how do you feel about punishing nazis in their 80s? Or about that lady that got emmett till lynched? or did they get old enough that their crimes are just who cares now to you
the problem is it’s immaterial. if you want to kill them that’s fine, if you want to call it justice that’s fine, but it isn’t meaningfully impacting anything so it isn’t praxis.
at least for the purposes of the thought experiment. in reality an 80-year-old could still be contributing materially to systemic harm. in which case ridding the world of them is a good thing.
nazi vets in their 80s still cause harm but people who were part of the US imperial machine dont?
Meme answer: kick old Nazis down the stairs etc. etc.
Serious answer: Not for me to decide, their fates are up to the victims. If they decide death penalty then so be it I will gladly help them. If not then nothing will be done. Theyre fucking old, dying, and harmless, nothing worth taking initiative on.
I am going to jump on that 80 year old mans head so he becomes a squished man of exactly halved height.
Tell me where I have mentioned 80 year old men, and tell me where I have mentioned physically hurting veterans as a moral service?
To my knowledge I have only ever argued that veterans should not be accepted as leftists just because after they got back and got all the nice benefits like an education or whatever, they decided to utter the correct phrases and jargon and therefore got baptised into good leftists now. Instead I think the bare minimum is that they should materially support the victims of American wars, who do not get any benefits, who get their schools blown up actually.
Some international solidarity is the bare minimum for a leftist veteran, and not just turning around and being critical of the US military, or doing mutual aid back in AmeriKKKa.
This is a really good critique, comrade. We need to be thinking about goals and outcomes. Retribution and justice may be good motivators for people to rally around, but they’re immaterial concepts in and of themselves.
At least my overall point is that these soldiers seem to primarily care about their personal outcomes, and the outcomes for people in America.
While largely ignoring the outcomes of countries victimised by Americas military beyond the idea that if there’s revolution or reform in the US that will also make the US stop victimising these countries.
It’s not fuck you got mine but more like “sorry for you, at least I got mine.” The analysis of goals and outcomes can’t end at the border of the states.
People like to bring up veterans in thr Black Panthers, but they certainly expressed international solidarity with the victims of US imperialism and supported their struggle.
While my personal experience with veterans of the Middle East is that in most cases their activism is focuses on just getting the US out of interventions, without really focusing on the primary victims.
I agree with you in general, my problem is with the moralistic framing. But largely I think the conclusion is the same. It’s an important distinction, though, for acute or other circumstances where a moralistic framing and a materialist framing have different conclusions.
Moralistic framing of this is saying veterans are a lost cause because of past action / sin. Materialist framing would say veterans might be a lost cause because they don’t have much revolutionary potential as a demographic, in my opinion, due to a variety of material and cultural influences.
But if somehow veterans as a demographic did have revolutionary potential, it would be important to recognize this and capitalize on it, rather than letting moralism cloud our judgement. Before the draft was abolished, for example, there was less selection for ideological purity, meaning a larger subsection of the demographic might be receptive to anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist sentiment. But I’m skeptical that the “poverty draft” has enough of a similar effect, even among veteran minorities. It may still be a useful long-term goal to see if we can come up with effective strategies to radicalize soldiers/veterans.
