The American political system has “broken down” as a result of the two major political parties becoming too conservative, billionaire philanthropist George Soros said in a 2013 memo that recently came to light, adding that the blame resided chiefly with “religious and market fundamentalists.”

“The two-party system worked well when both parties competed for the middle ground in general elections,” Soros wrote in a memo to the board of his Open Society Foundations. “It started breaking down when an unholy alliance of religious and market fundamentalists captured the Republican Party and the Democrats tried to recapture the middle ground by moving in the same direction.”