The Scope of the American Zionist Lobby
23.09.2024
The USA’s capitalist lobby, with its Zionist component, has visibly “bought and paid for” most American congressmen – politicians that the American electorate thought represented them. This, in turn, is what helps to give Israel the impunity to perpetuate the genocide it is perpetrating in full view of the world. And that is one reason it is important to understand the scope of capitalist lobbies in a class society – in the USA, as indeed in Mauritius, as elections loom in both countries: we learn what class is behind the genocide or any other political act against the people.
In Mauritius, we have only had glimpses – when the Jugnauth’s could build the Sun Trust building with the millions left over from capitalist donations for a general election campaign, or when the transactions with a sugar oligarch around their purchase of the Angus Road property were exposed, or when Ramgoolam’s safes were seen on TV disgorging their hundreds of millions in liquid currency, or when the BAI was exposed for financing of the Labour Party, and also the MMM. Calculating the spending of the MSM Alliance and the Labour Alliance for the next general election would be an important bit of research for any academic or student in economics, sociology or political science. They would need to learn how the parties work, at the grassroots so as to be able to add up the cost of each meeting, its buses and hand-outs, and of each car, and each agent or advisor paid to work for them, and each bit of publicity material generated. And then we would see how the electoral laws are flaunted, too. But, importantly, we would know how tied the hands are of these smiling, fawning politicians, once they have taken money into these same hands out of the hands of the capitalists, who have such clear-cut class interests. Such scholars could also study the use, since the Guy Ollivry corruption with the Teeren Appasamy capital, of diaspora money to try to buy elections in 1990s. Here is one reference in L’Express
https://lexpress.mu/s/article/appasamys-associate-implicates-opposition
It would be useful for Mauritian students and University lecturers to begin to quantify this corruption of democracy under capitalism.
USA – beginning to quantify the Capitalist Lobby Payments
How much exactly do capitalist lobbies in the USA pay elected politicians, when they buy them?
We have a glimpse of this type of corruption when Democratic Party Congressman Bob Menendez, now awaiting his sentence due in October, after being found guilty of accepting cash and gold bars worth some $550,000 i.e. over half a million Dollars.
But in this article we will give an idea, based on excellent research in progress by American activists and intellectuals in Code Pink, of the actual sums involved in the USA election donations from lobbies. We can assume that most of this money is, in fact, spent on corrupting the electorate – by advertisements and other means of hidden persuasion, to quote Vance Packard, and of manufacturing consent, to quote Noam Chomsky et al. Only part is diverted into the safes of Ramgoolam or Menendez, respectively.
But before getting to the scope of the capitalist lobbies in the USA, including the Zionist one, let’s explain why we used the word “visibly” in the first line of this article, when referring to how the politicians in the US are “bought and paid for”. We said “visibly” because earlier this year Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the US Congress while he was busy conducting genocide in Gaza, and we actually got to see all those “bought and paid for” US congressmen in a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives acting like puppets – standing up for a paid ovation and then sitting down again in obedience – over 50 times! They made clowns of themselves, puppet-clowns. Hilarious, if it were not so cruelly tragic, on the epic scale of genocide. American researcher and activist Norman Finkelstein referred to the Netanyahu session in Congress as a “Nuremburg Rally” he did not want to watch.
How can a democracy be corrupted this way? Corrupted by capitalists’ money, and in the blatant interests, in this case, of a foreign power outside the country concerned, to boot? The answer is partly that the capitalist class can get away with it because in the past, and until now, they have relied and continue to rely upon a huge Zionist social base – Christian Zionists (mainly Evangelical Christians) claiming to represent 50 million Americans, and Jewish Zionists claiming to represent some 4 million of the American Jewish people. These social bases have for 150 years or so been used by imperialist plotters, when it suits them. This is described in detail by Ilan Pappé in his recent book. It shows how the capitalist and imperialist corruption feeds upon the theocratic nature of these two social bases’ religious beliefs: their belief is that “God has promised the Palestinians’ land to Jewish people, wherever they come from, and therefore it is god-ordained that the Palestinian people be hounded off their land, or got rid of at all costs. So, genocide is OK. QED.”
Code Pink, an anti-militarist women’s organization in the USA, has made Dollar calculations of the amount of US Dollars that capitalist and imperialist lobbies, including the Zionist lobby, actually spend on paying American politicians, including their election campaigns. https://www.boughtbyzionism.org/
This down-to-earth compilation of data then adds to the historian Ilan Pappé’s brilliant book published last month with the accurate title Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic. It is a fine read. All 750 pages’ worth. Make it a must to read it.
Politicians Bought by Zionism
These politicians that Code Pink has data on, so far, are “bought” for a total cumulative sum of: $ 264,952,881 .... and counting. Code Pink breaks down this figure, showing how the different specific lobbies spend the following on buying politicians:
-- Weapons Companies have spent a total amount of $ 30,392,789 and counting...
-- AIPAC & Zionist Lobby Groups have spent a total amount of $ 39,449,387 and counting...
And at the same time, equally shocking for its “corruption” value
-- Think Tanks have profited off occupation by Israel for the total amount of $ 472,425,000 and counting... Of the total finance raised by all US Think Tanks 60% is definitely from the arms industry, and 24% is from undisclosed sources, so up to 84% may be from the arms industry. Only 16% is known to be NOT financed by the arms industry. This makes us think twice about the production of intellectual knowledge, and its dissemination.
-- Charities have profited off occupation by Israel for the massive total amount of $ 3,545,293,000 and counting... The Code Pink article has a good list of articles on Christian Zionist and Jewish Zionist charities and fronts for charities. This must make us think of the dangers of theocracy persisting into the 21st Century, as well as the malevolence of “the NGO-ization of the struggle”, to use Arundhati Roy’s expression.
The figures on the Code Pink site show American Congressmen, politician-by-politician, and how many Dollars the Zionist lobby has spent on each. For example, Biden has received a whopping $ 5.7 million and Harris $ 5.4 million, just from the Zionist lobby alone. These are enormous sums – even by US standards. Over a quarter of the total Zionist lobby money spent on politicians went to these two Democratic Party politicians.
Conclusion
The conclusion is that the “democracy” that we, the people of the world, have won over the past couple of centuries of struggle, is not only insufficient, but also diminishing. All this is necessary to explain one difference between us in LALIT, who refuse to be run by capitalist lobbies, and all the other parties in Mauritius, who are corrupted this way. Rabin Bhujun, media expert and enthusiastic fisherman, is quite right to draw attention to the ReAl politics that Ashok Subron has led his party into when he allies with parties so thoroughly corrupted by the capitalist lobbies as those of Ramgoolam, Bérenger and Richard Duval. We will watch if he tots up the expenses in their candidates’ constituencies and overall for the parties divided by 60 candidates, correctly and honestly, before swearing they spent less than the legal maximum, and then compare the expenses to those in the Kistnen papers.
