Soldiers Aren’t Victims, And They Deserve Contempt | The Maple
There’s never an excuse to join the army, despite the justifications some so-called progressives try to make.
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Where was the person yesterday that said Hexbear has shit takes and it makes them feel like shit? You don't have to go find me one I found it, it's right here.
I have a number of comrades in my area who used to be soldiers. They were sold a lie and didn't feel like they had another choice. All of them, and I do mean all of them, were victims of the US military industrial complex. All of my ex soldier comrades are on a road to healing from that and it's a difficult one.
This is like saying that people who work at WalMart deserve contempt because WalMart destroys towns, and by working for WalMart, they also destroyed those towns. It's ridiculous. It makes no distinction between career soldiers and people who join the military to be killers, and people who fall for the propganda and fall into the military because they feel like they don't have any other option. It completely and utterly ignores the material conditions that cause people to join the military in the first place, and that's why it's a garbage take. Just like people who work at WalMart as greeters and stockers and cashiers because they don't have any choice are different than people who live and breathe WalMart and make careers out of it.
Anyway I'll go tell the trans ex soldier comrade sleeping in my guest room right now since they're between homes at the moment that some idiot online thinks they deserve contempt, even though they've spent well over a decade doing mutual aid in queer and trans communities in an attempt to heal themselves and others from the trauma they experienced at the hands of the US military industrial complex. I'm sure they'll take that well. Jk, I'll protect them with my life from idiots who want to hurt them. They've suffered more than enough.
Hexbears learn the words restorative justice challenge: IMPOSSIBLE
I regret making this post for one reason only: It reminds me why I left Hexbear in the first place. Just chock full of ultras who have never left their cozy lil burb, have never done any organizing whatsoever, have never confronted a single real world contradiction. How can you possibly hope to overcome capitalism, a system built from the ground up on contradictions that must be resolved, if you can't even see that working class exploitation exists outside of factory floors? The world is nuanced. Confront that nuance, tackle that nuance, work through that nuance. Real organizers are, it's what separates us from the terminally online.
I've got a number of "comrades" in my area that used to be soldiers too! They've been almost universally been domineering, used their past as a badge of expertise and victimhood, and unknowingly reproduce reactionary tendencies while being very hostile to any criticism. And since being a soldier can be a path to financial stability, esp if you're not queer like most military members, a few have had a charming tendency to overestimate everyone else's financial means, while always making organizing suggestions that would require capital that only they have access to. (leftist gun organizing, not even once)
It sounds like your friends have been very hurt by the military industrial complex, and I do believe in rehabilitation for former soldiers just like I believe it's fully possible for someone who was a cop to become a comrade. But, I also think there's a real problem with how low our standards have become on this. Soldiers get victimized sure, but like cops they are also inextricably victimizers.
From what I've heard, part of why cops are so violent is because they're essentially traumatized by their training into being afraid anyone might shoot them at any moment. Apparently the hypervigilance and paranoia can really stick with someone after they leave, but we don't start acting like that excuses what they were complicit in, or like being hurt by their time in policing grants them an automatic right to solidarity.
The only difference is that the military's victims aren't our neighbors. I assume we all know someone who's been victimized by police, but we're much less likely to know someone targeted by the military personally, which makes it really easy lose sight of who the MIC hurt the most. If a veteran's entire criticism centers them, how much they were hurt, treated unfairly, tricked, whatever, they're no comrade of mine.
Also soldiers are like walmart workers? seriously?
Also soldiers are like walmart workers? seriously?
Soldiers are like Walmart workers except we have to suck up to them more than Walmart workers apparently.
they also, you know, kill people
The fact that you don't see the difference between most soldiers who sign up for a 4 year contract so that they can escape a hole that society purposely put them in so that they sign up for that 4 year contract, and cops who choose to do that knowing it's a full career commitment speaks volumes about how you look at the world. That is to say, you apparently don't.
I know people who will vociferously defend their own innocence in relation to the crimes of the country we live in, using precisely those terms. I've had local organizers insist to me that someones active membership in the military isn't a big deal because they needed the money and they're out as soon as the contract is up.
I've heard the excuses for joining straight out the mouth of someone right after talking about the third expensive rifle they bought with their national guard paycheck, and before dismissing queer comrade's concern over holding an event where the local fascists will find out their names.
I've known people born in a hole who used the military to get out, and I've known people born in a hole who manage to keep on living despite it. I trust one of those groups way more to be a good comrade.
I get wanting to defend your friends, and it's great you know some good people who made it out, but that's not universal, and the poverty draft is absolutely used as an excuse by vets in left organizing to avoid confronting certain things.
It's pretty disgusting that a comment comparing walmart greeters to people who have murdered poor people for the empire, and then has the gall to talk about restorative justice, has so many upvotes here.
What an absolute joke. Wehrmacht apologia with a new coat of paint. Many, many Wehrmacht soldiers came home broken and traumatized. I don’t give a fuck.
Whining about imperialist footsoldiers not being given enough of a second chance is the apex of first world entitlement. Tell that to the orphans in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Yemen. Or Laos. Or Syria. Or or or
"Restorative justice, but not for people I hate"
"I shouldn't face any consequences for my actions".
You really like punitive justice, don't you?
It's so telling that your first reaction to imperialist footsoldiers being criticized is to rush to their defense. Highly emblematic of western leftist priorities. You wouldn't pull out all the stops to defend wehrmacht soldiers and nazi camp guards, would you? Or maybe you would, considering you're only one step away from Nazi apologia.
I have the feeling that if the victims of your precious, innocent soldiers ever get to put them on trial, they won't give a flying fuck about "restorative justice".
There are Wehrmacht soldiers who defected to the Red Army. I think it would have been a mistake to turn them all away (though they obviously must be investigated). If someone recognizes that they were on the wrong side and want to join the right side, they generally should be able to.
I have the feeling that if the victims of your precious, innocent soldiers ever get to put them on trial, they won't give a flying fuck about "restorative justice".
I cannot blame them for feeling that way, but it by no means makes them correct.
You are making literally the same argument from anger and outrage that Republicans do to defend the death penalty.
There are Wehrmacht soldiers who defected to the Red Army. I think it would have been a mistake to turn them all away (though they obviously must be investigated). If someone recognizes that they were on the wrong side and want to join the right side, they generally should be able to.
Ok? I don't care what they did afterwards. Unless they find some way to retroactively undo their actions this is irrelevant, they can face the same tribunal as everyone else. Maybe mitigating factors can be considered.
I cannot blame them for feeling that way, but it by no means makes them correct.
There it is, the patronizing western leftist attitude. Try not committing war crimes next time, ok? Maybe you can head on over and lecture their victims directly when the time comes.
You are making literally the same argument from anger and outrage that Republicans do to defend the death penalty.
I believe in the death penalty for Nazis, yes. But if you insist I'll compromise for life imprisonment. And besides, I doubt paper-pushers would be sentenced to death. There are punishments between literally nothing and being executed; you know this, right? You also know that punishments should generally be accorded in proportion to the severity of the offense, right? I don't need to advocate for the execution of US soldiers to recognize that being one is bad and that they aren't blameless.
Ok? I don't care what they did afterwards. Unless they find some way to retroactively undo their actions this is irrelevant, they can face the same tribunal as everyone else. Maybe mitigating factors can be considered.
If you further agree that that tribunal can typically wait until the war is over and they have finished serving in the Red Army, then we agree on everything but sentencing.
There it is, the patronizing western leftist attitude. Try not committing war crimes next time, ok? Maybe you can head on over and lecture their victims directly when the time comes
I would (and do) say the same things of the families of murder victims here in America. Their sense of retributive justice is a problem in them,* not a problem out in the world being corrected by their sense of satisfaction. They don't need to forgive anyone, but they should come to understand that punitive justice is reactionary, sadistic, and bad for society.
*I expect this turn of phrase will upset you, but I mean it and I mean it very specifically. Consider the families of murder victims who are not interested in punitive justice. Imagining they are the only people who survived the victim, would it still be correct to kill the convict anyway? I don't think so, and yet this is a difference not in the world at large, nor in the convict, but in the surviving family. It is effectively an illness, one that we should not blame them for, if they feel anger and pursue vengeance, but that does not make it correct.
Regarding your last point, here's a new one for you: what is done to convicts should be bound to the severity of the crime, it should accord with what is useful to society. There will certainly be a great deal of correlation between the two -- someone who commits a greater crime probably needs a greater intervention -- but we must understand that it's not the basic causal mechanism at play.
There is no account to balance.
When the Nazis lost, the Germans didn't get to decide for themselves what punishment they should face. Well, in the East, anyway. It was right when the victims then pursued vengeance against their oppressors and it was also right if they didn't. How this vengeance manifests in a courtroom setting is heavily dependent on context, and until we have war crimes tribunals for the US, it's useless to speculate on how that might happen.
And you can't have it both ways. You can't just ignore what the victims want when what they want is severe punishment and then be all about listening to their wishes when they express forgiveness. If they do, ok then, but what about everyone else they harmed? If you're dealing with a paper-pusher you can't possibly track down every single person who might have been affected by their actions and tally the score. In the rare instance that there is like one victim and they forgive the soldier, then fine. But I don't think it's possible to have such heavily localized effects. If you serve in the military the likelihood that you've only ever impacted those you've directly met is near-zero.
Imperialism is just wrong. Re-education should be the very, very least of postwar justice.
And anyway, I believe that when you kill somebody the only person with the right to forgive you is the person you just killed.
What restoration is there? They do not help the people outside the imperial core.
If they help the project to destroy the imperial core, then they certainly do.
Well, they don't, so that point is null.
The discussion is about them joining a vanguard party, i.e. hopefully helping to destroy the imperial core, is it not?
Vanguard party? In the imperial core?
Are you high or just disconnected from reality?
If that's aimed at me, then sure, I believe in restorative justice even for the people who murdered the families of friends of mine. They can start by re-enlisting and fragging their commanding officers. But whining about how they feel bad about all the poor farmers they put in the ground (though they had to pay for college somehow) isn't going to cut it.
I think the overlap in vocabulary is incidental. If I want to accuse you, I'll tag you.
Obviously myopic pricks should be tossed out just like someone who committed (conventionally recognized) murder and says "but he kind of deserved it though for calling me stupid". I'm not saying they get a blank check, I am saying that they do not have the Mark of Cain.
I think the overlap in vocabulary is incidental. If I want to accuse you, I'll tag you.
You didn't have to tag me, you were directly responding to a comment I made, in which you made a single statement that you put in quotes, something I didn't say. I'd have had the same question even if you had redundantly tagged me. Wtf.
Maybe this is stupid but I think soldiers can be victims, "deserve" contempt (in the sense that people who contempt them are valid and logical in doing so), and now be good people
If somebody used to be an Iraq war veteran but is currently a positive force for the working class, that's great
But I'm not gonna lie and say I don't hate them for what they've done in the past. Though I obviously would hide this irl for social unity
But I'm not gonna lie and say I don't hate them for what they've done in the past. Though I obviously would hide this irl for social unity
That's fine.
But would you write an article about it like this guy?
I would rather write an article like this for a living than my current job yea
I know a leftie who was in the army who brags all the time how they did absolutely nothing and was an active detriment to their unit. I don't listen to people on the internet when it comes to case-by-case stuff, especially if they're brushing broadly. I agree the military is bad and a lot of the people are in the military are bad but the broad-strokes don't work for me since the best leftist I know were former military. Also, if we're gonna be like this, I can hate all rich and upper middle class people regardless of their politics which applies to many people here.
I don't think saying people deserve things is a practical or compassionate means of deciding what should happen after all the only people who need forgiveness don't deserve it by definition
that said a stigma against soldiers isn't unwarrented. I think soldiers are victims of circumstance in many ways but also I consider someone who grew up in the Albanian civil war and is now a murderer for money a victim of circumstance
Stigma as a heuristic for personal safety is okay if it is directed correctly and not pushed too far, but as you note that is different from "deserving".