Title: Retired general warns the U.S. military could lead a coup after the 2024 election
Only in communist countries do they politically brainwash their soldiers.
It's still so funny to me how people are convinced that there are legions of chuds just waiting for their activation phrase as if they're actually ready to give up their collections of dopamine buttons for :trump-anguish:
The most that could possibly happen is Jan 6 but with more people in attendance. These people are just as atomized and lacking in organization as the rest of us, and the military leadership is far too ideologically constrained to consider a coup unless things are literally disintegrating around them and it's viewed as an essential emergency measure.
It's not so much that they're willing to do it for Trump as they are to (re)impose/enforce white nationalism on the rest of the country.
They want fascism but it is not likely that they are ready to risk their pampered suburban lifestyle to achieve it. Fascism will come slowly though the ballot box, not suddenly through a coup.
A lot of people are deeply dissatisfied with their pampered suburban lifestyle. They love fantasizing about it getting swept away so that they essentially have another shot at living a meaningful, fulfilling life. That's the core appeal of a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction (especially stuff where some society survives, and the reader stand-in gets to have a real voice in it).
Now there's a huge difference between fantasy and actually going forward with something, but the pump is primed, and shit like QAnon is facilitating the steps from fantasy to action. You get the right leader, or the right crisis, or the right enemy, and a lot of suburbanites might be willing to move to action. They're already the most politically active segment of society. And if they see a little bit of success? Well now they're already doing it, and it's working, so there's inertia to stay at it even if objectively they're less comfortable than before.
You don't need legions though, you need a couple % of really motivated individuals.
I had a conversation with somebody about my age and we were talking about civics lessons, liberal arts education, and the development of the philosophical underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution.
Just fucking teach people Marxism. Dispel the myths around it, teach people revolutionary class consciousness. Yeah that might make a bunch of people quit and organize for PPW but fuck that's the logical conclusion of this statement.
These contradictions are gonna resolve themselves one way or another and if these assholes really wanted to stop these fascists they wouldn't be teaching people to be more liberal.
That Milley guy even said he read Lenin and Mao they know what they're doing.
Are civics lessons 'weak tea' to stave off an insurrection?
Yes, yes they are. These types of articles are so devoid of material analysis it's amazing, they can't even begin to examine the underlying material conditions and history of fascist movements in the US and instead do this :who-did-this: bullshit.
I think that all I ever learned about Marx and communism in 16 years of schooling (K-12 + a 4 year degree) was that "Marx invented communism, there was a revolution in Russia some time later, oh and then we had the Red Scare but thats over now"
I feel lucky that my dad has a PhD in history/philosophy and that my mum used to be a card-carrying communist. I picked up a lot of political theory and history just by osmosis.
The education system was shit at explaining anything about Marxism. I remember a short chapter about socialism in a grade 9 civics book having a very basic explanation of the LTV. Other than that I only learned about Marxism at law school when we had a half-assed class on philosophy/legal theory that was designed more to teach dumbass teenagers straight out of high school the proper professional jargon to not look stupid in professional legal circles than to impart any real knowledge. That class covered Marxism with a four page chapter in the textbook and a single 45 minute lesson.
I can't begin to imagine how little most normies actually know about Marxism, socialism and communism. All they have ever been exposed to is vague leftover cold war propaganda. Most people seem perfectly happy to believe that the people who liberated Auschwitz were just as bad as the people who built it.
I feel lucky that my dad has a PhD in history/philosophy
My dad has a PHD in philosophy of education and he is the most lib of all libs. Very lucky in that he's antiracist and completely supportive of the LGBTQ+ community, but holy shit his opinions of communism come straight from the CIA (he was born in the late 40s so that all tracks), and he's not very well read on anything Marxist or Marxist adjacent. I know I've posted this before, but when I came out as an ML to my folks, he tried to point to Putin's Russia as "why communism didnt work" and I just laughed and said his shit was revisionist and reactionary.
when they think Russia is still communist and think they can condescend to you on your ignorance, just grinds my fuckin gears so hard
He tried to open a dialogue with me about Marxism, but his ramblings were so bad I said "lets put a pin in this, I'll reply to your shit point by point later" and I've just never gotten around to it.
Don't get me wrong, my dad has the most amazingly shitty politics, but he knows a lot and has introduced me to a logical way of thinking that I'm really grateful for.
My dad is a great example of how intelligent people can arrive at batshit crazy beliefs. He is reading Marx and despises rich people and neoliberalism but he also believes in cold-war anti-communist propaganda, right-wing culture war bullshit including Islamophobic "great replacement" conspiracies. He hates modern succdems for their obvious betrayals but thinks that they are different from the "real" succdems who created the welfare state. Ideally he would like to live in a 1950's succdem welfare state without any post-1970 technology, LGBT or brown people.
This is funny because in my second year of law school we spent the last half of the trimester on Marxism in the property law class. The first half of the class was dedicated to showing that capitalism was just an extension of fuedalism and just an exchange of hands in regards to property. It's been a while, I'll have to reread my notes from the class.
We had the aforementioned half-assed class for a semester or two where they would touch on topics like "what is property?" and "what is law?" but all in all legal education was very unreflected and the concept of justice in any moral or philosophical sense was treated as a complete joke. We learned all the nuts and bolts of capitalist class justice that would make us good lawyers and bureaucrats but nothing that would make us challenge the existing order.
Yeah, aside from that once class, all of my law school has been focused on the little details of the law and setting us up to be alright at our jobs and stuff. However i was very silly and took a double degree of law and criminology, so its kinda funny to have all the law classes teach as if the Law is for all intents and purposes perfect and just, and then go across campus to the criminology class and be taught its all lies. I have to say though, I'm surprised that my criminology degree hasn't gone all in on the " muh personal responsibility" aspect of criminological theories.
I think that is because "muh personal responsibility" is just a dumbass reactionary opinion and not a conclusion one can honestly arrive at from looking at the actual data on crine. Academia is full of power-serving ghouls but there are also lots and lots of nerds who just want to find out how stuff works.
Yeah, it's definitely just dumbass reactionaries jerking each other off over what they think cause crime, and i remember going over some
Including phrenology, although it was a "look at it and laugh" thingbut by and large all the theories taken seriously were about how material conditions and poverty cause crime. And i agree, being one of those nerds who wants to know why stuff happens and how.
Oh yeah, I didnt learn what Marxism actually was until like....a few years ago really. I just knew that he was "a philospher in the 1800s who invented communism." As much as one can "invent" something like that. We were just taught his name, what he was famous for, and then we moved on.
if these assholes really wanted to stop these fascists they wouldn’t be teaching people to be more liberal.
They don't care about stopping fascists though. Liberals couldn't give less of a shit
Are civics lessons ‘weak tea’ to stave off an insurrection?
I'm sure some liberal platitudes will totally defuse all civil unrest as imperial collapse continues to worsen
Uncle Beau seems to think that this general knows the stats he’s citing are bullshit and that stunts like these are the only way to get DoD to actually do the training they should already be doing. Like, fuck the United States, but we legitimately do not want the US government to be couped by a bunch of QAnon military factions and these trainings would have a decent chance of weeding them out.
Liberal hysterics, why would capital overthrow the seat of capital? There is no benefit to any kind of coup in the US, no risk of communism.
Think less "overthrow," more "new management." Conservatives often rail against existing repressive institutions not because they are fundamentally opposed to their mission, but because they think those institutions aren't doing a good enough job at repressing the right people.
Please point to a historical example of a Liberal republic being overthrown by a fascist or military junta where there was no threat of socialist or labor movements. As far as I know, that's somewhere between extremely rare to unprecedented. The capitalists prefer the more stable system of Liberal democracy, and when that fails they are fine with fascist dictatorship as a back-up. But that back-up usually only occurs during intense crisis and a socialist movement.
Considering Biden is an obedient puppet of capital there's no reason for capital to fund the fascist uprising. That would only happen if there was actual threats in the state to them.
no threat of socialist or labor movements.
We're seeing a spike in labor activity, a democratic socialist was a major player in the last two presidential campaigns, and we're one year removed from a generational wave of protests kicked off and sustained for months by the patent injustices of capitalist policing. There's more of a threat of socialist or labor movements in the U.S. than there has been since the 60s or 70s.
We're living in unprecedented times. Capitalism is facing an intense crisis it's never faced before - the rate of profit is plummeting and the existing system is stretched to it's breaking point with no where left to exploit.
You should check the histories of other places, libs get couped by open fascism just because it's more benefitting to biger powers, (especially for libs who try do some economic independence from the central powers, that's a big no-no and you'll get whacked with a big IMF loan as soon as possible).
Which is why those in charge of maintaining the system are filling the cracks
Let capital handle problems of capital. You don't need to side with them against "fascism" when they already have complete and total control of the state. The entire scare of "Trumpism" and "alt right" is over-hyped and scaremongered to get vulnerable non-voting populations and leftists more onboard with a "popular anti-fascist front". Seems reasonable right? Except that Biden is exactly as fascist as Trump is, by any definition I can think of. Democrats are not on your side or your ally against fascists.
Cool thanks for the lesson this is all new information to me I will now stop donating to democrats and stop enrolling in the army and stop giving cops hugs when I see them in the street you have opened my eyes
Good first step would be to stop fearmongering about the imminent fascist coup and pogroms that will happen anyday now in leftist spaces, because the only outcome of that is people being driven back to the Democrats to do "Harm mitigation" and it's hyperbolic and unrealistic. It's crying wolf.
I definitely said they were imminent and I’m sure there are plenty of leftists on Chapo dot chat about to turn socdem because of my liberal fear mongering
US government to be couped by a bunch of QAnon military factions
:sicko-hair:
I’ve personally had my fill of paramilitaries roaming the streets and hunting minorities. We don’t need full pogroms
I don't think this plan to ideologically train soldiers is gonna do much to blunt that possibility. Civics lessons are already part of k-12 education and there already are open fascists intentionally joining the military to get training and do fascism.
The reasons for events like 1/6 or a possible military coup isn't because people didn't read the constitution closely enough.
they're probably less competent though so it could possibly be better than our current fascists
:shrug-outta-hecks:
Yeah I suppose it’s not impossible. But the point of the trainings being advocated for is keep them less competent. Without them we are literally teaching fascists how to coup governments by giving them trainings on how to defend against those potential coups. I know libs are going super hard on the January 6th stuff, but a lot of these right wing paramilitary groups are legitimately are growing in power and in numbers
Antonio Taguba
you'll remember Taguba as the general who was forced out of the military for wanting to properly investigate Abu Ghraib
No good generals. They either stay in as villains or leave a hero.
A lot of these high ranking generals seem to be the kind of highly educated technocrats that libs go nuts for. True believers who want to maintain civilian control of the military and keep the gears oiled on the largest empire in human history. And when they try to pay their debts and do the proper technocratic thing and investigate failures, they just aren’t allowed. I’d love to see a lib explain that in any sort of depth holy shit lol
So, how's everybody's spanish/mandarin/vietnamese language lessons going?
I'm asking genuinely - where would Spanish get you? I don't know much about Cuba, Venezuela, or Bolivia but can't imagine they'd trust a norteamericano asylum seeker.
I've heard good things about mexico. Certain folks might be against letting gringos into their communities, but Mexicans at large are pretty open to foreigners. Plus Mexican society actually has a use for some of us (translators, educators, engineers etc).
This goes for those other countries you listed as well. Of course you could be considered a threat for good reason by some leftist governments, but there are many Louis Proyect types who never gained any fame but were still nonetheless valuable to leftist movements/governments.
All those libs talking about moving to canada back in 2016 would have been a legit burden on Canada. They never considered Mexico cuz they have an anglo driven wordview where if every product available in the global market isn't available in their locality, they consider the locality beneath them/third world tier. fuck them, move to someplace where your skills can be put to good use.
Вы студент русского языка?
Edit: Я вижу ты родилься в России. Я Американец, но моя пробабушка и продедушка из России. Я долго учил русский язык, но очень плохо говорю.
Я всегда пробую понимать без словаря. Я не знаю "усыновить". Это значит у тебя были биологические родители в России, или поанглисский, you're adopted?
Мне кажеться, давно, у меня нет семьи в России. Многи людей умерли в погромов (очень кринж). Но я хочу поехать.
Моя старшая семья (я не знаю как сказать "ancestors") жила при Николае. Я знаю кто перехали в Америку, но Я не иненно знаю кто продолжали жить в России. В деревне (шетль) у много людей было моя семейная имя, но это известная имя. Возможно эти люди не в моей семьи.
Спасибо. Я знаю я плохо говорю по русский, но я люблю практироваться.
If I remember correctly, Bernie got more donations from soldiers than anyone else. Would that make any effect?
A lot of military grunts are people of color and poor people who joined for salary and free college so I’m not shocked by that and I don’t think a large chunk of the military would go along with an order to establish the fourth reich if they got one
You only need a relatively small slice of the pie to overthrow a government if you're better organized and more prepared than the majority. If ten guys show up with machine guns and order a hundred guys to stay in their barracks or die then the ten guys usually win.
This right here, yeah you got military chuds (they get filtered into horror wetwork shit and become media darlings) but most veterans I met going to college out of the force were either leftist or left leaning and pretty based (actually got War is a Racket recommended to me by one of the guys when I was helping out at the veteran college center). Add in that veterans deal with shit structural treatment when they return while peeps kiss their ass but give them no material benefits and it can lead to some cognitive dissonance to set in.
