Idk, this is a complicated issue for me.
The sheer horror of the holocaust and Second World War is something I don't think any of us who weren't there can ever fully comprehend.
Lyudmila's words and dehumanization do bother me to a degree, but compared to the unfathomable atrocities she and the soviet people faced it is an understandable sentiment and a much MUCH lesser "offense" in light of such terror.
Put in their position it is exceedingly likely I would have done the same, so I don't want to come off as sanctimonious or judgmental.
Perhaps I err in thinking we can both steel ourselves to the violence that must be done in lieu of such a threat as well as temper that with a recognition of our still shared humanity.
That it won't induce a form of psychosis.
Nevertheless, it is something I feel I should try to do.
I've been staring at this screen for awhile tbh, unable to fully express or process my feelings on the matter, I know whatever I type won't be sufficient, but I feel compelled to write a comment of some kind because I am uncomfortable with saying nothing in the face of cavalier attitudes towards violence.
Obviously WW2 is an extreme case of this, obviously you can't have a "rationale discourse" with the blitzkrieging German army, obviously they need to be shot and killed, but exactly because it is extreme and because it is hard is why I feel it is worth doing.
I don't know if any of this is making sense.
I commented early trying to say much the same (though I think you've done it better) and got an inbox full of rude dismissals and condescension. I'm glad to see others familiar with the feeling I was trying to express. Perhaps if I had taken more time I'd have done a better job, but it's a hard thought to properly convey, and it goes against the group trend so it's met with unwarranted hostility.
I'm fine with the hostility on some level.
people are rightly emotional and upset about the fuckingwehrmacht , if you will pardon my french.
I'm not going to bemoan anyone for that, no more than I bemoan Lyudmila for dehumanizing them.
Yeah you can all yell down the Jew who isn't angry enough at the Nazis. Didn't pull that card earlier because I shouldn't have to. Dehumanization is a fuck, I stand by that.
I'm a little testy. Got a full inbox of people telling me I'm defending Nazis or too online and not taking genocide seriously. Sorry if I'm firing off on people who don't deserve it.
it goes against the group trend so it’s met with unwarranted hostility
If you were willing to acknowledge that Lyudmila's comments are absolutely warranted, you would not have been met with hostility.
I understand why online Leftists, who've been sheltered from the lived experiences of genocide, are uncomfortable with her words. This is all an intellectual exercise right now.
Go ahead and yell down the jew who isn't angry enough at the Nazis. Didn't play that card because I shouldn't have to. Dehumanization is how that shit starts.
The way I see it is you can't engage in war without dehumanizing the enemy (people in general don't like killing another person, much less 300 of them), so if you are being invaded by a genocidal force that dehumanization is excusable if it's the cost of rebuffing them. Besides it's not like the USSR did a counter genocide against Germany so I'm not sure what "shit" was started in this case
I'm not an expert, and of course such an inflammatory historical narrative is going to have disagreement, but the evidence pretty strongly suggests that mass-rape took place during the occupation and invasion of Germany proper.
Now that MIGHT not rise to the level of genocide, but it sure as shit ain't the action of benevolent liberators either. One could see how virulent dehumanization might lead to a greater rate of war-time rape.
I don't care if you are "angry enough" or not. That is not what I am talking about.
You have not had to murder soldiers to prevent a genocidal war machine (presumably). You do not understand that trauma and cognitive dissonance that causes.
Dehumanization is a normal and justified response to that trauma. There is a documented history of this happening in countless anti-imperialist wars: Vietnam, Korea, Algeria, etc.
I'd recommend reading Wretched of the Earth. Fanon describes this better than I could.
Genocide does not start with soldiers dehumanizing enemy soldiers. It starts with systematic categorization & discrimination towards different social groups.
I think similar to another poster in this particular comment chain, I was responding with a chip on my shoulder from the earlier thread. My bad.
I wouldn't disagree with your assessment that that kind of dehumanization is almost a coping necessity for people living through such situations. With the benefit of hindsight, though, I think we should be able to separate ourselves from that same dehumanization. Should the current situation we are living in become more violent, I think practically as well as morally, we'd be better served by keeping it in mind. I will go ahead and seek that book out, though, thank you for the recommendation.
Part of what I like about leftist ideology is that it acknowledges the varying levels of culpability between class actors. I allow myself to hate cops and soldiers in imperialist countries as an institution, but at the end of the day they're victims of capital as well. The 'ideal' solution would be for them to recognize that, take off their uniforms, and join the class struggle. I think that same attitude logically applies to gaspmost werhmacht soldiers too. They weren't all dead eyed automotons of fascism, and truly the greatest tragedy of war is that its usually poor people killing poor people to benefit the rich/elite on both sides. (This is notably not the case in the USSR and the tragedy is more one-sided, but just because one side happens to be fighting for a revolutionary workers state doesn't make the other side being duped by nationalistic and fascist ideology any less tragic.) Of course the soldiers of the USSR and other countries fighting Nazis Germany were justified - I'd never deny that - nor would I deny that modern imperialist forces should be fought with a similar vigor. But to lose the capacity to see them as fellow victims of capitalism reduces our capacity to organize and welcome them as comrades down the line. That's the goal, right? Fight them while we have to so that we can bring about a better world for us all (them included). We're not going to be able to put every single soldier or police officer up against the wall - and I wouldn't want to be part of a movement that aspired to do so. Celebrating and internalizing the dehumanization that's a horrific reflection of necessity from humanity's lowest moment is part of how people slip into that thinking, though,
To be clear: I don't hold the same empathy for the elites/capitalists at all. They have no excuse for weaponizing and exploiting their fellow human beings, and I'm all for crab posting if someone like Trump or Bezos end up coughing their lungs out or about one heads' length shorter.
I got pretty defensive too. Pavlichenko was a war hero, and deserved to see herself as such. But war and murder are traumatizing experiences. I'm not got to pass judgement on how she squared that circle.
Yeah, I fully admit I could have expressed myself better in my original comment, but some real jerk immediately tried to paint me as an apologist and doubled down on dehumanization as the thread went on. As a Jew, I do have a particular sensitivity for dehumanization rhetoric, and I do my part to resist it when I see it. Perhaps I really should have qualified my position earlier, perhaps I should have been more careful with my initial comments, but the way the thread shook out was really off-putting for me. I immediately got cast as a nazi sympathizer and forced to argue against a bunch of people who quite frankly exhibited the exact kind of dehumanization I was worried about. Pretty gross to interact with that directly.
Edit: thanks for sticking in there and hearing me out.
I think Trotsky's equivocation between WW1 and WW2 is just wrong. The first was not a genocidal war. It was not a war that leveled most of Europe. It was a meat grinder fought along lines that shifted a few dozen miles over 4 years. You could be a civilian 50 miles from the front lines and go out and watch the bombs exploding with not too much risk.
WW2 introduced industrial machinery and aviation to the battle field. Now if you were 50 miles from the front, that front could come to you in a few hours. Or the front could stay and bombers could level your home. The war was now fought everywhere. That kind of encirclement will naturally turn the perpetrators of such violence into animals to the victims.
The Armenian genocide was a component of WWI... Not to mention Jewish pogroms that occurred during the war. Also, several crushed revolutions during the War were genocidal.
I'm totally wrong. I still think there was a difference between the scale of violence or at least where that violence reached society between the wars, but yeah.
Why did Trotsky think that WW1 was a more "gentlemanly" war then? Was he too ignoring the pogroms and Armenian genocide?
"Where that violence reached" is the biggest factor in my opinion. We are taught the World Wars from the perspective of Britain, France, Germany, and the US.
The colonization of the Americas, Africa, and China were at least comparable to the World Wars, but we are not taught to see them as such.
The Eastern Front in both Wars were horribly bloody, but they are always overshadowed by the narrative of the Western Front.
Why did Trotsky think that WW1 was a more “gentlemanly” war then?
I don't know what Trotsky means by that lol. I guess the Western Front did not target civilians as much in WWI? I don't know. I don't like Trotsky lol
I think you might appreciate the book The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich. It's an oral history of Soviet women who fought in WW2. Some of them felt a lot like Pavlichenko did, and some of them did not.
One of the scenes that stuck with me was a sniper explaining that she stopped feeling sorry about killing Germans after seeing a burned down house where Soviet POW had been burned (alive?) by the Germans. And yet when she was asked by some guys to kill a foal they saw in the woods because everyone was starving, she felt like an absolute monster. (Then the other women in her unit don't touch the foal-soup, she bursts into tears when she sees they aren't eating, and to make her feel better they gobble it down.)
I think where I'm going with this is that everybody reacts differently in such "extreme" situations, and many of the people had complex thoughts about it even during the horror. I know the Soviets' harsh response is kinda valorised on here (and tbh I think it's justified to some extent), but it just wasn't the case that everyone felt the same way about it. My dad says my grandpa didn't speak much about the war, but did say that he "didn't like it when our guys tied up the Germans and left them on a termite/anthill" haha... It's a really complicated topic. (And some of the women had an extra layer of guilt because the idea that women are the creators of life was ingrained in them; one woman said her period stopped for a while during/after the war and she thought she had been cursed by God for killing.) I dunno how I'd react in such a situation tbh - if I'd feel bad about killing fascists, if I'd have enough sensitivity left to feel bad about killing a foal. Idk. Reading the book, I cried a lot both for what was done to them and what they had to do.
Idk, this is a complicated issue for me. The sheer horror of the holocaust and Second World War is something I don't think any of us who weren't there can ever fully comprehend.
Lyudmila's words and dehumanization do bother me to a degree, but compared to the unfathomable atrocities she and the soviet people faced it is an understandable sentiment and a much MUCH lesser "offense" in light of such terror.
Put in their position it is exceedingly likely I would have done the same, so I don't want to come off as sanctimonious or judgmental.
Perhaps I err in thinking we can both steel ourselves to the violence that must be done in lieu of such a threat as well as temper that with a recognition of our still shared humanity. That it won't induce a form of psychosis. Nevertheless, it is something I feel I should try to do.
I've been staring at this screen for awhile tbh, unable to fully express or process my feelings on the matter, I know whatever I type won't be sufficient, but I feel compelled to write a comment of some kind because I am uncomfortable with saying nothing in the face of cavalier attitudes towards violence.
Obviously WW2 is an extreme case of this, obviously you can't have a "rationale discourse" with the blitzkrieging German army, obviously they need to be shot and killed, but exactly because it is extreme and because it is hard is why I feel it is worth doing. I don't know if any of this is making sense.
I commented early trying to say much the same (though I think you've done it better) and got an inbox full of rude dismissals and condescension. I'm glad to see others familiar with the feeling I was trying to express. Perhaps if I had taken more time I'd have done a better job, but it's a hard thought to properly convey, and it goes against the group trend so it's met with unwarranted hostility.
I'm fine with the hostility on some level. people are rightly emotional and upset about the fucking wehrmacht , if you will pardon my french. I'm not going to bemoan anyone for that, no more than I bemoan Lyudmila for dehumanizing them.
Yeah you can all yell down the Jew who isn't angry enough at the Nazis. Didn't pull that card earlier because I shouldn't have to. Dehumanization is a fuck, I stand by that.
I agree? do you think I am yelling you down?
I'm a little testy. Got a full inbox of people telling me I'm defending Nazis or too online and not taking genocide seriously. Sorry if I'm firing off on people who don't deserve it.
I forgive you.
I sincerely appreciate that.
If you were willing to acknowledge that Lyudmila's comments are absolutely warranted, you would not have been met with hostility.
I understand why online Leftists, who've been sheltered from the lived experiences of genocide, are uncomfortable with her words. This is all an intellectual exercise right now.
Go ahead and yell down the jew who isn't angry enough at the Nazis. Didn't play that card because I shouldn't have to. Dehumanization is how that shit starts.
The way I see it is you can't engage in war without dehumanizing the enemy (people in general don't like killing another person, much less 300 of them), so if you are being invaded by a genocidal force that dehumanization is excusable if it's the cost of rebuffing them. Besides it's not like the USSR did a counter genocide against Germany so I'm not sure what "shit" was started in this case
I'm not an expert, and of course such an inflammatory historical narrative is going to have disagreement, but the evidence pretty strongly suggests that mass-rape took place during the occupation and invasion of Germany proper.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany
Now that MIGHT not rise to the level of genocide, but it sure as shit ain't the action of benevolent liberators either. One could see how virulent dehumanization might lead to a greater rate of war-time rape.
I don't care if you are "angry enough" or not. That is not what I am talking about.
You have not had to murder soldiers to prevent a genocidal war machine (presumably). You do not understand that trauma and cognitive dissonance that causes.
Dehumanization is a normal and justified response to that trauma. There is a documented history of this happening in countless anti-imperialist wars: Vietnam, Korea, Algeria, etc.
I'd recommend reading Wretched of the Earth. Fanon describes this better than I could.
Genocide does not start with soldiers dehumanizing enemy soldiers. It starts with systematic categorization & discrimination towards different social groups.
I think similar to another poster in this particular comment chain, I was responding with a chip on my shoulder from the earlier thread. My bad.
I wouldn't disagree with your assessment that that kind of dehumanization is almost a coping necessity for people living through such situations. With the benefit of hindsight, though, I think we should be able to separate ourselves from that same dehumanization. Should the current situation we are living in become more violent, I think practically as well as morally, we'd be better served by keeping it in mind. I will go ahead and seek that book out, though, thank you for the recommendation.
Part of what I like about leftist ideology is that it acknowledges the varying levels of culpability between class actors. I allow myself to hate cops and soldiers in imperialist countries as an institution, but at the end of the day they're victims of capital as well. The 'ideal' solution would be for them to recognize that, take off their uniforms, and join the class struggle. I think that same attitude logically applies to gaspmost werhmacht soldiers too. They weren't all dead eyed automotons of fascism, and truly the greatest tragedy of war is that its usually poor people killing poor people to benefit the rich/elite on both sides. (This is notably not the case in the USSR and the tragedy is more one-sided, but just because one side happens to be fighting for a revolutionary workers state doesn't make the other side being duped by nationalistic and fascist ideology any less tragic.) Of course the soldiers of the USSR and other countries fighting Nazis Germany were justified - I'd never deny that - nor would I deny that modern imperialist forces should be fought with a similar vigor. But to lose the capacity to see them as fellow victims of capitalism reduces our capacity to organize and welcome them as comrades down the line. That's the goal, right? Fight them while we have to so that we can bring about a better world for us all (them included). We're not going to be able to put every single soldier or police officer up against the wall - and I wouldn't want to be part of a movement that aspired to do so. Celebrating and internalizing the dehumanization that's a horrific reflection of necessity from humanity's lowest moment is part of how people slip into that thinking, though,
To be clear: I don't hold the same empathy for the elites/capitalists at all. They have no excuse for weaponizing and exploiting their fellow human beings, and I'm all for crab posting if someone like Trump or Bezos end up coughing their lungs out or about one heads' length shorter.
Okay, I understand where you are coming from.
I got pretty defensive too. Pavlichenko was a war hero, and deserved to see herself as such. But war and murder are traumatizing experiences. I'm not got to pass judgement on how she squared that circle.
Yeah, I fully admit I could have expressed myself better in my original comment, but some real jerk immediately tried to paint me as an apologist and doubled down on dehumanization as the thread went on. As a Jew, I do have a particular sensitivity for dehumanization rhetoric, and I do my part to resist it when I see it. Perhaps I really should have qualified my position earlier, perhaps I should have been more careful with my initial comments, but the way the thread shook out was really off-putting for me. I immediately got cast as a nazi sympathizer and forced to argue against a bunch of people who quite frankly exhibited the exact kind of dehumanization I was worried about. Pretty gross to interact with that directly.
Edit: thanks for sticking in there and hearing me out.
I think Trotsky's equivocation between WW1 and WW2 is just wrong. The first was not a genocidal war. It was not a war that leveled most of Europe. It was a meat grinder fought along lines that shifted a few dozen miles over 4 years. You could be a civilian 50 miles from the front lines and go out and watch the bombs exploding with not too much risk.
WW2 introduced industrial machinery and aviation to the battle field. Now if you were 50 miles from the front, that front could come to you in a few hours. Or the front could stay and bombers could level your home. The war was now fought everywhere. That kind of encirclement will naturally turn the perpetrators of such violence into animals to the victims.
The Armenian genocide was a component of WWI... Not to mention Jewish pogroms that occurred during the war. Also, several crushed revolutions during the War were genocidal.
I'm totally wrong. I still think there was a difference between the scale of violence or at least where that violence reached society between the wars, but yeah.
Why did Trotsky think that WW1 was a more "gentlemanly" war then? Was he too ignoring the pogroms and Armenian genocide?
"Where that violence reached" is the biggest factor in my opinion. We are taught the World Wars from the perspective of Britain, France, Germany, and the US.
The colonization of the Americas, Africa, and China were at least comparable to the World Wars, but we are not taught to see them as such.
The Eastern Front in both Wars were horribly bloody, but they are always overshadowed by the narrative of the Western Front.
I don't know what Trotsky means by that lol. I guess the Western Front did not target civilians as much in WWI? I don't know. I don't like Trotsky lol
It makes a lot of sense that the places hit hardest by the first war were driven to revolution.
And I agree, Trotsky is absolutely a "fascism whore". The more I read about and by him, the more I hate his guts.
I think you might appreciate the book The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich. It's an oral history of Soviet women who fought in WW2. Some of them felt a lot like Pavlichenko did, and some of them did not.
One of the scenes that stuck with me was a sniper explaining that she stopped feeling sorry about killing Germans after seeing a burned down house where Soviet POW had been burned (alive?) by the Germans. And yet when she was asked by some guys to kill a foal they saw in the woods because everyone was starving, she felt like an absolute monster. (Then the other women in her unit don't touch the foal-soup, she bursts into tears when she sees they aren't eating, and to make her feel better they gobble it down.)
I think where I'm going with this is that everybody reacts differently in such "extreme" situations, and many of the people had complex thoughts about it even during the horror. I know the Soviets' harsh response is kinda valorised on here (and tbh I think it's justified to some extent), but it just wasn't the case that everyone felt the same way about it. My dad says my grandpa didn't speak much about the war, but did say that he "didn't like it when our guys tied up the Germans and left them on a termite/anthill" haha... It's a really complicated topic. (And some of the women had an extra layer of guilt because the idea that women are the creators of life was ingrained in them; one woman said her period stopped for a while during/after the war and she thought she had been cursed by God for killing.) I dunno how I'd react in such a situation tbh - if I'd feel bad about killing fascists, if I'd have enough sensitivity left to feel bad about killing a foal. Idk. Reading the book, I cried a lot both for what was done to them and what they had to do.
Just watched a video where Hakim recommends that book.