reminds me of this bit:
“not only will america go to your country and kill all your people but they’ll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.”
Sympathy for their PTSD
Submitted 4 weeks ago by IndustryStandard@lemmy.world to aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f7bef2b5-8f4b-41d6-86e0-0d791a58d4aa.png
Comments
DavidGarcia@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
egrets@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
For context, this is from Frankie Boyle’s 2016 Hurt Like You’ve Never Been Loved.
TheBat@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I reread that in his voice.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
In the aughts, once the US torture programs started getting public attention around 2003, I did my obsessive thing on the German Reich and the Holocaust.
During Operation Barbarossa, the SS was experimenting with eradication methods. The most common was the porgrom, endorsing the locals to massacre the undesirables. When they weren’t undesirable enough or it was the whole village, the einsatzgruppen (death squads) had to come do it, usually forcing them to dig a mass grave and then executing them along the side.
It was messy and brutal and gross, and there was high turnover among the death squads (the US has a similar problem with its combat drone operators). And this was a major problem.
The SS experimented with other ideas, including deathwagons that would pipe the vehicle’s exhaust into an enclosed chamber to kill dozens at a time, but even that was too harsh and too slow.
This is how the prototype genocide machine was made at Auschwitz. The program was aet up so no one who interacted with the live prisoners also interacted with the dead corpses. The guy who pushed the execute button was two persons removed in the chain of command from the guy who signed off on the execution order, and none of those people had to face the prisoners or the outcome. The point specifically was to make the process of massacre less stressful for the people involved.
BedSharkPal@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
My opinion of humanity was already so low…
Benjaben@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
It’s funny, I had the opposite reaction, I see this as pretty strong evidence of our decency. It’s really, really hard to get most people to behave this way, and the ones who do wind up fucked up from it (as they should).
Flipper@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
There was a Sonderkommando of Jews in Auschwitz forced calm down inmates before murdering them and to rob and cremate them afterwards. Exactly to keep the psychic toll lower on the SS and to ensure fewer witnesses.
Dasus@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Everyone: “It seems we, as humans, have a pretty strong dislike of executing other humans. A biological aversion to commiting genocide, one might say.”
Nazis: “Halten Sie mein Bier!”
But in all seriousness, your comment reminded me of “The Banality of Evil”.
For when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III ‘to prove a villain.’ Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all… He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing… It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is ‘banal’ and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, this is still far from calling it commonplace… That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man—that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem.
— Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
yesman@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
One of the reasons for creating the system of death camps was that Nazi soldiers and policemen tasked with murdering Jewish people and other undesirables had elevated rates of PTSD. Also, during the Cultural Revolution, the People’s liberation Army switched to a lower caliber sidearm because all the executions were giving them carpel tunnel.
You don’t want to loose sight of humanity just because you’re committing atrocity.
carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
i sincerely hope his actions haunt him for the rest of his pathetic life
Tyfud@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Indoctrination is a hell of a drug.
Not saying these guys should be absolved, but they’re doing this because they think they’re the good guys/helping out.
We should be lamblasting their leadership and all of Israel’s parliament that’s enabling this.
But sometimes, soldiers are just soldiers/grunts. US Soldiers have similar PTSD after Afghanistan and Iraq. Not absolving them of sins, but when you’re trained for most of your adult life to take orders and not question them, and then those orders include killing innocents, it’s difficult to break from the indoctrination/control a group has had over you in the moment. Usually it’s not until you’re finished with your tour and you’re back home and had time to decompress that you realize the horrors you witnessed and perpetuated.
Again, not justifying it in any way, but if we don’t humanize Israeli soldiers, we run the risk of turning them into boogeymen like we did the Nazis. They were human too, and by not acknowledging that and how far humanity can go when they are supporting nationalist movements, we do great harm to any attempt to catch and correct these sort of things early.
There’s no switch that gets flipped that turns people into monsters. The worst atrocities ever committed upon humanity was by other humans. We need to acknowledge that they’re all human, or we risk repeating history.
MellowYellow13@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
They made a choice, do not absolve people of what they are doing and continue to do, especially if its fucking genocide, that’s literally how these things happen as well as the Holocaust.
At some point, people have to stand up and say no, voice their concerns, and just simply do the right thing
d00ery@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I’m pretty sure they did.
Six months after he was first sent to fight, he was struggling with post-traumatic […] Before he was due to redeploy, he took his own life.
TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 4 weeks ago
Too cowardly to do anything useful to make amends. Just let another conscript fill his space.
Brave enough to drive over Palestinians and call them “terrorists in their hundreds”. Not brave enough to stand up to criticism from his countrymen. This is what spending billions of dollars on an asymmetrical war gets you: a system in which the weakest people can still take the lives of hundreds before being thrown away themselves.
Fosheze@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Wait… He crushed HUNDREDS of people with a bulldozer in less than 6 months‽ What the actual fuck.
NutWrench@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
Yeah, I suppose it was traumatic, bombing food relief convoys and hospitals. You could have avoided a lot of that PTSD by refusing to follow illegal orders.
Also, get farked, CNN.
orcrist@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
My interpretation of this is that some mid-level staffers at CNN pushed the story knowing exactly what was in it. Their bosses wouldn’t let them do obvious things, so they got a little subtle.
Fosheze@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Ah yes, those hundreds of “terrorists” all nicely lined up in the road.
winterayars@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
How the fuck do you run someone over with a bulldozer… no matter what i think of it’s not coming up good…
PugJesus@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
You would think it would be easy to find some poor conscript fuck who didn’t run over civilians in a bulldozer struggling with the fact that they were coerced into being part of a genocide, but no, CNN goes with the guy who crushed human beings. Even as attempted hasbara, that’s some high-level incompetence in CNN.
jonne@infosec.pub 4 weeks ago
CNN has to run every story through the Israeli censor in their Jerusalem bureau. The only mainstream outlet that doesn’t go through that process is Al Jazeera, and Israel closed their offices.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Precisely: this is the story CNN and the IDF want you to see. No matter the CNN reader’s reaction, the policy will not change.
So they do the thing because it is a demonstration that they can do the thing without repercussions. Bullingdon Club type mentality.
Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Poor guy. Did he also have to murder the little baby terrorists and their sobbing, horrified terrorist moms and terrorist sisters too? Poor fella. I hope he can muster the strength to do the right thing.
Fuck Israel and fuck conservatives (including neoliberals) who gleefully support this genocide. The wrong people are being erased.
JamesBoeing737MAX@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
Well, did he have a choice?
Disaster@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
ah yes… “I was only following orders” - Otto Adolf Eichmann
Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
He called the families he murdered terrorists. He’s lying about being “traumatized”.
Every word uttered by a conservative is deception or manipulation. The only terrorists in this story are the settlers committing genocide on the local residents.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Yeah you can go to prison
deathbird@mander.xyz 4 weeks ago
Everyone has a choice.
TrueTomBombadil@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
He has a choice now. The choice to end his own pathetic life or burn in mental anguish for the rest of his life. I hope he chooses whichever path leaves him and his the most miserable.
deathbird@mander.xyz 4 weeks ago
There’s no such thing as a “correct” people to erase.
Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
When it comes to people committing genocide, I disagree.
9point6@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I’m actually speechless.
I hope this guy suffers until his end.
BMTea@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I believe this particular quote is from a soldier who took his own life. How. Tragic.
leftytighty@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
Too bad about the order of operations
Krauerking@lemy.lol 4 weeks ago
He offed himself because he was about to get sent back out to do it again and apparently the IDF were gonna refuse burial because he was a chicken shit that didn’t want to squeeze the organs out of more children.
Some other people need to suffer from this story than the ones actually suffering.
Krauerking@lemy.lol 4 weeks ago
“So, there is no such thing as citizens,” he said, referring to the ability of Hamas fighters to blend with civilians. “This is terrorism.”
Fuck the IDF
TBi@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Well when he said “this is terrorism” he was correct. Just that it’s the IDF terrorizing innocent people.
Fosheze@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
mlg@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I swear this is almost trying to parody the title of the article about the 19 year old who was burned alive
jonne@infosec.pub 4 weeks ago
I’m sure we’ll soon get an article about how the pilot felt sad about bombing a hospital.
Aceticon@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Something about he at the end of the day going home to his young wife and 5 month old baby with a sad face.
TheMightyCanuck@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
“IN THE HUNDREDS”
Good god someone please operation overlord these mother fuckers.
rozodru@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
ah Israelis and playing the victim, name a more iconic duo.
masquenox@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
They don’t seem that traumatized when they are literally filming their own war crimes and posting them on Instagram for all the fascist clicks.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
The only way I could rationalize the OG Nazis…trying to get into their head and how they managed to do the things they did…was that they were straight up brainwashed.
It sounded crazy when I was younger. Like, something out of a comic book instead of a history book.
But as I watch and try to critically understand how the modern propaganda machine works, I can’t help but wonder if maybe I was right.
SasquatchBanana@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
OG Nazis experienced the same thing. Killing people on en masse mentally fucks with your head, even if the individuals you kill are perceived as vermin/degenerates. This is why they moved on to using other means that is more dehumanizing i.e. pressing a button for the gas chamber
masquenox@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Brainwashing is perfectly easy. Just ask the US Marine Corps.
That creepy thing people in the US do, hanging flags in front of their houses? That’s brainwashing. That’s what it looks like.
That’s how easy it is.
autriyo@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
Not sure if “OG Nazis” only include the first generation, but their Children were pretty much brainwashed.
You can look up “Hitler Jugend” If you want, that organisation basically indoctrinated children while growing up. Right when humans are the easiest to manipulate.
I’d wager that, maybe, you were right.
Fedizen@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
“cop needs therapy after shooting unarmed child”
Eiri@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Didn’t the US use to invade countries for much, much less of a reason than that? Sheesh.
These days I’m finding myself agreeing with the Iranian government more and more often because of Israel’s crap. I don’t like agreeing with the Iranian government.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
I find myself asking “How did I fall for this? How did this seem normal my whole life until now?”
We didn’t hear the whole story during the Holocaust. Now we’re getting live videos and firsthand accounts of steam rolling crowds.
What the fuck is wrong with a person to be OK with this at all.
TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Mis/under -education (propaganda), lies through omission.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
No, human rights and that stuff hasn’t been the actual reason for any invasions for a long time. It might have been used as an excuse, but it’s generally really about power and/or economics.
Read about what actually happened in places like Guatemala, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua, and Panama. Think about what the actual reasons are for opposing communism, especially considering the timeline of what was known when recruiting Nazis for the opposition to (former ally) USSR, invading Korea, and invading Vietnam.
If you only want to dive into one of those, just look up Guatemala and Edward Bernays (a massive piece of shit).
masquenox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I don’t like agreeing with the Iranian government.
I don’t like agreeing with Hamas, either. But if the rest of the world isn’t interested in lifting a finger against this genocidal excuse for a state, I guess that’s just the way it’s going to have to be.
sOlitude24k@lemmy.myserv.one 4 weeks ago
Posted this in another thread, gonna post it here, too.
“Looking another human being in the eye, making an independent decision to kill him, and watching as he dies due to your action combine to form one of the most basic, important, primal, and potentially traumatic occurrences of war.”
It’s an unpopular take, but I recommend everyone read the book “On Killing” by Dave Grossman. It’s obvious that what Israel is doing is very much a genocide, but I stand firm in my opinion that their boots-on-the-ground infantryman are also victims of the Israeli political machine.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
but I stand firm in my opinion that their boots-on-the-ground infantryman are also victims of the Israeli political machine.
Sure, but couldn’t the same be said for many of the literal guards at Auschwitz? A lot of those people were just kids who were drafted and were simply following orders.
Jtotheb@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The Nuremberg Trials are a great example of how you don’t hang if you provide enough value to the military-industrial complex, and a terrible example of full stop no excuses. Seems ill suited to be a foundation for a moral philosophy.
sOlitude24k@lemmy.myserv.one 4 weeks ago
It absolutely could, and should. I’m not saying that the crimes should be forgiven, but it is not a purely black and white area. It is very grey. To ignore the fact that they were ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, just because it’s uncomfortable to think about, would be a disservice towards efforts to prevent things like this in the future. People are complex.
Liz@midwest.social 4 weeks ago
Dave Grossman is full of shit. This is independent to the potential trauma from killing people (there’s a wide range of reactions to that experience). Dave Grossman is full of shit.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Grossman
What a fitting name. Because he is quite gross
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I stand firm in my opinion that their boots-on-the-ground infantryman are also victims
Settlers enlisted in an occupying force that seeks to claim more territory over the bodies of the native occupants are not victims.
Liz@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
They have mandatory service, though I’m sure very few people serving their mandatory term are a part of the invading force.
uis@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
but I stand firm in my opinion that their boots-on-the-ground infantryman are also victims of the Israeli political machine.
Caramel Marks, I mean Karl Marx, would probably agree with you.
Zacryon@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
Humans are not made to kill other humans. And those who fight the wars of the mighty, are those who are among the ones who suffer the most.
War is really stupid. And it’s astonishing how we continue to be such a stupid species. Given how far we’ve come, one would think that we’ve finally realized how much humanity could achieve if we were working together instead of killing each other.
By the way:
It’s obvious that what Israel is doing is very much a genocide
The international court of justice has not ruled on this yet, but continues to observe and investigate whether such genocide allegations could apply.
However, I am not a fan of anyone who practises or participates in wars and so easily tolerates the deaths of innocents.
abracaDavid@lemmy.today 4 weeks ago
Lmao are you really trying to act like it’s not a genocide because some bureaucratic board has been bullied into being quiet about it?
zbyte64@awful.systems 4 weeks ago
There’s literally video of a child getting cut down, then when help comes for the child they blow them up with a bomb. That’s some psychopath shit.
masquenox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The international court of justice
We don’t need a pack of overpaid bureucrats with fancy titles to tell us whether a genocide is occuring or not. It’s a fucking genocide. Plain and simple.
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Let me go get my Planck length sized violin.
MellowYellow13@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Gee I fucking wonder why you have trauma and PTSD??? Fucking moronic fucks, zero sympathy
hperrin@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Child murderer.
AshMan85@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Aww, war criminals
nonentity@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Some have labelled Israel as a rogue nation, but their actions are explicitly and implicitly condoned through other nation’s support and silence.
voldage@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I don’t think that’s really the case though? I’m pretty sure most nations condemned Israel except for USA, but USA blocked all attempts from anyone to do anything. And when USA says that commiting genocide with their weapons is on the table, I doubt any country wishes to find out what would happen should any concrete action against Israel be taken. It’s a big part of the reason why everyone calls USA complicit in genocide of Palestinians.
Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I have no reason to believe Germany’s government condemns Israel’s actions right now, and the way they always point out its right to defend itself, I suspect they actively condone them…
Linktank@lemmy.today 4 weeks ago
Just to be clear, everyday US citizens do not condone this shit.
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
I hope not that he dies but that he lives to watch everything he cares about crumble to dust as he is powerless to the winds of change
can@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Article link and a mirror
febra@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Oh, I can’t wait for the sympathy piece on Auschwitz guards to drop any day now. They must have seen some very, very, very difficult things too, poor souls.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Gil Hochberg described “shooting and crying” as a soldier being “sorry for things I had to do.” This “non-apologetic apology” was the self-critique model advanced in Israel in many politically reflective works of literature and cinema as “a way of maintaining the nation’s self-image as youthful and innocent. Along with its sense of vocation against the reality of war, growing military violence, occupation, invasion, [there was] […] an overall sense that things were going wrong.”
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
Waltz with Bashir (2008]
Disaster@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Just as Chris Hedges predicted.
Sundial@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
The last sentence is fucked up. If you’re running over hundreds of people how in the fuck do you know they are terrorists. These people are intentionally and knowingly committing war crimes then come back home and cry about how this all made them so sad.
drolex@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
If the IDF is killing people, then they are terrorists. Not the other way around. You are to be checked for antisemitism/glorification of terrorism. Please report to your nearest IDF bulldozer.
ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Relevant, from a comment I wrote below that is buried under too many other comments:
If going to jail is the penalty for not joining the IDF, it is the moral thing to do and should be worn like a badge of honor. It’s not complicated at all unless you literally have a death penalty for not joining. I don’t care how controversial this is: if as an IDF terrorist you don’t commit a mutiny, desert, or off yourself, congratulations, you’ve net increased the evil in the world.
Sympathizing with the IDF is 1:1 the exact same as sympathizing with the SS and anyone who says otherwise has both fingers in their ears and yelling nanananana until the crunching noises under their bulldozers stop.
You cannot be systematically eradicating a people you consider inferior and also pretend you have any moral high ground. You cannot bomb hospitals and ambulances and homes and schools and pretend like you are the good guy. You cannot set up viewing platforms to have your kids watch the destruction with your own eyes and claim to be the good guy.
Not to make this about me but I’ve been running myself ragged volunteering at the shelters here in a safer part Lebanon and I’m still fucked up over feeling like I’m not doing enough. Rotting at home will make me feel even worse. I went outside for a walk and wanted to throw up, feeling guilty over being able to go outside and walk to destress as people’s homes get carpet bombed more intensely than legitimate military targets. I know damn well that if I lost my own home these shelters are full and I would have literally nowhere to go. And more people are losing their homes every hour. People are fleeing to Syria and Iraq for safety, even as the border crossings are getting hit as well.
This is beyond ”normal” human evil. If any other army was doing this we would have rows of criminals hanging from cranes in The Hague, instead we have to watch them smugly tell us we’re next in a speech from the UN. For the unforgivable crime of being born on land that apparently exists only for colonization.
Do not let anyone lie to you. A Holocaust is happening right now and it is exactly as evil as the one the Nazis committed.
gex@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Anyone who runs is Hamas. Anyone who stands still is well disciplined Hamas.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
Ask Rachel Corrie, who was similarly run over by a bulldozer protecting Palestinian land. It’s been over 20 years and the US still doesn’t give a single shit about Israel murdering it’s own citizens.
Sundial@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Yeah I remember reading about her. She was an incredibly brave woman. The most horrifying part was reading about the IDF soldiers who had a pancake party to mock her death.
IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Image
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
Look at how well Israeli propaganda is working abroad. Now imagine how well it must be working on the israeli population.
Madison420@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Anytime who runs is a terrorist anyone who doesn’t run is a lazy terrorist.