Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with Chomsky here.

While the Israeli lobbying in politics seems "huge", it is done in the open. Everyone and their dog knows about AIPAC and the military aid that is provided to Israel so that Israel can buy US-made weapons (or, for that matter, the German aid for U-boats). That's not really a problem IMHO - it both provides jobs in the defense industry without supplying weapons to Saudi-Arabia at the same time, and ensures the stability and viability of the one true democracy in the Middle East. In addition, given the rise of antisemitism happening all over the world it is an absolute imperative that Jews do have a "safe place" in this world. That's what the purpose of Israel actually is and why it was founded!

The Russian meddling, however, is different: it is done covertly. Russian agents bribed politicians, financed or directly controlled troll campaigns on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. They directly or through obscure "loans" and "donations" finance far-right parties across Europe and destabilize democracies.

While I'm not a big fan of lobbying at all, I vastly prefer it to what the Russians are doing.

The problem with the 'destabilization' argument is that it's largely been caused by the reaction to the random Twitter/Facebook trolls, not the trolls themselves. Seeing people flip out and want to ban free speech because of some social media nonsense is a far more powerful reason to mistrust a group than anything they could have actually posted against them on Twitter or Facebook to begin with.

If you don't believe me, take a look at some of the actual memes they've been posting: https://imgur.com/a/ZjQ3PLS

Can anyone tell me which of these memes presents an existential threat to democracy and how?

     Seeing people flip out and want to ban free speech because of some social media nonsense

No one wants to "ban free speech". There just need to be limitations. There is no valid reason for anyone (outside of art/education) to fly a Nazi flag, doing the Hitler salute or call for putting people into gas ovens, stoning them, raping them or whatever.

    Can anyone tell me which of these memes presents an existential threat to democracy and how?

Uhhh... there is this thing called "freedom of religion". Calling for "no more mosques" runs directly contrary to this. And yes, people get riled up by these "memes" so hard they'll even burn down mosques or bomb them. It happens in Germany with increasing frequency. What these memes do is create a massive anti-Muslim, anti-refugee movement that sooner or later feels entitled to violence.

Many of those people caught attacking refugee centers etc. are not classic neo-Nazis. They're ordinary citizens (http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/fluechtlingsheime-...), often radicalized by social media.

> No one wants to "ban free speech". There just need to be limitations.

The USA already has a narrow list of exceptions (true threats, defamation, etc.) and several of the examples you cite are utterly reprehensible, yet legally protected speech, so you're providing contradictory evidence here.

Granted, you may be in Germany where the situation is different? Of course, if so, you would seem to be 'influencing US elections' by calling for this speech to be removed, so I'm not sure where that gets us.

> And yes, people get riled up by these "memes" so hard they'll even burn down mosques or bomb them.

I'm not aware of any country that won't jail people for threatening to do such things, and so they should.

Your personal opinion is that it's less of a problem, but the end result is the same, US following policies that are not necessarily good for it's own people, instead serving agendas of external entities.

    US following policies that are not necessarily good for it's own people, instead serving agendas of external entities.

Well, I don't see any downside in the US supporting Israel, only upsides:

1) ensures that jobs are being kept in the US

2) ensures that Israel won't buy the weapons from somewhere else (aka binding Israel to US, or at least Western, tech)

3) ensures that the US has a reliable (!), friendly allied democratic nation in the Middle East.

That's a really big assumption that they are not doing anything covertly because they are doing it in the open. Especially if you consider initiatives like Jewish Internet Defense Force [1]. In light of the history of Israel, if find it extremely unlikely that they don't do anything like Russia. Probably any country with sufficiently advanced intelligence forces does stuff like that. Competent ones just don't get caught.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Forc...

> That's not really a problem IMHO

Umm unless you're an Arab, you know the other Semite.

Ask the Arabs living in Israel as Israeli citizens - about 21% of the population [1] - what they think about this, the answer might surprise you.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel

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