Pastor Shane Vaughn accused investor and philanthropist George Soros last week of creating divisions in South Africa during the country’s apartheid era.
During a live YouTube event on April 1, which has since been removed from the platform but is still available to watch on Rumble, the right-wing pastor presented his arguments against Soros under the headline ‘The Sorcery of Soros’. The video initially contained a note about the removal of YouTube and its move to Rumble “to avoid censorship of FREE SPEAKING.”
Vaughn first described how he said that during his time as a colony, South Africa was under the control of the British monarchy.
“South Africa was a wonderful nation,” Vaughn said. “But it was a closed society. It had a queen. It had an identity with the Commonwealth, with Great Britain. It was identified there, it had traditions, it had its own history.”
Soros’ philanthropic efforts began in 1979 in South Africa. According to the Open Society Foundations, the organization that Soros founded to support his philanthropy around the world, his first philanthropic contributions came through the funding of scholarships for black students at the University of Cape Town.
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In his video, Vaughn quoted a quote that still appears on the Open Society Foundations website. Soros spoke specifically about South Africa and described it as a closed society with all the institutions of a first world country, but they were out of bounds to the majority of the population on the basis of race. ‘
Soros added: “Where can I find a better opportunity to open a closed society?”
That was the second sentence Vaughn quoted in his video.
“He brings his money down to South Africa, and he finances the university with scholarships for black youth in apartheid South Africa. When he opens the school, he changes South Africa, and look at what he did there,” he said. Vaughn said.
Vaughn further says that Soros’ actions led to division and violence in South Africa.
“He divided South Africa with this open society, removed the culture, removed the law, removed the foundation of society, turned the races against each other, and then you take the nation and now you create an open society.”
South Africa’s Apartheid era began in the mid-1900s and lasted through the early 1990s. South Africa held its first fully democratic election in 1994, about 15 years after Soros began his philanthropic work there.
Although Soros began his work as a philanthropist in South Africa, his efforts have expanded to more than 120 countries worldwide in recent decades, according to Open Society Foundations.
Newsweek contact Open Society Foundations for comment and will update this article with any answers.