- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- geopolitics@lemmygrad.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- geopolitics@lemmygrad.ml
Just the fact that people like Hillary (so the grossest neolibs) were out screaming "Assadist!" at people for years was enough for me to go "Knowing nothing else about the situation, I can assume Assad is not the primary issue here." Similar to Putin or even Hezbollah and Hamas. Any or all of these organizations and/or people can be "bad" by some sort of moral standard. Think what you will.
The fact will always remain though, that the US doesn't oppose Hezbollah for their stance on gay people. They aren't against Putin because he has irredentist desires in his region. If the US was actually bombing countries for being anti-gay and irredentist we'd be bombing... ourselves, first off (extremely homophobic and transphobic country). And we'd be bombing Israel for being anti-gay AND constantly annexing territory illegally. So any claims by the Hillary-types (using her as an archetype) that "Assad is bad because X" "Hamas is bad because Y" "Gaddafi is bad because Z" ultimately is meaningless propaganda. Even if claims they make are true, the US and policy makers in the US are absolutely not the people who get to stand on some moral high ground. Anything Assad may have done, the US has done worse and to a greater magnitude.
I feel like I'm constantly going in circles repeating myself, but I guess all we can do is digitally scream at and humiliate liberals until they just shut the fuck up basically. If they wanna yell at someone, I can give them a healthy list of far worse people who have way way more power than Assad. Joe Biden is a start. Chuck Schumer. Fetterman. Even Bernie Sanders. Go yell at these people. Yell at Trump. Have fun. Just shut the fuck up about "ooohh Syrian bad man! You won't condemn him! But he is Putler and Hitler and son of Iran! Why not condemn? Why do you hate Taiwan???" (That feels like some crazy shit I'd actually read in comments on Twitter from libs)
It's a repackaged White Man's Burden. Colonizers in the late 1800s going into the 1900s used language like "civilizing the savages" or "bringing democracy to the world." They've switched to "eradicating homophobia," women's rights, religious freedom, and "preventing another Holocaust."
Once someone pointed this out to me, I couldn't unsee it. It's the same rhetoric made politically correct for the 21st. Century. Ghouls like Clinton use these bad faith identity politics to justify doing ghoul shit. They'll talk about transphobia out one side of their mouth, then order carpet bombing those trans people out the other.
Yeah. The problem is a lot of people still would unironically say policies towards indigenous people in north America by the US gov was good. Or they'll justify it in some way that doesn't unequivocally denounce the US army, the US gov, everyone involved in those policies and the settlers themselves. Even though it should be incredibly easy to do so, many still can't reach even that bar.
You see much of the same rhetoric used towards Palestinians now days by Israelis and Americans. Along the lines of "You lost the war. Deal with it." with implications that genocide is just sort of the expected outcome of any conflict and it's fine as long as the people doing it can justify it somehow and also if they don't build literal gas ovens to dispose of the bodies... them it can't be genocide. That seems to be what they think is a "loophole" to get around the obvious comparison to "Well, the Nazis were "winning" the war for a while and also doing the Holocaust. It really sounds like you think the Holocaust was an acceptable thing for Germany to do..." "Aha! You fool! But Germany had gas chambers and ovens! Israel doesn't!" That seems to literally be the logic of every single liberal who refuses to acknowledge reality. No gas chambers = genocide? mmm, me thinks not
There's also another aspect for Americans that is the result of the unfortunate demise of the USSR and media (news and entertainment) propaganda. Many, I'd say most, Americans who know what the Holocaust was (already narrowing it down... ignorant ass country) and generally know what WWII was and what went on in simple terms think that the US literally got involved to save European Jews. That could not possibly be further from the truth. Anyone who has even studied the Holocaust and WWII at like an intro, one semester in college level knows the US didn't give a fuck about Jews fleeing the Nazis and certainly did not do D Day to liberate Jews.
And I only state all of that because it's incredibly important to understand that the retconning of US involvement in WWII and sentiments towards antisemitism around Europe at that time has been used ever since as prima facie proof that "America is good. Remember the Holocaust? Yeah, we made that stop." It's simultaneously "stealing valor" from the Soviets who did most of the stopping of the Holocaust and also that stolen valor was used to attack the Soviets. The whole narrative that was purposely crafted is incredibly evil, but I suppose you can't deny it was effective on the target population of dingus-ass Americans.
(Just for liberals in my mind: The US helping defeat the Nazis and other axis powers was obviously objectively good. We joined militarily far too late, but aid was provided to the USSR and UK the whole time, which was good and correct. However, the reason the US was opposed to the Nazis had nothing to do with their views towards Jews, black people, etc. America at that time was still a goddamn apartheid state itself treating black people as second class citizens (and often Jews as well, ironically). The civil rights legislation wasn't passed until 20 years after WWII... I don't know how else to word "shut the fuck up, liberals, please, holy shit.")
"Aha! You fool! But Germany had gas chambers and ovens! Israel doesn't!"
The ovens are solar-powered, sweatie.
I once tried to explain why the Assad meme had such marvelous predictive power, and it's related to this. Trade "Assad" for "Gay/Trans/Womens/etc Rights" and you can see the same pattern.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I was just thinking a few minutes ago 'yeah cool, the blood soaked tyrant is out... So something much worse is probably on its way thanks to the CIA'...