a million pieces/segments sneering at hasan piker and the co-chair of the DSA, meanwhile a republican congressional candidate in upstate new york named peter oberacker is the grandson of an actual nazi germany soldier and his former staffer was part of the 'i love hitler' young GOP group chat
"I salute all who served" GTFO
78 Comments
ConHoliousDonFrankle@lemmy.world · 80 pts · 2d
Should everyone be proud of where they come from? Probably not.
OldChicoAle@lemmy.world · 44 pts · 2d
I don't think being proud of your ancestry or heritage should be the default setting. In fact, we should look back with a critical view and criticize where we should and learn where appropriate. Humans tend to suck, you know? So we should acknowledge that and not ignore the faults of our nature.
TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca · 15 pts · 2d
Thing is, you could very easily be a very proud German AND proud of your family and still say "yeah, I'm not so proud of my country and family between 1939 and 1945"
DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 1d
I've never understood the concept of "being proud of your country" at all, to be honest. Like, you as an individual have such a vanishingly insignificant impact on your country as a whole that anything you may have contributed is pretty much irrelevant. This applies doubly so if you're below the age of, say 30 or 40, or if you're being "proud" of something your country did before you came of age, as you literally didn't contribute anything whatsoever and just happened to be born into it.
The obvious exception is if you are the supreme dictator-for-life and singlehandedly made every major policy decision for the last 3 decades. Or if you live in Liechtenstein and therefore your individual impact is drastically overrepresented compared to a "regular size" country.
RaphaelSchmitz@feddit.org · 6 pts · 1d
Yeah it feels more healthy to be proud of achievements.
Includes being proud of your children if you have achieved good parenting, but being part of a country, what is the achievement, what is the work you have put in there?
Pay taxes maybe. "I'm proud to pay taxes for country X" doesn't have the same ring to it, though.
mrbutterscotch@feddit.org · 1 pts · 1h
I understand where you're all coming from, but at the same time I do believe you can be proud of things you've done nothing for.
For example I don't see anything wrong with being proud of a family member for beating addiction or running a 5k etc.
Edit: Phrasing
Saryn@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
It's not about isolating and ranking historical events or periods tied to whatever nation-state ideology you were brought up with. It's about questioning the authority and functions of nation-state narratives in the first place. And realizing that ugliness is often borne out of the most seemingly banal things ever.
Being proud of your randomly assigned geography and demography can and has come with some good. But it's nothing compared to the ugliness it causes.
architect@thelemmy.club · 2 pts · 18h
I don’t really understand how, personally. I’m not proud of my family at all. I am American, but I am a first generation immigrant, and my family is Belgian and they are responsible for genocide and I mean they have in Belgium in their homes a Massive collection of stuff from the Congo. When I was younger, I didn’t understand what all of that ivory and everything else meant. But when I got older, I learned where it had come from. I’m not proud of that. I’m not proud of my family. I’m not proud of a thing they fucking did in the past.
I don’t really understand how any American right now could be proud of America considering where we are at.
I don’t understand, how German can be proud of themselves. It’s not been long enough. And while my own countries have been a fucked up places. I also saw what the Germans did to Belgium. My family never forgot that and we haven’t forgiven. I don’t understand why anyone fucking should.
Now I don’t believe any person or country should be proud of anything. Elon Musk didn’t make all his money because of America. That took nearly the entire world’s leadership to do. And they are collective of all of us. So I’m not sure what there is to be proud of anymore.
balsoft@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 1d
It's a longer time period tho. And "not so proud" doesn't cut it for literal genocide, you need to actively denounce that shit if you claim to be proud of the rest of your culture and history.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 15h
No you could not. Being "a proud " means outing oneself as a dimwitted loser with no accomplishments of one's own.
TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca · 2 pts · 14h
Dumb take
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 14h
Said the genius ^^
TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca · 1 pts · 14h
Thanks
balsoft@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 1d
You can be proud of yourself and your own achievements. You can be proud of how your kids or students turned out and, to an extent, their achievements. You can be proud of your teammates (colleagues, coauthors etc) and what your team has done. Being proud of millions of totally unrelated people, or a social construct like a "nation" or a "country" is a big fucking stretch. If you insist on doing that, you also need to be ashamed of all the awful shit your country has done too. And believe me, there will be a ton of shit there. Can't take the credit but eschew the responsibility.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 1d
A lot of people came to America because where they was was so shitty, that even a wilderness like America looked good.
TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca · 49 pts · 2d
It's almost like their morality is just another tool they'll use or cast aside as needed whenever it's politically expedient or something.
jtrek@startrek.website · 44 pts · 2d
Conservatives are bad people. That's it.
BigMacHole@thelemmy.club · 27 pts · 2d
We SALUTE and HONOR Nazis!
-JEW LOVERS according to AIPAC!
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1d
AIPAC doesn't care who the supporters are, just that they support them. Much like the "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel" were Zionists who wanted to get the British out of Palestine and found a Jewish state by teaming with the NAZI's and having them send the Jews to their cause. Turns out the NAZI's just didn't care to listen to them.
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 1d
We've seen this kind of thing before. This is the Southern Lost Cause propaganda strategy as applied to Nazi Germany.
If you've never been exposed to "The Lost Cause" in school, or haven't yet come to realize what that really means, I urge you to read up on it now.. It wears a thin veil of well-reasoned, even compassionate dialogue, but conveniently leaves out the bigger picture of why and what prompted all this in the first place. Those deploying this kind of speech are like a housecat: rolling over and displaying their belly while seemingly "taking the L", but are actually poised to harm by quietly aligning themselves with the Cause's original narrative.
While we're a far cry from erecting bronze statues and renaming streets in the name of Nazism, I caution everyone to identify this kind of speech wherever you see it. So, stamp it out, decry it as revisionist, and don't let up. Render it impolite, uncouth, and socially unacceptable in any context. Unchecked, this kind of thing slowly creeps in, eventually worming its way into textbooks and everyday chit-chat.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 20h
TR3@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 20h
Most what I learn from the USA nowadays is very negative and it seems that some people are totally off the rails over there.
It seems that the general quality of living is way worse than in EU.
Is the reality as bad as the news and these kinds of statements make it look like? We have higher taxes but good quality schools and healthcare is included. How is America average buying power after those?
It is very worrying that a country that often has been viewed as the lighthouse of the western culture seems to struggle so much.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 19h
Yes, USA is an miserable shithole. Personally I've been making long term plans to move to EU. Cities like Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, etc. They are like utopia compared to the fucking parking lot society that I live in.
barooboodoo@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 14h
Honestly, I'd imagine it's pretty similar to the EU. Your living experience varies drastically state to state and even city to city. Some cities/states prioritize education, infrastructure, healthcare, etc. and some don't. General political views seem to be the major difference between the EU and the US, from what I've heard, most of the "left" here would be considered center or center-right over there. I've only briefly visited the EU so many of you probably have a much better answer than me and I welcome any corrections.
AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml · -1 pts · 14h
Give it a winter or two. Europe is fucked. With fascism pretty much inevitable the dismantling will be fast.
tmyakal@infosec.pub · 6 pts · 17h
Oh, he'd look at it differently now. He didn't say he shouldn't have made the post, or that he wouldn't do it again. Just that he'd squint a little harder, I guess.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 19h
Fascism isn't widely recognized or condemned from within a fascist society.
Nomad@infosec.pub · 5 pts · 18h
Hate to break it to you, most Germans grandparents were at least collaborators. The NSDAP r member cards opened my eyes who of my family was a member. My beloved aunt for. example was a member.
Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip · 5 pts · 2d
What happened with the co-chair of the DSA?
socsa@piefed.social · 4 pts · 1d
Literally a bit from the Office
idiomaddict@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
All the troops.
Though at least the “other” troops in The Office’s scenario could have been described as defensive.
jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
all military people are evil, and those that offer military discounts to only some militaries are worst of all
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
i mean that's definitely an equally hot take. i'll admit i shared it until i made friends with a radiologist. didn't realize he was serving at the local military hospital until after we'd become best buds, but i'm not too big to admit when i'm wrong.
ohulancutash@feddit.uk · 4 pts · 1d
You expected moustache twirling and kitten slaughter?
The evil of soldiers is banal.
mulcahey@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
I never thought about that... If you offer a "military discount" should anyone who served in any armed force for any nation be able to claim it? That's an interesting idea...
Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip · 1 pts · 2h
There were former military in the black panthers. The military is an institution that exploits the poor and subjects them to moral injury in the name of imperialism- people who participate in it must do the labor to un-fuck their heads after, but those who have truly seen the belly of the beast and what horrors it would offer can be incredibly valuable allies.
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
My grandfather was drafted and fought, he was worth 10 of you.
Ioughttamow@fedia.io · 1 pts · 2d
I’m sure he only means the white kind of soldier
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world · -8 pts · 1d
I am not a WWII expert and don't know which unit his grandfather was in, with that in mind the Wehrmacht was a draft army and many non-Nazis were forced into the military and died "for their country" to protect their own families (if only from the consequences of their refusing to serve).
That's a man's duty to his family in my opinion, and I can't hate him for that. Many were executed for refusing to serve, also asset forfeiture and working in camps. If I had children, in their position, I would have served in the hopes of keeping them alive and well (not knowing that the entire country would be razed in a few years).
My grandfather served US Navy against the Japanese, he was a submariner. Until the day he died in his 80s he refused to tie his shoes, and any shoes that he wore had to be loose so that he could kick them off. He usually wore slippers.
Later, I found out that this was because his submarine was sunk, and he almost died trying to get his boots off to swim to the surface. He refused to talk about any of it to anybody.
Horrifying. I'm sorry for all of the "good people" involved on every side of the war.
I'll GTFO now
OriginalTangle@feddit.org · 5 pts · 1d
It's blurry but it kinda looks like the eagle is looking right which would make it a symbol of the party and not the state. So that man was a bit more involved in the whole Nazi apparatus than someone who just got drafted.
myotheraccount@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
Yeah, the badge on his left is an SA or SS badge, meaning he went above just being drafted to Wehrmacht.
OriginalTangle@feddit.org · 3 pts · 1d
Neither SA nor SS. Those were completely different.
Adding links to the wiki pages is a pain on my phone for some reason. Look them up!
myotheraccount@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 17h
Thanks for making me double check, looks like I misremembered. This is an SA sports badge, but getting one does not mean the person was an SA member.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SA_Sports_Badge
nightlily@leminal.space · 4 pts · 19h
The clean Wehrmacht is a complete myth and no sane German would agree with you.
456456@lemmy.ml · -23 pts · 1d
I feel the same way when I see people sucking Allied WW2 dick. There were no good guys in WW2, just a few imperialist powers fighting over who gets to take advantage of the world's resources.
If you get upset reading this, read about what the British were doing to Indians in India at the time and what the Americans were doing to "Indians" in the US forever. Still not convinced? How about what that generation of US veterans voted for in the years returning from the war? There is no moral high ground to claim, so I wish the same energy directed at the idiot who posted the original "I salute all who served" message was directed at all war propaganda.
Horsey@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1d
While I agree there’s no moral high ground, and Britain was always a terrible empire daddy, and the scramble for Africa was wrong… there was very clearly a difference in approach.
Jax@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 1d
But but.. Western country... fascists! They've always been fascists!! I'm morally superior to EVERYONE!! - .ml user in a nutshell
456456@lemmy.ml · -3 pts · 20h
Please do explain the differences in approach between the Nazis and the British and American governments when it comes to colonization and the persecution of undesirables.
The only real differences are of degree, and since that was pretty much a result of staring down the business end of the losing side of a war, it's easy for me to imagine us acting similarly. For instance, had Japan invaded the contiguous US and were approaching our internment camps and Indian reservations, the decision to convert them to kill camps seems like something we would have done.
Horsey@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 16h
You’ve delved way too far into whataboutism. I can’t argue what should or could have happened in the WW2 era. No one is alive from that time to have an educated discussion about it. It’s a question for a historian, which I am not.
Doom@discuss.online · 6 pts · 1d
oh I didn't realize what instance you were from, makes sense now.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
Your moral compass is broken.
456456@lemmy.ml · -2 pts · 20h
Haha no shit, Sherlock. I'm an American combat veteran who served during the Global War on Terror. I am morally shattered. I belong in the Hague, but people keep thanking me for my service.
But at least I'm aware enough to know there has never been a "good" war, and being on the side of a genociding force isn't "good" even if the other side is also genociding bastards.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 13h
So you don't think getting rid of the nazis and responding to pearl harbor were wrong? I'm fascinated by your viewpoint. At what point can you respond to an attack and fight back?
It sounds like you have personal issues that go well beyond your military service. PTSD?
456456@lemmy.ml · -1 pts · 12h
lol yeah we were just minding our own business, and then Pearl Harbor happened. Jesus I might have issues, but at least I'm not still fooled by decades-old propaganda.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 10h
So Poland provoked Nazi Germany? We forced Japan to attack our naval base? Japan HAD to attack China. England shouldn't have fought back? Wow
I think you've been fooling yourself.
balsoft@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 1d
I will agree that nation-states can't be "good guys" by definition. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't support those who were the less bad guys, or "on the right side of history" so to say, especially the common proletarian soldiers on the ground.
Otherwise you end up with "well, Iranian government represses women therefore it's OK to bomb the country into the stone age".
456456@lemmy.ml · -3 pts · 20h
I don't understand your logic. I'm saying that the US should not have been involved in a European war between essentially two morally and ethically bankrupt sides (and how bragging about being on one side over the other is literally retarted thinking). How do you extend that logic to being okay with bombing Iran?
balsoft@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 20h
Because the sides (which, to be clear, were mostly USSR vs nazi germany) were clearly not equally "morally and ethically bankrupt"?
USSR, while very far away from perfect as I will be the first to admit, was a socialist nation struggling to build an equitable, just, and advanced society for all working people, first inside its borders then worldwide.
Germany was a bunch of rich capitalists pushing nazi propaganda on its population, aiming to turn the entire European continent into an ethostate, enslave all slavs and kill all jews, with reactionary&inhumane views about gender, sexuality, disability, and a thousand other topics.
If you think that those two sides are somehow "the same" and thus it's somehow OK if Germany won that war, why would USA vs Iran be different?
456456@lemmy.ml · -1 pts · 20h
lol you think we joined the Allies because of Russia, and not the UK, which we had been selling war supplies to for years prior to us joining? Russia, the country we started fighting against before the Third Reich had even collapsed?
You are right that the majority of the conflict was between Germany and Russia, but you have eluded my point about why the US joined the fight. FDR was not salivating at the prospect of entering WWII to help Stalin. He was interested in the economic benefits.
I assume the soviets were the most morally just out of all the major WW2 players bc I know the least about their history, and what I do know has a veneer of anti russia propaganda. Had we intervened on their behalf out of a moral obligation, I can see how you got to the Iran thing- that was my excuse for supporting and fighting in wars against Iraq and Afghanistan- obvious mistakes at the time and even clearer with a little hindsight. But during WW2 we helped England, even if we were helping Russia, and England in the 1940s was objectively abhorrent.
balsoft@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 15h
It doesn't really matter why someone joined one side of the war over another, the thing that matters is that they did. In this harsh world, you will need to choose the "lesser of two evils" all the time, and in the case of WW2 it's patently obvious which side is the lesser of two evils. USSR was not only a more progressive and less awful country overall but also it was defending itself from an existential threat. Fighting on its side, even for the wrong reasons, is the right thing to do.
None of this applies to any other war the US was involved in post-WW2. I can understand that you can look at the string of genocide and war crimes and generally awful shit and apply the same lens to WW2, but it is just not the case then. US soldiers were fighting an opponent which was by all accounts about as awful as US itself, for the first and last time in history.
456456@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 12h
The lesser of two evils is still evil, and we did not have to choose a side. That same false choice is why the US has been involved in so many quagmires around the world over the last 80 years.
boonhet@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 1d
Yes fuck the allies, they should've just stayed out of it.
456456@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 20h
Had we adopted that position in WW1, there would not have been a WW2, a Third Reich, a holocaust, or a genociding Israel. The US would not have experimented with chemical and biological warfare in Korea because Operation Paperclip would not have happened. Vietnam would have gone differently even if we still invaded because we would not have had shit like Agent Orange to poison generations of people. So yeah, maybe we should adopt a "just stay out of it" approach to our foreign policy.
bobbyfiend@retrolemmy.com · -23 pts · 2d
Fun note: pointing out the bag guys doing super bad shit isn't some.kind of "own" of the people pointing out the so-called good guys doing bad shit.
The framing of this post is inane.
InputZero@lemmy.world · -11 pts · 1d
Yeah, this post strips a lot of context from history. What I mean is that it's important to remember that in Nazi Germany not everyone was a Nazi and that the armed forces were a separate organization lead by Nazis. That's an important distinction because a lot of the soldiers in Nazi Germany's armed forces were just regular people. Who happened to be in an organization who's leadership was replaced by Nazis. Some of whom were already serving long before the Nazis took over.Now I don't know if this particular person in this photo was army or SS. I don't know if they were a Nazi or regular person who was forced to follow Nazis or die. I do know that not every German soldier was a Nazi.Also it's a dumb post by a Neo Nazi. Just hopefully revealing to people that Nazi Germany wasn't so simple and had a lot of context.Edit: so apparently I have been falling for the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth.
ohulancutash@feddit.uk · 17 pts · 1d
You’re repeating the “clean Wehrmacht” myth. It originated within the German army during the war, and was further spread by the Americans at the Nuremberg trials, and subsequently, to prop up West German military legitimacy during the cold war. It was not until after reunification that popular attention was drawn to the deceit.
In fact, soldiers were amongst the most fervent Nazis, and had committed many war crimes and crimes against humanity, including willing participation in the Holocaust and the extermination of the Slavic peoples.
For example, the majority of all German soldiers in the Eastern Front actively participated in mass murder and mass rape, sometimes with a whole army unit participating in the latter. So that’s most of the 10 million Wehrmacht soldiers on the Eastern Front, itself the majority of the 18 million who served in the war altogether.
InputZero@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Thank you for giving me something to search. I'll look into it. It's hard to know something when you don't know it.
Jiral@lemmy.world · -8 pts · 1d
"Clean Wehrmacht" is a myth, your position on the other side is "Sippenhaft". People didn't exactly have a choice to join the Wehrmacht (unless you consider it a choice when the only alternative is suicide), nor did they have a choice on which front to end up. They did have mostly a choice to join the SS though.
You found all sorts of people in the Wehrmacht. Those who hated the regime and the war but liked to hang on to their life, those who were indifferent, you had opportunists and you had dyed in the wool supporters of the regime and the ideology. I am pretty sure one of my grandfathers was on the one side while the other was on the other. The one who prayed for his own side to lose ended up in a Russian gulag, while the other had a relatively easy time in a British POW camp. Life isn't fair.
Jiral@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 1d
It is a pity, no one here is actually explaining what is so terrible about my comment above.
The Wehrmacht was not some innocent organisation, it was the army of the Nazi regime, a draft army, inherited by the state that the Nazis took over and transformed into the army of their genocidal imperialist regime, as such it was of course also a pillar of their regime. For Americans to maybe get an understanding, the right question to ask in this regard is not what you would think about members of ICE but what you think about members of the US army that were drafted into the Vietnam war, with their units involved in war crimes. That is a poor comparison as the Wehrmacht did way more horrible things on a much bigger scale but it is a less flawed comparison than thinking about ICE, which really is not an army but a SA like mob with only voluntary members.
I am nowhere defending that Oberacker. He sure sounds like someone who would have loved to be in the shoes of his grandfather and that is something only a Nazi would think.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
too many acronyms all up and down the thread. not your fault my brain is numb. South Africa? Sturm...Arb...needentolernenmasdeustchen?
Jiral@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Sturmabteilung. Hey, its shorter than many English words, and given that it translates to "storm department", "ice" sounds rather fitting.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 21h
I knew it wasn't Sturmwaffe, although that would have been a cool name, the stormwaffles, i just remember they had a seeming obsession with the word storm. i get it, some words and phrases are cool. they roll off the tongue nicely. like cellar door. velvet elvis. nazi pulp.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today · 10 pts · 1d
Someday, people like you will be saying that people only joined ICE because they were unemployed and desperate because of the Biden administration, and Trump's ICE was a successful work program to get them back on their feet.
InputZero@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
You make a good point. I'll admit that I have fallen for decades of propaganda. I hadn't until now thought of the reverse comparison.
Jiral@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 1d
The comparison is pretty flawed though. No one is drafted into ICE, is anyone? The equivalent of ICE is the SA.