A common refrain for the past couple years or so is that left-wing billionaires such as George Soros are secretly funding protests and radicalized groups, such as BLM and antifa, and or are helping to engender social unrest, such as most recently in regard to protests over George Floyd’s death. Vox Day and Unz are going on about a so-called ‘color revolution’, but I think this whole conspiracy/concern is overblown. I think Vox, Unz, and others vastly overestimate the efficiency of billionaires, particularly left-wing billionaires, to meaningfully change society.
Billionaires fund all sorts of stuff: technology companies, colleges, hospitals, and yes, political movements and candidates. Just as the left has its billionaire backers, so too does the right, some examples being Peter Thiel, Joe Ricketts, and Robert Mercer, the former, as some may remember, brought down Gawker. Activism, whether left-wing or right-wing, is not profitable. Without outside funding, whether from billionaires, subscriptions, or networks of smaller donors, unlike private enterprise, non-government organizations are typically not self-sustaining.
However, in spite of Soros’ supposed invisible hand, BLM and Antifa are still losers, and beyond creating a bunch of sort-term commotion and noise that generates a lot media hype, are unable to move the needle in terms of policy, and in the long-run ineffective at creating any sort of lasting societal change, so if Soros is backing these groups, he is evidently not getting his money’s worth. Despite BLM’s tantrums over the death of 300-pound ‘youf’ Micheal Brown, they could not get a conviction on Darren Wilson, nor prevent Trump from winning in 2016, in spite of Sorros and other left-wing billionaires spending presumably a hundreds of millions, futilely, to prevent such an outcome.
No matter how much money these liberal billionaires try to pump into their causes, they still keep failing at achieving even the most modest of objectives. Another example is left-wing billionaires funding anti-gun regulation in the aftermaths of Sandy Hook and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, and failing to get actual regulation on semi-automatics (save for, perhaps, a bump-stock ban). Michael Bloomberg spent $500 million compressed into just 4 months in the 2020 democratic primates, and despite possibly being the only ‘reasonable’ candidate of the lot, still came in third, losing to a socialist and a dementia patient. Jeb’s 2016 campaign spent $100 million and did even worse. Sure, Jeb and Bloomberg’s campaigns generated considerable media coverage, but were still massive failures.
Rather than through outside philanthropy and activism, change comes from within organizations, such as large companies promoting ‘LGBTQ+ awareness,’ which then becomes normalized and emulated by greater society and other companies and governments. At least right-wing billionaires get a better ROI in terms of societal change, such as shutting down Gawker, which was a major win, but even then, they have been ineffective at doing anything about immigration or tech-censorship against conservatives. Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013, yet still was unable to prevent Trump from winning, and this was in spite of every major media and publishing company, save for Fox, being unified against Trump.