I upvoted because being nice to the imperialist war machine is cringe
Which matters more: AOC telling some troops they can have snacks, or AOC saying she's against interventions on principle and against intervention in Venezuela specifically?
spoiler
You're correct! Neither really matters, and AOC has about as much real power over U.S. foreign policy as you or me.
Don't criticize the parasocial kween, it's not her fault she's a captured asset for the DNC
copjacketing is cool and good and the left needs more of it, great stuff
No, just focus on substantive criticism instead of silly retail politics shit like this. Focus on stuff they have actual power over instead of stuff they don't.
What if we just made posts about those serious bad takes and discussed them there, and didn't bother with the silly bullshit at all?
we need to discuss serious bad takes
this is a shitposting forum
I mean, pick one. Are we taking this stuff seriously or not?
What about shitposting about the serious stuff, and ignoring superficial things that wind up being needlessly divisive?
Nah comrade, we gotta get at each other's throats because of the shitpost by the new user who thinks that modern American conservatism isn't fascist
Especially that I can totally see Ilhan or Bernie who gave anti-imperlialist credentials get upset over this. It's edgy to hate the troops, but come on.
come on the one funny bit on the american constitution is that if the soldiers can't find places they have to stay like that give us that at least
15 days before, these soldiers gunned down a woman for daring to criticize the election.
Your stupid ass is defending that QAnon Chud? I have never cared less about a police shooting victim in my life. And that wasn’t the National guard idiot
Doesn’t make the cops (not the troops, I was wrong about that part) who shot her in cold blood just.
And it also does not mean they shot her for critizing the election.
Im not going to lose sleep over this when they far worse to far less deserving poeple
In this situation theres an easy excuse, people in the protest had guns and they could easily assume she had one too and was trying to get in to hurt people.
Like yeah thats a bog standard excuse but its realistic enough that hammering on this point isnt doing what you think its doing.
There's even a video of this shooting. A bunch of chuds are trying to break through a closed door/window barrier in a hallway, and when they start making some progress you see someone on the other side point a gun and turn her into a good fascist.
Why would capitol police fire on people breaking through a barricade when they're protecting the vice president and congress people in the office behind them? I mean come on dude. I'm not saying they're in the right, but it wasn't the "criticism" that got her shot.
I feel like everyone is rushing to celebrate a woman’s murder by the pigs when it’s a bad thign
Yeah the person marching for the proto-fascist president surrounded by racists and bigots ready to overthrow the government and install a right wing dictatorship was a secret lefty
A conservative. I don’t believe conservatism is fascism, although conservatives will ally with fascism when given the chance
You've said multiple times that you think neoliberalism and fascism are pretty much the same thing but you don't think conservativism is fascist as well? Hard pressed to believe you aren't a wrecker.
And conservatism isn't fascist how? Especially in a US context. Conservatism in the US is the most neoliberal ideology. If neoliberalism is fascist, as you've said at least twice, how is it that conservatism is different?
Because conservatism at the moment holds at least a color opposition to liberalism
Is that because you personally dislike liberalism more than anything on the right wing as you've stated before?
Yet you think the dems are closer to fash than the GOP?
What even is your worldview?
That isn’t a worldview, that’s a cop-out, and a contradictory one at that
The neoliberal world order is a poison. Bring it crashing to the ground. That’s what Lenin tried doing, and it worked in Russia.
That isn’t anti establishmentism, that’s Marxist-Leninist Bolshevism, and are you saying Lenin would be saying “oh no the protofash ruling class killed a protofash conservative! The horror!”
Cause he wouldn’t
Wait, the protofash that got killed supports the ‘color opposition’ (to the other bourgeoise party) which makes them better and less fascist, I forgot
More usable than the average lib? Cmon that’s patently absurd
Go make friends with boogaloo boys if that’s what you wanna do, but it’s ridiculous
I don’t know, I haven’t heard that.
But, uh, Fucking and? What does that have to do with anything lmao
It really seems like you have no idea how absurd the stuff you’ve been saying is, I’d fully expect you to do that at this point
You really think my paranoid schizo ass is gonna willingly befriend a cop
Mate I have no clue what to think at this point, truly these takes are held together by scotch tape and spit
But maybe it’s a good idea to log off for a bit and reflect, I’m definitely gonna disengage because I don’t want to be coming down on you and stressing you out.
Well when this person was shot, a proto-fascist was running America, now a neoliberal is
And what’s your point here? You’re not going anywhere with what you’re saying, you’re just continually backpedaling and getting further and further away from saying something with meaning
My point is that the people in power are way worse than some trump chud
The people in power were the Trump Chuds they're petty bourgeois business owners and cops
They were in power. Somewhat.
Every mega corporation in the world came out to denounce the trump rioters. (Except My Pillow) I feel like that means that they felt threatened by these riots.
Even if that's true, we shouldn't be supporting these people. Take a look at the thread stickied at the top today. That's what happens when these people get into power, there are real people who will suffer.
Maybe I’m a shitty person, but the fascist movement in America doesn’t really have enough support to get to the stage of the literal Holocaust. It would require total economic collapse for that.
I mean they already have people in camps and the majority of Americans have forgotten about it, it would be an easy next step, that was how the holocaust started. And then a fascist government with the American military? The holocaust under fascist America would not be limited to their own country.
What does that have to do with what we're talking about? Fascism in Germany was driven by a multitude of different factors but I assume you're going to be reductive and pick one aspect of German society that supports your strange defense for our modern day brownshirts
I name a few. Already existing anti semitism mixed with a ruined economy, mixed with a recent humiliation, mixed with the bunker philosophy
How is that antifascist? Or even non fascist? It's a different flavor at best.
This is what you get when you take "Democrats are bad too" and contort it into "Democrats are actually worse than Republicans."
Not only does it make zero sense, but it actively stifles the growth of the left because anyone persuadable will look at that and think (correctly) that you don't have a clue.
I'm not gonna care when the conservatives/fascists are fighting each other. If anything their infighting is a weakness that the left should exploit, not support one flavour of racism over the other.
Yeah no the person who is involved with a right wing coup with this guy doesn't have my sympathy.
no they didn't. that was capitol police and that crowd killed one of theirs too. what is even the point of this post?
She was trying to kill congressmen and women you fucking far right sleeper agent. Go back to stupidpol or some other fashy space.
Of course you don’t you fucking loon. You think I’m gonna cheer fascists killing AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tliab? Fuck you.
AOC supported the fascist Bolivian regime. Stop running defense for congress holy shit
Dude every time I've argued with you on this site you're running defense for some right wing shit stain, I get it we all hate the libs too but you've gotta remember they're our enemies not our friends.
AOC supported the fascist Bolivian regime.
-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, November 11, 2019
https://www.revolutionarycommunist.org/images/latin_america/AOC_Bolivian_opposition.jpg
Oops
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that essentially a set-up?
As I understood, AOC met with some people from Bolivia, but they weren't forthright with their exact views or affiliations until after the meeting.
I mean, it could be that the people were not truthful with who they were or maybe AOC doesn't research the life story of every single person she comes in contact with.
That would be fair, except this shows a clear pattern of behavior. She was against Maduro too. Also, the tweet where this image came from said she supported the sham re-election idea
A person, especially one with bad intentions, can say anything on Twitter.
“And that’s why she deserves to be killed by domestic fascists”
You need help.
The people in power are ghouls and a thousand times worse than any larper that entered the capitol building.
No. AOC is not worse than the fascists trying to gun her down. You far right dipshit.
And they actually stormed the capitol building. So they aren’t larpers.
If it wasn't obvious that you were a wrecker before, it sure is now.
When I first saw the comment, it was at 15 upbears, and now it's at 8.
So, nearly half of those upbearing it, realized what he was actually referencing, then went back and unbeared it.
LAWLZ
From now on, I'm gonna use "criticize" as the new "parody" so thank you for that.
If the military lib takes continue, someone is gonna have to post the comic about the soldier killing a kids parents and him telling the kid it wasnt his fault
I did something similar a few months ago and the takes were off the charts. Any essential worker is braver than the shitty troops in my eyes
Honestly, you are just as bad as a lib. You want to lazily blame a target to make yourself feel better.
Who, exactly, is excusing such behavior?
Go talk about the "clean" Wehrmacht to someone who cares westerner
Who the fuck is even saying that?
All I'm seeing is cowardly class traitors consumed by impotent hatred.
You arent even part of the international proletariat, you are labor aristocracy that currently defending the class traitors know as the US military
I nearly died, unemployed, because of the American healthcare system. My lifespan is limited because I was born working class.
I earn my living now, by selling my labor. And definitely not in the military. I own no capital.
Fuck you. I stand with my brothers and sisters in the working class they sell their labor in the military or not.
I will have you know that I only bend over backwards to yell a single thing at a time.
And right now (bends backwards) it's that it is January 27, 2021, and Joe Biden is still a rapist.
Now, allow me to bend backwards a second, distinctly separate time: directing your blame and hatred towards individual cops or service members for crimes committed by other individuals, and due to systemic issues caused by capitalism, is stupid, counterproductive, and fractures solidarity of the working class.
This literally excuses nothing.
Thank you for your patience as I bent over two, distinctly separate times.
“All troops are forever irredeemable” is a bad take, as is "troops are basically the same as cops." Troops aren't good, and we should be automatically skeptical of them, but there are real differences.
For troops, the most powerful military on earth uses the most powerful propaganda machine on earth to target kids who are barely shaving for recruitment. That kid has zero firsthand experience with the reality of the imperial war machine, and if they try to quit once they’re in they can get a black mark next to their name that will impede their ability to get housing, education, and employment for the rest of their life. We can’t hold a kid 100% responsible – with no possibility of forgiveness at any point – for their decision under these conditions. That’s totally inconsistent with how leftists should think about culpability and rehabilitation in any other scenario.
Compare this to cops, who generally sign up for pig school in their 20s, who live under the realities of American policing every day, and who can quit at any time with no real repercussions.
“All troops are forever irredeemable” is a bad take,
Pretty sure only we privileged westerners who have to opportunity to have this "debate" may think this and not the Afghan child that saw their family get blown up by a drone, they certainly wouldn't give a fuck if that US soldier is a doctor, some bureaucratic pencil pusher down the chain of command or the war criminal that piloted the drone.
Read the rest of the comment, though. In no other context would leftists find it acceptable to write someone off for the rest of their life, especially if there are significant mitigating circumstances, and even if they were only tangentially linked to direct harm (e.g., some pencil pusher who's spent his entire career at a base in Kansas).
Imagine some 17-year-old was pressured into joining a gang. He just sells drugs, but other members of his gang kill people. If he thinks he's in over his head and tries to leave the gang, they're going to make life pretty hard for him. Should our 17-year-old drug dealer be put to death? Should he be imprisoned for life? Or should we consider the circumstances of how he got in the gang in the first place, and how easy it would have been for him to leave, and what he personally did, and have some avenue for him to redeem himself?
War criminals
National Guardsmen
Fellas I don't think OP knows what the fuck he's talking about. (also the National Guard is arguable the least chud of the all the military jobs, fuck the OP for being a joyless communist who thinks AOC must always be the offensive because that's good politics apparently.)
-7DeadlyFetishes
The national guard was firing tear gas and canister at protestors during the summer, bud.
Guard and Reserve units made up about 45 percent of the total force sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, and received about 18.4 percent of the casualties.
Jesus Christ that's even worse than I thought. 45% of the total force? That's almost half.
It's because the actual army is so small. In that situation the guard can be called to act as a support arm of army which happens because everyone knows the army sucks ass and won't join it. This was routine in the 19th century (though national guard were only called such in NY, it became the national name for state militia in 1903 and officially became mixed state and federal reserve forces in 1933) when the professional US army was small. They basically get called in by the army to be infantry fodder and logistics.
When the infantry units from the Florida National Guard arrived at the Assad airbase north-west of Baghdad in early May last year, they discovered they were to run a makeshift prison camp where detainees were confined in a vast aircraft hangar, with cells marked off with concertina wire.
Prisoners wore hoods made out of sacking used for sandbags. The Guard units were ordered to keep those suspected of being combatants awake for future interrogation, and instructed in techniques of sleep deprivation by three interrogators.
The interrogators were not in regular army uniform, and the soldiers never learned their real names.
"We had a sledgehammer that we would bang against the wall, and that would create an echo that sounds like an explosion that scared the hell out of them," said Camilo Mejia, a member of the Florida National Guard who has applied to the Pentagon for status as a conscientious objector.
"If that didn't work we would load a 9mm pistol, and pretend to be charging it near their head, and make them think we were going to shoot them. Once you did that, they did whatever you wanted them to do basically."
In a statement, written to support his conscientious objector application, Sgt Mejia writes that a platoon leader objected to their new duties, only to be told that his stand could end his military career.
next look up "ramadi madness"
This is a fucking stupid. They’re the national guard...what war crimes? Most of their job is sitting around. This is what’s known as...being a nice person. You all sound like that dipshit Jimmy Dore
Read Generation Kill; guardsmen are very dumb, but also very much war criminals.
Also they probably spent last summer beating and tear gassing BLM protesters.
Bad take, they can go fuck themselves with a rusty trowel just the same as the rest of the troops
That said I do feel for folks who fell for the lies and are now trapped in the NG, with the only ways out being destroy your life with dishonorable discharge or finish your service
https://twitter.com/herosnvrdie69/status/1319687366571950081?s=19
Do you mean Jimmy Dore, fan and apologist for the imperialist-approved Lava Jato sham that resulted in the false imprisonment of Lula?
:yes-chad:
how do you determine when its performative? do I need a specific form or permit to be valid? what if I left it in my other jacket?
i started using performatively for my internship that forced me too, and now I say folks and yall without realizing it
Is it okay to say y’all because it’s shorter and easier to say and also because I like saying it instead of you all?
They're is something dysfunctional about an empire who can't even accommodate is own troops in its own capital protecting its own elite.
as someone else has suggested...
let aocPosts = getAocPosts()if (isEven(aocPosts.length)) {chapoBanner = 'aoc bad'} else {chapoBanner = 'aoc good'}let's call communism communism instead
I do not think populism is a useful term for understanding a political position, as it seems more to describe aesthetic presentation rather than what kind of policy is actually being advocated for
that you switched so effortlessly between applying it to Trump's most fervent supporters and applying it to communism demonstrates this lack of meaning
Trump is populist, Maduro is populist, Modi is populist, Mao was populist, Julius Caesar was populist, so many totally different things are labeled as populist that attacking or defending something on the grounds that it is populist is weak as hell
I'm not saying "populism bad" or "populism good", and that's because I don't see the point in taking either side of that argument
Military service members are an exploited part of the proletariat, fuck you and everyone else in this thread that wants to sow even more division amongst the working class.
The military isn't part of the proletariat unless a draft is instituted, this is basic shit, like come on
It is basic shit. Their relationship to the means of production is the same as a factory worker's or an office clerk: they sell their time, their labor for compensation. They work for the interests of the capitalist class.
WTF are you talking about, they have no relations to the means of production, they're completely insulated by the state, physically, psychologically and financially, they're sole purpose is to enforce the capitalist state's monopoly of violence, that is not the function of the working class
Subjugating the global working class is not a fuckin form of labor
They absolutely do. Their labor fuels the military industrial complex.
Psychologically and financially insulated? Tell that to homeless vets. That's a joke.
THEY DO NOT PERFORM ECONOMIC LABOR, do you think solders are the ones building the tanks, the planes, the guns? They are a drain, literal weapons of the state, they're function is to kill and enforce, there is no relation here with the working class other than thru cultural affectation or like I said a mass draft which isn't the case in the United States
Psychologically and financially insulated? Tell that to homeless vets
We're not talking about homeless vets
If soldiers are so insulated, how do homeless vets exist, exactly? We absolutely are talking about vets, there is no decoupling of the subject.
Whether it's manning a ship, defending a border, or taking an oilfield, it has a huge, tangible economic impact. It is a form of labor, the labor that the military industrial complex fundamentally subsists off of. Without that labor, there can be no military industrial complex.
Just because some of the labor is mind bogglingly awful, does not make it not labor.
If soldiers are so insulated, how do homeless vets exist, exactly?
Because they're no longer insulated once they're cut loose, this isn't rocket science
there is no decoupling of the subject.
lol there absolutely is because the state does it for us
Whether it’s manning a ship, defending a border, or taking an oilfield, it has a huge, tangible economic impact
Economic IMPACT is not the same thing as economic output or maintenance, you're confusing concepts and terms, whether soldiers perform a FORM of labor is irreverent, with no relations to the means of production they cannot be working class, by your universal definition of labor every human on the planet is a member of the "working class", you're talking nonsense
And the military industrial complex doesn't subsist on the labor of soldiers, it subsists on our tax dollars
If they have no material well being after deployment, what insulation of any type is there? This seems pretty asinine, they're only insulted while they're being shot at and eating military rations?
Your point about economic output/impact interests me. Let's take a private analogous example. Let's consider something less potentially murdery...
Instead of a military patrol on the coast, let's take a security guard at like, a small downtown office. Do they have no economic output? Is "security" an impact but not an output? Are poorly paid laborers that only have "impact" not a part of the working class?
The insulation is the free housing, the free education, the free healthcare, the glorified gated communities that are built to contain and isolate them, "being shot at" and "eating military conditions" just wtf do you think American soldiers are doing at any given moment, you have a pretty bizarre view of the military, are you American?
let’s take a security guard at like, a small downtown office.
Cops aren't working class either, but MOST private sector security guards would be considered a maintenance role, overseeing products or the means of production in the function of a glorified alarm system, with state enforcement of property rights being left to the actual cops, an antagonistic element of the working class (since it's basically just snitching as a job) but still working class, and what type of paid laborers aren't engaged in economic output of one form or another, you like to play with words in a pretty ass backwards way but again this isn't rocket science
Volunteer soldiers who aren't discharged by the state aren't working class, pretty simple stuff
Sure there are incentives and benefits to joining the military. Same for taking a lot of corporate jobs.
But NONE of those benefits compare to the guarantees of the capitalist class. And that's what we're fucking talking about. Many vets live in poverty, like the rest of us - and they are at much higher risks for many health and psychological risks. Do military vets live in a class of luxury above the rest of us? NO. There is no golden parachute for the soldiers and their families, cast to the side for the sake of American hegemony.
Yeah I mean, I'm American, but what the fuck does that matter? Like, are you proud? What kind of non sequitur is this? And like other counties don't have militaries in service of American hegemony?
You initially raised an interesting question, regarding economic output vs impact, but you followed up with a word soup.
To start with: security guards are not snitches. Other fucking employees, also of the working class, often snitch in act of class betrayal. But that makes them no less the working class.
Security guards protect against petty theft and espionage. Not altogether different than the role taken out by much of the military.
Security guards provide the "labor value" of security, which can be empirically and financially measured.
Is that not an economic product of their labor? How does that differ from the Coast Guard? A navy vessel?
My assertion: the military provides economic output in both the form of "security" of assets and through obtaining assets (this is probably always murdery). This is the central force and output that drives the military industrial complex. This is a means of production.
Soldiers sell their time for compensation, the same as the rest of us in the working class. Their relation to the means of production, security and (murdery) asset procurement, is not one of ownership. They do not own the instruments of their (sometimes murdery) toil, e.g. Tanks, drones, guns, etc.
I mean you can easily say the same thing about cops. They get a paycheck too
Alright you've played your hand at this point. Calling the bluff, this is a bit
Haha I'm afraid it totally isn't!
I do non-ironically appreciate the indignant responses because they have me thinking more deeply about what "class" is.
Don't get me wrong, I believe in an ideal world there would be no military, no police.
I support "defunding" the police, and withdrawing our troops from abroad.
But I don't believe in demonizing the individuals. Nor do I think having a military or a police force is intrinsically wrong.
And yeah, I'm sympathetic towards the ACAB sentiment since I've never once had a positive experience with cops. Mostly scared of getting murdered.
But again, I think it's really important to direct our hatred and anger towards the right places.
It's one thing to dislike the military, it's another to be a class traitor and useful idiot to the capitalist class by shunning others in the proletariat.
You become a defacto class traitor. And that is certainly worth dunking on.
A person joining the military in an attempt to better their life or do what they think is right is no worse than someone joining a corporation to better their lot.
Blaming the soldiers is cowardly and shortsighted. The blame rests on leadership, and more importantly, the system.
All you end up doing is destroying solidarity, unnecessarily blaming the victims without understanding or empathy.
The millions of innocents slaughtered by American imperialism are absolutely victims.
And so is the American father who gets blown up in Iraq the day before his child is born, all for the sake of America's lust for oil.
Saying "they had a choice" ignores materialism and the influences the system has upon all of us.
Active soldiers, vets, and people that do not yet have class consciousness. When they see there's these stupid hysterics, this blame for American policy on the individual soldiers, they're going to think you're an unreasonable dingbat. And they'd have a point. It absolutely fractures solidarity.
Tell me, are soldiers called into action due to a proto fascist insurrection, sleeping a night in a parking garage, the same as a group of the Whermacht burning down a village?
I'm assuming you divined this information with a burnt sacrifice to the ghost of Lenin?
Hot fucking take: people aren't responsible for what they didn't do.
No, I'm saying American troops that haven't committed war crimes aren't responsible for war crimes.
I know, mind fucking blown.
If they are responsible, so is every single tax payer that has allowed a dollar to go towards the many illegal and immoral wars we wage abroad.
Except, blaming all tax payers seems stupid, right? Because it is the capitalist class, and more importantly, the emergent system that greases its gears with blood that is to blame.
Your hatred is directed towards fellow exploited cogs in the system. It's just easy to hate something that you can put a face to.
I absolutely disagree with:
Troops do choose to join the military, knowing full-well what the military does and is responsible for, making them directly responsible for enabling these actions.
You think that every kid signing up for the military gets this? Or, coming from abject poverty, should choose a minimum wage factory job?
That's beyond unreasonable. And again, your hatred for these individuals? There is no value in it.
probably like half of them would want to kill her so uh maybe not a good idea lol
