AIPAC vs. Progressives
I know it's popular for the online left to hate Democratic progressives even more than conservatives, but do you hate them more than apartheid and ethnic cleansing?
One of the biggest, bitterest, and most expensive political battles of the 2024 election cycle has emerged: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of the most powerful, best-funded influence operations in Washington, is planning to go all out to knock the famed “Squad”—the small group of highly visible and popular progressive legislators of color, most of them women—out of office.The most outspoken and unapologetically leftist contingent of the Democratic Party in national office, the Squad has been vocal in its criticism of Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza following the Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis by Hamas. Members of the group have prominently pushed a cease-fire resolution in Congress; it now has 18 signatories...
AIPAC wants “to make the statement this cycle that no one is safe from their wrath, that if you speak out, you can be targeted no matter how popular or how many cycles of incumbent you are,” said Connor Farrell, president of the progressive fundraising group Left Rising, in a phone call. “It’s extremely audacious.”
One thing we should make absolutely clear is that AIPAC isn't just targeting 'The Squad', but anyone on the left that isn't fully onboard with everything Israel wants. A good example of this happened in Orange County this spring.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the US, poured more than $4.5m into an Orange county congressional race in hopes of keeping Dave Min from advancing to the November election...
But Aipac’s massive spending in Orange county has perplexed analysts and Min himself.“Why the hell did you come in against me? We’re trying to understand why,” Min said in an interview with Semafor.
“Maybe AIPAC wants a rubber stamp. I’m not going to be a rubber stamp,” he said.
In response US progressives have created a sort of defense fund. Although I must say that it seems unusual that the Democratic Party as a whole aren't concerned this clearly partisan attack on their incumbents. Nor does Congress care about a foreign government openly interfering with out elections.
“Israel is a sovereign country,” Tal Heinrich, Netanyahu’s spokesperson, told Newsmax. “We don’t intervene in American politics, and we expect to be treated with the same respect.”But Israel is being treated with the same respect it treats the United States. For decades, intervening in the domestic politics of the United States and working to replace its elected leadership has been the Israeli government’s bread and butter.
I should point out that the federal courts have made it clear that the 1st Amendment protects criticism of Israel.
Comments
The reason we don't like "Democratic progressives"
is because, two months ago, the "Democratic progressives" were asking the advocates of Palestine to vote for Genocide Joe.
Genocide Joe, we must remember, accepts far, far more AIPAC money than anyone in Washington DC.
What has obviously turned the tide for AOC and the other useful idiots in Congress is that AIPAC plans to replace them. And AIPAC will replace them, because two months ago she basically told the complainants about Genocide Joe that they, too, can be replaced.
If you want to stay in office while deviating two degrees from the party line, you will have to make allies among those who, you know, have a moral compass of any sort at all, and who thus refuse to vote for Genocide Joe. The other option is to shut your trap about the genocide and take the AIPAC money.
"there's something so especially sadistic about waving the flag of a country that you're actively destroying" -- Aaron Mate
If AIPAC gets there way
There literally won't be anyone deviating from the party line.
The problem is solved --
-- by creating a mass political party capable of resisting AIPAC money.
No, that's business as usual. In fact, we can expect the Democratic Party to replace the Squad in much the same way in which it took AIPAC money to ruin Nina Turner's campaign.
It doesn't do a lot to defend eight members of Congress if they themselves can't ditch the Dems. Defend it all you want; your last argument will be that it's better than nothing. Even worse is if we ourselves can't ditch the Dems, because that shows we're not really trying to resist.
What's left is to explain why there is a Squad and why the Squad offers whatever of resistance they're willing to offer to those of us poor beggars who attend marches, block freeways, and shadow pro-genocide representatives without hope of PAC money. Well, such resistance exists in Congress because there is something actually going on in the mainstream society. Real resistance is that something actually going on. The Squad is not resistance: it's the genocidal Establishment's response to resistance. "You can have a Squad, but no more. Oh and Rashida Tlaib gets censured."
"there's something so especially sadistic about waving the flag of a country that you're actively destroying" -- Aaron Mate
So the choices are
a) Looking forward to that political party that can resist AIPAC...which at this moment does not exist. Even RFK is extremely pro-Israel.
b) Celebrating the destruction of Democratic Progressives. This means that you are supporting AIPAC and Israel's ethic cleansing by default. Also if you support the destruction of The Squad then you should support Rashida Tlaib getting censored and kicked out of office.
c) Ignoring Washington politics and organizing locally. This I support..except that how does this do anything to stop Israel's ethnic cleansing?
Am I missing something?
Maybe this one could be put on the list?
d) actually forming that political party. And don't forget e) actual protest.
The Democratic Party's half-baked PR effort to advocate regime change in Israel was made possible by the protests. AOC's opposition to genocide was made possible because a protester shadowed her and asked her "why don't you call it genocide?" as she ran away.
AIPAC's opposition to AOC was made possible by the protests. Now the Anti-Defamation League knows for sure who their real enemy is. From their perspective.
I would like to be clear about a couple of other things. RFK Jr.'s political positions are sad, but they're irrelevant. His existence is validated by the fact that he's not Joe Biden.
Joe Biden could end the genocide with a phone call. He's never going to do that, though, and so his opinion polling needs to go down to, I don't know, maybe 8%, the number of people who actually benefit from a Biden presidency. Genocide Joe must not go unpunished for the vast heaps of dead bodies (don't forget the 400,000 in Ukraine) produced in the wake of his team's foreign policy, or for the lasting shame he has brought upon the United States in the eyes of most of the world's people. This is why, unlike AOC, we don't endorse Joe Biden. The only reason there is ANY traction AT ALL on American foreign policy is that the opinion polls do not favor him at this time. And that, in turn, is due to #AbandonBiden.
As I've suggested before, the "Democratic Progressives" are the system's response to something more radical than "Democratic Progressives." Only people with outsized egos say "you must support them or you are guilty of genocide." The point is not to disdain the response but to produce something more powerful than what we're getting, powerful enough to, I don't know, do something real.
"there's something so especially sadistic about waving the flag of a country that you're actively destroying" -- Aaron Mate
Thanks for explaining your view of this political situation.
I, for one, do not have the complete context of party politics in mind when I judge how well the Party represents the will and the general consensus of the People. And I have never handicapped the Democratic Party's performance, based on its universal payola arrangement with AIPAC.
The US elementary and high school civics curriculum needs to get real. Students should be taught techniques for dealing with a corrupt government. People should know how to protect themselves legally when they deal with government officials. Young voters should learn how to recognize which campaign promises cannot actually be kept, so they are not bamboozled so frequently during elections. A government studies curriculum in the US must teach students the principles of Defensive Civics, otherwise we are throwing gullible US citizens to the wolves.
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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
I'm trying to imagine a civics class about this.
"Today's topic is: what do you do if your President commits genocide."
"there's something so especially sadistic about waving the flag of a country that you're actively destroying" -- Aaron Mate
I might add --
this, from Caitlin Johnstone:
"there's something so especially sadistic about waving the flag of a country that you're actively destroying" -- Aaron Mate
AIPAC losses one
Summer Lee
AIPAC meets the bus bottom
in service of their very agenda.
spare the fuck out of me.
The Sea Change
The Sea Change we need is 100% publicly funded elections. Candidates and causes should have a minimal threshold of signed support to get on the ballot. Then all campaigning regulated single source voter pamphlet/ voter information website. When outside money is allowed to campaign, it moves away from the crucible of evaluation by merit of ideas, towards deceit.
Obviously I am simply outlining the concept. IIRC, something similar is how they do it in the Netherlands, or at least one the northern Atlantic nations Denmark, Sweden, Finland.
I also think that Senators and Representatives should be housed in dormitories, and fed only the same food available to inmates and schoolchildren, while being given a stipend at the same rate as minimum wage.
TOTALLY onboard with this...
...but you're missing one detail: A dress-code.
All members of Congress must be required to wear clown-wigs while in session, as is everyone else who appears before them (this includes the POFT during the SOTU, and all the swaggering Deep State strongmen).
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
They should also wear
those racing suits with all of their "sponsor" patches on them so we can know who owns them.
They say that there's a broken light for every heart on Broadway
They say that life's a game and then they take the board away
They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story
And leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret-- A. Moore
@Johnny Q That should be the
That should be the stopgap measure, until we take private money out of public elections.
I'm sorry to have to say it
but to get rid of the parasites, the host must die.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Can you put that in more practical terms?
What exactly are you envisioning? Who/what is "the host", and what is its threshold of "death"?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Voting for puppet A
or puppet B will not solve our problem. We need to regain our civil rights, our freedom, and our will to fight for them.
America must sink to its lowest low. Like a substance abuser, we must hit absolute rock bottom.
Just like the Russian people did in the 90s.
Only when the American people have nothing left to steal or swindle out of will the Oligarchs (parasites) move on to greener pastures.
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose". Janice Joplin
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
I'm not so interested in foreign affairs
though I do think when one country makes war on another they should think first. Russia has lost a lot of people, and so has Hamas. The misuse of genocide and apartheid robs those terms of any meaning, what's next, the extinction of the human race?
I do think a lot of rhetoric about Israel is simple racism. The squad has spent the past few years trying hard to lose my support, they've succeeded. They're more about weird hating of anyone who isn't Muslim, Black, or Hispanic, than min wages and health care.
No middle eastern countries stepping up to take Palestinian refugees I notice.