Cao craps out another lie

Cao has found the motherlode, an endless supply of free material for her blog: She just makes crap up as she needs it.

She’s currently on some hopelessly ignorant rant comparing the National Council of Churches to Nazi collaborators. It really doesn’t matter what that’s all about. What’s revealing is her attempt to smear the NCC by telling a ridiculous lie about one of their sources of funding:

The funding of these leftist causes is not surprising; and the fact that Soros had some experience in Nazi Germany, the black market, etc., and profitted during those dark times in Nazi germany should also give a person pause.

Now… aside from the fact that this is a pathetically obvious use of the guilt by association fallacy, is Cao’s accusation against financier George Soros even true? Well, for starters, it takes about twenty seconds on the web to determine that Soros was born in 1930 in Budapest, Hungary. When Nazi Germany ceased to exist, he would have been a whole 15 years old. I can find no evidence that Soros was in Nazi Germany during the war.

The closest one can come to finding support for Cao’s accusation is a comment on a FreeRepublic.com page that was once available at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1353964/posts, but has since been deleted. Its contents, however, appear to be available at http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/1381895/posts, and it says in part:

George Soros as a young man traded currencies on the black market during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. Soros lived there until 1946 when he left the country as it was under the Soviet occupation and he, without money and at age of 16, ended up in London, U.K. in 1947.

Note that (a) there is no source given for these claims; (b) Soros was in Hungary, not Nazi Germany; and (c) far from having “profitted” (sic), he appears to have arrived in London penniless.

There are two fundamental ways to construct an argument: start with facts and employ rational forms of argument, or start with lies and build your argument out of logical fallacies. Alas for Cao, it is all too easy to show that she has clearly — and deliberately — chosen the latter course.

UPDATE 07/02/06 19:50 PM: Cao has obviously read this entry. She has added the following to her spew:

Let me be as specific as I can: Soros’ family had a connection with the Nazi movement; and made money off the Jews’ unfortunate situation during that period.

Note that most of the ‘sources’ she links to quote each other — never any primary source. Furthermore, they don’t agree with one another: was Soros "the grandson of a Hungarian official working for the Nazis", or did he "[avoid] the fate of many Jews by posing as the godson of a Hungarian official overseeing the confiscation of Jewish properties"? No matter… as long as ‘Soros’ and ‘Nazi’ appear in the same sentence, that’s good enough for Cao.

And Cao has added some lovely little anti-Semitic touches as well:

So his family, like John Kerry’s are jews who posed as gentiles (lied) because it was politically expedient. How interesting. A life which appears included making money off the property of the Jews, many of whom were sent to concentration camps… Just as in the case of the Rosenberg granddaughters, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Oh my God! Soros is a JEW! Who worked for the NAZIS! No WONDER he wants to destroy America! You can’t listen to anything those JOOOOOOS say!

It’s still an ad hominem attack. Since Cao can’t construct a serious, rational counter-argument to the NCC’s "Faithful America" initiative, she has to link it (and Soros) to the Nazis. Notice that the Nazis make their entrance in Cao’s post in the third paragraph. Cao didn’t make even a perfunctory attempt to avoid falling ineptly into the trap of Godwin’s Law.

And the bottom line remains this: When Cao can’t argue a point on the facts, she will make shit up out of thin air. If the shit allows her to link the current object of her mindless hatred to Nazis, all the better.