Agreed. While we can organize or educate in the hopes some future generation uses some of what we build today, nothing good is likely to happen in my lifetime here. Unless a certain tendency is correct and our salvation lies with nuclear fire, I can see that feasibly happening in my lifetime but I’d rather the cost of my potential liberation NOT include the agonizing death of 6-7 billion people or more.
No no no, they are useful for all kinds of things! Like:
- Gaslighting the masses into voting harder
- Informing the masses that this coup or that assassination is definitely 100% not from some western intelligence agency
- Showing stock pictures of sad things and letting the masses know that this is definitely the kind of things
enemies of the foreign ministry/state departmentour enemies make happen - Show everyone that line goes up = good capitalism
- Show everyone that line goes down = bad communism
- Let everyone know that skyrocketing prices and unmoving wages is just normal inflation, nothing to worry about
- AND SO MUCH MORE!
/s
After thinking about your post, I see where I am wrong.
Joining out of some form of necessity is one thing, but to have fallen so far as to perform or knowingly enable the actions you’ve described is unforgivable even if your own freedom from prison or family economy is at stake. It was tone deaf of me to even remotely equate those things and my original post was poorly thought out.
The only point I made originally I will defend is this: We should not be wishing mental illness, homelessness/poverty, or drug addiction on anyone. I refuse to believe this is what Communist justice looks like.
I used to live in South Korea. It is closer to 80 hours, 90 if you include the frequent mandatory after work drinking time with the boss which sometimes includes being forced to be unfaithful to your spouse if you are a man or to provide sexual favors if a woman. The use of prostitution is extremely common, particularly among corporate South Korea. Then there is sexual assault and harassment for women in the workforce.
So yeah, South Korea is wonderful /s
I never said it was an excuse. The first thing I said was that it isn’t an excuse, here:
First, going to get this straight: I do not support what the US did in Vietnam or really everywhere. I firmly believe those who commit war crimes should be held responsible.
I was saying that too many of the comments showed a lack of understanding about how military recruitment works, the motivations for joining (if willing), the motivations for complying with draft/conscription, etc etc repeat what I already said.
My intention was to bring to light some of the nuance of the situation that was barely touched upon, if at all, since otherwise it would’ve been an echo-chamber of people praising PTSD.
Gonna burn some of my Lemmygrad goodwill with this, but:
First, going to get this straight: I do not support what the US did in Vietnam or really everywhere. I firmly believe those who commit war crimes should be held responsible. That said…
There are a lot of comments here which show a lack of understanding about how the military recruitment and drafting process works. They lack any sense of nuance, and like all working class issues, there is nuance to the actual issues at hand.
First, many of the people in that war were not there by choice, but because they had families to take care of, something impossible to do as a prison slave, they didn’t have much choice. Minorities and the poor were particularly at risk as they couldn’t afford to flee or seek legal counsel or pay bribes.
Second, among those that joined by choice, they were mostly the very poor. Just like military recruitment today, joining the military was seen as the only viable way out of poverty for many people. There are countless communities with no unionized industrial work or benign bureaucratic government work (like being a forester or environmental inspection agent or whatever) or whatever. There are many communities still with a single local gas station as the sole option for employment. So for many, they don’t know what other options exist or can’t even access them.
For those two reasons above, the military has a significant proportion of minorities in their ranks, today and during Vietnam and throughout modern history.
Also, military personnel who disobey commands to commit war crimes don’t have a real way of defending themselves when they are tried and likely executed or put in prison for a life sentence. Again, hard to support a family if you are an unpaid prison slave or executed.
Now, as some of you pointed out, this is exactly why a lot of veterans, especially Vietnam veterans, went on to become staunch anti-war advocates and members/allies of the anti-war movements. Many had firsthand knowledge and experience with the shit Amerikkkan commanders forced them to do and knew what Amerikkkan foreign policy was at its heart, from personal experience.
Of course, I recognize full well that there are genuine fascist POS fuckwads who did and do join out of bloodlust for some minority or other. I recognize those are hopeless cases and they need to be treated as war criminals. However, this issue, like any working class issue, should be looked at with nuance and a real material analysis.
Want to eliminate voluntary entry into the military to escape poverty? Organize marginalized and impoverished communities and help people to find meaningful employment and education opportunities so that they have better choices than risking their life for some rich fuckface who couldn’t give a third of a shit about them. Advocate to keep recruiters out of schools; they prey on the young, naive, and ignorant.
Engage in community organizing to increase resiliency so if a draft or conscription is enacted, people have a better foundation from which to resist. During such events, provide hiding places for those fleeing a draft or some other material support if possible.
Want to reduce lust for minority blood overseas (and domestically)? Advocate and fight for the recognition of minorities as actual human beings, put faces to numbers, and teach working class people that they have more in common with the working class people overseas the State Department wants to bomb than they do with the owning class who direct it. Yeah some people can’t be reached but you might be able to stop it at that generation. My parents were raging racists who used the n-word freely around the house but I was still able to reached early enough that I am fairly certain I turned out okay. Shit even hardcore skinheads can be rehabilitated sometimes.
So tldr; stop just going “hehe have a happy PTSD and merry homelessness, enjoy your drug addiction” (which btw is a pretty un-communist thing to wish homelessness, addiction, and trauma on someone when… isn’t that what we are supposed to be fighting against?) and look at the material conditions which lead to these problems and address those. Create a system which better serves the working class than what the government and owning class shitfucks tries to say is the best we can get. Catch them where the existing system fails them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel
I know it is Wikipedia, but feel free to look at the sources they cite here. Seems defense industry folks disagree with you though.
- @bleepingblorp@lemmygrad.ml to
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“Human resources”