“Fascist invasion”, implying that Argentina would be putting people in concentration camps in the Falklands.
The junta was kidnapping people, torturing them, then disposing of them by drugging them, flying them out over the ocean, then throwing them out of a plane with their stomachs slit open. They did this to somewhere around 30,000 people suspected of opposing the regime. It's entirely reasonable to wonder how Falkland Islanders -- who opposed Argentina's rule -- would have fared under the same government.
The distinction is that Falkland Islanders were at no risk of being yanked from their houses and disappeared under the British, and were at some risk of that under the Argentine junta. Obviously the British Empire sucks and has committed no shortage of atrocities, but the context of this situation meant that one government was clearly better for the island's inhabitants than the other.
I don’t see how exchanging a murderous military dictatorship for a murderous imperialist oligarchy justifies killing a thousand+ people
First, this is like counting Nazi deaths as part of the total casualties of WWII. Second, how much value do you place on countering fascist wars of aggression? How much value do you place on striking a hard blow against a wavering fascist regime?
The British, known for not committing genocide against indigenous peoples.
The point is that this was not a war between an imperial power and a non-imperial power. It was a war between a strong imperial power and a weaker one. Argentina's military junta certainly wasn't a victim here; they started the war.
Was there any actual evidence at the time that the Falklands would make or break the regime?
The Argentine economy was in the tank and there was widespread opposition to the government.
The Nazis conscripted plenty of folks, too, and killing Nazis was still good.
How much value do you place on countering imperialist wars of aggression?
The only imperialist war of aggression here was imperialist Argentina invading an island they had never settled, and that they had made no attempts to even occupy for 150 years. Calling Britain the aggressor when Argentina invaded the islands is straight-up fantastical shit.
Meaning that they were on their way out already.
lol you've gone all the way from "there's no way of knowing this would have sped the downfall of the junta" to "well the junta was going to collapse anyway."
the majority of whom in all likelihood were not ideologically committed to any kind of fascism and would go on with their normal lives not being fascists under any other circumstances
There were plenty of Wehrmacht soldiers who weren't members of the Nazi Party, just as there are plenty of soldiers in any horrible war machine who aren't ideological zealots. But that doesn't really matter -- if killing them was necessary to defeat fascism, then without any reservation, killing them was good. I have sympathy for damn near every human being, but that sympathy is limited when one is a willing, if not enthusiastic, participant in fascism.
Conscripts obviously get more sympathy, although it would be ridiculous to oppose conscription but then refuse to fight the government that forces people into war against their will. I haven't seen anything suggesting Argentina's military was mostly conscripts, anyway.
The British were the ones who started killing people.
Say I've killed a bunch of people, am fresh off killing some more, and I walk into your house -- guns drawn -- and look real closely to see if anyone in your family tries to make a move. I tell you that your house is now mine. But I haven't killed anyone in your house, at least not yet! It's downright laughable to not call me the aggressor in that situation, and it's embarrassing that you'd argue fighting back against such obvious aggression actually makes you and your family the bad guys here.
This all rests on the assumption that it’s actually your house
Falklanders being the only people to ever fucking live there makes it their house. It's fucking ridiculous to apply this logic when literally nobody was displaced or oppressed for the colonization of that rock.
I agree they could've solved the invasion w/o the war but suggesting Falklanders don't get rights to their land because they're eurotrash is cringe
the referendum complicates that. they used their self-determination to give sovereignty to the UK. the UK defending them is the application of their choice.
If the reverse were the case, they'd voted Argentina & the Brits invaded--would your position accordingly reverse? Argentina--Junta Argentina I'd argue also had very little right to exist
I mean if the Falklanders surrendered their sovereignty to a different party. Your whole schtick seems predicted on the UK not being allowed to do anything because it doesn't deserve to exist, ergo were a different country the one the Islanders decide to join would that country have a right or obligation to protect the Islanders?
Well at least we've managed to clarify exactly what you mean. I fundamentally disagree, imo you're very wrong, but I don't think this thread will change your mind. See ya🤠 yee haw 🤠 :inshallah:
That's just appeasement, and we know how well that works.
They had mandatory military service for all men.
That's inaccurate. They had a draft, but it involved a lottery system and not everyone served. The mere presence of a draft doesn't prohibit people from joining voluntarily, re-enlisting voluntarily, willingly or even enthusiastically serving even if drafted, etc. It also doesn't speak to how easy it was to evade military service if one's number came up.
This all rests on the assumption that it’s actually your house.
That is they key question, but either way it's absurd to call an armed military invasion not aggressive. That's libertarian levels of contorting that word's definition. You can argue that aggression was justified, but it's unquestionably aggressive.
Argentina wasn’t remotely similar to Nazi Germany despite also being an oppressive dictatorship.
I'm not going to argue about some fascists being slightly better than others, especially when literal Nazis fled to Argentina after the war. "Oh they're not really Nazis, come on" is a flat-out right-wing talking point. They ran a murderous terror campaign against their domestic opponents that's still being unpacked today. They tortured and killed tens of thousands of their own people. There's zero reason to give them the benefit of the doubt that they'd be kind to a few thousand foreigners.
it could have been that only some of the soldiers were drafted
Defeated fascist soldiers claiming they have no culpability and are in fact victims themselves.... should we take that at face value? Have we seen that anywhere before?
an escalation which was itself an act of aggression
That's not how the concept of aggression works. If you're minding your own business, I point a gun at you, and you smack it away, there's only one aggressor in that scenario.
they’d just have to not exterminate most of the population, which is not, actually, consistent with their behavior domestically
You're living in fantasy land. There is absolutely no reason to believe that fascists who'd already murdered 30,000 would suddenly get cold feet at a few thousand more, especially when they're defeated foreigners. And again, stopping a fascist invasion has inherent value, even if you just think the islanders would "just" be forced from their homes.
Literal Nazi Germany’s objective was mass extermination
Well no, there were years of other strategies to push "undesirables" out of Nazi territory before the final solution was implemented. That's the thing about fascists -- you can't let them hang around, because while they don't start with extermination, the ideology points squarely in that direction.
If the goal is to stop the fascists from murdering people, then engaging in a war with these particular fascists, thereby getting them to murder people, was an awful way to do that.
You heard it here, folks: don't fight the fascists just because you want to force them to stop murdering people!
other fascists like the British
So the Argentine junta and Nazi Germany are totally different, but Britain and Nazi Germany are totally the same. This is a coherent worldview. But of course anti-imperialist violence against Britain is necessary -- but this ain't that. The Falklands are not Northern Ireland, for instance.
protecting the Falkland Islanders from genocide
You keep making this claim more and more absurdist (now it's genocide!) because that's the only way you can justify abandoning people to fascists actively butchering tens of thousands. Again: stopping a fascist invasion has inherent value. We've tried appeasement, and it doesn't work.
The ones who went "straight to war" are the ones who decided to conduct an invasion, which is just about if not the absolute most clear and plain example of an act of war that exists.
The British response was entirely predictable, so the blame for outcomes here lies with the aggressor, which in this case is undeniably the right wing junta that was running Argentina.
There's exactly zero fucking diplomacy to do when they'd already been in talks about the islands and Argentina abandoned those to take up arms.
Argentina had exactly the same opportunity to pursue diplomacy or do nothing, so even these incredibly weak claims you're making are at least equally applicable to Argentina as well. I'm not even sure what you're trying to accomplish at this point.
The junta was kidnapping people, torturing them, then disposing of them by drugging them, flying them out over the ocean, then throwing them out of a plane with their stomachs slit open. They did this to somewhere around 30,000 people suspected of opposing the regime. It's entirely reasonable to wonder how Falkland Islanders -- who opposed Argentina's rule -- would have fared under the same government.
Depriving fascists of power is also a priority.
Plus, Argentina waged a war of extermination against its indigenous people. Neither side can really claim to be non-imperialist here, especially considering that Argentina was (again) invading occupied territory it had never previously settled.
Seems pretty reasonable to predict that humiliating a fascist government already under significant duress would hasten its fall.
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The distinction is that Falkland Islanders were at no risk of being yanked from their houses and disappeared under the British, and were at some risk of that under the Argentine junta. Obviously the British Empire sucks and has committed no shortage of atrocities, but the context of this situation meant that one government was clearly better for the island's inhabitants than the other.
First, this is like counting Nazi deaths as part of the total casualties of WWII. Second, how much value do you place on countering fascist wars of aggression? How much value do you place on striking a hard blow against a wavering fascist regime?
The point is that this was not a war between an imperial power and a non-imperial power. It was a war between a strong imperial power and a weaker one. Argentina's military junta certainly wasn't a victim here; they started the war.
The Argentine economy was in the tank and there was widespread opposition to the government.
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They literally were fascists.
The Nazis conscripted plenty of folks, too, and killing Nazis was still good.
The only imperialist war of aggression here was imperialist Argentina invading an island they had never settled, and that they had made no attempts to even occupy for 150 years. Calling Britain the aggressor when Argentina invaded the islands is straight-up fantastical shit.
lol you've gone all the way from "there's no way of knowing this would have sped the downfall of the junta" to "well the junta was going to collapse anyway."
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There were plenty of Wehrmacht soldiers who weren't members of the Nazi Party, just as there are plenty of soldiers in any horrible war machine who aren't ideological zealots. But that doesn't really matter -- if killing them was necessary to defeat fascism, then without any reservation, killing them was good. I have sympathy for damn near every human being, but that sympathy is limited when one is a willing, if not enthusiastic, participant in fascism.
Conscripts obviously get more sympathy, although it would be ridiculous to oppose conscription but then refuse to fight the government that forces people into war against their will. I haven't seen anything suggesting Argentina's military was mostly conscripts, anyway.
Say I've killed a bunch of people, am fresh off killing some more, and I walk into your house -- guns drawn -- and look real closely to see if anyone in your family tries to make a move. I tell you that your house is now mine. But I haven't killed anyone in your house, at least not yet! It's downright laughable to not call me the aggressor in that situation, and it's embarrassing that you'd argue fighting back against such obvious aggression actually makes you and your family the bad guys here.
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Falklanders being the only people to ever fucking live there makes it their house. It's fucking ridiculous to apply this logic when literally nobody was displaced or oppressed for the colonization of that rock.
I agree they could've solved the invasion w/o the war but suggesting Falklanders don't get rights to their land because they're eurotrash is cringe
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the referendum complicates that. they used their self-determination to give sovereignty to the UK. the UK defending them is the application of their choice.
If the reverse were the case, they'd voted Argentina & the Brits invaded--would your position accordingly reverse? Argentina--Junta Argentina I'd argue also had very little right to exist
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I mean if the Falklanders surrendered their sovereignty to a different party. Your whole schtick seems predicted on the UK not being allowed to do anything because it doesn't deserve to exist, ergo were a different country the one the Islanders decide to join would that country have a right or obligation to protect the Islanders?
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Well at least we've managed to clarify exactly what you mean. I fundamentally disagree, imo you're very wrong, but I don't think this thread will change your mind. See ya🤠 yee haw 🤠 :inshallah:
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That's just appeasement, and we know how well that works.
That's inaccurate. They had a draft, but it involved a lottery system and not everyone served. The mere presence of a draft doesn't prohibit people from joining voluntarily, re-enlisting voluntarily, willingly or even enthusiastically serving even if drafted, etc. It also doesn't speak to how easy it was to evade military service if one's number came up.
That is they key question, but either way it's absurd to call an armed military invasion not aggressive. That's libertarian levels of contorting that word's definition. You can argue that aggression was justified, but it's unquestionably aggressive.
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I'm not going to argue about some fascists being slightly better than others, especially when literal Nazis fled to Argentina after the war. "Oh they're not really Nazis, come on" is a flat-out right-wing talking point. They ran a murderous terror campaign against their domestic opponents that's still being unpacked today. They tortured and killed tens of thousands of their own people. There's zero reason to give them the benefit of the doubt that they'd be kind to a few thousand foreigners.
Defeated fascist soldiers claiming they have no culpability and are in fact victims themselves.... should we take that at face value? Have we seen that anywhere before?
That's not how the concept of aggression works. If you're minding your own business, I point a gun at you, and you smack it away, there's only one aggressor in that scenario.
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It is when you're talking about fascists!
You're living in fantasy land. There is absolutely no reason to believe that fascists who'd already murdered 30,000 would suddenly get cold feet at a few thousand more, especially when they're defeated foreigners. And again, stopping a fascist invasion has inherent value, even if you just think the islanders would "just" be forced from their homes.
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Well no, there were years of other strategies to push "undesirables" out of Nazi territory before the final solution was implemented. That's the thing about fascists -- you can't let them hang around, because while they don't start with extermination, the ideology points squarely in that direction.
You heard it here, folks: don't fight the fascists just because you want to force them to stop murdering people!
So the Argentine junta and Nazi Germany are totally different, but Britain and Nazi Germany are totally the same. This is a coherent worldview. But of course anti-imperialist violence against Britain is necessary -- but this ain't that. The Falklands are not Northern Ireland, for instance.
You keep making this claim more and more absurdist (now it's genocide!) because that's the only way you can justify abandoning people to fascists actively butchering tens of thousands. Again: stopping a fascist invasion has inherent value. We've tried appeasement, and it doesn't work.
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Setting a high bar for which invading army I will defend on a leftist forum
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Go tell the junta.
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The ones who went "straight to war" are the ones who decided to conduct an invasion, which is just about if not the absolute most clear and plain example of an act of war that exists.
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The junta sure seemed to think so.
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The British response was entirely predictable, so the blame for outcomes here lies with the aggressor, which in this case is undeniably the right wing junta that was running Argentina.
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There's exactly zero fucking diplomacy to do when they'd already been in talks about the islands and Argentina abandoned those to take up arms.
Argentina had exactly the same opportunity to pursue diplomacy or do nothing, so even these incredibly weak claims you're making are at least equally applicable to Argentina as well. I'm not even sure what you're trying to accomplish at this point.
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New struggle session: The Battle of Britain, good or bad?
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Good luck with your classes resuming next week.