SixSidedUrsine [comrade/them]
I am still “salty” about all the apologists for killing children around here, especially when a child I loved was actually murdered, something I doubt these apologists have any care about or conception of. I admit, this may be the wrong place to bring it up because fuck the SS, they all get the fucking wall, no question. But the fact that the child-murder advocates like you are coming out of the woodwork to defend their odious, cruel, anti-empathy, anti-human, position is kinda telling.
I appreciate your position and your response even if I think you’re wrong. Even then, I don’t think you’re completely off base. Ideally, this kind of thing needs to be accounted for on a case-by-case basis whenever that’s possible. But 99.99% of those cases still deserve the fucking wall. There is a line crossed where if a person consciously chooses to support the things that Nazis support enough to actually become one, coerced or not (and join the SS no less), that person forfeits the same right to life they would deny others and so deserve whatever comes to them as a result, including death, execution.
That said, a lot of people around here have no conception of justice beyond “my side = good and justified no matter what and any killing in support of the revolution is ‘good.’” They advocate even for the explicit murder of children (that post is good, but many of the comments are disgusting), completely innocent of any crime, so long as they might be some nebulas potential threat. There is a very gross, anti-humanism streak that a lot of posters around these parts fall victim to, and I hate to see it. I’m glad there are still people here who recognize the gravity of actually executing another human being and are rightly reluctant to just throw caution to the wind and go all in in support. So again, thank you for posting this, and try not to let the cynicism of the frothing “kill 'em all!1!!” contingent get you down.
Have you even been following the war at all?! ive seen 4k videos of Russia bombing Ukrainian Civilians for months now
Russia has been extremely restrained in destroying Ukrainian infrastructure, especially in the first year of the war. It has also made strong efforts to avoid civilian casualties. Considering it wants to incorporate the zones where there is the greatest conflict into being part of the Russian Federation, it’s not like this is surprising either. I’m sure this sounds shocking or ludicrous to someone who has been closely following along, and I do take your word for it that you have. But there is a very good reason for that. To explain:
I have also been following the war extremely closely since the beginning, including from countless telegram channels of people on the ground on both sides in addition to official outlets and what I’ve seen is a massive amount of ridiculous false propaganda spewing out of Ukraine’s official outlets that the west eats up and repeats without question, often amplifying the false parts and making up even more. It is to the benefit of both the current Ukrainian rulers and the west to make this propaganda, so I’m not saying Ukraine is doing this to the west, I’m saying they’re both complicit. Yes, I’ve seen plenty of propaganda from Russia too, obviously, but it is nowhere near the same scale or level of outright lying about what’s actually happening on the ground, not because Russia is somehow above all that (it’s definitely not) but because it has far less need for such false propaganda. (It is also arguably not as good at propaganda as the West which has the most developed propaganda apparatus in the history of humanity).
There is material reasons behind all of this. Ukraine relies almost entirely on NATO countries for its ability to wage war, this is not in question. It therefore needs to sell that war as not only just, but winnable - and whatever you you think of how just it is, it is definitely not winnable in terms of taking back the currently occupied regions let alone Crimea. That will simply never happen. NATO also has a vested interest in Ukraine winning this war, and in many ways is NATO’s proxy war, so it also has an interest in pushing this propaganda on the people of its member nations. However, Russia has ramped up production of its war machine (and is highly self sufficient despite what some western propaganda might say about them having to fight with shovels lol) and importantly is not dependent on other countries to wage this war. It doesn’t need to sell this war internationally and It doesn’t even need to sell this war to the Russian populace who already broadly support it. Hence the large difference in amount and severity of false propaganda. If you have been following the war closely, but you have been relying entirely or mostly on Ukrainian, Western, and NATO information (which is understandable because it’s really all you get offered in the west), you have been closely following a massively lopsided story being told to you by someone who isn’t just distorting fact, but outright lying.
Since you specifically mentioned bombing of infrastructure, here is one example I just happened on in a different thread today. It’s from the New York Times, which has been one of the cringiest large network liars throughout the conflict, but even here they are making an admission that what was claimed to be Russian attack was actually Ukraine itself. This happens all the time but usually admissions aren’t made or are done very quietly so everyone believes the first story of “look at how horrible Russia is!” My suspicion is that admissions like these are starting to happen more often because there is beginning to be a shift in the narrative and propaganda as it becomes increasingly clear how unwinnable this is for Ukraine and NATO is beginning to look to pull support.
NYT: Evidence Suggests Ukrainian Missile Caused Market Tragedy
From their original article:
A Russian missile strike in Kostyantynivka that killed at least 17 and injured more than 30 others was one of the deadliest in months.
There are tons of other examples of this, but I don’t currently have access to the laptop I saved all my sources on. Anyway, the reality is that you are being lied to constantly about the crimes Russia is supposedly committing, at the very least, the severity of them. And it’s helpful to understand why.
I know I’ll get called a Russian bot/shill for pointing these things out. Whatever. I have no love for Russia. Fuck Putin and the reactionary Russian government. But I really do despise the intensity of misinformation I’ve been witnessing and how it gets repeated by genuinely well-meaning people around me (I’m in the west too) who only have access to lies that are perpetuating death and human misery.
At the risk of being a little petty by using this post as an opportunity to address some things said to me on the locked thread I never got a chance to respond to:
Comparing killing the Romanovs to not only dropping atomic bombs on civilians, but also to the Iraq War you really have no sense of scale at all huh.
It has nothing to do with scale. It has to do with the justice (or rather injustice) of innocent people, kids nonetheless, being killed. I am so very aware of the scale. I am aware of the insignificant scale any of this makes in the geologic history of the earth. I am aware of the insignificance of the scale of less than a dozen people compared to thousands. I am also aware of the scale of being from a family where a single child was murdered. Gone. Dead. Lost. And while her snuffed out little life is not on the scale of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all the children wiped out from that despicable war crime, the life she won’t ever have is NOT FUCKING INSIGNIFICANT. I assure you, on the scale of her family and the people who loved that child, it matters. It always fucking matters. Got that? It always matters.
I really don’t care about this at all, I’m sorry it makes you so upset.
That’s very telling. I’d say thanks for your crocodile tear “sorries,” but I know you don’t care about the death of children who you don’t personally know because you said as much. A few kids a hundred years ago, right? Who cares? None of the kids murdered by the OG nazis will matter soon, so long as they’re taken on an individual basis. It’s only scale that matters.
This is a great effort post, thank you! A few early things to comment on though:
While not exactly of practical significance given how few of us have Royal Families locked up in our basement
That is of course true. But if anyone here is ever in a position where, ‘god willing,’ we are participating in a proletariat revolution (unlikely in the imperial core but much more likely outside it), this precedent most certainty could be of practical significance.
This strand of amoral communism thus is not terribly interested in this discussion, and anyone here that adheres to that framework is excused from the discussion as having won the argument.
Excused from it, yes, but not having “won” it. It is fundamentally a moral argument, which means the people taking that amoral position should have nothing to say on the matter outside of context-specific events where every eventuality is already known. What I mean, is that if the children of monarchs were to survive, we wouldn’t know that this would lead to even more death and suffering, which is the claim of the child-murder apologists. We don’t know that, even in retrospect with the killing of the Romanov children, it’s still a hypothetical. We do know that the collective capitalist world didn’t need any such excuse to use every means at their disposal to undermine it even in the most petty ways. If it’s the position the strict determinists take that morality should not be a consideration, it should also be the position they take on any argument where morality is in question.
Choosing not to participate is a reasonable position, but it is not “winning,” only neutral at best. Morality exists, even if it is not the domain of a Marxism that only serves to describe the world and not change it. But isn’t that the point, as someone said?
Excusing the murder of children for “practical” concerns will never be moral, and any Marxist who bases their politics on their sense of morality (even if doing so is not strictly 100% the vulgar materialism some here seem to advocate for), it is extremely common. What’s more, it is not in contradiction with a strict materialist approach.