The topic was why it took the shitlibs and Hasanabi-watching leftists (lol) a fucking tattoo to denounce Graham Platner, an Iraq veteran who did 4 trips to the war zone and then joined the Blackwater mercenary company to kill even more people.
lots of people join to change it from the inside!
“When I joined the US army, I didn’t think I’d be killing people!”
It seems like the shitlib’s complaint isn’t that the U.S. military is a fascist, neo-colonialist, imperialist army of mindless Stormtroopers, but that the violence isn’t focused or financed enough.
Who is joining the army thinking they can change it from the inside?
You can change it from the inside by joining and sabotaging machinery 😉 X thing runs on diesel? Mix in some drops of gasoline, Y thing needs X type of oil? Throw in Z type of oil, etc…
Doing an updated take on my other comment, the army, and a lot of it also applies to the police forces, are composed of people, and no matter how you slice it, the vast majority are proletariat, not the most precarious proletariat, but proletariat, and it is unreasonable to believe that at least some part of those individuals, chose those careers because they believed it was the best pay they could get from where they came from, you understand unemployment you understand that most people do not choose jobs completely freely. That is one of the points I want to make clear and I believe this one is quite grounded in reality
Next point, yes the job and function of those institutions is to oppress and discipline the proletariat overall, keep the people in their place, there is no doubt about that eithe, I’m not questioning that. But to claim that because of the atrocities committed by the organization every single member is either agrees or at least have no problems with does not track, it can be that even the majority is like that but still it’s not a forgone conclusion.
Next point, even a small number of members of armed forces sympathetic to our cause can be of crucial strategic value, not because they can change things from the inside, but they can potentially offer training, inside information, among and myriad of other things
Based on that I do think that the line of thought that goes: is part of the army = is and Nazi and I hate you. Achieves very little, makes their side of propaganda even easier, and prevents us from potentially getting strategic support from inside of crucial organizations
Those are my thoughts on the subject, I have no beef with anyone that disagrees and I do completely understand the deep aversion from those forces, I do, the US military have been a very destructive force on my continent (South America) I have no love for the organization, neither for the US as a country as well, but I do understand that the people of the USA are not the responsibles for what the US as an nation does, just the same way that I don’t blame every soldier for the actions of the Pentagon
the army, and a lot of it also applies to the police forces, are composed of people, and no matter how you slice it, the vast majority are proletariat, not the most precarious proletariat, but proletariat, and it is unreasonable to believe that at least some part of those individuals, chose those careers because they believed it was the best pay they could get from where they came from, you understand unemployment you understand that most people do not choose jobs completely freely.
Not true, actually. The majority of the US army forces come from privileged backgrounds.
I’m sorry comrade but it’s still proletariat, as I said not the most precarious, but still if you are not bourgeoisie, you are proletariat, that is elementary, there is no two ways about it. I do not want to redeem the military forces I do not believe we can change the institution, but I think directing propaganda towards them can yield benefits, if it’s the best way to go about it, that is to be pondered and decided, but still my point holds
You misspelled ‘Class traitors’.
That’s not an argument, I’m up for debating conflicting ideas and understanding the perspectives, but just saying stuff like this do not achieve anything
Well this Graham Planter guy seems to be a piece of shit indeed, but the general sentiment of the post you printed I’m in agreement with, the US military uses poverty to fill its ranks, so it is made of proletariat people, and there is benefit to disputing their hearts and minds, but it is a rough struggle to do so since they’re surrounded by strong ideological training, but does not mean it’s a useless struggle
the US military uses poverty to fill its ranks, so it is made of proletariat people, and there is benefit to disputing their hearts and minds, but it is a rough struggle to do so since they’re surrounded by strong ideological training
It’s an active choice. I grew up in some pretty terrible conditions but I never volunteered to become a baby-killing veteran. It’s really that simple. People who do make that active choice; poverty or not; should be shamed and treated as war-criminals like they are. It’s really simple.
No, it’s not that simple.
You’re ignoring the role of pro-military culture, militaristic propaganda, higher ed incentives, medical coverage incentives, housing incentives, peer pressure, hero worship, etc.
It is a choice, yes. People should be judged for making it, yes. But it’s not simple in the slightest. Good proles join the military because they think the military is good because they’ve been taught the military is good. That is a sad fact but a fact nevertheless.
The goal should be to educate them on why it isn’t good.
No, it’s not that simple.
It’s pretty simple when the party I’m a part of and in my circle I don’t tolerate genocidal jackboots. I have no use for them and nor does the rest of the party I am in. Most guerilla tactics will put you a league ahead of most jackboots who sat in diapers in Afghanistan.
You’re ignoring the role of pro-military culture, militaristic propaganda, higher ed incentives, medical coverage incentives, housing incentives, peer pressure, hero worship, etc.
I’m not because ignorance is never an excuse for ANYTHING. I KNEW the risks and grew up in worse environments than most “soldiers” because there is literal evidence that the “soldiertariat” is a complete fucking myth and that most soldiers are from middle-class/upper-middle class backgrounds. It isn’t their “class” that makes them disgusting but the fact that they HAVE the chance to learn more, talk to vets and understand the risks before joining the military and MANY still choose to do so, regardless if they understand that propaganda is just propaganda. You’re acting like propaganda is an excuse.
Does Nazi propaganda excuse Wehrmacht soldiers? Fuck no. They deserve the wall at best.
There is no “middle class”.
It’s clear you’re thinking about this from an emotional standpoint and not a scientific one.
I never made excuses for anyone’s behavior; I explained the nuance behind the how and why they were able to do these things.
Propaganda isn’t an excuse. I never said otherwise. But it still works and that needs to be acknowledged.
It’s obvious I’m looking at this from an emotional standpoint because most soldiers come from privilege. I won’t deny there’s an emotional angle, because it’s also unfair to assume people have a survival instinct that automatically means they go sign up for the military when MOST soldiers come from privilege. So what was that about the scientific angle, again?
I’m gonna go ahead and block you now. Absolutely absurd.
edit: Do me a HUGE favor and anyone who agrees with this can block me or respond and say something absurd so I can block them too.
Can you give me some sources to disprove the “Soldiertariet” myth?
You’re behaving like a child throwing a tantrum because someone disagrees with your analysis and doubling down on idealism throughout. Sad behavior to see, I thought better of you. But I guess you are yet another victim of “westerner who hasn’t actually embodied a successful revolution looking at the world and being smug about how much better they are at morals than other people.”
The kind of attitude you’re pulling here is cut from the same cloth as when people call AES states revisionist for not doing a full communism immediately. It comes from the same general error in thinking, of viewing the world as a composite of individual moral choices and viewing those moral choices as coming from individual will faced with the possibility to be corrupt in a very obvious way and choosing not to do the obviously wrong thing.
It’s a highly erroneous worldview, which assumes that the world is broken up into good and evil, that everyone has the same lens and information, and that the evil people are just choosing to be evil in spite of good being an obvious option.
You don’t need to have any personal sympathy for people who commit atrocities in order to understand the dynamics of the world. You don’t need to want to personally forgive or work with people who commit atrocities in order to understand the dynamics of the world. I could go on.
But as usual, AES states show us what real practicing communism looks like. They show us that there are times to war and there are times to persuade and negotiate, and it’s not always immediately clear which is more effective and in what way. Perhaps most importantly, they show us what you can do with actual organized power and how useless and divisive it is when we get caught up in imaginings of what we could or should or would hypothetically do in situations that haven’t occurred instead of actually formulating outcomes in the world. That last one is part self-crit.
ou’re behaving like a child throwing a tantrum because someone disagrees with your analysis and doubling down on idealism throughout. Sad behavior to see, I thought better of you. But I guess you are yet another victim of “westerner who hasn’t actually embodied a successful revolution looking at the world and being smug about how much better they are at morals than other people.”
The kind of attitude you’re pulling here is cut from the same cloth as when people call AES states revisionist for not doing a full communism immediately. It comes from the same general error in thinking, of viewing the world as a composite of individual moral choices and viewing those moral choices as coming from individual will faced with the possibility to be corrupt in a very obvious way and choosing not to do the obviously wrong thing.
“You see! Not wanting to be with soldiers who have directly contributed to the death of family abroad and the family of friends abroad is a childish tantrum doubling on idealism, despite the fact that multiple people agreed with the Myth of The Soldiertariat post you made, more people understanding the point you made, etc”
I don’t give a fuck what you think about me. Especially when you think it’s over a disagreement with my “analysis” when it’s actually a lack of basic fuckin’ principles. Especially from someone who even comes along the same angle as the dipshits that I’ve been arguing with before. In order to have a revolution, you need to shed the fascist parts of the state and encourage the soldiers in it to engage in class suicide. That is not happening in the Imperial Core until it collapses. When it collapses, maybe I can consider working with a few soldiers who literally lost anything and everything that made them loyal to their class. Until then? There is going to be plenty who will give everything up to crush your skull underneath their boot, and I’m “emotional” because I don’t want to work with them? Fuck you.
You don’t need to have any personal sympathy for people who commit atrocities in order to understand the dynamics of the world. You don’t need to want to personally forgive or work with people who commit atrocities in order to understand the dynamics of the world. I could go on.
I never have to forgive anyone. Remember that. Forgiveness is never free.
But as usual, AES states show us what real practicing communism looks like. They show us that there are times to war and there are times to persuade and negotiate, and it’s not always immediately clear which is more effective and in what way.
What does me saying I don’t want or need to work with baby-killers involves any of this? I didn’t say anything about “AES” states. In the periphery, soldiers can absolutely have different class interests than their colonist occupiers. This is purely America, here and it’s in relation to Platner.
It’s a highly erroneous worldview, which assumes that the world is broken up into good and evil, that everyone has the same lens and information, and that the evil people are just choosing to be evil in spite of good being an obvious option.
In this world, I can gladly judge people for the decisions they make in the past. I never said it was “good and evil” I simply said that people are fully capable of looking past propaganda, even when their starving and in the most critical conditions and that there are plenty of people able to do that. Maybe it’s because one of the things that separates us from rabid curr is that we have principles and dogs don’t. I did it and I can gladly judge those in the military; especially when most come from “non-lumpenprole” backgrounds if you don’t consider the existence of a middle class. So the whole “good and evil” about “military propaganda” is pure clean USMC theory bullshit. Want citations? Again, fuck you.
You don’t need to have any personal sympathy for people who commit atrocities in order to understand the dynamics of the world. You don’t need to want to personally forgive or work with people who commit atrocities in order to understand the dynamics of the world.
By those same dynamics that you are referencing, we need to accept the fact that, using as a reference the current material conditions, the US military personnel are class enemies due to their settler colonial nature and other reasons as previously discussed by 6-6-6. This is very different to what an AES military personnel or even the Global South military are. This was eloquently explained in this post -> https://archive.ph/2x19K
It is not idealism to accept this knowing all of the material conditions that push veterans and soldiers to defend and murder for the empire. From what I have investigated, better prepared people have tried rallying the abandoned veterans but this has been proven futile according to the article above and the low membership numbers exposed in there. This is my honest observation here with the information exposed so far.
But as usual, AES states show us what real practicing communism looks like. They show us that there are times to war and there are times to persuade and negotiate, and it’s not always immediately clear which is more effective and in what way.
Now, let’s try to go with hypotheticals and explore the possibility to persuade or negotiate with the veterans or active military personnel. The only way that I currently see for a US military soldier to go against their capitalist collaborator incentives is for the following to happen:
- Complete destruction of the incentives provided by the empire for active members and the prestige offered to Veterans. In other words, they need to experience an existential crisis that threatens their lives and forces them to organize agains the gov’t. (If the shutdown stays for months, we might see this possibility due to the internal dissidence rising up)
- Complete class awareness that fighting their gov’t for a revolution will mean the loss of their privilege and the exceptionalism due to the dismantling of this structure. There are no concessions here.
- Accept the process of decolonization and the process of generating empathy with the oppressed(aka victims of the Iraqi war and other victims of US interventions for example).
- Complete acceptance of the role of the US military in war crimes, genocide and destruction around the Global South.
There could be more options but just this three conditions are close to impossible for the majority. You can correct me if you have a different perspective though. However, I see easier for comrades to spend time agitating the liberals in the No Kings protests rather than agitating the veterans or the good proles that are active in the military. People like Aaron Bushnel or Mike Prysner had to go through at least one of the conditions for them to come around but I don’t see their experiences as something that could be replicated unless there is an existential crisis hitting them all. Actually, those two examples are important because they prove that people can choose to overcome the lies and supremacy suggested by the empire. I could even add more names like Monica Erst or Michael Gloss.
Hope that you can convince me otherwise. As of now, -6-6-6- holds a better explanation on the lack of existence of the “soldiertariet”.
That’s fine. It’s clear you’re too irrational for an intelligence conversation anyway. Cool off.
Civility policing of people that are angry at mass murderers?
Condescending and arrogant and wrong
There are indeed middle classes.
There are more than two classes, yes.
There is no “middle class” however. That is a myth tied to the lie of the ‘American Dream’; the fiction that the average person is wealthy and prosperous.
It appears your “uneducated” veteran was already educated on the pre and post world war American colonial wars and wanted to participate in them. He wanted to volunteer in Vietnam if he could. He thinks small wars are pretty enjoyable because heavy artillery takes the fun away from fighting and Iraq and Afghanistan were indeed ‘small wars’.
He also worked at Abu Graib prison even after the torture and warcrimes were exposed in the media.
No decent human being would want to fight the Philipines in the 1920 for the US, that was a flatout genocide.
Bold of you to assume a US veteran who did 4 trips and joined a mercenary group is a decent human.
Never once brought up Platner. Didn’t mention him, didn’t allude to him, wasn’t thinking about him when I wrote that post.
Exactly. Quoting the internationale:
“No more deluded by reaction On tyrants only we’ll make war The soldiers too will take strike action They’ll break ranks and fight no more”
Proletarians often join the military because they’re sick fucks who want to kill, but many also join as a result of either necessity or militaristic imperialist propaganda e.g. Red Scare, Islam = Terrorism, etc.
No clean USMC theory here.
I haven’t once denied the crimes of the USMC nor did I make excuses for them. Fuck off.
Was just about to echo a similar sentiment. Thank you
My friend who is literally sitting next to me right now upon reading this:
“Hey, I’m about to become homeless, if someone offered me a military contract/ice contract personally I’d removed them.”
Seems like you can still have principles in desperation.
Good for them.
Not everyone is able to suppress their natural survival instinct, however.
Literally withering and shriveling away unless I give my recruitment form to the chud behind a stall in the library
You’re ignoring the role of pro-military culture, militaristic propaganda, higher ed incentives, medical coverage incentives, housing incentives, peer pressure, hero worship, etc.
You and others are the ones ignoring this. You can’t pretend that soldiers are blameless victims of a machine while acknowledging they participated voluntarily and received payment and credit for doing so. This is what makes them morally culpable.
If I work in a factory that makes bombs that kill people, I have an ethical responsibility to strike or quit. How is this same dynamic gone for people who drop them?
You’re arguing against a position I don’t hold. I didn’t excuse anyone or justify anything. Not once. That was not the purpose of my response.
I didn’t mean to imply you held beliefs you didn’t. You’re just losing me on the point about education. They didn’t join because of deception or disinformation, they joined because they wanted what the military offered them. This is not someone you can “educate” into different behaviors, right? What would you even tell them?
The bribes are effective in part because many don’t understand what they sign up for. A good chunk of Americans don’t know about the war crimes our military commits or the toxic, fascistic culture within it and at worst only oppose our overseas adventures because they think it’s a waste of money and don’t like our soldiers dying in wars they think were unjust.
I can’t count how many times I’ve heard people tell me - even people who’ve actually served - that the US military is completely/mostly clean. In their minds war crimes are something other countries do, not ours. There’s also a disconnect from those who think along the lines of “Oh, well, I just worked in the Motor Pool! I didn’t kill anybody!” who are obviously in denial about their role in the imperial machine and how they contributed to the barbarism even if they didn’t directly partake.
Well put. People can get caught up in moralizing more so than doing analysis of material conditions. Such analysis doesn’t mean we excuse atrocities, but it does mean we don’t lose sight of methodology for creating a better world in favor of waxing on about how morally inferior some group of people is. I’m sure we’d all love to think we’d never be “the baddies”, but scientific socialist framework would indicate that some of us who aren’t would be under different conditions; the alternative is believing that it all boils down to a moral choice and overcoming personal corruption, and that’s a form of idealism.
When I was still a liberal there was a time that I was deeply patriotic and wanted to serve. It wasn’t because I glorified killing or thought other cultures were inferior to mine but because I genuinely believed that the USA was better than the alternative, that we were the lesser evil keeping the greater evil in check around the world. My perception of the US Mil was one of a liberator and protector, as fucked up as that may sound. That’s how I was taught to see the world and it stuck with me for a long time.
I was fortunate enough to learn over time that this wasn’t the case and as a consequence my opinion of the military diminished slowly but surely and my position on war in general shifted dramatically. This development began long before I was even a socialist and continued well after until now where I can firmly state that I am both anti-war and anti-military in nearly all circumstances save for a handful of extreme ones.
I don’t cry when a marine steps on a land mine and gets his leg blown off, but I do hope he survives and learns from his experiences serving that he isn’t the good guy and he’s on the wrong side. I do this in part because I know many people in uniform have been outright tricked or bribed into participating in something they probably wouldn’t have had they been better informed like I was.
I also can’t help but imagine: “What if I hadn’t learned what I learned, continued down that path, and I was the one who ended up stepping on that land mine?”
Cops and soldiers might be the enforcers of empire but it’s important to remember that they’re just the attack dogs of the capitalist class and just like any other attack dog they are that way because they’ve been trained to be; some working class person was fed a mouthful of lies and shut out from the truth until they believed up was down and right was wrong. Then they were sent to kill people like them, watch their friends die for nothing, and then come up broken and disfigured - if they come home at all.
Every soldier and cop created by the capitalist state is one more doctor, one more musician, one more engineer taken away from the world and turned into a willing accomplice for evil. They are still perpetrators and wrongdoers but they are also victims and have had wrong done to them. Whether they deserve forgiveness or not is debatable but I can at the very least call ‘comrade’ any veteran who was able to see through the veil and join the right side of history in the end. Better late than never.
Whether they deserve forgiveness
Not from me and not from the leagues of people in the Third World they have slaughtered, even if they were Red Alert 2 Yuri mind-controlled by post-2001 slop-propaganda in American high-school library recruiter stalls. I don’t think it’s debatable, I think it’s an active choice some comrades will make and most of the people who put up with baby-killers will have to accept it one way or another. It’s a difference of principles, in my opinion.
Every soldier and cop created by the capitalist state is one more doctor, one more musician, one more engineer taken away from the world and turned into a willing accomplice for evil
Now imagine how many people they have taken away from us. I’m less interested in the brains of cops, soldiers and jackboots then the brains splattered by them.
No war but total war on the American empire
I don’t put the lives of the imperial soldiers above those of the people whose lives they’ve taken or ruined, despite your obvious misgivings on my position.
If the choice comes down to it they’ll get the wall and I won’t object.
I agree with some parts of what you say, but this:
They are still perpetrators and wrongdoers but they are also victims and have had wrong done to them.
Feels like whitewashing criminals. Yes the guys may not have had the resources nor the wake up call before joining but so what? does that excuse any of them from going half a world away to participate in a genocide? or more recently does any of that excuse them from killing innocent fishermen in the coasts of Venezuela/Colombia? fuck no.
I wasn’t excusing anything; I was explaining the nuance behind people willingly joining the military. Writing them all off as simply being racist psychopaths who want to kill people is a knee-jerk, moralistic argument fueled by misplaced passion and devoid of material analysis. It’s a vibes-based way of understanding phenomena and has no place in Marxism.
That is my sole critique, not that US soldiers are ‘UwU smol beans’ or whatever.
I don’t cry when a marine steps on a land mine and gets his leg blown off, but I do hope he survives and learns from his experiences serving that he isn’t the good guy and he’s on the wrong side.
As a citizen of the Global South, I was impressed on knowing that people from the military like Aaron Bushnell or Mike Prysner exist. However, it will take time as you have mentioned to destroy that American Exceptionalism installed in the military and to plant the seed of empathy and humanization of the oppressed.
All I know is that there is certainly a great number of abandoned veterans by the US and I am not sure if it helps to agitate them. However, I wish you all the best of success.
It appears your “uneducated” veteran was already educated on the pre and post world war American colonial wars and wanted to participate in them. He wanted to volunteer in Vietnam if he could. He thinks small wars are pretty enjoyable because heavy artillery takes the fun away from fighting and Iraq and Afghanistan were indeed ‘small wars’.
He also worked at Abu Graib prison even after the torture and warcrimes were exposed in the media.
I never once mentioned Platner. My post wasn’t about him specifically.
my “I never once mentioned Platner.” shirt for babykillers in a Platner thread has a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.
I ain’t reading all’at. Marg bar Amreeka.
The Average American soldier is indeed a fascist and a serial killer.
How can you extrapolate from this that the average is like that plus I’m quite sure it varies state by state, and even if there is a huge number of radicalized soldier that for me is all the more reason to direct action and attention to try to sway their opinions before they get that bad
We can “sway their opinions” on the battlefield. 1 dead soldier = 1 less enemy.
