as they emerged from 70 years of Communist rule. The Russia debacle may haunt us for generations.” (51)

ARGUMENT #13: Soros exploited the massive corruption of Yeltsin’s Russia for personal gain.

Between 1992 and 1996, 57 percent of Russia’s state-owned firms were sold for a grand total of only $3-$5 billion, in rigged auctions and other sweetheart deals. (52) By 1996, 60 percent of Russia’s natural resources had come under the control of seven men, known as the “seven oligarchs”. (53) Soros worked closely with these oligarchs. With their help, he acquired shares in such properties as the Russian oil giant Sidanko and the steel mill Novolipetsk. During these years, Soros’ power in Russia grew to such proportions that he told The New Republic in 1994, “the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire”. (54)

ARGUMENT #14: Soros is now applying to America the same strategy he used in Russia.

In Russia, Soros helped engineer an economic crisis, triggered hyperinflation, then bought up Russian properties at firesale prices. Soros used a similar tactic to take control of the Democratic Party. First he pushed the party to the verge of bankruptcy, then he bought it.

Beginning in 1994, Soros colluded with a group of leftwing foundations — including the Pew Charitable Trusts — to bamboozle the U.S. Congress and Senate into believing that Americans were clamoring at the grassroots for “campaign finance reform” — when, in fact, Americans wanted no such thing. The Pewgate conspirators spent $140 million lobbying for their bogus “reform” plan. The result was the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002. (55)

McCain-Feingold threatened to bankrupt the Democratic Party, by cutting off the party’s life blood — the huge, soft-money contributions from unions upon which the Democrats formerly depended. After forcing the Democrats to the brink of ruin, Soros then offered to rescue them. He set up the Shadow Party — a network of private groups which could raise money and organize political campaigns outside the auspices of the official Democratic Party. With Soros’ help, the Democrats could now stay in the race. But, from now on, they would have to take orders from their benefactor George Soros.

As Soros operative and MoveOn PAC director Eli Pariser put it in December 2004, “Now it’s our party: we bought it, we own it […]” (56)

ARGUMENT #15: Soros is pursuing a three-phase plan for regime change in America.

Now that he controls the Democratic Party, Soros is moving ahead with a three-phase strategy for regime change. The first two phases are based upon the successful effort of the American left to force regime change in America during the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Phase #1: Vietnam II

Turn Iraq into a new Vietnam. Undermine America’s will to fight by discrediting, hindering — and thus prolonging — the war.

Phase #2: Watergate II

Turn George Bush into the new Richard Nixon. Inflict upon America a second Watergate crisis, thus depriving us of our war leader when we need him most.

This strategy worked for the left in the early ’70s. Nixon was forced to resign in August 1974. In April 1975 — barely eight months later — a Democrat Congress cut off aid to South Vietnam, thus inviting a full-scale communist invasion from the north. The Shadow Party is pursuing a similar strategy in Iraq. If Bush can be neutralized through impeachment, Democrats will be free to cut off aid to the Republic of Iraq, and allow Islamist extremists to dominate the Middle East.

Phase #3: Velvet Revolution

The third and final phase of Soros’ plan for regime change calls for a velvet revolution. This is a term used in Eastern Europe to describe the sort of bloodless coup for which Soros is well-known in that part of the world. He has used these methods to topple regimes in many countries, such as Yugoslavia, Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia. Soros’ velvet revolutions always follow the same pattern. The rebels wait for an election, then precipitate a crisis by charging voter fraud.

ARGUMENT #16: Soros appears to be planning a velvet revolution in America.

The Shadow Party appears to be setting the stage for an Eastern European-style velvet revolution in the USA. If they fail to win legitimately in 2008, they will likely cry voter fraud, fomenting an electoral crisis similar to the Bush-Gore deadlock of 2000.

ARGUMENT #17: The “crisis strategy” underlies Shadow Party planning.

Underlying Soros’ planning is the so-called “crisis strategy”, sometimes known as the “Cloward-Piven strategy.” Its purpose is to break down society’s resistance to radical change by creating artificial crises. In its present form, the plan was developed by two Columbia University social scientists and radical activists named Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.

In 1966, they set out to destroy the U.S. welfare system, which they viewed as an instrument of the ruling classes to mollify the poor and dampen their revolutionary rage. Cloward and Piven proposed a “massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls.” Rising welfare costs would bankrupt American cities, they predicted, leading to what they called “a profound financial and political crisis”, which would pave the way for socialism. (57)

Their plan nearly succeeded. Cloward and Piven organized a mass movement of welfare rights activists to press for spending increases. They succeeded in swamping the welfare system and actually drove New York City to the brink of bankruptcy in 1975. However, the resulting backlash from voters forced Congress to enact massive welfare cuts rather than embracing socialism.

ARGUMENT #18: Today’s Voting Rights Movement is a Cloward-Piven maneuver by the left.

After their “welfare rights movement” ran out of steam, Cloward and Piven next applied their “crisis strategy” to America’s voting system. Neither Cloward nor Piven believed in voting. They viewed America’s voting system — like its welfare system — as a sop to the poor, to keep them docile. As they had done with welfare, they set out to disrupt and destroy the voting system, under the guise of promoting “voting rights”.

Cloward and Piven created and successfully lobbied for the so-called Motor-Voter law of 1993, which loosened up voter registration requirements. When President Clinton signed the National Voter Registration Act on May 20, 1993, Cloward and Piven stood behind him, in places of honor, at the ceremony.

The law quickly led to what John Fund of The Wall Street Journal called, “an explosion of phantom voters.” (58) On the eve of the 2000 election, in Indiana alone, state officials discovered that one in five registered voters were duplicates, deceased, or otherwise invalid. (59) Leftist activists set to work flooding the polls with phony ballots and bogus registrations. Election officials who dared to complain were intimidated with lawsuits and cries of “racism.” (60) Richard Cloward defended the mess he had created by telling CBS News in 1996, “It’s better to have a little bit of fraud than to leave people off the rolls who belong there.” (61)

Once again, the Cloward-Piven strategy had proved effective. Throughout the 1990s, U.S. elections descended ever deeper into a maelstrom of confusion and chaos, culminating in the Florida recount crisis of 2000.

ARGUMENT #19: The Voting Rights Movement enjoys Shadow Party support.

The Shadow Party has emerged as a major supporter of the “voting rights movement” which Cloward and Piven created. Soros-funded groups such as ACORN, the National Voting Rights Institute and the Brennan Center now lead the movement. Now a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York, Frances Fox Piven is listed as an advisor on the website of Robert Borosage’s Campaign for America’s Future, a Shadow Party front group which has received more than $300,000 from Soros’ Open Society Institute.

ARGUMENT #20: Soros uses street thugs to influence elections.

When toppling governments in foreign countries, Soros typically pays private armies of young rowdies to take the streets. In Yugoslavia, for instance, he funded a group called Otpor, whose 70,000 members ran wild during the election deadlock of September 2000, throwing Molotov cocktails and setting fire to government buildings in Belgrade. Outside the city, Otpor-led units set up roadblocks, armed with AK-47s, mortars and shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons.

The Shadow Party has already set up an extensive network of organized street rowdies in America. In March 2006, about half a million protesters brought Los Angeles to a standstill, calling for open borders and free immigration. Some burned American flags and fought with police. Similar protests occurred simultaneously in many cities. The Shadow Party orchestrated the entire operation. Virtually every sponsor was a Soros-funded group — at least eight organizations — including ACORN, La Raza, MALDEF and others. One of the organizers, the Center for Community Change, has received $5.2 million from Soros’ Open Society Institute.

ARGUMENT #21: The Shadow Party may call on foreign mediators in the 2008 election.

The last time the Democrats attempted a velvet revolution in America, they were foiled by the intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court. The next time they try, the Shadow Party will doubtless try to circumvent the Supreme Court. We suspect that they will press for international arbitration, possibly under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The U.S. State Department under Colin Powell actually invited this group to monitor our elections in 2004, in the face of Democrat demands for foreign observers. Go here to download a copy of the OSCE’s “mission report” on America’s 2004 election. (62)

In normal times, Americans would never accept foreign arbitration of an election, but a destabilized America, demoralized by military defeat, discouraged by the fall of a president, and alarmed by orchestrated unrest in the streets, might just go along with any plan that promised to restore order.

NOTES

44. About ACT“, ActforVictory.org [accessed 07.14.04]; “Pro-Democratic Group Accused of Campaign Finance Violations“, DirectMag.com, 23 June 2004

45. George Soros, The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror (Public Affairs, 2006), xvi

46. Mark Tran, “Soros Prepared to Dig Deep to Oust Bush“, The Guardian, 29 January 2004; Press Release: “George Soros to launch book on American supremacy at LSE“, The London School of Economics and Political Science, 23 January 2004

47. George Soros, “The Capitalist Threat“, The Atlantic, February 1997

48. George Soros, The Alchemy of Finance (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003; first edition 1987), 337; David Horowitz and Richard Poe, The Shadow Party (Thomas Nelson Inc., 2006), 215-16

49. Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (Random House, 1989: first edition 1971), 116

50. George Soros, Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (PublicAffairs, 2000), 337

51. David Ignatius, “Who Robbed Russia? Did Al Gore Know About the Massive Lootings?“, The Washington Post, 25 August 1999, A17

52. Peter Reddaway, “Questions About Russia’s ‘Dream Team'”, Post-Soviet Prospects, vol. 5, no. 5, Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 1997; cited in Janine R. Wedel, Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe (St. Martin’s Press, 2001), 141; Janine R. Wedel, “The Harvard Boys Do Russia“, The Nation, 1 June 1998

53. Harry Kreisler, “The Myths of Globalization, Markets, Democracy and Ethnic Hatred: Conversation with Amy Chua“, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley, 22 January 2004

54. Michael Lewis, “The Speculator: What on earth is multibillionaire George Soros doing throwing wads of money around in Eastern Europe?”, The New Republic, 10 January 1994, 19

55. John Fund, “Astroturf Politics: How Liberal Foundations Fooled Congress into Passing McCain-Feingold“, Wall Street Journal online (OpinionJournal.com), 21 March 2005; William A. Schambra, “In a World of Bloggers, Foundations Can Expect More Scrutiny“, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 12 May 2005; Ryan Sager, “Buying ‘Reform’: Media Missed Millionaires’ Scam“, The New York Post, 17 March 2005, 33; Richard Poe, “Pewgate: The Battle of the Blogosphere“, FrontPageMagazine.com, 25 March 2005

56. Sam Hananel, “MoveOn to Democratic Party: ‘We Own It'”, Associated Press, 9 December 2004

57. Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty”, The Nation, 2 May 1966, 510-17

58. John Fund, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books, 2004), 23

59. Bill Theobald, “False Counts: Special Report; Bogus Names Jam Indiana’s Voter List”, The Indianapolis Star, 5 November 2000, 01A

60. “Vote Fraud, Intimidation and Suppression in the 2004 Presidential Election,” American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), August 2, 2005

61. Jeff Jacoby, “The Dumbing Down of Democracy“, The Boston Globe, 12 November 1996, A17

62. Don Feder, “International Monitors, for an American Election?“, FrontPageMagazine.com, 16 August 2004; Daniel Pipes, “The Next Assault on American Sovereignty“, DanielPipes.org, 16 August 2004; Daniel Pipes, “Foreigners Monitor U.S. Elections“, Daniel Pipes’ Weblog, DanielPipes.org, 16 August 2004; Press Release: “International Election Monitoring Group Headed by Impeached Judge; Group Warns of Election Catastrophe“, American Policy Center, 25 August 2004; Matt Labash, “Who Will Observe the Observers?“, The Weekly Standard, Volume 10, Issue 9, 15 November 2004; Press Release: “Leader of Foreign Election Monitors Under Federal Investigation“, American Policy Center, 30 August 2004; United States of America: 2 November 2004 Elections – OSCE/ODIHR Needs Assessment Mission Report, Warsaw, 28 September 2004 [download pdf file]

Return to previous page here.