Billionaire investor and liberal philanthropist George Soros announced on Monday that he is “alive and healthy,” after rumors that he had died of a heart attack spread on social media.
“Rumors that I had a heart attack are completely false,” Soros announced via his official Twitter account, adding “I am alive and healthy.”
‘George Soros dead’ had been trending on Twitter since Sunday. The rumor was apparently kicked off that afternoon by an Irish right-wing activist, who announced that “George Soros has died of a violent heart attack,” attributing the news to a handle called ‘Politics For All Ireland’.
The account has less than 1,500 followers, and for the last two years has sporadically tweeted anti-immigration and anti-lockdown messages, as well as a series of posts last December announcing that Santa Claus’ sleigh had crashed in Ireland, leaving Saint Nick “in critical condition.”
News of Soros’ death has been prematurely announced before. In 2013, Reuters accidentally published an unfinished obituary for the financier, which read: “George Soros, who died XXX at age XXX, was a predatory and hugely successful financier and investor, who argued paradoxically for years against the same sort of free-wheeling capitalism that made him billions.”
Born to a Jewish family in Hungary, Soros spent the Second World War concealing his ancestry while working with the occupying Nazis, a job he later said he had to do, but felt “no guilt” over. He moved to the UK after the war and began working for British and American banks. Soros set up a hedge fund in his own name in 1970, and shot to prominence when he short sold $10 billion worth of British pounds ahead of a drop in the exchange rate in 1992, netting himself a profit of $1 billion and earning the moniker ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank of England’.
Soros is best known, however, for his liberal activism. His Open Society Foundations is a sprawling global network that funds NGOs and charities aimed at promoting globalism and left-neoliberal ideology. Soros’ money has funded pro-immigration activism in Europe and financed the campaigns of “progressive” public prosecutors in the US, whom conservatives accuse of being “soft on crime.”
Soros has funded online censorship campaigns, has a stake in hundreds of global media outlets, and was the largest donor in last year’s midterm elections in the US.
When Soros does pass away, his legacy will be carried on by his son, current Open Society Foundations chair Alexander Soros, and by graduates of his Open Society University Network (OSUN). Launched in 2020, OSUN was described by Soros as “the most important project of my life,” with the billionaire explaining that it would train students, including “refugees, incarcerated people, the Roma and other displaced groups” to “promote the values of open society.”