hopefully i don't get called a lib for this but i have been feeling quite a bit of uncertainty when it comes to Jewish people who have been indoctrinated into Zionism and Americans , and partially people from other western nations , who have either due to economic distress or due to indoctrination joined the military . don't get me wrong both are absolutely privileged , especially those Jewish people who live in occupied Palestine , however i feel that they aren't fully responsible for their harmful beliefs . of course this doesn't excuse acting on their beliefs , but from testimonies of people who have rid themselves of those beliefs its not an easy thing to do (i have been particularly affected by Matt Leib's , of the BadHasbara podcast , comparison between fighting off his heroin addiction and his Zionism) .
they are of course not the people who are most victimised , however i feel somewhat uneasy about blaming them for not doing the work of deindoctrinating themselves , especially as , especially those who joined the American military , they are really mistreated . a lot of propaganda is explicitly about making those who benefit from the ideology maintained by it to feel unsafe , therefore , in their minds , justifying violent actions .
like this mostly matters for those who are on the path if deindoctrinating themselves , even if they themselves have not realised that yet , for example a ex military member who is struggling with trauma over actions they made in while deployed or someone who has been raised in a Israeli settlement questioning the morality of living there , beyond the usual labor Zionist stuff . i definetly don't think that , sorry for the extreme example , someone who relives pressing down the trigger of a sniper riffle and the bloody effects of what happened after , especially if they were aware then or were made aware later that the person they killed was a noncombatant , that their actions were wrong . i think that helping them towards the realisation that its a wider issue is the better option .
like this isn't very well put together but like just wanted to throw this out and have someone say if i'm not insane or just the usual over empathic stuff .
on language
feel free to replace each usage of "person" with "entity" , i wanted to make this more readable to those outside the ΘΔ space
Ultimately it is difficult to brainwash people against their perceived material interests. People latch on to narratives where the perceived cost going against it is worse than going with it.
"Blame" may end up being an attempt to draw a clean line between a person and their environment where none such exists. If, for example a class of people refuse to support a peoples' self determination and progression then they probably have a vested interest against it, and then attempting to convince the former to against their perceived interests maybe futile.
If you can make a narrative reflecting the truth where the target person could potentially see benefits within the short term and ends up being a material benefit to the cause, then it may be worth it. I just have very little sympathy for those who managed to level up to the very minimum of humanity by being sorry for their participation in war crimes. If they are truly sorry then they can join the resistance* (actual not nominal).
We should be materialists and not based on vibes. Growing up in the west and attempting to shed liberal frameworks is not easy because for a lot of us it goes against our class interests.
(*I don't believe in idealistic nonsense about submitting oneself to some imagined neutral court to be "punished" for said war crimes. Make yourself useful instead.)
Which class? It goes not against the class interest of the proletariat.
The history of all hitherto existing human society is the history of class struggles. - Marx
There were subjugated non-proleteriat classes now and then.
The term class is not something categorically distinct and opposed to gender and nation. Genders and nations are classes for example.
Dominic Losurdo's class struggles is a good one for further reading if interested.