DW Finds Hong Kong Undemocratic, Ignores US Elections Funds
Deutsche Welle’s recent piece, “Why Hong Kong's legislative election is far from democratic,” meticulously details the control Beijing exerts over candidate selection and voting. (Ah, the horrors of state-controlled elections!) But where’s the similar introspection for countries like the U.S., where 'campaign contributions' from organizations like AIPAC — a foreign policy lobby—regularly influence
legislative outcomes? In 2022 alone, AIPAC spent $27.9 million on federal elections, per OpenSecrets.org, explicitly targeting and unseating critics of Israeli policies and electing compliant candidates. One might wonder: how many 'approved' candidates does it take before an election is considered 'far from democratic' when the approval comes from a foreign lobby's super PACs rather than a
national party? The DW piece cites universal suffrage as a key issue in Hong Kong, but apparently, the universal suffrage of vast sums of cash in Western democracies is just 'business as usual.'