903
Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies
(www.rollingstone.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
903 points (95.7% liked)
World News
39096 readers
1828 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
You think because the names you listed were leaders of their countries doesn't make them part of a greater evil? No one person commits atrocities alone; there must be some backing.
One single name doesn't get to make decisions... There must be a greater body at play. There has to be support of some sort, otherwise the people would have just said no, and killed that person.
I'd rather not have an internet argument, but I'll give you a pointer that you can use to google for more information of the issue is of actual interest to you:
Mao, Stalin and Hitler were tyrants that forced their way to leadership and killed everyone who opposed them. Kissinger was the advisor of a terrorist government that existed long before him and will continue to exist.
"just said no, and killed that person" is a naive Disney fantasy. In actual reality people that "just say no" get vanished, tortured and killed. And their neighbours suddenly turn reaaally quiet after that. However, there is always a certain joint guitl and complicity, I agree with that. And it weighs especially heavy if "the people" are very free to protest their nation's terrorism but don't do so.
There is a big difference between a single dictator being a plague upon the world for the 10-50 years he's in power, and an nation with constently changing leadership being a permanent plague upon this world for 100+ years.
That's the reason why Kissinger sticks out of the list: Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Kissinger*.
I agree with your overall thesis but your characterizations of the three tyrants are casually backwards.
Mao was a leader of a militant group first. He won political power in that group and that group won a large following of people over several decades. His status as tyrant emerges from that history and cultivated in a desperate militaristic role which is already predisposed to authoritarian rule.
Hitler was similar, his authotarianism, is on display much earlier in the process, and part of his charismatic attraction. It was clear early on that Hitler was going to mow down anyone in his way. Still, he needed to acquire popular and then political power. He leveraged existing sentiment and thuggish groups such as the Freikorp.
Stalin was just a bureaucrat.
Just kidding. I know very little of Stalin's rise to power except that it was internal to a party that already had seized power.
Great analysis thanks
That's true but group think requires a strong leader with a vision and a willingness to direct the group towards his own goals vice the best interests of the people. So I believe there's an argument to be made for targeting and removing specific people from power to prevent atrocities from happening. Group think is a psychological concept, so here's some more information about it. There are other factors involved, so removing one person still might not be effective.
Group Think
Occurs when:
Signs of Group Think
My point wasn't that single people can't be bad, or do bad things, but ultimately to perform terrible acts at scale it requires buy-in from other people. Without support, whether it be through fear, coercion, or otherwise, it's nothing more than intrusive thoughts.
Hitler was a bad dude but it took a concerted effort by who knows how many people in order to make the sick stuff that happened a reality.
All the names he listed were indeed bad dudes, but I feel saying Kissinger stands out because he had the support of the government while the others just killed millions by themselves is not a fair assessment of what transpired.
I agree with the sentiment in context of these "next level" atrocities, for lack of better way to phrase it.
But I disagree with "No one person commits atrocities alone; there must be some backing". Plenty of atrocities have happened because one person decided to be a dickhead
I actually can't think of one on a geopolitical scale. There's always some other people involved.
Oh yeah, geopolitical is probably a better way to phrase it than "next level".
That I agree with. I just felt like saying "nobody commits atrocities alone" removes some blame from some monsters out there that have done terrible shit.
Oh absolutely. That's why I made a point to qualify it like that. Atrocities can go from a mass shooting carried out by one person to a genocide carried out by an entire government.