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.
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.
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.
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?
https://archive.ph/2x19K
Damn, after reading this, now I understand your position better. This part is absolutely true:
This is very similar to what I think of the armed forces of the Mexican state that repressed students, activists and guerrilla members. For a revolution to actually work, we need to shed this part of the state that represents the fascists and the rich.
I never said I was a great orator or great at texting.
The part in our minds too!
Thanks, comrade! This should be required reading!
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.
“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.
I never have to forgive anyone. Remember that. Forgiveness is never free.
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.
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’re still throwing a tantrum and missing the point continuously because of that fact. It’s very tiresome. I’ve put up with far too much adult child behavior in my life. Not taking it from you. Grow up or shut up.
Civility policing.
Your account is 4 years old and you’ve never read this rule of the instance?
People should try to act like adults, it’s not supposed to be a high bar for adults to meet. I can only guess you’ve never tried to organize anyone for anything if you think people being able to regulate their emotions isn’t important; that expecting them to do so is some kind of, what, liberalism? Do you want the most loud and angry people bullying their way into running things? Because not pushing back against that kind of stuff is how you get the most loud and angry people running things. I have some experience with the worst kinds of those people, up close and through others’ experiences, and if anything I’d call it liberalism to “go along to get along” with such behavior instead of pushing back against it. When those people are allowed to get away with what they do consistently, they make the world revolve around them and they get others bending over backward to soothe them. Notice how similar that description is to how young children can be, except that young children are that way because they haven’t had the chance to learn how to regulate yet, they have extra trouble communicating and advocating for their needs, and they need extra attention and care. Once you get to be an adult, the expectation is that you grow past this hyper vulnerable state.
It doesn’t mean you’re now bootstraps as an adult. It just means people shouldn’t be having to “manage” you so that you don’t pop off and make things harder on everyone else.
There are situations where people get upset about things in a valid way, even as an adult. And some of the stuff we are aware of in the context of a form like this one is very angering. It doesn’t change the fact that other people are not punching bags.
It reminds of the situation I’ve also seen online where some “leftists” would throw insults at “rightists” that are meant to put them down, but are insults that end up being some kind of -ism territory in the process and are more a reinforcement of the status quo than fighting against it. In the same way, having a “leftist” message is not a shield to hide behind immature behavior. Letting people operate that way consistently enough is how you get cult of personality sectarian offshoots.
So no, this is not “civility policing.” I didn’t demand someone say please and thank you, and only speak during their allowed five minutes duration and say their points are invalid if what they say extends beyond their five minutes. I told them to act like an adult, which is in line with the expectations of the instance’s rules.
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.
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:
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”.
Ok, have some time to try to go through this in more direct detail now, focusing on the discussion about “soldiertariat [myth]” with personal conflicts between people on here aside.
First, I want to emphasize that if the data shows that USian military is largely not exploited poor people, I see no reason to deny or downplay that. However, if some percentage of it is exploited poor people, that is still a certain number of people existing in that realm of it. If the majority comes from a class that is higher class and more just directly benefits from imperialism, no question about it, that obviously doesn’t bode well for the revolutionary potential of such people overall. Exceptions may exist, but in that case probably the expectation would be that most are a hard nut to crack in that regard and energy is better spent elsewhere.
Going through your breakdown:
One distinction I want to focus on here is active members vs. veterans. Although veterans might have a degree of “prestige” in the sense of people who say stuff like “thank you for your service” or whatever, my understanding is some of them are disabled and struggle to get proper help for it. Those kind of people I don’t think are quite in the same category as others.
I do agree what you outline is a possible vector for people changing their allegiance to some degree. It is still a question in my mind with people like that whether they will be sympathetic to a more socialist-like cause or if they will just be “blue maga” for lack of a better term.
There may not be that much privilege for those who exist in the sphere of disabled, but for others, sure, I see how there would have to be a certain degree of… how do I put it, “long term over short term.” Understanding that they can be part of something better even than what they have, but that it requires a significant shift in the structure of things.
Here I do see it more as something like I emphasized before in another thread, the idea of “they may be helpful with supervision.” I don’t see them as likely to be reliable people who are leading anything, but some may still be able to help with advice or training under the right circumstances. I’m trying to remember a parallel I’m thinking of, maybe it was in the context of China’s revolutionary efforts? How there was something about those who would change sides and the liberation forces would accept their help, but keep them more at a distance in terms of proximity to the power structure. This may be the way it has to be with those who are too close to enforcement of empire in actual execution of it.
So as you may see, I’m not trying to make a case for major focus on recruiting from imperial core service members. Never have intended to be doing so. But it has, from how it looks to me, been made out like myself and perhaps some others are saying that simply because we don’t agree that 100% of them are a lost cause of conscious baby-killers no matter what.
By this same reasoning, civilians in the imperial core are enemies of imperialized countries. Which isn’t necessarily a misguided way of looking at it for people who live in imperialized countries and are contending with empire in their territory, but accomplishes nothing other than hair-shirt-ism (pointless guilt and self destructive obsessive with moral purity) for people living in the imperial core.
Obviously people who go to another country and commit atrocities are a step worse from the rest of us living in the imperial core, but what about those who know capitalism is exploitative and still go about their day buying whatever product? At what point are we complicit? What about service members who don’t directly participate in war crimes, but only operate logistics (desk job, etc.)? What level of complicit is that?
What I’m taking issue with is largely binary thinking obsession that fixates on imperial core veterans as an oversimplified group, while implying that anyone who doesn’t agree with this is a person who wants to work with and support “baby-killers.” I went over this kind of subject with another poster recently too. My point then was much the same as it is now. Consider all of the factors involved, rather than considering it as a binary thing of either work with them without reservations or treat them like pariahs who couldn’t possibly ever contribute anything positive.
I’m not in favor of chasing after imperial core veterans as some kind of liberating saviors of the west, if that’s what some people are thinking. But the way some talk, you’d think that’s what I was saying and that it’s either that or they’re all demons.
The idealism part is the obsession with moral personal choices. You are not doing that. You’re looking at the conditions veterans face, the incentives, and so on. The other person in question was telling people to block them, telling them to “fuck off”, etc., because they weren’t on the same page about veterans. They were further going on about it as if it is some kind of “you’re with me or against me” thing and if you even accidentally hint at any sympathy for veterans in the process of discussing their conditions, you are essentially taking the side of “baby-killers.” They further went on to drag it into general discussion in a back-biting way.
Had they approached it as you have, I would consider it unfair of me to say the least, to have accused them of throwing a tantrum. I want to be especially clear on this because the discussion of the “soldiertariat” is a reasonable one in itself and I would have quite a problem with myself if I thought I was trying to leverage accusations of misbehavior in order to dismiss a valid point about material conditions. It’s why I tried to focus more broadly and not factor that into things when I said what I did.
I will try to say more on your specific points later. Bit distracted at the moment and wanted to get out some thoughts on the other angle.
You brought very good topics here! I might be getting myself ahead and answer from my point of view instead of waiting. I apologize for that.
Before I answer, I first need to add some context here. It is a fact that the Western imperialists provided numerous concessions to the imperial core working class as written by this Redsails article. However, now, those concessions are being actively eliminated for plenty of the imperial core working class. The loss of those concessions allow for exchanges like this one where we can both read the story of each other and create solidarity. The oppression to the imperial core working class is getting closer and closer to the ones that we feel in the Global South.
With this in mind, my answer is that the vast numbers of the imperial core working class WERE the global south enemies during the times of great concessions but now that it is no longer the case. Solidarity is brewing to the point that stories like this one are becoming common. That solidarity among the oppressed is worth a lot in this dire times where the US goons like Marco Rubio want to paint my region with the blood of my brothers and sisters.
This topic reminds me of the story that CriticalResist shared some months ago: The Clone Economy and the Palestinian genocide. The level of complicit varies but it is there. Let me put some examples:
Knowing your complicity helps to organize and protest it such as what some microsoft employess have done -> https://www.kuow.org/stories/microsoft-protester-reflects-on-campaign-to-end-company-s-ties-with-israel . For plenty of people, it is liberating to know the truth.
This shows how normal people could unwittingly be part as a cog in the machine that is currently killing people in the Global South.
I understand that person a lot because I too have the same degree or even higher level of repulsion for the Yankees gov’t, their war criminals and the racists within the working class. I empathize with that reaction because I will have done the same if it wasn’t for reading about the Burkinabe solidarity and the Palestinian protests. However, at this point in my life where the US have flirted with the idea of invading my country Mexico, invading my comrades in Venezuela and destroying the rest of Latin America with their funded bootlicking fascists; cultivating the solidarity for the oppressed is way more important for me. We are all in dire need of solidarity and unity. I no longer care if I find solidarity in the least expected people like Monika Ertl(daughter of nazis) or Michael Gloss(son of CIA deputy director). As long as we are able to fight the imperialist beast, I will welcome you.
Anyway, cheers.
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.