I fucking hate the cult the West has built up around its role in WWII, the war they idolize because it was about that one time they fought (more brazen and mask off) imperialists and genocidaires, rather than poor villagers with scavenged weapons somewhere in Africa or Southeast Asia. Not just because it sweeps some inconvenient details under the rug (ie, what sociopolitical and economic developments in America/Europe led to the Nazis in the first place) but because there hasn’t been a single war or geopolitical rivalry since that hasn’t tried to shoehorn in non-existent parallels, leading up to the big-brained take that a militant Islamist group comprised hardened orphans in a walled-off ghetto is somehow the Third fucking Reich in this scenario. It’s somehow even worse when they learn about the unsavory aspects of the (Western) Allies’ conduct because they can use that to justify war crimes so long as it gets the “bad guy” in the end.

Compounding this is a profound ignorance of the Israel-Palestine “conflict” as well since I’m sure anyone who isn’t a disingenuous fool would know about the Israeli settler-colonial system and put two and two together treating the occupied Germans and Japanese as an “undesirable” indigenous population to be displaced would have similar if not worse results. There were already Wehrwolf terrorist cells in occupied zones where the west treated “former” Nazis with kids’ gloves and poured in that sweet sweet Marshal Plan aid, just imagine how bad it would have been in that aforementioned hypothetical scenario.

As a bonus, there’s another dipshit trying to imply that WWII partisans didn’t commit atrocities against “civilian” settlers participating in a war of extermination against them.

There, I was holding in that rant for a while. parenti-hands

On a related note, Kay and Skittles did a great video which touches on this, particularly on Saving Private Ryan towards the end of it.

  • StalinIsMaiWaifu@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    11 months ago

    Id be remiss if I didn't point out Germany's and Japan's goals in ww2 were directly influenced by the actions of the west against them (id argue the oop is being willfully ignorant by not counting imperial japan and nazi Germany as "terrorist states")

    In ww1 Britain launched a devastating blockade and would seize all incoming food (Germany was a food importing country) a direct result of this was Hitler's belief of victory in the east in order to secure resources the homeland lacked- oil in the caucuses and grain in ukraine

    As for Japan, it was forced to open itself to western influence by gunpoint and it had a first row seat to the century of humiliation. To Japan the message was clear- conquer or die.

    • theposterformerlyknownasgood
      ·
      11 months ago

      That isn't even a little bit what happened with Japan, and its sus as hell thst you would imply so. Yes Japan had been opened by force. But the weren't witnesses to Chinese humiliation, they were eager participants, and what drove them to attack the US was the US demanding they get out of the humiliating China business.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        11 months ago

        Yes, but the message "conquer or die" was absolutely clear. I'm not saying Japan is smol bean forced to do imperialism, but they tried to just resist on their own at first but were smashed and decided they will be rather the winners in the classical manner of opressed becoming the opressor. Look who and how started under a sonno-joi slogan and then those very same people became so westernized even fucking Kipling thought they are going way too far.