TLDR - My friends think r/combatfootage is totally fine and are offended when I point out it’s kind of fucked up. This isn’t an AITA post. I am the asshole, but at least I’m NOT a fascist.

I’ll be clear about what I think about the proliferation of combat footage forums like r/combatfootage and the myriad of duplicate communities on various fediverse instances. I find it abhorrent because of what it has done to my friends.

I have a very close group of friends who for the most part are fairly compassionate people. I love them with all my heart. We’ve helped each other for a lot, and they even helped me on my journey from being a rightwing libertarian to a democrat. While I continued to be radicalized by other events and communities online, they’ve stayed relatively the same, left leaning liberals. You know the type. They hate the republicans and will vote blue no matter who. They support the LGBTQ+ community, abortion rights, the recent rise in labor action in the US, and the Palestinian people. All good things to support. But they’re also armchair “socialists” who don’t know the difference between a socdem and a communist.

Which is fine. Not everyone is going to interested in theory, especially in their comfortable, white, micro-borgeious (three attempts is enough, I’m not looking up how to spell it again) slice of American life. They don’t know what they haven’t learned. And I’m not going to info dump our group chat with theory. I’m good with just sprinkling in class conscious takes into our conversations.

Last night I learned of this Reddit post from the mods of r/combatfootage. It amounts to a feckless update of their rules, to disallow footage from terrorist groups (ie Hamas). You and I know what that really means though, no Palestinian footage. I bring this up in our group chat. This is an exchange between me and one of my friends who is in the US military. (Please note that I use terms that are very general in nature, like “right wing” instead a more accurate term like “reactionary.” My friends are liberals. Their vocab is small.”

Me, “So you know how r/combatfootage is a right wing hate farm like r/politicalcompassmemes? Apparently Reddit is putting their foot down about them… by banning all videos from Palestinian perspectives. Really cool and good, right? (Link to post)”

Friend, “Are we talking about a group called combat footage or actual combat footage?”

Me, “R/combatfootage is a subreddit for sharing footage of actual combats and armed fighting. It’s pretty gruesome. Lots of really gross memes of Russians soldiers being droned. I’ve never been a fan of watching shit like that let alone making fun of a Russian teenager freezing his nuts off in a Ukrainian corn field getting killed by a grenade dropping on his head.”

Friend, “How is that right wing?”

Me, “Dehumanization is kinda step one for a lot of right wing radicalization. Plus equating people to a enemy figurehead. Stuff like, ‘All Russian soldiers are mindless orcs and just as sadistic as their leader Putin.’ Or, ‘All trans people are degenerate child molesters who want to brainwash your children like their leader Joe Biden.’ You know, bullshit like that.”

Friend, “The trans stuff and combat stuff aren’t really the same thing. How does that relate to combat footage? It’s kind of a stretch. Don’t get me wrong, trans bashing is real right wing but combat footage is pretty different. Maybe I’m not reading the comments but I do watch that stuff. If I go into combat I really want to be aware of a drone dropping a grenade on me when I’m taking a nap.”

Me, “The footage itself isn’t the problem, I guess. It’s the discourse and comments around the footage, and the presentation of it. What I’m saying is that the discussions around combat footage on Reddit are in a lot of ways similar to how bigots talk about queer activists in those ‘Ben Shapiro Owns Leftist Morons!’ videos.”

Friend, “Aren’t all comments sections full of monsters?”

Me, “Well yeah lol. But that doesn’t change how a lot of the videos on r/combatfootage are titled things like ‘10 Israelis killed tragically by HAMAS’ vs ‘100 rebels dead after IDF scrimmage’. So it’s not always comments. The posters are making a conscious choice of words in their titles. And a lot of them are fucked up.”

Friend, “This seems like a lot of spider webs and not super strong arguments. I think you might be right for maybe some people but are making too many over arching generalizations. Some of us can see both sides of the combat. Soldiers are Soldiers. They are enemies until they pass and then they are fellow fallen soldiers. Dehumanization is a part of war. There are a lot of papers about it. ‘How do I kill the person next to me? They are [racist term], Nazis, Antifa, MAGA assholes, etc.’”

Me, “That’s valid…from a soldier’s perspective I guess. You’re able to compartmentalize an enemy combatant from the person they are. Especially when not you yourself aren’t actually engaged in the conflict, right? But let’s be honest here, there’s not a whole lot of ethically minded soldiers on Reddit forums giving enemy combatants the same amount of respect. The most popular stuff I’ve seen is pretty tasteless. One video in particular stands out to me was shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It showed a group of Russian soldiers running and trying to find cover. And the footage was sped up slightly and Yakkity Sax was played over it as they all got picked off. And the comments were filled with “Putins dogs” and other dehumanizing language. If you laugh at that you’re being radicalized.”