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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Where'd you get your basic morals and solidarity?
My mommy.
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.
Read the essay.
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.
And if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bike.
So you admit your life experiences lead you to have better morals but still think OP's wrong because... idk?
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.
Holy shit there's even a reference to Chad.
Based author
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.
You should read the essay.
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.