Oro Valley, AZ – Republican Representative and candidate for Secretary of State Mark Finchem is being criticized for his continued use of an antisemitic trope in an attack on his Democratic opponent Adrian Fontes. The trope is connected to a QAnon conspiracy theory
In a tweet Wednesday, Finchem said that Democratic politicians are all “liars and deceivers” who are loyal to George Soros and Mike Bloomberg and implored his audience to “not be deceived.”
Soros, a wealthy Hungarian-born businessman and philanthropist, has become the boogeyman of the right-wing due to his financing of many left-leaning causes and politicians. This has led to a large number of conspiracy theories around the man which have been debunked but still persist to this day, some of which are rooted in QAnon and antisemitism.
Both Soros and Bloomberg are Jewish.
“I think it is fair to say that context is everything,” Tim Eckstein, board chair with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix said to the Arizona Mirror. “An attack on George Soros for some specific thing he has done or said is fine, or at least not on its face antisemitic.”
