HATRED OF WHOM IS A USEFUL TELL:

Despite widespread condemnation by civil society groups and international watchdogs, the bill is the latest, and perhaps most concerning, realisation of the vast number of conspiracy theories surrounding the Hungarian-American Holocaust survivor. 

Soros's long-standing advocacy for liberal democracy and the acceptance of refugees in Europe and beyond is an ongoing source of contention in Hungary and several other countries on the continent. 

Alexander Reid Ross, author of Against the Fascist Creep, explained that "Soros conspiracies have always been a marker for the radical right as opposition to mainstream conservatism".

Explaining that such theories found currency among some leftists in the past, Ross noted that Soros has been blamed for economic crises, the tanking of currencies worldwide and backing an uprising against Serbia's former ultra-nationalist ruler Slobodan Milosevic, who was toppled in 2001.

The far right's narrative, however, has anti-Semitic undertones.

"In a way, he fits the perfect sort of historic epistemological category in the national socialist tradition," Reid Ross told Al Jazeera.

"It used to be Rothschild, but today, Rothschild conspiracy theories are much easier to debunk than they were back then.

"Now you have George Soros filling that space that those conspiracy theories used to occupy."

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