this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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chapotraphouse
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I guess this is what I notice right away:
glossing every nation and class as "people" or "human lives" is falling for the trick that liberalism tries to pull to make us feel equal even when we're really not. historically it's ideology that the bourgeoisie introduced to break down non-meritocratic aristocracies without endangering their own material situation. "we're all equal so no more hereditary titles. but oh you want to expropriate the kulaks? you want to guillotine your ceo? we're all equal though, they're people and we all have the same inalienable rights." actually, there are still oppressors and oppressed, and that contradiction can't be papered over forever with bourgeois appeals to common humanity
also:
I strongly disagree that there are no individual actions making ordinary americans morally responsible for the atrocities committed in our names
every day people take steps to deliberately materially support empire. we lavish support on troops and veterans, we hang up american flags, we carry water for our brands, we vote for cops and war criminals. and it only takes a 9/11 to unleash oceans of latent racism and bloodlust. even people who dislike americanism still passively sit and enjoy the fruits of imperialism because almost all of us are doing well compared to our victims and we naturally don't see it in our interest to violently equalize things. in fact socialists have so little idea of how to sell the american people on becoming as poor as everyone else that we're basically uncritical of patsoc lines about how americans could be even more prosperous under socialism!
even the anti-war pb, millennial hippies, the socialists, apolitical people, etc can't really escape culpability. in his introduction to fanon's wretched, sartre was pretty unsparing toward oh-so-compassionate protesters who enjoyed the fruits of empire but declined to actually kill anyone to shatter the status quo:
if it's any consolation most of the people on this site disagree with me