Another claim often made is that the military provides an easy path to financial stability that people, particularly those who are racialized, have a difficult time finding elsewhere. Putting specifics aside for now, it’s worth considering the thinly veiled implications of this argument: being part of an institution responsible for maintaining Western domination abroad, largely through terrorizing populations in the Global South, is justified or excusable if it provides some benefit for a resident of the Imperial Core. This is the logic of colonialism as marketed to the masses: sure, you’ll never reap the real rewards of the plunder and terror, but the activities abroad will bring some benefit to you. It’s not a sign of “privilege” to argue that personal benefit shouldn’t justify becoming part of the military or serve as an excuse from critique
People defending volunteer soliders is just some of the craziest shit I’ve ever seen. Imagine if you applied any of this logic to cops, because that’s what NATO troops are overseas. Going ACAB but defending volunteer soliders is straight up incoherent from an ideological perspective. They’re not even conscripts. And the class character of the US volunteer army is wealthier than the average American. I’d imagine the same is true for most NATO volunteer armies.
"Um I NEEDED to kill that family for my college money, you stupid moral purist elitist. I’m the REAL victim here. "
The absolute state of western leftism.
Um I NEEDED to kill that family for my
college moneyCamaro, you stupid moral purist elitist. I’m the REAL victim here.
The article actually adresses that quite well, as well as most of the other common talking points from leftists in NATO countries.
My original comment is basically a summary of the article in some ways
Why read the article when you can reflexively jump to the defense of the innocent innocent soldiers? How could they have known that the military was for killing people?
I am more convinced that the third wordists are right with each passing day. We have a word for people who just want their own slice of the imperialist pie, they’re called radlibs. Third world leftists sure as hell don’t lose any sleep about the suffering of the bastards that pillaged their country. I know I don’t.
Fuck the troops. Amazing that this is even remotely controversial in a “leftist” space.
This is an amerikan website. Shit takes from chauvinists are to be expected.
I just don’t understand it. I’m pretty sure no one on here is going to go defend old apartheid South African troops or the modern apartheid Israeli troops (and that’s good, no one should defend them), yet those groups actually have more of an excuse than volunteer soliders as they’re conscripts and were/are forcefully drafted.
Plugging your ears and repeating “materialism materialism materialism” as if it absolves you of any and all responsibility. Literally just clean wehrmacht but it’s leftist so it’s ok. Just as I don’t give a fuck if a concentration camp guard didn’t actually hate Jews and just did it for the money, I also don’t give a fuck about your motivations for participating in a genocidal war machine. Even if all you did was handle paperwork, you still greased the wheels.
You won’t catch me clutching my pearls about the precious victim-soldiers.
Yeah if the military wants to, they can just bring the draft back and ignore all the silly rules. But then it becomes something completely different in terms of the class and income level, and stuff like fragings might happen again or rebellions against command.
It’s actually really easy to not enlist in the military. I’m not in the military every single day. You don’t even have to think about it, you can just wake up in the morning and poof, you’re not in the military.
The western left is such a complete and utter farce, can’t even agree that serving an imperialist army is bad, actually. Any one of these defensive comments could be applied just as well to cops, but these are the international cops that don’t affect me, so fuck their victims, I guess.
It’s so fucking sad that even on this site we can’t get people to actually view Iraqis and Afghans as human beings.
The comment I made applies just as much to former cops, skinheads, coyotes, jihadists, you name it. Moralism is an idealist trap.
Serving an imperialist army is bad, actually, and it remains bad no matter what you do afterwards. You are at the very least complicit in genocidal American policy.
You don’t get a free pass just because you’re “former” whatever. Former serial killers still get convicted, former rapists still get convicted, former concentration camp guards still get convicted. You’re not entitled to absolution just because you’re “former”. You’re even less entitled to make it about yourself and how you’re the real victim.
It’s never, ever anyone’s fault. They were always tricked, they didn’t know, the higher ups made them do it, or whatever the latest excuse is.
I’m not really interested in the poverty draft or propaganda arguments. I’m interested in getting more use out of people than executing them or leaving them in jail to rot, if such a thing is feasible (which will vary case by case)
I was just clearing out my inbox after the site migration and came across this exact struggle session from a year ago, the one that led to seven deadly sins getting kicked out. Kind of surreal to see it play out again.
I think these circular arguments happening over and over is a reflection of our powerlessness. There’s no organized revolutionary party, there’s no party discipline, there’s no political education. So we can just fight over hypotheticals that don’t have any bearing on anything.
There’s no substantial left in the Imperial Core in large part due to propaganda and cooperation between the media class and the state, but mostly because people in the Imperial Core generally get a good deal from Empire. These questions can become relevant when more than just the very bottom (usually racialized) strata of our societies experience revolutionary conditions. Fortunately, that’s coming.
We had the exact same argument three years ago when I first joined hexbear lol. The needle has moved zero since then
