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this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Damn you probably shouldn't have signed up to kill babies if you're afraid to die.
American troops should be extremely reduced into simplified parts that are very difficult to identify
you will drink the mouse smoothie
Terrifying
That's gross and not funny
I every single member of the US millitary dropped dead right now, It would be the single most positive event in the history of humanity up until that point.
if only because thousands of people randomly dropping dead normally doesn't happen.
but you could also figuratively "destroy the solider" by flipping them to the socialist cause
Edited for clarity, I meant "them" as is the persons in the military not the entity itself.
Anything that has the power to "flip" the Us millitary to the socialist cause without somehow destroying it in the process would make needing to flip it in the first place irrelevent.
You do know what the military is made of, right? It's all removable.
Opposing a criminal organization that double taps elementry schools with impunity is a extremely useful goal and pretending these monsters deserve special consideration is a dangerous act of ego stroking that lets everyone else in the path of this monster known exactly where you stand. You would never say the same about the iof but the people who will follow the order to fight beside them arm in arm are somehow victims of that choice?
If you don’t think you’re coming off as humanizing and empathizing the waffen SS in this thread I dunno what to tell you.
It's not me who could possibly be wrong! No, it must be that everyone else just can't read, yes that must be why I'm getting ratioed on the bear site.
Wow, it looks like the scourge of bad reading comprehension even infected the mods!
(sorry, I couldn't help myself)
Which implies you think there’s a difference between voluntarily joining the US military and voluntarily joining the waffen SS. I’m curious what that difference is.
Long as we’re agreeing that there’s no tangible difference between a US troop and a waffen SS member then I think the difference in perspective here is probably smaller than this whole thread has made it seem.
I think you’re right that people join up for reasons we should try to understand, especially the systems that cause it. But it’s just as understandable if not vastly moreso why people would despise troops and veterans and find it cathartic when some small measure of justice finds them. I certainly do and I wasn’t their victims.
Most people joining up are willing participants in the horrors they perpetuate on the global south
Depends on what you mean by “vulnerable” and “impoverished”. If you mean actually in poverty, the US Federal poverty line in 2025 was an annual income of $15650 for individuals, $21150 if you’re in a household family with two children. However, if you look at the below infographic:
Source
The vast majority of US military recruits are well above the poverty line. Even if you could extrapolate most of the 19% of recruits who fall beneath the annual income of $41691 as being at or close to poverty line, that still puts the remaining 81% of recruits in a broadly middle/ upper-middle class income bracket.
Just for reference, the average median income (that’s the 50th percentile of all income earners, not the average which tends to be skewed by the upper class) in the US was only $43222 in 2023. That means the majority of US military recruits came from a household that was already earning more than 50% of the US population.
So by any of these metrics, you cannot consider most US military recruits to be impoverished.
Additionally, the racial and ethnic demographics of the military, especially in the higher ranks, is disproportionately White by a huge margin. I think it is reasonable to say that these majorly White recruits are nowhere near as vulnerable to discrimination or poverty as someone who has a non-White background, such as a black person whose family descended from slavery, or a Hispanic who migrated from a poor Hispanic country that could very well be deported by ICE any day now.
What can we ascertain from these facts then? That most people that join the US military are White, middle class individuals who are very likely joining not because they are desperate to leave poverty, but because they like the idea of being a stormtrooper of the empire whose propaganda they willingly ate up. There are far more Graham Platners than Mike Prysners in the US military.
On your other statements about purges and pragmatism, it is ironic that you say purges lead to counter-revolutionary outcomes when purges are what prevented the USSR from being completely destroyed from the inside during WW2 (see the number of Nazi collaborators in the occupied Baltic and Ukrainian territories), and is why the PRC and the DPRK still exist today.
As a non-American communist, I fail to see how it is pragmatic to try and defend the jackboots of the American Empire who are willingly carrying out war crimes and imperialist atrocities while completely ignoring all the actually impoverished, brown people they are currently murdering in the Middle East.
If empathy is ‘pragmatic’ as you claim, then I will say it is far more pragmatic to empathize the victims of the empire and materially support them to bring them to our cause, than the stormtroopers who carry out the orders of the Empire without question. It is like saying we should ‘pragmatically’ empathize IDF soldiers who are genociding Palestinians because they are all conscripts who came from all socioeconomic backgrounds and maybeeee 1% will defect if we just keep saying Free Palestine.
I was vulnerable, impoverished, and 18 at one time, and recruiters told me I could have free 3 squares and then college paid for, which I would have loved, but for some reason I still had the good sense to recognize immediately that it wasn't worth killing other poor people in other parts of the world. In fact it was empathy that played a big part in my refusal to be a part of such an evil institution.
Yes, having empathy for the victims of the US military, like the poor working class families of brown people they murder, having more empathy for them than the ones who signed up to do the murdering is virtuous and pragmatic.
Because I and millions of other people who are in situations just as if not more dire than the troops are able to not "fall to propaganda," yes, I expect others to be able to do the same. You're missing the point though, It doesn't matter what I expect, it's simple and undeniable proof that being 18, impoverished, and offered (mostly false) promises of alleviation from that poverty, is not reason enough for most people to be willing to join a murder cult.
Says the one simping for murderers.
Guess we had better stop hatin' on capitalists then. It's all just material conditions, not their fault. Cops? They just needed a job like anyone else!
Wtf are you even talking about? When did I say I had the ability to "get rid of them"? That would be nice, but I... Ohhhh, you're talking about letting child murderers and their facilitators join socialist orgs, something which wasn't even part of this thread, but apparently is a bug stuck in your craw from some previous discussion. Fine, I'll bite. Yeah, that's just purity politics, we should let cops join our orgs too. (Eyeroll). Personally, I actually might be willing to let a veteran join an org where I had control of who could become a member if and only if they fully recognized that they chose to become class traitors and joined the enemy, that they made a nearly irredeemably cruel and selfish choice that caused real material harm and have spent their lives since that recognition doing what they can to make amends to the peoples they wronged and being willing to sacrifice their own well being to improve the lives of the victims of the imperialism they were a willing part of. Most vets though think they deserve our "respect" for their cowardly choice and want special benefits above other poor people. Fuck anyone like that, they should be grateful they didn't come home in a box. There were millions of other poor people who weren't willing to facilitate or outright commit mass murder in exchange for college tuition. However I would not blame any org for refusing any and all US vets and I wouldn't blame anyone for refusing to join an org who does allow US vets in. The same way I wouldn't expect someone whose family had been murdered to let bygones be bygones and work hand in hand with the "rehabilitated" murderer of their family.
It's the only thing you're hearing? That's really weird considering no one here has said anything even remotely like that.
Your position is neither more humane nor is it "smarter."
Ah, doing the accusation -> confession thing, I see.
Petty redditism. Typical.
Get that everybody? We have to help the bourgeoisie first before we can help the working class. We have to help the leaders of the imperialist hegemon first before we can help the people of the global south. We have to help the entity first before.... fuck it, I don't even want to finish saying that one.
The poverty draft isn't actually a thing. The nunber one motivator for US troops joining (statistically) is having a family member in the military. And even more damning is that the poor sections of american society are less likely to join the military than more. That's despite the plague of recruiters sent into poor and black neighbourhoods and schools.
The American proletariat by and large hates the guts of the American state.
Like how ICE have good singing on bonus so it's understandable.
You're not justifying it, you're excusing it. Everyone here understand the underlying structural issues. The problem for me at least, it seems, that you don't want these people to have to take responsibility and this is a sentiment I get from most of these people as well. They just got "tricked" or "just followed orders" or "the money was too good" or something. No need for self crit or doing any of the actual work. I bet you most of them still have their uniforms neatly folded and tucked away instead of burning that shit on the spot.
If you got "tricked" into joining baby crusher incorporated, honestly you're a liability until you've proven otherwise. Trying to doge that responsibility is big yikes. And if taking that responsibility is a deal breaker for you, then even bigger yikes.
Just look at libs invasion logic, where they go "we got lied to about x" and 10 years later they're doing it again, having learned nothing, or rather refused to learn anything.
Youre right and no amount of poor people turned away from having criminal records, being too overweightor too uneducated will change their mind that more poor people would join if the US didnt already betray them to point so they cant even be part of the war machine. Because too overweight, did crimes and/or cant pass the ASVAB. You're right but they're holding onto a graphic that doesnt really prove anything either and ignores the amount of poors in the military.
I'm sorry you're totally right, critical support for baby killers because now they understand what it's like to have a poopy diaper.
It's pretty insulting to assume that we're talking about people being ontologically evil. US soldiers have been shaped by the viciously brutal US society, right, no one is a literal demon spawn from hell doing evil for free, pretty basic stuff. Accountability is not a crusade though, if you're doing politics for real you suppress these people because they've been made into baby killers and baby killers can't be allowed to simply be there and do what they do