Beyond irony In 2018 the Washington Post wrote: ‘[Prime Minister] Orban’s demonization of [George] Soros, to the exclusion of virtually all other issues, reflects just how far Hungary has drifted from the European mainstream since his election in 2010. A fringe obsession in other parts of the West, Soros-bashing in this nation of 10 million has moved to the very center of political debate.’10Then it turns out that the entire Soros-Jewish-conspiracy-theory campaign in Hungary had been designed by two American ‘political consultants’, George Birnbaum and Arthur Finkelstein, who are themselves Jewish.11