220
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 04 Mar 2024
220 points (100.0% liked)
news
23562 readers
568 users here now
Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.
Rules:
-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --
-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --
-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --
-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --
-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--
-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--
-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --
-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
Okay cool, yeah we all agree about the troops, but the question is "what do we do with this information?" and "how do we leverage this to radicalize potential comrades"
As someone that actually organizes IRL we can't simply write off an important component of any potential successful revolution.
Writing them off and pushing them away out of a sense of moral purity is only going to leave them twisting in the wind and vulnerable to fascists.
I like the idea of dissenting soldiers and see the value of getting a Certified 1905 Moment™. An anonymous letter which heavily decries politics and the idea of political soldiers is just performative on its own. It's Step 1. Bushnell showed one form of Step 3. For this to have any real significance to me, I need to see that they're committed to some kind of Step 2. That Step 2, which the whole Certified 1905 Moment™ depends on, would require contradicting the first three paragraphs of this and admitting that war is political and a coherent response against imperialism/colonialism/genocide is political. Maybe it will come but I've been watching the military subreddit responses to Bushnell's self-immolation and it's 100% psychopathic.
It is literally a federal crime for soldiers to make "political" statements. Just signing this letter even as soft as it is is grounds for court marshal
Yes but that's my point. If the penalty for protesting and the penalty for rioting are the same, protests become riots. This is a political statement which uses political language to describe a political problem. It violates that article of the UCMJ and they face the same charge whether they write this or something more radical. They use the political language of milquetoast liberalism, that they're values-based patriots who hold themselves accountable to the highest standards.
Sure that might attract the handful of troops who otherwise starved Yemen for a decade without a letter, who are ideologically committed to the same ideologies perpetuating this war and consume hours of that ideology's media per day. This alone establishes the myth of the Clean Wehrmacht using the same rhetoric for the updated version of the same genocide. To this point they've been entirely responsible for this war without a peep, and like Bernie Sanders there's some arbitrary number of dead kids where it suddenly sparks their moral conviction. If what comes after this letter is something which recognises the reality of war and confronting it, something at least in the vein of a venerated general already writing War is a Racket, then I will treat it as a more serious trend indicating a real threat to the war. With this they're inviting the same criminal charge they'd otherwise face spreading Bushnell-level rhetoric to write "Gee golly we just love America and our values so much we don't wanna do this" as they press the Do This button 12 hours a day.
We must be extremely careful that support for dissenting soldiers does not undermine opposition to participation in the armed forces.
This is clearer if we talk about cops. If I start talking about how some of the cops are actually good and trying to change things what reaction does that conjure up in you? For me it immediately feels like it threatens to undermine all anti-cop work we do. It threatens to convince people that it's ok to be a cop if you're one of the good ones.
This same principle applies to the military. For me, the decision to promote radicalising military members really only becomes a viable prospect when we're actually approaching a sincere possibility of revolution. Outside of that specific situation it feels like it would undermine the work that has been so successful in harming their recruitment.
I agree on one hand but on the other "weeks where decades happen"
None of us can know when that moment will come.