Comradeship // Freechat

The vast majority of people operate under their material interests regardless if they know it or not, so yes they absolutely carry the burden.

Some good answers here already. Purely from consequences it's necessary to hold people to account. For example even if you didn't believe in free will at all which is kind of a maximalist argument along the lines of your point (that people are influenced by outside factors, are indoctrinated, are not entirely responsible for their thinking and hate), most agree we still should hold the r*pist to account, we should still hold the murderer to account, we should still hold the arsonist who burned down an apartment with people inside to account. That really only those in the grips of total psychosis, who are suffering from a brain malfunction, who cannot at all tell reality from fantasy are held somewhat harmless for their actions beyond being restrained and treated until no longer a threat to others.

This doesn't mean it's not human and somewhat normal to have some pity, to see the humanity in the eyes of even a murdering colonist, the humanity they gave up with their choices to become monsters.

But some people commit acts as adults so far beyond what we can forgive that no apology can suffice, no amount of pleading that they've seen the error of their ways can be enough. The extremely rare 1 in a million who decides to atone by working themselves to death in service to their victims can be left well enough alone but most let's be honest don't take any actual action beyond crying and booing their own sadness and trauma and playing the victim.

I'm sorry I just don't think someone who bombs and kills little kids and posts memes laughing about it can do anything to change the weight of their actions and what any decent society must rule is the consequence for such. Those most directly responsible for the violence, for spreading the indoctrination to others, for defending the violence (propagandists) are soaked in blood that can never be washed off. There are those whose situations are more nuanced but there are many whose situation is not at all.

As an aside I look with some amount of skepticism at those who propose that in the west we could at some enormous scale what China did at a very small scale to a small number of high ranking war criminals and a former emperor. Quite frankly the indoctrination runs far deeper here in the west than in China. Liberalism, capitalism have been here for hundreds of years. It's interwoven with religious dogma, with cultural dogma that is entirely part of the liberal super-structure unlike in China whose culture still had strong communal non-individualist (if feudal/peasant) elements to it. You try and shame a Chinese person from that era with their ancestors and community responsibility and most feel it pretty deeply, you try and shame a westerner and they scoff at you because they, their parents, their parents' parents were all raised in individualism, in a contempt for the community, in a fuck the world and treat others as stepping stones mentality, in an economic mode that directly rewarded and venerated this behavior.

Frankly in that situation you're not going to have success, you're going to have relapses be as common as any success if not more-so. The easier solution, the more merciful for all involved including the millions of jailers you'd need under such a scheme is triaging. It's the Nuremberg solution for the worst of the worst, for the bottom rungs for whom chance of success is much stronger, re-education.

That kind of thinking is the kind of blind dogmatism that Marxism-Leninism rejects. We say for each nation, for each struggle, learn from the common path but adapt to the unique circumstances rather than trying to copy paste as the Maoists (MLM) do.

In the specific example of Zionism and young Jewish people, it is directly in their material interests to fully "buy in" on Zionism. Free land, free homes, subsidies... the price for admission is only your soul.

For liberals in walls: This applies to American colonists all the way back and, in a different sense, still applies today. All the "free land" is claimed now, but the descendants of those who stole land have profited greatly in a personal way. Thus it directly against the material interests of a large portion of white Americans to ever question much less oppose the status quo in the USA. This is not yet the case fully in Israel, but as they steal more Palestinian land (Gaza annexation seems fairly imminent. Not being a pessimist, just... I mean, look what Israel is doing and saying) they will also grow a population that moves from material interests being conquering land (early USA colonies and America broadly equivalent) to defending and demanding a never changing status quo where ever ceding "Israeli" land (or, likely, it'll be framed cynically as "Jewish land") is fully off the table- as it is now in the USA, Canada, etc.

I don't think blame has anything to do with it, basically. If that's the word you want to apply, then ok. But Zionists in Israel or with family there are acting primarily on material interests backed up secondarily with ideology that proclaims them to be righteously stealing land and wealth. (Same as other colonial societies)

I think we need to think a bit less in terms of indoctrination and a bit more in terms of material interests. Not saying indoctrination doesn't exist but oftentimes it is used as an excuse when the observed behavior is actually simply a result of a person's material interests. And the sad reality is that many people materially benefit from the colonization and genocide of Palestine. Their indoctrination is simply a reinforcement of already present material interests. In such cases it is going to be very difficult to try and undo said indoctrination and possibly not worth the effort when you could be focusing instead on educating and organizing people whose material interest aligns with de-colonization.

Were all Nazis bad people and to blame for their actions?

Are all oligarchs responsible for their actions?

KKK members?

Sure you can make an argument of some kind of diminished responsibility due to low IQ, general ignorance etc. But ultimately we're talking about grown adults with the capacity of free will.

Ask yourself what it would take for you to exult in the mass murder of tens of thousands of little girls? What could people tell you to make you behave in this way? I don't think they even think of themselves as blameless because they think of themselves as supreme. They are entitled to cause massive harm due to being better, chosen, Übermensch etc.

It doesn't much matter to the kids who are crying because they've been told that their arms won't grow back, that someone who supports this happening to someone else tomorrow is starting to have doubts and might feel bad in the future.

This trade off of "bad feelings" versus the brutal physical impact of someone's actions is a common feature of settler colonialism in particular. We see it with the "loyalists" in Northern Ireland, with the Americans' about Vietnam (except only in movies), and it pervades Zionist supremacist propaganda today.

To blame, means to be responsible for. Are people responsible for their actions or not?

Might be the wrong question. I recall sharing a bluesky thread on here some time ago, where a person talked about the history of the last emperor of China and how the communists reformed him (not while he was an emperor, after they had power). This isn't to say reform will always work or is always the right choice, but in China's case, it showed what the program was capable of in bringing people around.

In an actual war scenario where you don't hold the power, it's probably just going to be "peaceful protest" silliness to think you can reform those in power (though you can still impact footsoldiers in the war, maybe more so if they are conscripts). But once you do have the power, the landscape can change drastically in that way. Now you're in charge of the propaganda engines and the normality of how the society functions.

Note that I've not said what's moral because I'm not sure that's really the important part here. The important part is the strategic success of liberation, decolonization, etc. Some moralizing will happen within that and some moralizing drives the motive to be in favor of those things. But ultimately, you have a need to succeed or else people suffer greatly. Whether everyone in the way of that truly deserves some kind of punishment in a moralistic sense is more about what is going to define the forces of liberation as a new society, and what is going to keep the power in their hands, than it is about what those individuals deserve.

There's a trope in liberal storytelling that goes something like: Oppressed group takes power or tries to take power, but they also agonize over how they go about it because if they do it the "wrong way", they will be "just as bad as their oppressor." Sometimes they make a pivotal decision that is merciful and this is supposed to make them stand out as moral compared to who they're fighting against. The problem with this is it ignores the conditions of oppression and simplifies it to discerning who is in the right based on individualistic morality, which gets into all the stuff about the "perfect victim" vs. not. It's a worldview that believes abuse of power is fundamental to possessing power, like a morality meter in a video game, rather than a product of other, more complicated factors. And that the only way to guard against this is to dilute power as much as possible (which can then lead people to a kind of anarchism worldview). I forget why I brought up this point and I'm spacing out on finishing it out, so I'll leave it here rather than try to hamfist a connection to the rest of what I said.

Edit: I think maybe the reason I thought of it was that how the new society acts on a moral level does matter, but it's not all-defining and somehow flips the dynamic into them as oppressor if they cross an invisible threshold of "bad version of liberation" like how liberal storytelling does it. A colonized people liberating from colonizers doesn't become colonizers if they are mean in how they liberate. It's just not how these things are defined as systems.

While I don't fully agree with or like this standard, I think it's a very useful barometer:

My sympathy ends, when someone harms someone else.

It's perfectly okay and reasonable to feel empathy and sympathy for people who have been indoctrinated and misled, and ideally, we are working towards a world where that will no longer occur.

Yes, people are incredibly dualistic. Complex and simple, "stupid" and intelligent, stubborn and open, hardcore or withdrawn.

I think that soldiers and indoctrinated people should have varying degrees of empathy and sympathy, but we shouldn't mollycoddle them, and I think it's better to be on the safe side, when in doubt.

When someone uses their indoctrination as an excuse to greatly harm others, or at the very least doesn't start an actual reform and accountability, recovery and retributive process, I don't think they deserve any excess sympathy or empathy.

Ultimately, most of the time it's actions that matter more, because they speak louder than words.

I think you can and should blame people for being indoctrinated, in various circumstances and various degrees and contexts. Now, that simultaneously doesn't mean that they can't work towards the greater good, or can't slightly ameliorate or mitigate things, or that maybe eventually they don't deserve forgiveness.

But always remember that forgiveness for indoctrination and atrocity, fundamentally isn't required or owed to anyone.

That's why I maintain that communists should be very willing to educating, reforming and working with indoctrinated people or current/former imperialist military, depending on the context. But we shouldn't mollycoddle them.

To answer your question, I don't think you can fully blame many people in Israel for falling for the better part of a century of racist lies and propaganda. But that doesn't mean that they should be mollycoddled.

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.)

I think everyone has the right to a chance at changing. I had the whole set of reactionary ideas but they fell apart really quickly once I realized nearly everything I had ever been told was a lie. That said anyone who calls themselves a zionist after the live streamed genocide in gaza is probably a lost cause.