this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2025
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Instead of killing themselves they should be fragging their fellow soldiers. But these cowards can’t even bring themselves to try and right their wrongs.
They’re not victims. They’re monsters who finally learned who they are but refuse to repent.
Are you ready to throw your life away and turn against everything you've learned in your life? This isn't like Vietnam where you could get away with dropping a live grenade in the tent of your commanding officer because you are in the jungle with the next town 5 miles away; they are literally at home and every move against your own will end with you being subjected to a traitors treatment.
I'm pretty sure a lot of them are conscripts, since there's a mandatory military draft with a duration of 2+ years. Those are young, inexperienced minds that are thrown into a machinery that has had decades of experience in how to make you do things you don't want to do.
So yeah, they are victims: victims of propaganda, victims of a military complex that knows how to break you. If you want to damn someone do it with those that keep on killing innocents, not those who kill themselves so they don't have to do more killing.
I'm not a monstrous piece of shit so I'll never find myself in this kind of situation. There is not a single moment in my life where I have supported the military actions of the US despite living in the Imperial core, and it's not like my parents were anti-war hippies or something.
The only victims of their propaganda that I care about are the innocent people they've slaughtered.
I don't think you realize that you are blessed that you didn't grow up in Israel. Refusing to serve because of your conscience gets you an exemption in 10% of cases there. The 90% who didn't want to serve but had no other choice are not monsters, they are caught between a rock and a hard place. Even those who got lucky and didn't have to serve lose most of their job chances and are branded as undemocratic and traitors - even the "leftwing"-Israelis look down on the "refuseniks". If you flee your country to dodge the draft, you can never come back, leaving behind everyone who you hold dear.
You can call what most of them DO monstrous (and i agree fully), but they are still human beings. And to feel such remorse that you take your own life is very human - more than any of those who continue to kill can ever be.
Sooo... like that thing Aaron Bushnell didn't do?
Aaron Bushnell didn't just kill himself. He transformed his death into a protest. He didn't just go quietly in the comfort of his own home. He picked one of the worst ways to go, in public, and made it known without a shadow of a doubt what he died for.
So yeah, Bushnell didn't frag his peers, but he did at least do something positive with his suicide... unlike IDF soldiers. How many IDF soldiers have made their suicides a protest? Nah, when IDF soldiers kill themselves, it's because killing Palestinians is "icky" and they can't deal with it, not because they consider Palestinians worthy of being mourned.
Bushnell was a cybersecurity spook for the US military - he could have done a lot more than just fragging his peers. Instead, he decided to be flashy.
Are you normally this much of an expert on suicides committed by people half-way around the world? Reading through these comments I can pretty much see a pattern of first-world, liberal views being projected onto a society the commentors absolutely do not understand - and it's annoying.
The suicide rates among IDF personal is - perhaps - a positive indicator of the pressure Israeli society is under. That is all it is - figuratively pissing on the graves is hollow edginess and nothing else.
Could he have? I'm not a cybersecurity expert, but my understanding is that these systems are designed to be robust to attacks by former personnel. But even if he could have done more...at least he did something. At least he tried. These IDF soldiers are doing absolutely nothing. They're not even trying.
Okay but Pissrael is a first-world country that claims to hold liberal views. So even if I made such a projection of first-world, liberal values onto my analysis of IDF soldiers... I haven't actually lost anything in the projection, because they are first-world liberals.
Yeah which is why it's surprising you're figuratively pissing on Bushnell's grave as a way of standing up for IDF soldiers...
You'd think the intel on these systems would be valuable to those that are targeted by US imperialism - but I guess modern-day anarchists just don't understand how the intelligence business works (which would actually explain a lot - including why Bushnell didn't even see himself as becoming an intelligence asset to them)
Yes... he won the approval of all the armchair revolutionaries by setting himself on fire. But before that, he was just another "baby killer" to them, right? That's quite a high bar to pass... I guess it's no surprise that there is such a gigantic schism between the modern left (emphasis on the "modern" part) and military veterans.
I have to wonder why he felt the need to act so unilaterally? Do tell... what would you have advised him to do? To go ahead with it and set himself on fire for the cameras? You know... considering that this is the only way he could "atone" for his sins in your book - for whatever that is worth?
Since you and most people commenting here are such experts on why military vets off themselves it should be easy for you to say, right?
I'm not the one using Bushnell's death as a cheap propaganda prop - and no, I don't give a flying fuck if it was his intention to be used as such.
You are free to peruse my comment history here on Lemmy, Youtube and Reddit for evidence of this accusation of yours if you so wish - otherwise, I'll just be ignoring it, okay?
Yeah I might have been speaking a little too strong because I've seen you posting around here and I know you're no fan of the IDF. I'm not saying you have a pattern of defending the IDF, but I think you're doing so in this case by mistake.
Fair point. If he still had access to critical US intel, then leaking it would have been more productive.
Why on earth would the average person (including anarchists) understand how the intelligence business works? If you have any resources on that, I'd love to read them, because this would be very niche information that would be nice for the community to have.
No I cannot stress enough that suicide is not the only way to atone for what veterans have done, or even a good way without extra information (i.e. making it a protest, taking soldiers with you, etc.). If I knew Aaron Bushnell, I would have selfishly told him to stay around and organize protests and direct actions, and see if he could use his cybersecurity expertise to secure anarchist communications and sabotage imperialist systems. I cannot stress enough that I do not believe that Aaron Bushnell's suicide was "ideal", and I selfishly would have loved to see him do more. But at least he tried, even the teeniest tiniest amount, in an imperfect and brash way, to fix what he broke. The people we're talking about aren't even trying to fix what they've broken; they're just trying to escape it.
Correct. He was just another baby killer until he took action to fix what he broke. However, as I mentioned, he could have done lots of other stuff that didn't require him to set himself on fire.
Again I want to see veterans do actual productive activism, but if (and only if) they refuse to do that then I'll happily watch their suicides 🍿
Exactly what "damage" will the IDF be suffering from the discourse on here that I am (supposedly) - and mistakenly - protecting it from?
Are you trying to say it's not anarchists' business to understand stuff like this?
That doesn't it even get into the nuts and bolts of anything - but it suffices to demonstrate that an intelligence asset is worth far, far more than somebody performing hit-or-miss (but ultimately very temporary) stunts for the media cycle.
While we're on the subject of the Makhnovists - you did know that the Makhnovists, after taking prisoners on the battlefield, went to great pains to separate conscripts from officers (before shooting the officers, of course)? What did they understand that you don't?
Similarly, the NFL (Viet Cong) cadres that particpated in the Tet offensive did the exact same thing - they went to great pains to separate South Vietnamese army conscripts from officers in the towns and cities that they captured before "liquidating" the officers. What did they understand that you don't?
Okay... maybe I'm not anarchistically "pure" enough to get this - but wtf would be "selfish" about this? What mental process is going on here?
Perhaps you should learn where that term comes [from.][https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/09/27/vietnam-war-protesters-have-nothing-apologize)
Perhaps then, you won't use it in a way that actually helps the imperialists.
The people in question here aren't around to refuse anything, are they?
Intelligence is not my expertise - it's just an interest I gained because of my radicalisation (in my opinion, it should come with the territory). My actual expertise is in propaganda - I worked in it for many years.
Maybe you can tell me - if you were to use IDF suicide rates as a propaganda device to help drive a wedge, no matter how small, between IDF conscripts and the IDF officer class - do you think the discourse on this sub would be a hindrance or a help?
Not that it's not our business, but that it's simply uncommon to know. (E.g. I think that it should be anarchists' business to understand how complex dynamical systems work, e.g. to generate and distribute clean power for everyone, to optimize the factories, to make breakthroughs in medicine, etc., but I'm not expecting most of us to have dynamical systems textbooks lying around.) Thank you for the resource.
Yeah I'm 1000% with you there. I want to stress again that Bushnell's suicide was not an ideal protest, but that I thank him for at least trying in his own way to fix what he broke.
(Mods/admins: what follows is not a cry for help; I am not suicidal now.)
It's less about being "anarchistically pure" and more about having dealt with suicidal thoughts and major depression for most of my adult life. From an anarchist perspective, I believe we have a right to life as well as our right to end it when we choose as a function of our right to dignity. I.e. I'm saying this as someone who is probably going to kill myself when my body becomes a prison. When it happens, I don't want people who don't understand my situation to make it harder or impossible for me to end my life because they want me to stay around for whatever bullshit reasons they have. I'm saying that I don't know what Bushnell was going through, but I trust him enough to respect his decision. From my perspective, it would selfish of me to beg him to stay because him staying alive would benefit me (i.e. as an effective activist, as a comrade, etc.) even if for him, being alive might have been agony.
Like I gotta be real with you, maybe I'm just not as sensitive about suicide because that's how I'd like to go. I'm coming from a position where I'm not even telling IDF soldiers to do something that I don't plan on eventually doing to myself. Frankly, I'm more irritated that some IDF soldiers get to go out on their own terms in the privacy and comfort of their own homes without ever attempting to fix what they broke while the Palestinians they torture just get murdered whenever the IDF chooses to kill them. Like for me, suicide is a Good Ending depending on the context, so maybe I gotta work on that.
I'm confused? How am I helping imperialists here?
Yeah but they were. They had a chance to use their remaining time productively.
Simple: they had these people as prisoners. Really, the key was that they were temporarily no longer dangerous. IDF conscripts are still dangerous. IMO, they're more like conscripts during the actual fighting — i.e. enemies you defend yourselves and your comrades from, possibly by killing them.
I'm not a propaganda expert, but somewhere between help and neutral. If a conscript identifies with the IDF, as opposed to merely a slave to it, then IMO they're not radicalizable yet. This is a clumsy parallel, but when people say "Death to Amerikkka" I don't get defensive even though I'm from Amerikkka because I completely and utterly disown the Amerikkkan entity. I 1000% expect the same disownment from IDF conscripts and Amerikkkan soldiers, at a bare minimum. I.e., being able to read rhetoric like this and understanding that it doesn't apply to former soldiers who actually do fix their wrongs is a necessary part of radicalization. I.e., like I said in the beginning (although I might have said it elsewhere): veterans and conscripts who are trying to fix what they broke are not the target audience of people saying their colleagues should kill themselves.
... Are you a veteran? If so, none of what I have said so far is directed at you, i.e. if you're a veteran and you've come here, I'm assuming you're trying to right your wrongs. I.e., until I have competing information, I assume that being in an anarchist community and not having been immediately yeeted into the stratosphere filters out veterans who still pledge allegiance to the army they served in.