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this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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Its soldiers literally volunteer to take part in imperialism and jackbooted fascism around the world. There is no ignorance here, and there is no "they had no other choice".
There is absolutely no sympathy for fascists. You wanna be one of the good ones? QUIT.
Don't rehabilitate them. Shame them into fucking leaving and stop making excuses for them.
I'd agree with you in ALMOST every case. The ones I don't condemn half as harshly, are those from military families and those who get DEP'd out of their high school; doubly where they intersect. (Literally, the Delayed Enlistment Program is ALL ABOUT prowling high schools like the predators most every recruiter I ever knew turned out to be.) I was one of their victims, groomed by my family, then groomed by a recruiter to not think about the costs of what I was doing. I was a high schooler, thinking I was ensuring a future for myself in a future that was very quickly proven to be the lies of my elders made of nothing but whole cloth; thinking 'oh, I'm not gonna be near the front! I won't have bodies on my conscience!'
Then I ended up in a support shop, watching drone feeds that blew people away day by day-- to the cheers of the rest of the shop. The blood isn't on my hands, but in my eyes, and coating my brain. Leaving was the best decision I ever made, and having to remember everything I saw-- never mind the several losses of function I've suffered as a result of that service-- is the price to pay.
Not all of them chose to be bloodthirsty jackboots. Some of us only really found out what it was when we were too deep in to get out without handing over the time we signed a contract to give.
This is an argument for being harsher, not kinder.
We don't get these people to quit by being nice to them. We get them to quit by making as many people as possible see it as morally reprehensible to be a troop.
Even if you have empathy for the ones that get tricked into it, the correct strategy to minimise it as much as possible is to be as harsh as possible about the troops and to build a social environment that inoculates the largest number of people possible.
It is simply the right strategy whether we acknowledge a small minority are fools or not. It's the right strategy to get those fools out and it's the right strategy to inoculate more of those fools before the military recruiting machine gets to them.
The US military is quite comfortably middle class in background and enjoys robust welfare benefits along with being housed in literal gated communities with some of the best public works infrastructure in the country
The US army has rich and middle class members, and also lures in people who come from poverty. The first two are borderline unreachable, the others are desperate for money or safety. Massive gulf in individual interests. Those ones in particular need to be carefully guided away from enlisting with better alternatives. We're literally just talking about Dual Power here. No more paragraphs or grandstanding needed. It's literally that simple. A low percentage doesn't mean a group of physical beings does not exist, Hexbear.
This is me addressing the entire thread because it's useless to participate in this a hundredth time.
i guess i was biased. i don't know how reliable this source is but it states that in the past it was true that poor income neighbourhoods were responsible for the majority of the military but it's been changing gradually in the last decades.
I know that Native Americans were the largest racial group to join the US military by percentage of their population. Not sure if that's still the case but most of it was due to poverty and those living on reservations not having much opportunities anywhere else.
A lot of people enlist due to lack of opportunity. I think the difference is once you join, you do indeed get a lot of opportunities for serving in a military that treats its soldiers pretty kush. I used to live in a neighborhood with a bunch of Puerto Rican vets, all of whom grew up poor, but the GI bill made them all landscaping company owning CHUD fucks even worse than the whites in the community.
That's a lot less fertile of a recruiting ground than a military that crews up and spits out peasant boys into a life equally as shit as the one they were pulled out of.
Its gotten better in the past few decades but rez life can be bleak as shit and you mix in "military families" and a bit of the "you aren't an adult until you do military things" mentality (particularly with young native men) and you end up with the quintessential victims of US empire fighting for that empire. But there are some hopeful changes. Anecdotal, but none of my family that joined the military encourage that path which isn't the way it used to be. There's also less of the "do anything to get out" mentality. So I remain hopeful we can finally break that stereotype.
I'm trying to find data to support this claim. Only stat i found was one saying 60% of the military make under 34-80k, with 20% making less than that. If that bracket is what the term middle class means now then the term is officially useless.
Do you have anything else a bit more granular? My fu must be weak this morning
It's not that the US Military pays it's troops a "middle-class" wage , it's that troops in general come from middle-class families and communities.
Also a lot of the compensation is housing and healthcare, so them making 34k is maybe more comparable to someone getting paid 50-60k depending on the housing market where they are.
This is what i was saying, though reading my post i can see that was unclear. My scant data shows demographics of enlisted prior to enlisting is 60% 34-80k and 20% below that bracket.
Ahh gotcha - yeah I got my info from a CFR report that basically says the same thing, but the breakdown was by median household income: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military
So the Wehrmacht was a Drafted army .. US Army is a Volunteer force ..
meaning acording to your logic ... Wehrmachtsoldiers is even more innocent ! lets reinstate "7deadlyFetishes" , ? or maybe we accept that you come with certain obligations into this world, and if you go on murdering other people for your Masters in a Foreign land , then it naturally follows that your "Non -Existance" is prefarable to your "Existance" (and here i include myself) . They lose their "obligations " to you , ecause you decleared that you do not follow them yourself. Theres no "eternal innocence"
The Bolsheviks agitated among the soldiers between Feb and Oct, winning the support of the Russian lower ranks of the army in Petrograd and Kronstadt, and elsewhere, was essential to the Bolsheviks seizing power. Radicalized Navy was crucial in Russia, but also it was the German Navy that basically began the German Revolution against the war credits voted for by the SPD. Burkina Faso, while I'm not yet as familiar with the history, was another example of the enlisted military splitting from the top ranks and seizing power to implement socialism.
I don't know what it would take to turn the American military away from imperialism and toward socialism, and I'm not in a position to argue for it. But your example of Wehrmacht soldiers is completely unmoored from what the person you were responding to was trying to get at. I've talked to people who served who have made good arguments for agitating within the military, and everyone I know who has actually been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan (and there's def some selection bias here) is some flavor of anarchist/socialist.
"But Nazis tho" is not the level of criticism that will help us to build socialism. Relax.
I'm sorry but this is not a good comparison. The Russian Imperial Army and Navy were mostly lower class conscripts fighting in a traditional style with rifles and canons. The US military is all volunteer and uses tactics that rely on air superiority, advanced weaponry and intel gathering. Most people in the US military these days never get into an actual fire fight, or even ever see "the front". If you get recruited these days you're way more likely to get a job moving boxes in some base in Italy, playing Xbox in an air conditioned dorm in your free time, than hunkering down in a ditch with a rifle. I don't see what the left gains from recruiting some guy who piloted a drone while eating Doritos or drove a hummer around Kandahar for a year and maybe got shot at twice, both of whom are getting a full ride scholarship and a cheap home loan when they get out.
I literally said I wasn't arguing for agitating in the army, just that I've heard good arguments and I could imagine a confluence of historical conditions where it could become possible. My main point is not to jump down people's throats with debate-lordy indignation using examples that are irrelevant.
Theyre more likely to be duty stationed in Germany than Italy
Navy buddy got stationed in Naples so not uncommon
well that's the navy. nobody likes the puddle pirates
Those are Conscripted armies that are fighting in an inter imperalist war , reclaiming their innocents by revolution.
US Army is a Volunter Force used in Colonial Oppression ... it is less inncocent then a Conscripted Soldier . If you join it you have discared your obligation to your fellow man and have Puplicly decleared your intention to make Murder in the Colonies your Profession.
why would that be Innocent ? It just isnt.
you are literally discribing the People whos Job it is to "Kill Socialism" .. but no they are not your enemies ? But Nazis tho . the greatest thing is , i dont even have to explain that , once we will build socialism , they gonna come themselfs to explain it to you ! its one of their primary service products.
I am not saying that agitating within the army is the path to socialism, I specifically said that I was not making that argument. I'm saying that it had been the path to socialism in specific historical contexts, and thinking about it is not akin to allying with Nazis. Stop trying to win a debate. We can have discussions.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
The class character of the US military is pretty far off from the impression people have where only poor people join it for a better life, since it became a volunteer force. I'm glad you've met class traitors, not trying to invalidate what you're saying or say "it's on sight with anyone in the military" lol, people make mistakes.
It would be cool if people could go get trained by Cubans a la Angolan rebels 😸
https://hexbear.net/comment/4395565 <- obnoxious recursive linking to Adam Tooze (radlib) writing about modern US military being almost entirely deep south JROTC recruits
I forgot about that guy. whatever happened to them?
we found out one of the fetishes ..
where have i said that they were innocent? every action we take has consequences, whether you evaluate and come to a conclusion or just accept it blindly. in either case we are not absolved of the consequences of our actions.
i'm saying that there is a context to this. it is deliberate that the easiest way out is recruitment for a serious number of people. if we want to make it easy to dissolve that entity, a very powerful way forward is to make the material conditions better for everyone.
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
— Matthew 20:1–16, New Revised Standard Version
I see it that way. you get a full day Labour in gods vineyard. No matter if you laboured in it the hole day or just the evening hours. If you dont you will NOT get payed . (Fair: Labour is the source of all value).
EDIT (more explaination ): Somebody leaving the town to Opress other Towns , is most certanly not working in the Vineyard , and he will have little chances to be pickt up from the Market place . He will most certaily not get payed !
Dont wanna preach in Latin here .
I'm gonna bully you with a bit of Marx's Gothe and say lol no but whut about nature tho
bring it to me , not using labour or bring me to it not using labour..
Was? Das macht auf Englisch keinen Sinn.
bring mir die früchte der Natur, aber ohne arbeit , oder lass mich die Natur genießen , aber ohne arbeit .
geht nicht , braucht auch arbeit , und sei es nur das Schuhwerk... so ungefähr. ?
I think I get what you're saying now