• Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      Obligatory US troop copypasta


      You see american choppers in the bright blue sky, hundreds and hundreds of screaming american soldiers drop from it, you look across the field and see the tanks rolling in. You hear a loud explosion and realise that the shrine you have protected for thousands of years with tooth and nail is destroyed by the empire, you come to the realisation that this is very probably the end of your people who’ve struggled to survive all these centuries.You realise that very soon there is going to be a river of blood of your people here; white phosphorus and depleted uranium will be shot very soon, deforming babies for decades to come, and millions of your people are gonna be killed. Your millennia old language and religion will be wiped out, you’re very likely the last of your kind.

      Suddenly, an American soldier kicks you down, puts his foot on your neck and aims his standard ar-15 on the side of your head all while screaming; you realise you’re gonna die, and you won’t have to see the destruction of your community that you fostered so carefully all these centuries for.

      Just before he pulls the trigger, you think to yourself, “To be fair to him, he probably had a low GPA in highschool and didnt have a health-care, those are notoriously hard to get in America”.

      • TrippinMallard@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        Don’t confuse hatred of the institution with hatred of the people fed into it.

        The U.S. military sells education, healthcare, housing, income, status, and stability in a country where those things are not guaranteed. That is not an accident; it is part of the recruiting bargain. A lot of people join because it is one of the few paths that looks structured and secure.

        That does not make every service member personally responsible for U.S. foreign policy, defense contractors, or the political decisions that send people into wars. Criticize the machine. Don’t pretend every person inside it built the machine.

          • TrippinMallard@lemmy.ml
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            12 hours ago

            The draft does exist. Marketing/Advertising is the preferred tool. Military families are only one feed into the system, it’s absolutist to think otherwise.

            Joining it doesn’t make you a fascist, especially if your baseline needs aren’t being met it gives you choice. Systems this large have to be taken down from the inside.

        • Tangentism@lemmy.ml
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          22 hours ago

          That sounds a lot like “I was just following orders… Because free healthcare and shit”

          • TrippinMallard@lemmy.ml
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            12 hours ago

            Look up Simple Sabotage Field Manual. Joining Military for free education and not being homeless doesn’t mean you agree with or help the US. Most people leech resources intentionally and leave.

        • DornerStan@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 day ago

          The US military is primarily comprised of middle class people who chose to participate in the subjugation of people infinitely poorer than them, in order to preserve their cut of the imperial spoils. Poor people who happen to join are also just vying to be allowed to enter the imperialist-peripheral class.

          The machine and its components are part of the same process. To pretend otherwise is idealism, elevating some imagined internal essence of each indivual above the function they serve in material processes.

          Even in your fantasy of an “innocent” génicodaire who only participates for economic privileges rather than because they personally believe in the fascist project, they’re still selling out and killing their fellow workers for selfish benefit. The term for that is class traitor and they deserve no sympathy.

          It’s a fucking wild fantasy too. “Hey I was only a concentration camp guard because it financially benefited me, I’m not a fascist the machine I work at is fascist”. Liberal nonsense

          • TrippinMallard@lemmy.ml
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            9 hours ago

            While anti-fascist extremism is not fascism, social-media extremism can accelerate fascist dynamics by normalizing the psychological and rhetorical habits fascist movements depend on: dehumanization, purity logic, collective guilt, and contempt for procedural restraint.

          • TrippinMallard@lemmy.ml
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            12 hours ago

            This is not materialism. It is moral flattening with Marxist language.

            Yes, the U.S. military is an imperial institution, and service members are implicated in what it does. But treating an enlisted 19-year-old, a general, a defense contractor, and a senator as morally identical erases class pressure, hierarchy, coercion, and actual decision-making power.

            People can be responsible without being equally responsible. Recruitment works because healthcare, education, housing, and stable work are inaccessible to many people. That does not make enlistment innocent, but it does make “they’re all just selfish class traitors” a lazy analysis.

            The machine matters. So do the conditions that feed people into it.

            • DornerStan@lemmygrad.ml
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              11 hours ago

              You are dressing up moralism in Marxist language. Marxist materialism has fuck all to do with moral culpability, which is the topic at hand.

              If you want to talk about the tactical utility of radicalizing current and former US soldiers, that is where a material analysis is useful. I’ll toss whatever ethical considerations aside if it means advancing the liberation of the global working class.

              But trying to use surface-level Marxist language to minimize the moral responsibility of fascist foot soldiers is equally hilarious and disgusting.

              • TrippinMallard@lemmy.ml
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                9 hours ago

                This still dodges the distinction.

                If we’re talking moral culpability, then role, power, age, coercion, hierarchy, and decision-making authority matter. Treating a senator, a general, a defense executive, and a 19-year-old recruit as morally interchangeable is not materialism. It is flattening.

                If we’re talking material analysis, then the recruitment bargain matters. The military offers healthcare, housing, education, income, status, and structure in a society where those are insecure for many people. That does not make enlistment innocent. It does mean the institution is reproducing itself through material dependency, not simply through millions of individually evil fascist choices.

                “Implicated” does not mean “equally responsible.” That distinction is not liberal sentimentality. It is basic analytical precision.

                • DornerStan@lemmygrad.ml
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                  8 hours ago

                  You have no real argument so you’re inventing shit to argue against, debate pervert.

                  You are the only one trying to quantify moral culpability, and you’re the one trying to claim “materialism” in your “analysis” of the innocence of fascist foot soldiers. You’re the one misusing baby’s first Marxist terminology to try to morally whitewash the fascism inherent to every atom of the imperialist machine.

                  The imperialist machine reproducing itself through financial incentive isn’t fucking insightful, it’s basic Marxism 101 shit. It’s also non-unique and fundamentally flattens moral considerations because everyone does what they do for reasons. And it’s already been addressed why selling out your fellow workers for financial benefit isn’t a defense.

                  Graduate from middle school and read more than half the Manifesto, I beg of you.

                  But it really is an indictment of the Western left that the sole purpose of your “material analysis” seems to be negotiating the minutiae of moral culpability of individuals in the fascist machine. Fully defanged bastardization of actual theory from people whose only exposure is memes and videos.

                  • TrippinMallard@lemmy.ml
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                    8 hours ago

                    You’re not avoiding moral culpability. You’re making a moral claim and then refusing any distinctions inside it.

                    Calling every participant a class traitor who deserves no sympathy is not material analysis. It is a culpability claim. My point is not that material incentives make enlistment innocent. My point is that agency, hierarchy, coercion, information access, and decision-making power change the kind and degree of responsibility.

                    “Everyone has reasons” is not a rebuttal. Some reasons are structurally produced, some roles are coerced, some roles command, some profit, some design policy, and some are recruited into executing it. If your framework cannot distinguish those positions, it is not more radical. It is just less precise.

            • EmmiLime@lemmy.ml
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              12 hours ago

              You’re right, the poor soldiers had no choice but to go to another country and kill a bunch of people. What else were they supposed to do? The dead civilians are so entitled, do they not realize that choice is a luxury?

              • TrippinMallard@lemmy.ml
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                12 hours ago

                Joining military gives them baseline needs so they gain choice. Most soldiers never get deployed, and if they do they can use the gained choice to employ Simple Sabotage Field Manual.