this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 41 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (6 children)

No, it happened because people with guns killed or threatened anyone who didn't do their jobs.
Personal safety people! Most of us care for it more than we care for others.

I mean look at the Israel thing. Protesting is nice but is anyone actually doing anything about it? Any of you? Any of your armed forces? Any of your governments?

Oh, you're not going to vote for whichever candidate is running next. Good for you. Doesn't help the people already dead or dying, but keep doing that.

Ah Russia vs Ukraine, Russians should protest harder and overthrow the totally-not-gonna-shoot-them-in-the-face government. It's the right thing to do. Cheers to that.

But no, it's easier to just say "majority of Russians actually support the war" like it's not a complete sack of bullshit.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda is a nice sentiment, but it's also just that, a sentiment. Life's tougher than spoken or written words because nobody wants to be someone else's cannon fodder.

Unity only works in two situations:

  • nothing else left
  • bigger guns than the other side

Any uncertainty will always break up a group, always. Which is why it's so easy to disperse protesters.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago

A whole lotta people did stand up to the guys with guns. Sometimes they took up their own guns. Sometimes they smuggled a bit of bread away for a Jewish neighbor, or they adopted a kid as their own. Factory workers purposefully worked as lazily as plausibly deniable. People spied for the allies and hid food away from the occupiers.

Everyone of these actions carried personal risk or cost, to varying degrees. Many paid for it with their lives, but so many more lives were saved by the Resistance and the many forms it took.

Ronald L. Haeberle was "just doing his job" as a war photographer in Vietnam churning out propaganda, with a constant and real threat on his life from his hierarchy. He was by all accounts a softspoken man who didn't seek trouble. Until in 1969 he turned over tens of harrowing pictures from the My Lai Massacre to reporters, genuinely helping change public perception and precipitate US capitulation.

Helping a humanitarian cause thousands of kilometers away is harder, but plenty of humanitarian organizations provide real help on the ground in Gaza and are seeking donations right now. So instead of falling for cynicism, consider donating to one.

[–] Seleni 5 points 9 months ago

Very true. Although, with Hitler, it was both—plus a complacent government that thought they had all the reigns of power and so they could use Hitler and then dump him when they were done with him.

Hitler spoke, very eloquently, to a large part of the population that was really two groups. The part of a population that, when the chips are down, want an easily identifiable simple target (that’s not them) and the excuse to attack them and make them suffer with impunity, and the part of a population that would like things to be better for them personally and don’t much care how it gets done, as long as they don’t have to bloody their own knives.

They voted Hitler into power, and then the first group set about terrorizing anyone who didn’t agree with their glorious leader, while the second group looked the other way and did a bunch of ‘well, I don’t approve, not really, but it’s not him doing it, and he really has such good economic policies…’

And then out came the real knives, when Hitler had all the power, and then he had the military and then no-one could speak up anymore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

No, it happened because people with guns killed or threatened anyone who didn't do their jobs.

As far as I know, there are no documented examples of people actually being killed for refusing an assassination order. While you might end up being shunned by other members of your battalion, you could always ask for redeployment.

[–] AdolfSchmitler 1 points 9 months ago

100%. How many of us are truly ready to die fighting tyranny? How many of us don't want to give up our partners/kids/friends/comforts.

[–] Mango 1 points 9 months ago

Don't go down with the boat. Bring the boat down with you.