Financial Times Shamed for Naming George Soros Person of the Year

© AP Photo / Olivier Hoslet, Pool PhotoGeorge Soros, Founder and Chairman of the Open Society Foundation, waits for the start of a meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, April 27, 2017
George Soros, Founder and Chairman of the Open Society Foundation, waits for the start of a meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, April 27, 2017 - Sputnik International
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The Man Who Broke the Bank of England, the Guardian of Liberal Values, the Anti-Christ - George Soros has been awarded multiple, and sometimes contradictory titles, but the latest one is perhaps one of the most flattering. However, a host of critics were surprised, to say the least, with the FT's choice.

The Financial Times unveiled on Tuesday its 2018 Person of the Year: the honorific was bestowed upon George Soros, a controversial US billionaire of Jewish-Hungarian descent, who is known for financing liberal causes across the globe.

The FT branded the 88-year-old investor a target of "daily attacks" for his left-wing activism from "forces of nationalism and populism". This choice, the newspaper stressed, was not only about what Soros has achieved, but also about the values that he represents — those of liberal democracy and open society.

READ MORE: Swedish Liberals, 'Soros Admirers' Struggling to Stay in Power – Academic

The Soros-funded Open Society Foundations were forced out of Hungary after thirty years this summer, after Prime Minister Viktor Orban accused the NGO of meddling in the country's domestic affairs and promoting illegal immigration. The FT chastised Orban's accusations as "false", insisting that he used his anti-Soros narrative as an election-winning tool.

There has been a mixed reaction to the announcement, with critics comparing it to TIME's selecting Hitler as Man of the Year in 1938.

Others believe that Soros is misinterpreting the ideas of freedom and democracy he claims to be standing by.

A Daily Caller report this week said that George Soros had indirectly awarded a $500,000 grant to a left-wing group that verbally attacked Florida Attorney General and Republican politician, Pam Bondi, at a movie theatre in June.

As per another report, a Soros-linked firm gave money to an investigator who compiled a dossier on the so far unproved allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow, which both the POTUS and Russia adamantly deny.

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