https://twitter.com/taliaotg/status/1764639811023884648
Remember to encourage any military people you know to do this. It's a hard decision with the possibility of real consequences, the more support they have the easier it will be. And if you can push them farther left military trained personnel will be invaluable to any revolution.
This is exactly the correct take. It's easy to say "fuck the troops" it is harder but no less necessary to also try to reach them when opportunity arises.
Troops willing to recognize that they're participating in evil and willing to do something about it is a carve out of "fuck the troops".
My problem with this logic is that a bunch of people who were convinced America was the good guys will be pretty useless in the larger context of the revolution if they're that easily swayed by obvious bullshit.
Sure you can try to reprogram them but what happens the next time a bloodthirsty fascist tells them turning on us is the real smart cool patriotic move.
They're useful as long as you can just plant them somewhere and point them in the right direction as long as we aren't counting on them to make any rational or moral decisions.
My problem with this logic is that a bunch of people who were convinced America was the good guys will be pretty useless in the larger context of the revolution if they're that easily swayed by obvious bullshit.
unlike me, who is immune to propaganda
Never signed up to kill a bunch of innocent people in random countries halfway across the world so feeling pretty good by comparison.
Ah yes, people are fixed in their education and opinion at a particular point in time, never to change no matter what.
People’s susceptibility to large ideological shifts varies a ton throughout their lives based on all kinds of different things. It’s not a static property.
https://soundcloud.com/eyesleft/girights
"A Guide to Getting Out of the US Military (Now) w/ the GI Rights Hotline" by the Eyes Left Podcast
Listened to this a week or so ago, the methods described are pretty straight forward and clear.
A lot of people who do the violent work of capital aren't actually dead-eyed psychos. Plenty believe there's some worthwhile purpose behind what they're doing. That's half the reason we have such a wall-to-wall propaganda machine; to let the folks pointing the guns rationalize.
There's a big difference between that and doing anything (even as modest as this) that might jeopardize your livelihood for your beliefs, but there's at least an entry point there.
Yeah but the letter said values of the US Armed Forces not “values of certain individuals within the US Armed Forces.” So as a commentary on the values of the institution itself, the letter is hilariously wrong as the USAF is one of the most evil institutions in the history of mankind
the explicitly-expressed patriotic values of the USAF are different than the actual values of killing brown people in service of capitalism. but the oaths and propaganda is largely about the explicit stuff. this type of thing appeals to
- new guys who believe the hype
- old guard who (somehow) believe wholeheartedly in the official values about "defending from enemies foreign and domestic". as they discovered stuff that wasn't that, they thought that their job was to reform the institution into congruence with its stated values. Now they may be despairing of the possibility
“Support for the conduct of the IDF is unacceptable and inconsistent with our values in the US Armed Forces.”
Uh, no it's not.🤷♂️
Well yeah obviously, and this is certainly not what Bushnell would have written, but the impact is clear as day. Something is stirring.
Oh, yeah, and that's great, but...unless the left latches onto this and does some serious education, I wouldn't get my hopes up. Imperialism: Now with Nuance!™
On this day hexbear exonerated uh... was it 7deadlyfetishes or based_ball? For their crucifixion and death on the hill of "muh not all troops"
They were right but for the wrong reason
for the record it was 7deadlyfetishes and they were explicitly doing clean wehrmacht apologia.
7deadlyfetishes came right out and said -- unironically -- that we should feel bad for Nazi concentration camp guards because they were just in it for free college. (Categorically untrue, since those guys were all party loyalists and were only selected for those posts if they were ideologically committed.)
Eh close enough, there's guantanamo prison guards that probably do it for the free college lol
It's one thing steal a loaf of bread if you're starving, it's another thing to start torturing and murdering people for money if you're starving.
Not to defend anything Isreal is doing but where was this energy from these troops at any point during the last 30 years when it was us doing this to random Muslims across the globe and not Isreal?
After the movements in Vietnam of people refusing the draft, refusing to carry a rifle, slinging their rifle on their back and surrendering to the first NV soldier they met, sabotaging military equipment, doing mass troop anti-war protests, and last but certainly not least fragging officers, the military propaganda complex went into overdrive pushing out anyone with a nuanced opinion on war and turning dumb teenagers into deus vult crusaders for the American Empire.
Nowadays I think a lot of those tricks have been over used and are thus losing their effectiveness. Back around 9/11 the troops were properly bloodthirsty, but now half the military now are just alienated nerds who hate their job (this does not exonerate them, it merely attempts to explain why we see what we see).
I mean to be fair, 30 years ago most of the kids signing this weren't even born yet
They got swept under the rug and their existence ignored generally, plus multimedia infrastructure wasn't as advanced as it is now.
sure would be ironic and funny if a combo of decreasing rates of enlistment combiend with deteriorating material conditions causes even like 10% of the u.s. military to radicalize to the left
doubt we'll get a carnation revolution out of it but there could definitely be some funny consequences
Every days we are getting closer and closer to what historians call the cool zone
Definitely interesting, but 100 troops out of 1.3 million active duty members is not really something to get excited about
I feel like tens of thousands is required for cool zone activity
I don't know how you get to ten thousand on your way up from zero without crossing a hundred, comrade
Wtf... this seems too good to be true
I think this honestly is fake, considering how the chuddish the U.S army tends to be... but yk, benefit of the doubt, I suppose...
The military is probably more chuddish than the U.S. as a whole, but there are tons of earnest libs who join, too. Think a literal Boy Scout who has vague aspirations of going into politics.
If an officer is left alive to give the order, the soldier that didn't frag them is complicit in the genocide. Both will deserve the Hague.
Okay cool, yeah we all agree about the troops, but the question is "what do we do with this information?" and "how do we leverage this to radicalize potential comrades"
As someone that actually organizes IRL we can't simply write off an important component of any potential successful revolution.
Writing them off and pushing them away out of a sense of moral purity is only going to leave them twisting in the wind and vulnerable to fascists.
I like the idea of dissenting soldiers and see the value of getting a Certified 1905 Moment™. An anonymous letter which heavily decries politics and the idea of political soldiers is just performative on its own. It's Step 1. Bushnell showed one form of Step 3. For this to have any real significance to me, I need to see that they're committed to some kind of Step 2. That Step 2, which the whole Certified 1905 Moment™ depends on, would require contradicting the first three paragraphs of this and admitting that war is political and a coherent response against imperialism/colonialism/genocide is political. Maybe it will come but I've been watching the military subreddit responses to Bushnell's self-immolation and it's 100% psychopathic.
It is literally a federal crime for soldiers to make "political" statements. Just signing this letter even as soft as it is is grounds for court marshal
Yes but that's my point. If the penalty for protesting and the penalty for rioting are the same, protests become riots. This is a political statement which uses political language to describe a political problem. It violates that article of the UCMJ and they face the same charge whether they write this or something more radical. They use the political language of milquetoast liberalism, that they're values-based patriots who hold themselves accountable to the highest standards.
Sure that might attract the handful of troops who otherwise starved Yemen for a decade without a letter, who are ideologically committed to the same ideologies perpetuating this war and consume hours of that ideology's media per day. This alone establishes the myth of the Clean Wehrmacht using the same rhetoric for the updated version of the same genocide. To this point they've been entirely responsible for this war without a peep, and like Bernie Sanders there's some arbitrary number of dead kids where it suddenly sparks their moral conviction. If what comes after this letter is something which recognises the reality of war and confronting it, something at least in the vein of a venerated general already writing War is a Racket, then I will treat it as a more serious trend indicating a real threat to the war. With this they're inviting the same criminal charge they'd otherwise face spreading Bushnell-level rhetoric to write "Gee golly we just love America and our values so much we don't wanna do this" as they press the Do This button 12 hours a day.
We must be extremely careful that support for dissenting soldiers does not undermine opposition to participation in the armed forces.
This is clearer if we talk about cops. If I start talking about how some of the cops are actually good and trying to change things what reaction does that conjure up in you? For me it immediately feels like it threatens to undermine all anti-cop work we do. It threatens to convince people that it's ok to be a cop if you're one of the good ones.
This same principle applies to the military. For me, the decision to promote radicalising military members really only becomes a viable prospect when we're actually approaching a sincere possibility of revolution. Outside of that specific situation it feels like it would undermine the work that has been so successful in harming their recruitment.
I agree on one hand but on the other "weeks where decades happen"
None of us can know when that moment will come.
I'm sure the US Military Service would also like to know, so they can be dishonorably discharged
Or because it's probably just 1 person who published this and organized "concerned us military service members" don't exist.
An open letter like this is supposed to be signed by a bunch of organizations so that individuals can't be punished. If the "letter" is addressed to nobody and is signed by nobody, then it's not a letter. It's just an anonymous twitter post.
The whole purpose of an open letter is having powerful people behind the message of the letter. Big organizations, famous individuals, etc. Otherwise it just looks fake.
I agree that it lacks political teeth without being signed, but if it is real and it continues to circulate among conscientious service members, they could come out later when their numbers are great enough to be politically significant.
No one is more skeptical than I am, but if Aaron Bushnell was willing to set himself on fire in protest, a protest that likely hit much harder to like minded military personnel, then other members are probably willing to write or sign a letter like this.
No one on the side of imperialism would fabricate a letter like this.
I talked with a former marine friend of mine and he says it's possibly a kind of limited hangout to save face, like "yeah we're TOTALLY not loving this genocide," most of all because there's nothing substantial behind it.
So yes, it makes sense for someone on the side of imperialism to fabricate the letter.
Possible, but the risk associated with faking a document that compels isolated alienated service members actually taking up political action against the will of their own government would be reckless beyond measure. This system works in part because it depoliticizes the individual. It would be like handing an unloaded gun to someone who wants to kill you and saying its harmless because it doesn't have any bullets; because if they can get some bullets, you're fucked, and you just saved your enemies a step by supplying the instrument of your undoing
Faking a document where individual military personnel engage in collective action is a real strange way to continue the centuries long concerted effort to prevent and destroy even the idea of collective political action.
True, but they go to great lengths to keep up the depolitization in the letter anyway. It's really more like recognizing someone is bound to come beat you up so you give them a
, feels threatening and dangerous but it's toothless.I see your point, but since it characterizes the author(s) as loyal, disciplined, committed service members and not weird and unrelatable radicals, I'm gonna have to agree to disagree wrt the authenticity.
Now whether something real will come out of it is a larger, much more complicated, and uncertain prospect. The odds of soldiers forming a united, cohesive, coherent left-wing political organization within the time frame of this conflict is desperately slim. Not much I, a civilian, can do either way unless I get a chance to do some educating.
You think these idiots know how to scheme when their public and private personas go whole hog at massacres?
probably like three random lance corporals in a discord server, truly the new American red army
If you are taking the IDF at their word, they are committing a bigger failure than the Fallujah battle that was horrific and a failure and a low point for the US military.
The IDF makes that horror show look GOOD.
