good post
https://twitter.com/BadEmpanada/status/1661212920938737665
I don't even believe in Hell and I'm still inclined to agree with you. Actions gotta have consequences or it'll never stop.
Actually, retribution based justice is a dead end. I guess restorative justice is still a consequence in some way but we're supposed to be prison abolitionists lol how can prison abolitionists turn around and advocate retributive justice.
User name checks out.
also I wish your dreams to come true.
As an absolutist about restorative justice, shit like this just makes me sad. You went through something I never and will never experienced so I'm not going to dictate to you, I know you have no responsibility to forgive, but it just fucking depresses me. I don't personally believe that leftists should subscribe to retributive justice, I think it goes against our ethos.
This seems a little silly. If the problem is that even the veterans who regret their actions for whatever reason still function as part of the tools for imperialism, why frame this in terms of repentance? Who cares if they "truly repent", are we some kind of a religion now? Should we not try to use these people to actually fight imperialism instead of asking them to go let themselves be killed as revenge for moral reasons?
He shouldn't put it in theological terms, but he does have a serious point about how disingenuous that shit almost always is. Look, if someone wants to agitate against recruitment and doesn't want to travel to Iraq to get lynched, that's fair, but sitting around moping about your PITS without the slightest interest in actually improving the world, while constantly bringing up your status so people can venerate you, that's fucking bullshit.
I think the implication is that if they don't truly repent, then we aren't able to use them for our own ends. Not gonna argue this idea very much since I spent all of half a second with it, but thats kinda where my brain went.
Thats basically one of several points BE makes, if you get back and all your efforts are about gaining acceptance from your homeland and to improve your homeland, then that isnt meaningfully different from your decision to go abroad and assist in imperialist slaughter for personal gains and benefits.
Or at least thats my way of putting it.
Should we not try to use these people to actually fight imperialism instead of asking them to go let themselves be killed as revenge for moral reasons?
In my experience, the vast majority of vets are broken people, whether it's physically broken, mentally broken, or emotionally broken. It's not us who need their help but them who need our help. We should not see them as heroes who will save the day but victims who need saving. There's no need to put them on a pedestal.
I genuinely think this website suffers from american nationalist brainworms of some kind.
No matter how many Death To America's are spoken, when something like this comes up theres still some spinal instinct to bring out apologistic arguments and try to explain away blame in a way that would be and is laughed at for any other historical or current reactionary and supremacist state.
Not trying to say this in like a funny way either I think its a real festering problem.
People here are so fucking weird about vets. They're not some breed of superhumans lording over us pleb civs. They're people with tinnitus and knee problems who also get very agitated over sudden loud noises and have nightmares at a higher rate than normal people. Vets aren't gonna be the vanguard of the revolution or the vanguard of anything really. Please stop putting them on a pedestal.
The fact that a struggle session has to always come up means some people here still refuse to see them for what they really are: a bunch of broken people who have nothing to show for it except the further advancement of US imperialism. They ruined their ears, their knees, their back, and their minds just so the talons of US empire could sink an inch deeper. Why should socialists cater to a group of people who by all accounts are going to contribute less to the revolution than your average worker?
"But veterans constantly get recruited into fascist paramilitaries." Anyone who has rubbed shoulders with enough vets would have met people who give spree killer vibes. I wouldn't trust any of those fuckers with a sharp object, let along a rifle. There's always room for them in some fascist death squad, but it should be clear to see why they have no place in any socialist formation, especially ones with members of marginalized communities.
But, "They are all unhealthy and injured" is not a very good argument for outright wishing them harm unconditionally. It just means they're not a political group we should be necessarily advertising to.
What we absolutely can do is support similarly disenfranchised people, while not refusing support for veterans while doing so. And then reaping all the clout that brings.
Part of it might be utter despair at the idea of opposing one of the most heavily armed militaries on the face of the earth.
it's incredible how suddenly there's a bunch of handwringing and complaints about "moralism" whenever it's yankee troops in the crosshairs
Well said. Death to Amerikkka means Death to Amerikkka. Imperialists get no further resources or good will spent on them
I thought to myself: no we won’t. Even if there were brigades of leftist militias and soldiers, it’s not enough not should it be.
Correct
Revolutions can always be non-violent or quick coups by rival factions of society against the state
Usually incorrect.
The only time there are ever "quick coups" is when it's done or supported by a nation's military and police and the force behind it is unmatched internally in terms of strength. The chances of the left in the West ever being in that position are slim. I've also never seen a non-violent revolution succeed. Even in India, there was a bunch of violence.
I thought to myself: no we won’t.
Yea, ok, but what if you need to drone strike a childrens hospital? How are you gonna do that without the help of US vets?
I guess I just assumed that anyone who can operate a remote control can pilot a drone
There's no such thing as a non violent revolution. And if you think that's an actual path than you are not being realistic at all
i don't give a fuck about the troops. fuck the troops. am i supposed to feel better if the particular troop you know was in a non-combat unit, or fixed the tanks? everything a military person does has the singular goal of spreading us hegemony via expression of violence, regardless of whether they're the psychopath pulling the trigger. you hardly need any triggermen today anyway. we have goddamn drones and computer-guided missiles. i say, fuck'em all. if a troop wants to be accepted into anti-imperialist struggle despite having been a troop, they've got to show that they understand what they helped accomplish to other people, something happening to their friends be damned.
am i supposed to feel better if the particular troop you know was in a non-combat unit, or fixed the tanks
Military prison guards are also non-combat, but the ghouls who did Abu Graib deserve :pit:
this seems weird because they literally can't seek forgiveness from their victims, because they're halfway across the planet most of the time
I don't think this objection makes sense.
We can communicate halfway across the planet very easily. Most of these people would happily take a long flight for a vacation. Not weighing in rn on whether or not they should fly to Iraq et al. to ask for forgiveness. But acting like most don't have the means or physical ability is factually wrong.
I meant in the case of poor and/or homeless veterans. If someone who can afford to travel confessed, I do not think anyone would do anything to them, or even listen to a confession in the first place.
You don't have to travel to communicate with people halfway around the world.
Your statement was "can't seek forgiveness". You've changed this to be "can't travel to confess" or victims would not "listen to them in the first place."
The former is very different from the latter. They can seek forgiveness even if they can't travel there. They can seek it even if the victims wouldn't care.
I'm not sure "seeking forgiveness" is the best framing. But its good for people to recognize the evil they've done and its good for them acknowledge that evil to their victims. Acting like they can't or shouldn't bother trying doesn't make sense.
I apologize for changing the topic of conversation. I meant the second sentence primarily as another criticism of the general message of the original post, not a defense of my own original position.
the question that is implied there is what do you do if they don't forgive you and make it clear they never will and want you to stop trying. Because the uncomfortable implication is that you are then locked in to your bad behavior and might as well keep going
seeking victim forgiveness is an important step in recoverying from a harmful habit or state of being but ultimately I think there needs to be forgiveness both internal and societal regardless of what the victim has to say for the simple reason that there needs to be a way out or people won't even try to stop on the basis that there isn't anything on the other side anymore
Its not difficult for an imperialist society to forgive its own hitmen.
I think this kind of thinking falls apart when the crimes go from national to international.
that is true but I was also speaking more generally about wrongdoing
it is easy for an imperialist society to forgive its own killers but what else are we going to do with them. If we killed or imprisoned them it wouldn't undo their crimes.
I was recently asked to support Ukraine on the basis of what if your mother was killed by a Russian shell wouldn't you want the Russians dead and I think it's kind harsh but we can't make decisions on that basis or we just end up covered in blood.
Sometimes the damage a person or society has caused is more than they can undo or fix and the question at that point is what do you want from them. They should fix it but are clearly incapable of doing so so now what
the uncomfortable implication is that you are then locked in to your bad behavior and might as well keep going
A 'repetant' veteran should be a person that no one know that they're a veteran at all (barring their whatever closest confidant). You dont go around telling people that you're normal murderer, why should imperial murderer be different.
I upbeared this but I'm not actually sure I agree? Surely public accountability for past crimes is a good thing? I have some sketchy shit in my past and I always make sure to at least run it by the heads of the communities I'm part of privately. Though I've never publicly disclosed I guess. But like If I were ever to become a public figure (which I might, if I ever get around to publishing my fiction) I think I would want to publicly disclose somewhere, partially to head off people digging that past up but also partially just because... it feels like the right way to handle things? Like it just feels like if I'm a public figure, people should be aware of my past? Like I'm not bragging, I'm making sure my audience knows who they're engaging with. And I feel like the same should be true of anyone like, publicly making a stand for leftist causes?
Then again, what I did and being a veteran are different because what I did is near universally considered to be bad, but being a veteran is usually considered good. So i guess thats a key difference. But you're phrasing it in terms of "dont publicly admit to being a murderer", not "dont claim things which are bad, but for which most people will admire you".
AKA the Bojack Horseman Fallacy. "Of course I'm a better person now, I SAID I was sorry, didn't I? Why are they still booing?"
i prefer the bojack horseman truism: "the troops are jerks. most people are assholes already. i don't think handing an asshole a gun and telling him it's ok to kill people makes him any less of an asshole"
We're assholes because the material conditions we live in encourage assholes. Being better than this takes actual effort and actual praxis, but it isn't an inevitability.
sure, i just think the point is that handing an asshole in bad material conditions a gun in exchange for an essentially fully alternative socioeconomic model is like, probably a bad direction for a person to go vis a vis not being an asshole.
this just sounds disingenuous to me. so all troops have to go seek forgiveness from "their victims?" what does that even mean? who are their victims? can they just find any person from the country they were sent to and seek forgiveness?
this post sounds good but it's devoid of any actual path. it's "I don't think any troops should ever be forgiven under any circumstances" but disguised as being reasonable.
it's also a great wedge issue to prevent organizing with people who might have a firsthand perspective on the material conditions within the US military
I think all former and current imperialists deserve a bullet
My original reply was out of line. I'm tired and angry.
But as cathartic as it might be to say shit like this (and I'm guilty of it sometimes), I don't think its compatible with leftist ethos. I think leftism is about building a better world for everyone, not killing our enemies. And I think retributive justice is morally wrong and a waste of time that does nothing for anyone. I feel like a lot of leftists talk like they want to significantly reduce the human population with how bloodthirsty they come off and it really frustrates me. Which is why I got angry about this post at first.
Unless the imperialists in question are an active obstacle to revolution, killing them is useless. Noone is helped (feeding retributive bloodthirst is not helping people). If there are strategic, practical uses for killing them, go ahead. But if you're just trying to satisfy your anger, noone is helped.
Also not believing in the ability of people to get better and help the world after doing bad things is... really also morally wrong and against the leftist ethos. Class traitors exist.
I don't really care. If someone chose to put themselves above the lives of many and contribute to their deaths and the destruction of their country, they've gotta go. No questions asked. No resources wasted. The world isn't going to end because an imperialist gets what they deserve. In fact, it makes it very clear that this shit is unacceptable.
Is it unfortunate that the sad lil 👉👈 soldier failed to realize cheaper college was not worth inflicting terror on millions? I guess, but that's what they chose and that should be the last choice they make. It's pure :brainworms: to think otherwise
This is such an immature, malformed worldview its barely worth engaging with. Yeah lets just shoot everyone who's ever done anything bad to avoid "wasting resources". Not like human life is valuable or anything, or people can get better. Its all about those wonderful resources. Thats what leftism is about. In fact thats the real reason we should abolish prisons. We can just shoot everyone. World population bellow 1 billion is a key part of revolution you see.
Oh and unironically thinking "the death penalty is a deterrent" on a leftist forum is rich too.
The world isn’t going to end because an imperialist gets what they deserve
"The world isn't going to end" isn't the standard you should be using for the decision to FUCKING KILL SOMEONE.
Your imperialist apologia is what's truly anti leftist. You're doing it all over this thread and it's embarrassing
Not wanting to fucking kill people and believing in restorative justice for crimes isn't "imperialism apologia". I believe in accountability. I just dont believe accountability = death.
Youre never going to get me to care about the life of an imperialist. You should consider spending the amount of effort you're using to defend them to think about the victims of imperialism instead :very-smart:
I do care about the victims of imperialism. I think restorative justice does much, much, much more for them then retributive justice does.
ETA: Its not about caring for their lives, its about what form of justice is actually useful and effective.
No, it clearly is caring about their lives for you. You've said as much already. The lengths that western leftists will go to defend imperialists is absurd
Don't fucking assume shit about me. I did not say that anywhere. Do not presume to know my brain and what is going on inside it. As an autistic gaslighting victim I will not accept it. I own my brain and only I own my brain and the contents thereof.
What I said is what I said. This is about justice, and how to actually carry it out. I dont care about their lives as individuals, I care about human lives generally. And I care about the right way to perform justice.
ETA: Even from a practicality angle mass murdering 19 million military veterans with a bullet to the head is an absurd proposal lol. You can want it all you want but that isn't happening and its fucking silly to suggest it. Like if the revolutionary state really wanted to carry that out... fuck idk I wouldn't betray the revolution about it but I'd be vocally advocating against it. Mass murder is no joke. Eastern Germany didnt do it to the Wermacht. Even Soviet killings of Nazi POWs weren't indiscriminate.
yeah I also don't care for the equating of bloodlust and the desire for justice
I don't have to assume shit, you've said as much here. If you don't wanna come off as an imperialist apologist, then stop doing it. I wholeheartedly believe this is what is to be done to the imperialists and that's because I don't downplay their choice involvement in the most destructive imperialist force. You're going to absurd lengths to defend them.
idk man
I definitely have a dog in this race, on the "don't automatically assume that all troops are bad" side. But even though that's the outcome I want, I know for a fact that the sob story we often tell about troops being poor kids trying to find their way in America is just wrong.
Most troops are middle class suburban and rural kids, and the reason is that a lot of recruitment criteria is designed to weed out kids from lower income and urban environments. Recruits will be rejected if they have priors, gang affiliation, lack a high school education, not have perfect health, have a history of drug use, etc - and all of those track with income level in the United States. Now there's a waiver for everything of course, and if Uncle Sam needs bodies then he'll lower the requirements and get more poor people in uniform, but for the majority of troops in the majority of years it's something that they went into clearheaded about exactly what they were going to be doing and exactly who they were going to be doing it to, and their decision to support the Empire is frankly a logical one when you consider their labor aristocracy/petite bourgeois class position.
So I think the stance towards lefty troops should be the same as towards any agent of imperialism that wants to "defect". Like if a cop or a landlord or a boss became a class traitor and quit their former life to be a socialist. We know they're rare, we know that they come to the left with a lot of brain worms that need to be excised, we know that some on the left have been harmed in terrible ways by them and will not be willing to entertain them. We also know that every successful socialist movement has had its share of class traitors who committed to the cause wholeheartedly, and that if the tiny leftist movement that exists in any given western country were to bloom into a true mass movement that had the potential to upend capitalism it would involve caucusing with a lot of people who have all of those problems in spades.
So if they're going around asking for forgiveness or whatever, tell them that that's fucking cringe and to earn it by putting the work in, and if they claim to be lefty but they're not putting the work in then they're indistinguishable from every other radlib.
because god knows this struggle session needs more takes, here I go:
These people were completely brainwashed. They were used. We all agree here that the United States has the most powerful propaganda apparatus in the world, and we all agree that nobody is immune to propaganda, so then how can we blame kids for not being immune to the strongest propaganda in the world? This shit literally runs so deep and works so well that you can take a human being - the same blueprint as you and I - and convince it that other human beings must die on sight by the thousands. These people have been completely scrambled and ruined by the bourgeoisie military state and what they need is repair.
To act as if you are better than some kid who gets tricked into rolling around in a Humvee shooting people they've never met; to act as if you wouldn't have done the same in exactly the same material circumstances, is to claim that you are genetically superior. The system is broken, exactly 0 of these kids would have been murderers in hypothetical FALC. All we can do is appeal to them to join our cause and stop destroying humanity and the world, and if they don't want to join, well, that's really sad. I'm sorry they got fucked up like that. *Of course, most of them shouldn't even be considered as acceptable to join our cause, because they have had their humanity mutilated by the most evil state to have ever existed, but if there is evidence that they are saveable, then maybe if any of us has the stomach for it it's worth the rehabilitation.
e: let me frame it as a thought experiment. Say you've got a machine, the Human Ruiner 9000. People keep getting blackbagged and thrown in the machine. What comes out are barely human anymore: these people are near soulless and have a hard time interacting with many or most normal people, possibly forever. We all should agree that the machine is the main evil here, not the people, right? And if someone happens to come out of the machine, as fucked up and damaged as they are, and say "fuck that machine, we need to destroy it", should we focus our energy on destroying them? These people will need aggressive rehabilitative labor, psychologically and emotionally, possibly for years, and that labor may be dangerous work in some cases, but performing that labor, in my mind, is a preferable choice to spending energy and time fighting the person instead of the machine.
e2: for what it's worth, I also entirely 100% agree with badempanada here, no buts. I just think it's maybe sometimes worth it to try for that rehabilitative process, and also we should put more focus on what made them this way - emotionally mutilated veterans (all veterans) are a symptom.
Hell yeah, ACAB is unequivocally true, but also they're bastards because they're cops. If they just stopped being cops then they're on track to stopping being bastards too. Same exact thing goes for troops. It's a long process to undo all of that evil but there is such a process.
A bit confused here. Are you saying cops are blameworthy but not soldiers?
They're basically in the same bin. They're both causing irreversible harm, they're both bastards, the world would be a better place without either of them. But they're both, in the lucky cases, rehabilitatible, they both started as innocent children, they were both ruined by an evil state apparatus and essentially possessed for the purposes of evil and harm, and most importantly, they are both symptoms of an underlying disease more than they are the problem themselves. Take any future cop or troop from their cradle and raise them up in Lenin's Russia and they would likely be just as good of communists as their peers.
Okay, that clears it up. I will ask the big question:
Do you believe there is there such thing as a blameworthy individual? Everyone begins as an innocent child and is shaped by circumstances that can lead them to act in certain ways.
Ultimately, even the most racist, horrible mass killer was taught the concept of racism by someone else. Hitler himself was shaped by the ideas that came before him.
In your opinion, at what point do we stop blaming society, and start blaming the individual?
Literally everyone is a product of their environment. So I guess in that regard there's no such thing as a blameworthy individual. If we believe we are products of our environment, we have to actually believe that.
Do I believe that there are people who need to be [redacted]? Hell yeah, lots of them. It's sad that things got this way but sometimes the immediate end to the harm caused by an individual is worth more than their ultimate triumph over their brainworms. Lots of veterans probably fall in this category. I view this as the ultimate and only possible conclusion of embracing historical materialism over great man theory.
I would hesitate to wed socialist thought to determinism. Marx wasn't a determinist and material relations is not the same thing as a lack of free will. Engels was a capitalist and betrayed his class, after all.
I would reject this position as I cannot believe in the morality of harming a blameless person. To me, it would be like executing a mentally ill person. If noone is in control of their actions, then there cannot be punishment for behavior of any sort. It would be horrific to punish someone for behavior they had no control over.
I have some reading on this subject I'll share here: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/molyneux/1995/xx/determin.htm
Full disclosure, I haven't read this, I'm too busy fielding other replies, but one question on this - is there some other factor besides lived experience/material conditions that makes a person more or less likely to make "evil" decisions? If so, do you have any idea what that might be?
thanks for believing that I'm engaging in good faith btw you're making me think and I appreciate you :meow-hug:
I would reject this position as I cannot believe in the morality of harming a blameless person. To me, it would be like executing a mentally ill person. If noone is in control of their actions, then there cannot be punishment for behavior of any sort. It would be horrific to punish someone for behavior they had no control over.
:side-eye-1: :side-eye-2:
That sounds pretty correct to me. Punishment is just unnecessary suffering on top of unnecessary suffering.
Why must it be necessary for punishment to be morally justified? Is there some other thing that exists that makes it so that absolutely must be true, other than vague collective opinion?
Yeah, I mean, my biggest "die on this hill" take is that retributive justice is bad. Period. I'm an absolutist about it. I think there are situations where violence is necessary obviously. Sometimes you have to execute someone, in a revolutionary situation, for practical reasons. But I'm against it for retributive reasons.
The example I always use because its fairly extreme, is that like, if world revolution happened somehow and Obama waited out the whole thing in a bunker, and he was still alive after the revolution was finished and secured. And then the leaders of the revolution met to discuss his fate. And I was there (I wouldn't be a leader of the revolution lol, I'd be taking care of the kids, but just for thought experiments sake I guess) I would advocate against executing him. I'd suggest whatever form of restorative justice we could actually accomplish, but mostly just... leaving him alone in a comfortable but not luxurious place mostly separate from society. I would see executing him after he ceases to be a danger to the revolution as retributive, and thus pointless.
And I understand thats a VERY hot take among leftsits.... well sort of. A lot of them will claim to be prison abolitionists and restorative justice believers when asked, but also are also like... extremally bloodthirsty at times. With my Obama example, one of my friends said "if even one Libyan wants him dead, then he dies" (which I think is incredibly absurd but whatever). And I think that takes SIMILAR to that are pretty common. And, honestly, I get it. I get so angry at things like transphobic state legislatures that i want them dead. And its cathartic (WOW I REMEMBERED THE WORD) to demand their deaths as well. But in reality the only reason I want them dead is so they stop hurting people. So I'd also be perfectly ok with them merely removed from power and forced to go through restorative justice programs. Its only the danger they present to others that I want to stop.
So yeah, I think retributive justice is incompatible with leftism and I will die on that hill no matter how much I sympathize with the rage that causes people to want it.
I suppose the Nuremberg trials went too far, in your opinion?
Literally everyone is a product of their environment. So I guess in that regard there’s no such thing as a blameworthy individual. If we believe we are products of our environment, we have to actually believe that.
We aren't merely products of our environment but conscious shapers of it as well. Humans, shaped by their environment, shapes their environment. Given that this shaping is conscious, it means we can assign praise for people who consciously shape our environment for the better and contempt for people who consciously shape our environment for the worse. Marx said that man does not make history as he pleases. He did not say that history makes man, which is what you're suggesting. To suggest this is to slide into undialectical mechanism.
if we're following this thought to its conclusion, do you believe then that people can change? like, yes people are products of their environments but they are not ONLY products of their environments
Sure. Pulling the trigger is a reprehensible and unforgivable act. Have you ever done anything you regret as a result of capitalist propaganda? I have. Understanding that feeling is key to understanding how things got like this. They just got sucked in deeper and emotionally mutilated more thoroughly than you or I. We were raised in a way that put our uncrossable line before pulling the trigger, they were raised in a way that put their uncrossable line after pulling the trigger.
We agree that neither you nor I would pull that trigger (at least I hope you believe that about me; I believe that about you). Why wouldn't we do it but they would? Are we made from better stuff? Or did something happen differently between us and them?
Imagine writing this about members of Wehrmacht, which at least had conscription. I'd be skeptical of welcoming into my org former Nazi soldiers who say they're reformed. I'd be very skeptical if they're unwilling to publicly apologize to their victims, or if they seem more interested in promoting their identity as a troop than anything else.
Some human beings are permanently ruined. I don't intend to suggest that the power of love and friendship can save everyone. But to blame the individual is to excuse the primary blame holder: the ones who put the guns in their hands and taught them who to shoot at.
Also, yeah, if they can't apologize to their victims, they are still ruined. Their humanity has been destroyed by an outside factor. We can't accept them in that state. The boldest among us can try that repair process but it's grueling work and it's sure as hell not guaranteed to succeed.
well that was more or less the society of East Germany wasn't it.
Under the leadership of a communist government that denazified the country and suppressed reactionaries.
We don't have anyone denazifying vets seeking to join our organizing or proclaiming to be leftists. We have to be critical of them ourselves.
yeah I don't think we should trust vets either and most are completely unrepentent and don't even think they did anything wrong. Far more of that guy who killed Neely than people sincerely trying to move on.
But at the same time I think it is imperative that we allow people chances to change who they were. That isn't saying trust them implicitly as soon as they even hint they want to change though the safety of others is more important than their chance to change but revenge is less important
so you're saying under different material conditions the vets could be rehabilitated? wow crazy
Not necessarily, they could be nullified and shamed to a point. Rehabilitated is a strong word
https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
Brainwashing is a two way process, if brainwashing is accepted as an excuse for participation in genocidal wars, theres obvious gain in playing along with it and claiming you were just brainwashed.
Also I am fucking better than that kid, because I've never killed anyone.
I have not been in whatever hypothetical material condition this hypothetical kid was in, but I belive I could trust myself to not take blood money in exchange for participation in imperialism.
Not because of some strawman genetical superiority, but because I think thats a matter of basic morals and solidarity. And if I did take take the blood money in this situation, I would deserve repercussions from that.
I would simply choose not to gun down a crowd of innocent people.
I get that you're not being serious here but this is exactly what I mean. They had a different mommy. Maybe they were abused and only learned to influence their surroundings through violence. Maybe the truest love they'd ever felt was the pride of their parents for believing the same lies. Almost certainly they had the un-humanity of the Other drilled into their head harder than it was drilled in to yours or mine.
I will simply not be excusing genocide.
If you are going to reply to this with further sob story hypotheticals, simply do not, fuck off instead.
look comrade, I have literally already - in a reply to you, not elsewhere that you might have missed - stated that a just system would put bullets in these people's heads yesterday. All I'm saying is we need to understand what made them like this in order to keep more of them from existing.
Friend. Pal. Buddy. You're making shit up about what I said. I'm not excusing genocide and to accuse me of such is either deliberate bad faith or a straight-out lie. I have genocide victims in my family and I don't want to let you win by knowing that you're pissing me off, but you're pissing me off.
I'll read your hour long essay when you demonstrate to me that you have read the thirty seconds of conversation that we're literally having with each other. Until then, I'm reading the other essay I was linked by a person who is far more effective at communicating and coherent than you are.
the point is that you can recognize both the bad conditions and traumas that would make a person want to accept brainwashing while also understanding their own conscious acquiescence to the material benefits of that situation, and often an integration of the accompanying propaganda. it's not a carrot and a stick, it's popcorn and a movie, but i don't think we have to care per se about which factor is potentially more dominant in making a person a genocide supporter: they're helping do global murder.
This comment doesn't actually disagree with the person at all, though. You're right, and they're right. We should be distrustful of veterans, but not because we're mystically superior beings who are just built different. We should be distrustful of them because they have a provably dangerous mindset, given all the murder.
So why does the distinction matter? Well, it wouldn't, if people wouldn't also keep bringing morality in the conversation. Once we start talking about some sort of abstract moral judge of character, the distinction becomes very important, because of ethical implications I'm too burnt out right now to explain.
I would like to see you actually answer this question because its pretty key to dispelling the notion that you DONT think you were somehow born with "dont participate in genocide" genes.
This is especially important because military recruits are children. Groomed for killing instead of sex.
I disagree, I think the whole exchange is sob story bullshit that would be laughed out of the thread if it was applied to any other comparable state.
This is the kind of dilemma libs fret over when they read about the Nazis and "Oooh geeee I dunno would I be participating in the kristallnacht if I was in Germany? Ooooh I just dont have any agency oooh."
Well I don't fall into that strawman so you have to actually engage with my point. I'm an absolutist about this and don't differentiate between nations that did evil.
OP's point was if you went through the exact same life experiences you'd make the exact same choices. If your reason for believing this isn't true ISNT "I have the dont participate in genocide gene", then what is it? Because "im just born different, my morality is in my bones" is the only explanation for that I can see.
Its not a fucking sob story because I dont feel sorry for them. I think accountability is necessary when harm is done.
So you admit your life experiences lead you to have better morals but still think OP's wrong because... idk?
I think this line of argument is tedious horseshit meant to ultimately wedge in apologism for veterans no matter the assurance that "oh no I definitely still think the bad ones should get punished", and that this would not be fucking accepted for any other comparable state, yet the American instincts of this site seem to demand endless horrible dogshit debates like this be had no matter what when American veterans are maligned, when the same people would rather hurl than argue like this for something like the IDF.
I dont engage with it because of that.
I already said that I dont have that double standard but you're still strawmanning me with it lol. I would absolutely argue this for the IDF lol.
Well sure its real fucking easy to say that when confronted with an accusation, but I dont think you would actually, I just do not believe that because I see threads about other militaries and 99 times out of 100 stuff like this isnt said.
And I am speaking in general, this thread has over a hundred replies, and there have been like a dozen threads just like this this year. Sorry that you specifically feel strawmanned by me speaking of the general tendencies of this site and not taking your uniqueness into account.
Now you're assuming shit about me lol. I didn't participate in those threads. Sometimes I do fall into screaming the usual bloodthirsty slogans for catharsis reasons but my ethos under all that remains the same. I think retributive justice is morally wrong and useless. I think leftist bloodthirst has gone off the rails. And i'm starting to get more and more angry about it and its past my bedtime so I'm going to log off.
If you had the same brain, uprising, memories, environment, friends, neighbors, parents, and exact same sequence of events in your life, you would make the same decision.
This is not apologia for the imperialism or murder. It just means any one of us could have been the murderer if we were born in the wrong place. This also doesn't mean that life is "deterministic", just that our decisions and behavior is formulated entirely by our memories and experiences.
Lmfao this is such a good essay, starts off like one of those late 20th century communist tracts and am currently at the middle where the internet language appears, 10/10 never expected to see the words "crab bucket" or "cope" in a communist essay.
Triumphant, handsome, charismatic, “alpha” men
Holy shit there's even a reference to Chad.
These days Orwell’s reputation among socialists is in well-deserved shambles. Invocations of the specter of his memory as some kind of aspirational revolutionary ideal — as a staunch opponent of “totalitarianism” — are increasingly buried under citations proving he was in fact a colonial cop, a rapist, a snitch, a racist, a proud Englishman, and so on
Based author
It's not an excuse as in we're letting them off the hook, its an explanation. They will need severe reworking, they're not excused of shit. Many of them can never be fixed and the only option is the pit. But we should be grieving that things ever got to this point and recognizing that they, despite needing the pit, were born loving and caring human beings just as we were, and that the evil forces that didn't quite catch us got to them and did too much damage to ever undo.
Its a bad explanation, the essay provides a superior one that accounts for the agency and participation of the masses in propaganda.
This assumes that everyone who is exposed to propaganda is aware it is propaganda, which seems very optimistic of the political awareness of your average American.
I don't even have to read the essay, suggesting that everyone who does bad things in service of false claims is doing so for their own benefit and also does not believe those false claims is simply absurd. People are just stupid sometimes. Doesn't justify murder, but the majority of people are not playing some sort of gigabrain 5d chess.
The Human Ruiner isn't a deus ex machina, of course. It's made of people and it turns people into more of itself. Until those people are held responsible for their actions, nothing is changing.
thanks comrade, it's one of the most sobering and sickening realizations I've come to but I think it's extremely important for us to recognize that the only thing separating us and them is material conditions and influences. I posted this full well knowing I'd get ratio'd and I'd be fighting for my life in the replies but I think it's extremely important to convey that the reason we're all here posting on the bear form and not gunning out the door of a Humvee is material conditions and material conditions alone. Believing this means that we believe material conditions are the thing we need to fix.
Even if someone thinks that outside raising and influences are less important than some kind of innate soul-like inner moral identifier, that would simply count as yet another material condition that influences us.
