Interview with Max Blumenthal on The Real News:
Nina Rosenwald, (she's the heir to the Sears-Roebuck fortune) has spent about $2.8 million specifically on funding anti-Muslim figures and groups in the last ten years. But this money has gone a long way. And this is similar to a piece I did about another millionaire, named Aubrey Chernick, who spent around the same amount of money funding many of the same figures. And through this coordinated campaign of funding, they have been able to drive the Islamophobia industry and put the anti-Muslim agenda on the front of the American political radar.
Geert Wilders (the far-right Dutch political leader), who is—until recently, really held the key to the Dutch governing coalition, until he pulled out in protest of austerity measures being imposed on the Netherlands by the European Union, which made him sort of populist hero, and who is really the leading Islamophobia in the world—I mean, this is a guy who went on trial for hate speech in his own country for calling Muhammad a pedophile, for calling for burning the—for calling for banning—an unofficial ban on the Quran—was brought to New York City not once but twice by Nina Rosenwald, through her think tank Hudson NYC, which grew out of the Hudson Institute, a major neoconservative think tank which is no longer affiliated with it. And she hosted a fundraiser. According to her website, it cost $10,000 per person to get in. I don't know if this money went to Geert Wilders' legal fees, for his battle against hate speech, if it went into his campaign chest or what, but this is really remarkable. And she's apparently hosting these fundraisers at her apartment in New York City.
She's a major socialite. She's very close to Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative godfather who is the publisher of Commentary magazine. And she's also close to people like former NSA chief Michael Hayden, who sits on the board of MEMRI with her, a think tank, another anti-Muslim think tank. She's close to a whole host of national security figures.