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As the United States reckons with the death of George Floyd, it seems George Soros’ name is increasingly invoked as social media posts sow doubt about the authenticity of protests across the country. I’m going to bring down the United States by funding Black Hate groups, reads the quote that’s attributed to Soros in one post . We’ll put them into a mental trap and make them blame white people. The Black community is the easiest to manipulate. The post says Soros, a billionaire investor and philanthropist who donates to Democratic political causes, made that statement in September 2014 in an interview with Germany’s BILD. This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook .) Bild is a German publication . Using Google, we searched for references to George Soros on Bild’s website in 2014. We found one result : an April 3, 2014, story with the headline, So irre lästern Bulgariens Politiker, which Google translates to Bulgaria’s politicians are so insane. The article describes how Bulgarian politicians called government protesters ‘Sorosoids’ — a newly created derogatory word for employees of the billionaire George Soros Foundation or other western non-governmental organizations. There are no other mentions of Soros in the story. Next, we searched online and in Nexis news archives but found nothing resembling the quote. Soros is a heavily scrutinized figure who is the regular subject of conspiracy theories and misinformation. If in 2014 he made the statement that appears in the Facebook post — even in a non-English language — it would make American news. But we found nothing to corroborate the post. Finally, we reached out to Open Society Foundations, the philanthropic organization founded by Soros. The group told us that there’s no truth to the post. We rate if False.
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