evidence: Even when they do not lead to new legal or regulatory restrictions, smear campaigns threaten the functioning of democracy by attempting to delegitimize the participation of nongovernmental voices in public debate. The logic behind the smears is that only those who have been elected by a popular majority, meaning the government, are entitled to speak about issues of public interest. The implications of this line of reasoning were made clear in January 2018, when Hungary’s government discussed banning the U.S.-based liberal philanthropist George Soros—who holds Hungarian citizenship—from even entering the country. Combined attacks on Soros and the NGOs and journalists he supposedly controls aim to tar them all as outsiders, recalling the anti-Semitic trope of Jews in Europe as "permanent foreigners." In the Hungarian campaign against Soros, he is portrayed as a puppet master manipulating opposition politicians, or said to be organizing an influx of millions of migrants so as to change the demographic balance of the country. Caricatures of Soros as a malevolent wizard—or even as some kind of reptilian monster—tap into a rich historical vein of European anti-Semitic imagery.