this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
418 points (96.0% liked)

You Should Know

45032 readers
380 users here now

YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.

All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.



Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:

**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Rule 11- Posts must actually be true: Disiniformation, trolling, and being misleading will not be tolerated. Repeated or egregious attempts will earn you a ban. This also applies to filing reports: If you continually file false reports YOU WILL BE BANNED! We can see who reports what, and shenanigans will not be tolerated. We are not here to ban people who said something you don't like.

If you file a report, include what specific rule is being violated and how.



Partnered Communities:

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

Credits

Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

At least 347 and up to 504 civilians, almost all women, children and elderly men, were murdered by U.S. Army soldiers. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, and some soldiers mutilated and raped children as young as 12.

only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., the leader of 1st Platoon in C Company, was convicted. He was found guilty of murdering 22 villagers and originally given a life sentence, but served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after his sentence was commuted.

Research has highlighted that the My Lai Massacre was not an isolated war crime. Nick Turse places it within a larger pattern of American atrocities enabled by deliberate policies from commanders, such as "free-fire zones" and "body counts", as well as widespread racism amongst American military personnel. Many other atrocities were also covered up by commanders.

Why you should know about this: It is important to know about history so that we can learn from it, avoid the mistakes and atrocities of the past, and know which institutions have a history of performing atrocities, trying to cover them up, etc. and what that looks like.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 0 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

What those in authority don't want to tell us is that this is exactly what they expect in war. They want our soldiers to be so horrific that the other side quits. That's the goal of EVERY leader who starts a war. Any hand-wringing or regret later is just theater.

The only sin is letting the Civilians hear about it.

[–] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

It's historically the only effective way to fight an insurgency and every military since ancient times knows it. Basically anytime you hear a modern military is enacting a "counter insurgency" it's either code word for doing death squads, or it's a tacit admission that they are out of ideas and have found themselves in an unwinnable quagmire.

The only way to defeat an insurgency is to do massive amounts of crimes against humanity......or avoid creating one in the first place.

[–] forestbeasts@pawb.social 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

"You should know: [totally horrible political sexual abuse thing with absolutely no kind of warning on it at all]"

...no, I really, really didn't need to know that, thanks

-- Frost

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 0 points 6 hours ago

The warning is implied, don't you realize that? If what happened at My Lai and the subsequent legal outcomes was justice, then that justice can be done to you as well.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 50 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

The only reason why my Lai is known today is because one helicopter pilot had a conscience and ordered his door gunner to open fire on their own troops if they were to approach another group of Vietnamese civilians that he decided to protect

Had he not, likely nobody would have known what happened

[–] raker@lemmy.world 19 points 22 hours ago

And only because this has gone public, they had to award Hugh Thompson Jr. with the Distinguished Flying Cross. Otherwise military court.

[–] FundMECFS@piefed.zip 16 points 1 day ago (2 children)

| Sentence | Life imprisonmentcommuted to three years' house arrest by President Richard Nixon |

Fucking hell Nixon …

“Protect the children and women” Except from my murderous rapist soldiers apparently.

[–] bestagon@lemmy.world 7 points 19 hours ago

Interesting how this narrative keeps getting used to justify our colonialism. “These are backwards savages and we are agents of progress and feminism” and then, in the course of the conflict, women and girls are raped, killed, and bombed while women’s rights are stonewalled or even stripped away back home

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 6 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (3 children)

The police protect women,

WHICH WOMEN!?

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 11 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

It is important to know this because when the military is turned on you, you should know they’ll obey. If you think there are enough that would so no, you’re wrong.

[–] Abyssian@lemmy.world -2 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

As a former member of the US military, please go fuck yourself.

[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I’ll accept that.

But it’s all about the crowd and momentum. The crowd gets hyped the crowd is gonna do some shit an individual won’t.

That and it’s beat into you to do what you’re told.

[–] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world -1 points 2 hours ago

Shut up and follow orders.

[–] bluejayway@lemmy.zip -2 points 6 hours ago

you seriously think none of your fellow service members would listen to violent orders?

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 24 points 1 day ago (2 children)

US soldiers also raped thousands of French women during WW2.

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 20 points 1 day ago

I've read about this too, and the US blamed the problem on black soldiers. Maybe that's something that deserves its own post?

[–] toad@sh.itjust.works 6 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Yup. They burned my grandma's city to hide the looting.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] uberdroog@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago
[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 96 points 1 day ago (8 children)

it's sad when I don't even know which massacre is being discussed, or even which theater of war or era - there are just too many examples

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] workerONE@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

That's just one village.

"According to the Information Bureau of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRG), a shadow government formed by North Vietnam in 1969, between April 1968 and the end of 1970 American ground troops killed about 6,500 civilians in the course of twenty-one operations either on their own or alongside their allies. "

and from bombing:

"Estimates for the number of North Vietnamese civilian deaths resulting from U.S. bombing range from 30,000 to 65,000.[35][4] Higher estimates place the number of civilian deaths caused by American bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder at 182,000.[36] American bombing in Cambodia is estimated to have killed between 30,000 and 150,000 civilians and combatants."

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

after learning of the massacre, he wrote in his memoir that it was "the conscious massacre of defenseless babies, children, mothers, and old men in a kind of diabolical slow-motion nightmare that went on for the better part of a day, with a cold-blooded break for lunch".[

yo what the fuck

[–] FundMECFS@piefed.zip 6 points 1 day ago

For context “he” here is General Westmoreland.

[–] minorkeys@lemmy.world 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

We aren't the ones deciding to go to war and cause a generation of men to have their psychological well-being put through a wood chipper. We don't produce the propaganda that make men willing. We don't make poverty rampant so men get desperate enough to enlist.

It doesn't matter if we learn, plenty of us already know and it doesn't change anything. People like Trump, like Putin, like Netanyahoo, don't care about us or whoever ends up a victim of their ambitions. Putin and Netanyahoo know what their troops do and don't give a fuck, they might even use it to their advantage.

The problem isn't learning from the past, it's that psychopaths are good at gaining power. They know and simply don't care. If voters weren't such ignorant imbeciles, maybe they wouldn't vote for ppl like Trump, but they are, so here we are. If customers weren't such ignorant, weak willed cowards incapable of not buying the new toys, we wouldn't fund the people stealing all the property and making us poorer every generation. We are all victims of the decision-making prowess of the average voter, the average consumer.

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 3 points 17 hours ago (8 children)

I understand how you feel, but we actually do have the power to change our world. We need to first recognize that something needs to be done, build a popular consensus, network and build connections with like-minded people, and start a real movement for change.

Electoralism has not solved our problems in the past, and it won't do so in the future. At best, it is harm prevention, and at worst, it's a distraction from more effective efforts. I encourage people to vote for the candidates they feel best, but to be aware that it's not a real, long term solution. It's always just the best of two terrible candidates, both of whom ultimately serve the ruling class.

The problems we have did not start and will not end with Trump, they are in the fundamental roots of our society, and the road to change our society is a long and difficult one, but it is a journey we have to undertake. We are going to have to act if we want to live in a better world. Simply giving in to nihlism is not an option.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] glitching@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

them vets are the main foment vector for what we now know as the white supremacy movement. not that the sentiment wasn't prevalent, but it was disjointed groups, churches, cults, klan, militias, prison gangs, etc., each pushing their own thing with only limited local reach.

the influx of large swaths of radicalized and trained MAMs was the igniter. all those power squabbling groups started coming together under one banner and they had a new tool - computers.

early on, they realized you can reach a whole lotta more folks with the new tech than the usual zines and the like. so they formed armored truck robbing gangs, and used the proceeds to buy home computers for establishing a network of BBS all over the country, pushing their shit to previously unreachable corners. I mean, if that's not a michael mann movie, I don't know what is...

for more, kathleen belew - bring the war home, available at anne's site or wherever you pirate your shit.

load more comments
view more: next ›