Is this anti-semitism?

re saudi arabia
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/11/saudi-arabia-declares-war-on-americas-muslim-congresswomen/

This subject is not taught in US schools, and most certainly not discussed in US media, so I would have guessed it was Saudi Arabia. Surely, you would not suggest that South Korea's purchasing political influence is benign?

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/08/foreign-interests-fara-lobby-watch-exclusive/

https://i.imgur.com/fKfUEnJ.png

Ireland, wtf? What a waste of money!

It's the Ireland Tourist Board.

You say that now but when the Irish-American lobby rises to deny the UK a trade deal

(This will never happen)

Like Ireland needs to spend money on persuading Americans to love Ireland, claiming you're Irish is a national pastime.

No on has yet written a best-seller Eat, Pray, Shillelagh.

you don't need to talk about the evils of AIPAC to talk about the settlements unless you actually believe that it's impossible to have a conversation about Israel without first weeding out the influence peddlers who are hijacking our national interest.

Why would anyone believe something so absolutely correct?

Don’t think you need to when you’ve got The Devil’s Own.

tbc "impossible to have a conversation about" is not synonymous with "we talk about it all the fucking time"

Mordy's point is incomplete for two reasons.

First, that just describes parties registered under FARA. AIPAC and other US-based groups are not registered under FARA.

Second, I believe Mordy is citing the "foreign principals" numbers. But there is also the money the country itself spends. On that account, Israel is #2.

https://www.opensecrets.org/fara

Also, the argument that others buy influence and turn the money crank even harder is not an argument that influence buying is not a problem and does not corrupt the process of creating sound policy.

i for reals read what she said and thought little of it tbh but i don't know shit so

I imagine the reason we don't hear more about South Korean lobbying is that there's no pro-North Korea interest to speak of in the U.S. so it's probably taken for granted.

I can't think of another situation where people identifying in some way with another country is considered to be fifth-columnism, in the way that it happens with israel. Maybe people accused irish-americans of promoting republican politics in the US, I dunno, it feels different.

anti-Catholic nativism endured sufficiently long in this country for people to accuse John F Kennedy of being a tool of the Pope or whatever

it's especially weird coming from the left (the "allegiance to a foreign country" stuff)

but arguably that's also been a part of the russia-trump stuff too

Iirc people made a suspicious stink that Kennedy was going to pledge allegiance to the Vatican over America, or whatever the anti-Catholic trope was at the time.

xpost Jinx!

Is "allegiance to" something of a term of art in this case? Does it have a specific meaning, like eg preferring that nation's interests over your own?

Maybe people accused irish-americans of promoting republican politics in the US.

They certainly did and not without good reason.

Truth.

I can't think of another situation where people identifying in some way with another country is considered to be fifth-columnism, in the way that it happens with israel.

is this functionally very different from the suspicions people have of muslims in the u.s.? main difference being that there has for a while been a single political entity with which for jews to be identified. there not being a single bloc of muslim-friendly geopolitical interest doesn't seem to stop the sharia-law-panic people from talking and acting as if there is, out there, somewhere outside the u.s.

AND WITHIN IT, TO OUR HORROR

East-asians in another era, also. Slavic people during the cold war, and yeah, Muslims today.

A reminder that the motivation is always, always, always somehow, somewhere, truly economic--someone benefits.

https://qz.com/1201502/japanese-internment-camps-during-world-war-ii-are-a-lesson-in-the-scary-economics-of-racial-resentment/

“Based on an accumulation of evidence, we now know that the government’s action was partially initiated by California corporate agribusiness interests hoping to satisfy their own lust for land while ridding themselves of competition from the state’s most productive family farms.”

As I recently learned from The Mushroom at the End of the World, the Bracero program was started shortly thereafter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_program

a nuance that's sort of being glossed over is that Omar didn't say anything about Jews having allegiance to Israel, she said that members of congress are being asked to have allegiance to Israel

^^ Explicitly unpacked in that WaPo article.

The distinction with, say, Irish republican sympathies is that those sympathies weren't thought to be in contradiction to american interests.

Omar's entire talk has been transcribed here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-ilhan-omar-25142297

(I'm sure i'm wrong about this, I'm just trying to identify why it feels different to me)

wtf was so wrong about what she said ? i don't get it

She insinuated that Congress was not a wholly idealistic enterprise and that her esteemed colleagues were perhaps swayed by motives less pure than an undying love of country and the strictest regard for truth, justice and statesmanlike reason. This was a shocking thing for any member of Congress to say, which is why so many of them instantly impugned her motives as impure, untruthful and unpatriotic.

so she is otm and they are just butthurt clutching their pearls . got it

there not being a single bloc of muslim-friendly geopolitical interest doesn't seem to stop the sharia-law-panic people from talking and acting as if there is, out there, somewhere outside the u.s.

Julia Ioffe immediately went to "oh yeah well where is Omar's criticism of Saudi influence HUH" on Twitter and deleted it when she was immediately corrected by Omar herself.

I can't think of another situation where people identifying in some way with another country is considered to be fifth-columnism, in the way that it happens with israel.

Fifth-columnism not what's happening, though. The criticism is that the ruling class's 'support for Israel' is to their own ends (anti-Muslim fervor, imperialism, the military-industrial complex, etc.) to the detriment of the public good of Americans.

Julia Ioffe immediately went to "oh yeah well where is Omar's criticism of Saudi influence HUH" on Twitter and deleted it when she was immediately corrected by Omar herself.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Wednesday, March 6, 2019 5:29 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The irony is that the reason people get the impression that Omar "focuses" on Israel and not other things is that her critics focus on her focus on Israel and make lots of noise about it, whereas there doesn't appear to be an equivalent level of pro-Saudi noise/outrage when she criticizes SA (although they clearly target her in other ways). It's precisely the criticism of her statements about Israel that magnifies them so much.

Fifth-columnism not what's happening, though. The criticism is that the ruling class's 'support for Israel' is to their own ends (anti-Muslim fervor, imperialism, the military-industrial complex, etc.) to the detriment of the public good of Americans.

this may be so, but there's certainly some 'fifth-columnism' involved - that jewish-americans are actually working against US interests to support Israel.

not really, Congress is like 5% Jewish. The loudest voices for Israel have been WASPs for two generations.

People who automatically equate "American use of Israel as a client state" with "Jews" are kind of telling on themselves.

The idea that taking issue with support of Israel means one is necessarily criticizing Jews as Jews ignores the last few decades of political developments around the United States’ relationship with Israel. “Supporters of Israel” hasn’t been a synonym for “Jews” since the 1980s. I have to repeat this: In the United States today, a “supporter of Israel” is much more likely to be an evangelical Christian Republican than a Jew.

tbc "impossible to have a conversation about" is not synonymous with "we talk about it all the fucking time"

― Mordy

most of the things people talk about all the fucking time are things i find it basically impossible to have a conversation about

example: steely dan

So for me I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is ok for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country. And I want to ask, why is it ok for me to talk about the influence of the NRA, of fossil fuel industries, or Big Pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobby that is influencing policy.

So in context she is clearly talking about AIPAC, not Jews in general. Pretty unobjectionable when you read the whole thing imjo

it's being spun all over as 'coded wording' which is fucking absurd. I've seen people on social media basically copy and pasting the same 'explanation' as though if they pass it around enough it will become true.

the most grotesque part of this is that a bunch of evangelical christian theofascists, who devoutly wish to bring about a rapture in which, in their eschatology, jews will descend to the fire pits of hell, are lecturing me, a jew, on what constitutes anti-semitism.

i know that is just one part of the dynamic but it's a key part