this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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also throw in US troops too
For some reason this is a controversial take here and people keep telling me the troops will join the revolution even though idf service is compulsory and everybody who signs up to serve in the larger even more genocidal army is doing it willingly.
People really fell for the "the US army is made of poor people doing what they can to survive" propaganda of the 00s.
I mean I joined the military cause I was broke and homeless. I did 5 years active duty and I'm here an committed as fuck to leftist ideals and revolution.
You're right. I'm sorry, I'm sure the work you've done after while being committed to leftist ideals has outweighed all the crimes against humanity you either committed or enabled while you were enlisted. I'm sorry for implying that the data reflects that your personal story is an outlier when it is actually the norm and we have tons of ex military out here doing the work of undoing the harm they caused.
It's really wild to see a bunch of people that theoretically understand and think with materialistic determination in mind to claim that they didn't do anything wrong by serving for years in the literal armed wing of American imperialism.
"Sure I was the literal triggerman for a genocidal empire and perpetuated a half dozen illegal wars for American hegemony but I'm on your side now, you can trust me."
We should be all set as long as somebody else doesn't swing through offering them a 14% loan on a camaro.
I've yet to see anyone here who was a troop claim this. It's almost always the exact opposite, where seeing (and participating in) the business end of imperialism up close was a radicalizing experience.
Ok they admit they did something wrong but think they should be forgiven and welcomed back I to the fold without people pointing out they were already convinced once to do genocide by fascists.
That clear enough you pedantic pain in the ass.
If they're aware of the fact they participated in carrying out genocidal goals for the American empire they should keep their fucking mouths shut about it and just say "I'm her to support the cause" and deal with what should be soul crushing guilt internally.
Lmao get the fuck out of here. It's not pedantic to point out you making shit up.
That's pretty much what they do
its because every revolution in history has had a military component and envisioning one for the US based on historical materialism requires working in military participation as a prerequisite.
Yeah, the military will be either:
1 and 4 are real possibilities, but a lot of folks want to foreclose any avenue for anyone who's ever been associated with the military to take part.
If we're relying on the people who have willingly and enthusiastically murdered everybody the American government has told them too without hesitation with less than zero justification for decades that doesn't speak well for the plan.
I’m not gonna pretend to know an exact number but I’d say 95%+ of modern troops never directly killed anyone and you know the sickos who did it enthusiastically sure aren’t left leaning, let alone communists.
Fuck off with the "didn't see direct combat" line
You know what the ones who didn't see direct combat were doing?
Signing the papers that said the unarmed 13 year old who got canoe'd was deffinitly an enemy combatant and figuring out the logistics of how to get bullets from the factory to an innocent persons head halfway around the world as efficiently as possible.
By this thinking anybody who works in any industry that contracts with the US military is a murderer. The workers who make bullets in a factory, the truck drivers who ship them, people who provide mental health services, cooks who serve them meals etc.
Yup fully agreed.
Well except trying to lump in people who provide counseling after the fact that's a pretty obvious bullshit false equivalency but I suspect you know you were reaching for that example.
It's why when I graduated I took a a job designing water and wastewater systems for small communities instead of a job that paid three times as much where I'd design bombs or do that exact kind of logistics. Because I have a functioning set of morals and not facilitating the MIC was a priority to me.
This is why it's frustrating as somebody whonwas faced with the choice and actively worked to make choices to not be complicit in the imperial war machine pretty fucking annoying to have people insist there's no way it can be avoided.
Apply this same logic to the pretty much universally agreed on fact that nobody should support Biden.
If you can make excuses for the people who do the shooting, make the bullets, facilitate the logistics, or even interact with people in the military what's your problem with Biden? Probablly that he's the one causing all this to happen right? Same applies to everybody literally working every day to make it possible.
Not really, there are psychiatrists, counselors, etc who are in the military doing the same job they would outside the military. Are they more complicit than the contracted workers?
Is their work facilitating the soldiers being able to murder people sooner?
If so than yes, they are more complicit than psychologists who don't get soldiers cleared to get back on the frontlines asap.
It is increasingly hilarious to watch you attempt to make this out to be a complicated moral issue.
Here's a handy flow chart.
Does their work enable current active duty service members to more quickly and easily kill innocent people?
Yes --> they are bad
No --> they are not bad
Hell, let's turn it around and go back to the current thread were in.
So does all this mean that actually you can't criticize the idf because everybody is equally culpable for what's going on in Gaza and the idf is going to be the vanguard of Palestinian liberation any day now?
Expecting the American MIC to be instramental to the socialist revolution in this country sure does feel an awful lot like when democrats keep convincing themselves lifelong republican removed like muller comey and garland are going to fight their battles for them and take down a sitting republican president.
Or like how they whitewashed Bush because he gave Michelle Obama a piece of candy one time.
What about the normal doctors? They patch up soldiers and help them kill more.
Sweet fucking christ this really isn't fucking difficult. Yes
If so than yes, they are more complicit than doctors who don't get soldiers cleared to get back on the frontlines asap.
Was that supposed to be a gotcha? Like I said it's increasingly hilarious to watch people try to make this complicated.
The soldiers deserve the injuries they receive (and more) as a result of being a genocidal imperialist.
Please reference the flow chart I have already provided.
So kill the psychiatrists too, they help the soldiers just a little slower.
Again, yes I'm literally not sure why anybody is having a hard time with this.
For the third fucking consecutive time please refer to this handy flow chart I have already provided.
Let's do a little exercise since apparently you need more practice.
Answer the first question, and then try to follow this super complicated flow chart and tell me what answer you get instead of literally just asking me to walk you through it for various specific examples.
Seems like it's not an obvious false example by your own admission. That is you can't read your handy format.
You really going to make me explain to you for a fourth time the difference between psychiatrists who dont facilitate troops returning to active duty and those that do?
And your going to follow that up with accusing me of not having reading comprehension?
Bold fucking move cotton.
If you turn the screws on the death machine, you deserve death yourself. This isn't hard to understand, I cannot conceive of why you would defend people who are actively enabling the war machine. Do you fucking work for raytheon or something?
No I’m just wondering where you draw the line. I pay taxes that go towards building these bombs, is every American taxpayer therefore a genocide enabler? Obviously this is a straw man, but where do we draw the line of who is complicit or not?
Personally, my personal policy has always been don't directly tighten the bolts by working for a company that does. I understand that we can't go around holding a trial for the inventor of the screw because they're used in everything, not just weaponry. But I can pretty comfortably say, anyone who works directly for the US military and accompanying industrial complex deserves no forgiveness. The engineers and workers at raytheon and northrop grumman etc are scum. I have a friend who found out their seemingly normal company was making systems for weaponry and they immediately quite. I think they're cool for walking away the moment they found out.
Past that is very case by case basis.
Yeah that is really principled and cool of them. I understand if my playing devil’s advocate comes off as genocide-defending, that’s really not my intention.
I just don’t want people getting carried away in the same kind of rhetoric being used by the Israelis as an excuse to kill all Palestinians because some of them are Hamas.
Not that being a freedom fighter is the same as being genocidal, it’s just the rhetoric Israel uses to justify their crimes.
Edit: This mostly applies to the other commenter I was talking to
I’ll set down how the baby killer rhetorical device is an ultra leftist boondoggle for the time being.
States need militaries. Without force, a state cannot defend its sovereignty. Will you only support an American revolution that brings its own parallel military structure along and includes no former members of the American military?
Even if I were to concede the point you just made, which I won’t, it requires foreclosing on any revolution in the imperial core. That may or may not be a foregone conclusion but it ain’t exactly the kind of thing you can build a polemic or propaganda machine around.
I think that excluding people that try to say they didn't do anything wrong when they were the literal armed guard for American inperialism is a good way to make sure you're movement isn't filled with fascists with no political knowledge.
You realize this is the exact argument liberals make when they explain why it's a good thing we're giving self avowed nazis unlimited unrestricted weapons in Ukraine right?
"If theyre helping us fight our enemies who cares what their beliefs are." - somebody 6 months from being shot in the back of the head
People should be given a chance to grow and change(not where it can harm others), I do believe redmeption is possible, and that humanity is not something you can loose.
There's a real contradiction between the prison abolitionist line of thinking and the "kill everyone remotely associated with imperialism" one.
If I didn't believe in redemption I'd kill myself.
So then you disagree with the original statement of the post that all idf soldiers are guilty?
Are you aware of human history? if you can't lose your humanity what happened to the nazis that were lining people like me and the people I care about up at the edge of a mass grave.
How about the people on the edge of the mass grave? What happened to their humanity when they were shot in the back of the fucking head for opposing fascism.
This "all people are deserving of redemption" is sure rubbing right up against the tolerance paradox.
They get a chance, outside of their fascist society, what they do with it is their business. It's not guaranteed, it requires the work from them. But they are still fundamentally human, denying others humanity is never right. You can possibly be unworthy, but you can't stop being human. We are all people, from the day we are born, to the day that we die. Saying that others can be inherently lesser than me is something I refuse to do.
Every human live lost to hate is an unimaginable waste, each of these warcriminals could have been a good person,they aren't, of course. But in a better world, they could have been.
It is not, and never was, about tolerating their actions and believes, be more careful when reading before becoming needlesly aggressive, please.
People say this a lot, but the fact that the former US troops here on Hexbear haven't been driven off makes me wonder about the depths of their conviction.
I'd hope their conviction isn't real, because wishcasting mass death like this (1) is a purely aesthetic choice that does nothing but look unhinged and (2) is far in excess of even the most punitive measures suggested after WWII.
"We're going to kill every one of you if we win" makes winning harder, not easier.
This is hexbears stated position on white people and straight people, not sure why there's more of a carve out for people who willingly signed up to murder people for Haliburton.
And I'm not trying to play victim for white or straight people, ùjust like there's a bunch of former troops who don't say anything because they know it's not directed at them because they're already here, always just thought it was strange that the site is more defensivee of people who actively made a choice than people who didn't have a say in their situation.
This place doesn't have stated positions, and genocide sure isn't one of them, unless we've gone off the deep end of people taking edgy jokes seriously.
I mean the "I am not joking or being hyperbolic, I literally will never trust white people even if they're active in progressive orgs and I unironically passionately hate straight people" posts are deffinitly edgy but they're going out of their way to be pretty clear they aren't joking.
No one on this site sincerely hates all white people or all straight people, I guarantee their real feelings are more nuanced than that. People make those blunt statements out of frustration and exhaustion, and hexbear should be a safe place to vent like that.
It's for the same reason that the guy lost his mind at the end of The Telltale Heart.
Because we're supposed to be sympathetic they feel bad about choosing to murder people?
Not sure if you're joking, so I'll elaborate my point.
Most people on this site live in the imperial core, a lot of them are American, and while most probably were never in the military, there's a good chance they have friends or loved ones who were. It's easy for such people to brush off something like "kill all whites" because the notion that someone deserves to be punished for something they had no control over (their genetics) is patently absurd, but "kill all current and former American soldiers" hits a bit different because, even if it's not meant as a literal statement of policy, anyone who's a regular on this site knows the sheer depths of evil that imperial core armies are responsible for, knows that joining such institutions means being complicit on some level in their crimes, and so they can't help but suspect at least a little bit that it really is what they deserve.
It's also easier to ignore the white shit because we all know a fuckload of white peeps, but if you mention veterans then individuals pop up.
Well if history is anything to go by, they'll slink off under cover of darkness, leaving their allies to be overrun by the Taliban.