Anonymous #1 1d

No

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Anonymous #1 1d

Also, do you deny that the majority of both parties receive money from lobbies whose interests are directly opposed to yours? If so, do you believe AIPAC somehow represents your interests?

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Anonymous #2 1d

sometimes it means their super PAC makes a bunch of ads

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Anonymous #2 1d

and AIPAC was the 37th largest donor this midterms

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Anonymous #2 1d

you can hate them, i hate them, but stuff like this is misleading as hell

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Anonymous #2 1d

I would be extremely skeptical of any politician that AIPAC decided to add to their website

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Anonymous #2 1d

If the KKK had a politician on their website with a link to donate, would you donate to that politician?

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Anonymous #2 1d

Obviously there are larger donors, but there’s also more pro-Israel lobbies than just AIPAC. Regardless, lobbies pay for favors from politicians/ support politicians they believe will vote in their interests. It doesn’t matter if another lobby gave more to them, they have been secured as a pro-Israel candidate

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Anonymous OP 1d

that’s a wild comparison because they’re extremely different but also i don’t base my opinion on what white nationalists say. tucker carlson endorsed el sayed. nick fuentes said to vote democrat. single issue interests sponsor whoever they think will get them closest to their goals

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Anonymous OP 1d

AIPAC is the largest pro Israel lobby by far

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Anonymous #2 1d

Not really, Zionism does tend to be a supremacist ideology.

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Anonymous #2 1d

So you don’t mind that candidates get pro-Israel money? It’s too “single issue” to worry about. You don’t mind if we integrate our militaries with Israel and give Israel weapons and money to commit genocide and entangle us in foreign wars, because a candidate also said XYZ that you agree with? It balances out to you?

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Anonymous OP 1d

it’s number THIRTY SEVEN bro it doesn’t control anybody or anything

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Anonymous #2 1d

i don’t like it but it doesn’t run congress or decide what policies get passed

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Anonymous #2 1d

How are you this dense? If it donates to candidates then it’s because they expect them to align with their interests. Period. Would the NRA donate even a small amount to someone that wants to ban rifles? Probably not right?

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Anonymous OP 1d

it’s one policy is strengthen political ties between america and israel. if a politician isn’t explicitly saying they really really want to cut or weaken political ties to israel AIPAC will probably put their picture on their website

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Anonymous #2 1d

That’s also a method by which they can appear smaller, if they’re simply funneling individual donations to candidates they like. I can’t tell what your main point is except “it’s not a big deal”. We are complicit in genocide and have been dragged into multiple wars over the Israel issue

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Anonymous OP 1d

everything that endorses anyone does that. and my point is yeah AIPAC itself is not a particularly powerful PAC. all these politicians are perfectly free to make their own decisions and they don’t all vote as a block on anything

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Anonymous #2 1d

Regardless, even if you don’t care about AIPAC, the bigger picture is that politicians work on behalf of their donors. Which apparently according to you there are 36 even larger ones. You cannot have a true democracy for the people under these conditions

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Anonymous OP 1d

that i 100% agree with and its why acting like AIPAC is so uniquely evil bothers me so much

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Anonymous #2 1d

it’s not unique it’s just one of many players doing what our system is designed for

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Anonymous #2 1d

let’s make these charts for all the big donors and see what it looks like

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Anonymous #2 1d

It is uniquely evil in the sense that it lobbies for the interests of a state committing genocide. Let’s not act like it’s some run of the mill lobby pushing for boring legislation like tax cuts for XYZ industry

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Anonymous OP 1d

that’s a very fair reason to dislike them but that “boring” legislation is incredibly consequential for people’s lives

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Anonymous #2 1d

and the most powerful forces in our system are the ones who don’t have official lobbies because they don’t need them

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Anonymous #2 1d

Sure, so is voting to send weapon to a country slaughtering civilians. That’s a very direct effect

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Anonymous OP 1d

again. yes. they all do incredibly consequential things. aipac is bad. focusing exclusively on AIPAC to the point that you don’t even know about the rest of the top 50 is also bad.

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Anonymous #2 1d

I think the point is going over your head. I can’t dedicate my attention to 50 other lobbies simultaneously, if anything a bigger point is that lobbies in general are bad for democracy and especially AIPAC since we are slaughtering people for their interests. I don’t know why you care so much that I happen to point out this lobby. If you care about all these lobbies so much you would probably just agree that it’s baf

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Anonymous OP 1d

i think my point is going over your head too

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Anonymous #2 1d

Your point is AIPAC is not a big concern and I shouldn’t bring it up because there are other bigger lobbies that do something vaguely worse. Please tell me where I am wrong

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Anonymous #2 1d

the way congress votes on any particular issue isn’t determined by the endorsements by the most visible PAC devoted to that issue. it’s determined by an incredibly complex web of competing financial interests in which AIPAC isn’t a particularly powerful player. for instance, US oil companies made $130 billion over the war in Iran. 80% of the $23 billion we sent in aid to Israel actually went straight into the pockets of US defense contractors

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Anonymous #2 1d

you can hate aipac for what they very loudly and crassly advocate for and donate money to, i get that. what’s dangerous is mistaking visibility for influence

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Anonymous #2 1d

if aipac was destroyed tomorrow, it wouldn’t change American foreign policy in the middle east

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Anonymous #2 1d

Different lobbies can have interests that align, in fact the majority of the capital owning class has generally aligned interests. I suppose AIPAC isn’t even the greatest problem, the bigger point is our political system as a whole. It mediates between the workers and owners, and the owners control it

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Anonymous OP 1d

exactly

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Anonymous #2 1d

I think it’s easy to point to as a way to convince people that even if they elect the color they like, the politics are not changing fundamentally

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Anonymous OP 1d

and i think its a huge mistake that we never seem to go beyond pointing to aipac

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Anonymous #2 1d

i feel like a good metaphor is when something keeps getting spotlighted, pay attention to it. but also pay attention to what the spotlight keeps covering in shadow

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Anonymous #2 1d

bc you never really know who’s in the lighting booth

1