• fed [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    what is this weird obsession with attacking another poster lol. the power of the state can force it’s subjects to fight it’s imperial wars, this is seen literally throughout history

      • fed [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        yes there is no analysis or nuance needed of why someone would commit atrocities ,follow draft orders. i view history as something happened and there is no more analysis beyond that.

        for fucks sake this is literally a marxist website cmon :what:

        you can understand as a victim hating the actions of a person while also understanding material reasons for why they committed their actions. like rehabilitation is a thing for the worst of society ex. murderers and rapists. victims have forgiven such acts before, not that they are obligated to or should

        • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
          hexagon
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          No one is saying there’s zero nuance. We are saying you start from a position of anti-imperialism and condemning genocide.

          Understanding how people are systemically funneled into fascism is important to combatting it. It does not absolve a person of having committed atrocities.

          Rehabilitation is important. It comes from a place of first acknowledging the evil a person has done.

          victims have forgiven such acts before

          When the predator admits guilt and asks for forgiveness. It’s also the victim’s choice whether they accept.

          • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            You don't understand! They might have had to experience poverty like those subhumans they genocided!

            • fed [none/use name]
              ·
              3 years ago

              are you ok? Like you replied to 4 of my comments and seem to not understand anything I’m saying.

              :wtf-am-i-reading:

        • silent_water [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          we can understand the reasons someone commits atrocities, understand that the economic factors that lead up to it, and still understand that they're fascists who must be fought, god damn.

            • silent_water [she/her]
              ·
              3 years ago

              you're up and down this thread arguing that we should forgive genocidiers because of the reasons they had to commit or abet atrocities. no one is saying slaughter them. but neither can they simply be forgiven for what they did. rehabilitation and restitution require so much more than merely saying "I see the economic factors that forced your hand". you're engaging in apologia.

              • fed [none/use name]
                ·
                3 years ago

                i have not argued that we should forgive genociders, if i did feel free to copy and paste where i did. my point should be clear from my recent comments

    • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      The vast majority of troops in Vietnam volunteered to commit genocide.

      Every single one of them could've taken a prison sentence, where they would not die, would not commit genocide, and would not see their friends die.

      They went there because they are vermin Americans, and, like you, consider foreigners subhumans and their deaths an acceptable price.

      • Imbeggingyoutoread [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        You’re literally repeating militarist revisionary talking points. The claim that the majority of combat troops in Vietnam were volunteers is an incredible distortion to present the draft as less unpopular/significant than it actually was. If you follow up on those claims you’ll find that 2.2 million of the 2.5 million were drafted, many of them only volunteering AFTER they received notice to try and avoid infantry which is reinterpreted as a volunteer in order to ignore the coercion present there. Please don’t repeat right wing bullshit.

        • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Do you have a source for this? I'm not finding a lot of info that confirms it.

          • Imbeggingyoutoread [any]
            ·
            3 years ago

            http://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antivietnamwar/exhibits/show/exhibit/draft_protests/the-military-draft-during-the-

            Top search result while I’m at work, I can get other sources w/o difficulty.

    • Gonzalo [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Obsession is when this site dunks on someone banned for defending nazis. Thank you fed, very cool.

      :marx-ok:

        • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
          hexagon
          ·
          3 years ago

          I had family who died in the holocaust. I had other family who refused to fight in any of America's imperialist wars and paid for it. I don't have a lot of patience for anyone trying to absolve nazis of their guilt or claim it was impossible to resist the draft.

          • fed [none/use name]
            ·
            3 years ago

            most people can not “pay for it” most can’t flee to another country or be thrown in jail for 5 years and then be released into homelessness and poverty. this is the 60s we are talking about lol. I’m glad your family was class conscious/anti-imperialist but a large majority of Americans are not/were not.

            • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
              hexagon
              ·
              edit-2
              3 years ago

              Honestly it wasn’t even 5 years, I just rolled with that number because he pulled it out of his ass. More like 2-3 tops.

              Anyway, there were tons of people in the 60’s who fought back and resisted the Vietnam war. My family weren’t an outlier.

              Homelessness and poverty is such a strange assumption about what happened to draft dodgers, especially given what happened to vets when they came back.

            • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I’m glad your family was class conscious/anti-imperialist but a large majority of Americans are not/were not.

              And? The imperial machine marches on whether or not imperial subjects choose to recognize it. Imperialists who commit atrocities can't just get a blanket pardon because they didn't know better

              • fed [none/use name]
                ·
                3 years ago

                I’m not saying blanket pardon, I’m not even saying forgiveness, I’m simply talking about analyzing the material / societal reasons. unless you believe people are just evil and like doing evil it seems like the “normal” take leftists should have lol

                  • Zodiark
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    5 months ago

                    deleted by creator

                • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  Nobody is arguing that we shouldn't do that.

                  Analyzing the material reasons people do what they do is good. Recognizing the systemic factors that lead imperialists to project imperialism is something that we should do. But that doesn't mean treating imperialists with these uwu kid gloves, especially when they haven't deprogrammed.

            • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              Oh well if the genociders might have had to experience poverty if they didn't commit genocide, that's hunky-dory! I wonder if the people they were genociding ever experienced poverty or homelessness. 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

            • Parzivus [any]
              ·
              3 years ago

              Are you saying fighting for imperialists (or less charitably, commiting genocide) is preferable to prison?

              • fed [none/use name]
                ·
                3 years ago

                I'm saying from a person in the 60s pov yes. You have been force-fed American exceptionalism and anti-communism from the cradle, of course, you should fight those dirty commies. (although only 1 out of 7 draftees was in combat) But the alternative is if you don't have a family to fall back on you lose everything(job, car, house if you have one), have a criminal record, and have spent a prolonged period of time in an American prison, an institution that is proven to turn 1st-time offenders into repeat and more violent offenders. or you have enough money to go to another country/have a good enough education to get into college (during this time a huge % of people, especially in the midwest did not finish high school)

                i think my main point is there is a reason the draft worked in the 60s and early 70s, but we wouldn't dream of it being attempted today; less dissenting news against US imperial interests, a lack of a real existential threat (china/sinophobia is like 1% of what the population thought of Russia. side note for example my father/mother and most everyone they went to school with 100% believed that nuclear war was going to happen, it was a fact of life) and a lack of understanding of how awful the war was until later into the conflict. Today day 1 we would see pictures of soldiers getting blown the fuck up/mass refusal to report if you got drafted also inpart due to a cultural shift towards anti-war among younger people.

                like 5 years and a 25k (200k adj. for inflation) fine or have a 6 in 7 shot of never seeing combat for 2 years then returning with GI bill benefits + pay. It is understandable to me why some took the state's offer. That does not mean it is GOOD, or ABSOLVES THEM OF WAR CRIMES, it means i can see why,at the time, draftees did not see themselves as the modern-day wehrmacht

                • Parzivus [any]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  I mean, the same logic works for the Wehrmacht itself. There were a good six years between the Nazis taking power and the invasion of Poland. Plenty of time for propaganda pushing on top of the resentment from losing WWI. Nobody sees themselves as evil.
                  Like, if you want to go full materialist and say everyone is a product of their times then sure, but that line of thought is really only suited to historical research. It doesn't serve a purpose politically other than to absolve those people of any crimes they committed, and since that doesn't seem to be what you're going for, it's kind of a weird argument to make on a leftist politics website.

        • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
          hexagon
          ·
          3 years ago

          you’ve been tagging him and attacking him since like 1am

          Oh come on now, we both know I had a good night's rest and woke up to wonderful news!

          7df is not the enemy, he is simply posting a take that is “people more often than not choose the path of least resistance”

          Umm that wasn’t what he argued.

        • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          The path of least resistance is going to prison where you won't die. It's objectively safer and easier than going to war.

          They volunteered to go because, like you, they see foreigners as subhumans.

        • fed [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          like empires have conscripted soldiers against their will for thousands of years

          • Brak [they/them, e/em/eir]
            hexagon
            ·
            3 years ago

            You are right, and throughout that time, people have come together and rebelled against it.