The meme isn’t wrong but “westoid”? Only the terminally online could have dreamed up a term like that.
You know I just realized, incels also call women “femoids”…
Westoid? Are you one of those Lemmings who sound like bots that randomly go on an irrational tirade against the entire West whenever 'Murica does some shit but you still blame it on everyone else?
I assume we also blame Chinese citizens for everything the CCP does too or does that only apply to western nations.
Does it even apply for all western nations? What about Norway?
When was the last time China invaded a country again? I’ll wait…
Less than half a decade ago with Hongkong…
Are our blindspots this wide?
Wow China invaded… themselves???
They took their city back from foreign imperialists. Get fucking real.
Foreign imperialists consisting of residents that want their freedom who already were independent from their prior occupiers?
This is one way to say you don’t support freedom in a very literal anti democracy sense.
Did you even read the first paragraph? It literally says China’s offence was retaliation after Vietnam invaded Cambodia. You’re comparing this to unprovoked western aggression. Y’all need literacy…
- You asked for when china invaded another country not about their motivation. This is an example of China invading a sovereign country.
- Vietnam invaded Cambodia to stop a genocide.
If we are going to allow these excuses, every single bit of western aggression had its own flimsy justifications as well.
Not sure about “last time”, but this is pretty famous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_China
In recent years they have colonised more subtly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative#Accusations_of_neo-colonialism_and_debt-trap_diplomacy
plus all their bullshit around the nine dash line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratly_Islands#Conflicts_in_the_21st_century
LMAO 1951
I suggest you learn about Tibet’s history as well. They were a slave state before China liberated them. Dalai Lama has been shitting and pissing himself for decades trying to get his slaves back lol.
Those islands also belong to China. If you think defending it from western imperialism is “bullshit” you might not actually be a leftist…
I would caution against attributing altruistic motivations to the actions of nation states. The Spratly Islands are having their ecosystem trashed so the various powers can have a fucking dick measuring contest over imaginary lines on a map. So far a bunch of fishermen have been killed and irreplaceable coral reefs have been destroyed, all in service of building artificial islands for reasons that vary depending on the state actor.
Debt trap diplomacy is a problem with every large power including BRICS, the west is currently the biggest offender because the World Bank and the IMF has the implicit backing of US military power projection. It is easier to strong arm “client states” into onerous loan terms and “free trade zones” when there is the threat of their nation being labeled as “supporting terrorism” and have a carrier battle group off shore within days.
I have no reason to doubt that once that BRICS has the ability to project power, basically whenever China has several modern carrier battle groups, they won’t operate any differently than the west does now. The flag and justification will be different but the global south will continue to be exploited.
Former Marine here. This illustrates the prevailing excuse endemic to the whole imperialist war machine. Every bloody cog has some way of passing blame up the chain. I fixed electronics so I never had to personally pull a trigger but the electronics I fixed helped fix aircraft whose pilots and aircrew were responsible for atrocities I can only imagine. I used to rationalize that this separation erased my culpability but now I understand it actually enhanced it. At the level of maintenance I was at a broken twidgit tip unaccounted for could ground an entire air wing for several days.
If you have made the massive mistake of joining the military please use your power of being a rusty cog. Report every chip on every tool to maintenance control, send every piece of gear missing a screw or emp braiding in for parts/DRMO don’t run to the hardware store for a quick replacement, CDI time is valuable and limited so make sure to never skip a CDI verification step and ask for their opinion on every anomalous reading, if you drop a torque wrench or break a cal seal ground that gear and send it back to the shop, take your time and verify every measurement, don’t gundeck MAFs, and follow all procedures to the letter. Don’t be afraid to involve maintenance control to make sure your shop is fully compliant and not taking shortcuts. If you had just sat on your rack and refused to work you would just get replaced, now you have weaponized the regulations and bureaucracy in a way that covers your ass for the rest of your enlistment while crippling the whole air wing. You can now get out and try to make amends for the catastrophic damage you have done to the world. However if you reenlist fucking die in a fire.
I regret every day that I joined and wish I was aware of the evil the system I was a part of was perpetrating. The few times I talk about my time in the Marines in the last few years is to warn people about how fucked up it is, how they brainwash and strip the individuality from recruits, and most importantly the reality of what the US Military does to innocent people all over the world and the environment.
There is a reason that 18 is a prime recruiting age - not enough life knowledge to know better.
It’s pure exploitation by the state of the ignorance and naivety of the average recruit as well as the capitalist system weaponizing its own failings. Most people in my boot camp platoon were under 20 and the vast majority of us came from disadvantaged backgrounds. I didn’t know the term at the time but most people joined for the hope of class mobility along with getting the fuck out of wherever they came from. It also showed the strength of the US propaganda machine, especially in the immediate wake of 9/11, where the media was complicit in a massive coverup of US/ISAF atrocities and a whitewashing of the savage inhuman brutality that is implicit in war.
That does not excuse our ignorance since millions of people our age marched against the wars, especially Iraq. In retrospect we unconsciously chose cowardice and selfishness and cloaked it in a delusion of honorable sacrifice.
Prefrontal cortex stops developing at 23 to 25. Let that sink in as you remember all the decisions you made prior to 23.
Thats actually just pop science and a misunderstanding on one studies wording.
We’ve not reason to believe there is any sudden stoppage of development vs trailing off.
You recognize what’s going on and not brush it off, you didn’t directly kill and rape people, so that puts you really on the good side.
Westoid? Average?.. so like, millions if not billions of people, all believe this to be a just argument?
We both know this is where your argument falls apart but damn it must be cathartic to post it knowing some idiot “westoid” will try to prove their virtue to you.
The capitalist version of the Nuremberg excuse… “We all have a mortgage to pay”
Just following orders
Bam!
“Just doing my job.”
Nuremberg o’clock yet?
How is this “westoid” logic? As if no other country does this kind of bullshit.
We only have a chance at peace when ALL soldiers refuse to invade foreign lands.
We only have a chance at peace when ALL soldiers refuse to invade foreign lands.
You’re not wrong, it’s just that that statement historically doesn’t apply to the US. Very few US wars started because we were attacked.
that… exactly means US soldiers need to lay down their arms and refuse their commanding officers orders. but more importantly it means that those of us who get it have to talk to soldiers about that they are not out there in the world defending freedom. they have been lied to and what they’re really doing is stealing wealth for oligarchs
So US soldiers need to refuse to invade foreign lands. How does that not apply to the US?
As if no other country does this kind of bullshit.
Most countries can’t conceive of operating at the scale of the US. And a great deal of that military surplus is derived from wealth and labor looted overseas.
You’re stacking up Jeffrey Dalmar against the Enola Gay.
So how is the original picture “westoid logic” if it only applies to the USA?
It applies to the entire Western block. You can toss in everyone from the French to the Philippines.
The US just happens to be the folks operating on a global scale. You’ll find American military goons engaged in this kind of wreckless, pointless bloodshed from the coast of Venezuela to the highlands of Yemen.
Wait, then why did you show that photo? US spends more on army than China therefore US bad, but in the same photo China spends more than France therefore France still bad?
Adjusted for purchasing power, China is pretty close to the US in defense spending.
Adjusted for purchasing power,
The yuan doesn’t buy $8 worth of commodity or labor on the global market. Crazy that anyone would believe this.
Who said anything about the global market? Labor is the single biggest cost to the US military and the gap between What a US private earns and what a Chinese private earns is enormous. This is true of all Chinese labor; weapons and kit manufactured in country are all cheaper for them than imports. And the cost of US weapons are hugely inflated: in the US, the most important consideration in defense appropriations has long been steering the most jobs possible to the most congressional districts possible efficiency be damned.
If you are considering that then you would have to divide it to be per capita as well
And maybe not only foreign lands, but also their own ones.
The problem there is that it allows a foreign invader to invade everyone that is peaceful. I think the first step needs to be to refuse to march across the border.
The rest of the world would like to sincerely apologize for making up 0.8% of all unprovoked invasions and war crimes in the last 100 years. We really should do better.
0.8%? At that point I have to ask wtf you consider the west to include as it sounds like you must be ignoring anything done by everyone else.
not every other country is the usa, and not every other country is meddling in every world situation and creating world situations.
sit the fuck down redwhiteandblue underwear, this comment wont hurt you.
Ahem take a look at Russia right now ahem. Or Israel, or China…
Has China been bombing people recently?
2 questions bombing only specifically, and what do you consider recent? Do the Uyghurs count? Tibet? All the shit they pull in the South China sea? Korea? Vietnam? Shit they might be bombing Taiwan soon.
Shit they might be bombing Taiwan soon.
Western chauvinists have so little to hold against China that they have to resort to things that China isn’t doing, but “might” do in the future.
Conviniently skipped all the other points
Oh no, someone criticized China. 🥺
Not surprised to see this jerk face banned.
I support their intervention in Korea. America was the aggressor in that conflict and the Chinese defended Korean sovereignty from imperialism. Did they bomb Uyghurs without my knowledge? Even if you believe everything western media says about Chinese treatment of Uyghurs their conditions are remarkably better than Palestinians. When Tibetan peasants were freed from serfdom and the culture of the Tibetan ruling class that justified their oppression was suppressed was that equivalent to American imperialism? To the Palestinian genocide? The shit China does in the South China sea is military postering at worst. Nothing they have done has left a place as ruined as Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan. Nothing has come close the the shear destruction we see at the hands of western imperialism. They are not comparable. You can exaggerate their actions and lie about them to an extreme and they still do not compare to what our countries have done to the world.
Vietnam was fucked up though and I will die mad about it
Ah, good old “their war of imperialism” vs “our liberation of good people”. Right after “oh yeah, you think our genocide is bad? Check out tvis different genocide on the other side of the planet”.
You realise two things can be bad at once, right?I didn’t say “not bad” I said “not equivalent” and “not comparable”. China does not belong on that list next to Israel and Russia. That’s just patently ridiculous.
If you really need me to say it, yes china has done bad things lol
It’s telling that they have to go all the way back to Vietnam or Korea to try (and fail) to find things equivalent to what the West is going currently.
Ok explain the South China sea bull shit and stealing international waters and being the aggressor to the Philippines an neighbors? Genocide of the Uyghurs? You just jumped right over that part and used only a select part of the statement to make a weak ass strawman argument.
Whataboutism
Yeah? I’m looking at China, and I’m not seeing anything.
Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South China Sea, India… off the top my head.
India and China have a border dispute using sticks and rocks.
I am not American
The point of the Latuff cartoon is valid, I just really dislike the smell of the word “westoid”.
The term smacks of eating just as much propaganda as the people that they’re complaining about.
smell
tbf, the word smells better than the people (“peoploid”) it refers to.
He, language changes, new informalisms drop constantly. it is better to accept it and move on, otherwise growing old will get really annoying, and you do not want to spend any portion of your life complaining about those damn kids
We used to critique whig historiography, maybe we need to critique whig linguistics too. “Westoid” reeks of campism, that’s not something to just accept and move on.
yhea, but judging language is something I don’t want to waste energy doing. as long as I’m confident I understood the meaning I don’t care.
And often people adopt those terms ironically. or spread naturally by kids grabbing new words.
it might be a slight red flag, but too many false positives to care.
Call me old fashioned, but language matters. And if you scroll through this thread you will see that OP is pretty much using it as a campist slur, not ironically.
I gotta respect my leftists elders, keep an eye on campists🫡
We don’t need an age/authority framework to have a discussion.
was trying to jokingly do an ok boomer.
“Our Glorious Eastern Soldiers”
“Their heathen rapist genocidal evil brutish westoids”
The message is good, the title is needlessly inflammatory, as if ANY major country has clean hands.
Russia is leveling cities in self defense I swear.
Three diverging things can be all correct at the same time.
is this the infamous whataboutism? we could probably attribute stuff like this to “eastern” soldiers as in any war. however, the scale isn’t even comparable.
no other group of countries did as much of this in history by a long shot if not for the evil brutish westoids. no other empire commited as much violence on a global scale.
the US’s military budget in comparison to the world only begins to tell the story of misery and poverty westoids rain down upon us here in the places they claim to be protecting right now.
The level of historical knowledge that is only possible to achieve by registering at .ml
plugging your ears to the level of destruction western powers sponsor won’t make it go away. and it makes me wonder if i’m really in a leftist comm.
because god forbid we point out the crimes of the west without going “but these orientals are still bad tho!!!”
Lol, claiming that Russia is oriental is pretty wild. That is just about as accurate as saying America is Indian.
Russia is a western nation that brutally colonized its eastern territory. This doesnt make them Asian, just like European colonization of America doesnt make it native American.
There’s actually a long history of Russia being orientalized due to orthodox christianity. Their culture is othered and generalized through this lense. Do look into it, it is an interesting subject if you like that sort of thing.
orientalized due to orthodox christianity.
Russian orthodox christianity is separate from oriental orthodoxy practiced in places like Syria or Armenia, who follow nicene Christian traditions. They may be othered by their western European counterparts, but eastern orthodoxy is fairly normal in places like Greece. I don’t think it would be appropriate to label them as oriental, especially in the modern understanding of the word.
In the modern context the orientalization of eastern europe is less severe for sure and Russia orthodoxy is more understood but I think its arguable that everything east of germany has experience with being orientalized
Ehhh… I’d have to disagree with that. The meaning of “the orient” has changed drastically over time, but even in the early days the furthest west it would encompass would be the caucuses, and even that’s pretty rare.
Oh boy, you’re gonna be pissed when you find out the continent Russia is located in…
You say that like the modern polity/culture didn’t grow out of Europe and spread east or like minority ethnic groups in Asian Russia aren’t treated worse then Muscovites and ethnic Russians.
It’s both, so what’s your point?
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Russia,[b] or the Russian Federation,[c] is a country in Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world, spanning eleven time zones and sharing land borders with fourteen countries.[d] With a population of over 140 million, Russia is the most populous country in Europe and the ninth-most populous country in the world.
How can you be so confident, and yet so wrong about everything?
Ahh… So when a white person lives in Asia they are oriental?
Yes. Oriental has nothing to do with race, and you would know that if you had spent 3 seconds googling before you made this snarky statement.
The term oriental is often used to describe objects and (in a derogative manner) people coming from the Orient/eastern Asia.
The term Oriental may sound dated or even be seen as a pejorative, particularly when used as a noun.[20] John Kuo Wei Tchen, director of the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Institute at New York University, said the basic criticism of the term began in the U.S. during a cultural shift in the 1970s. He has said: “With the U.S.A. anti-war movement in the '60s and early '70s, many Asian Americans identified the term ‘Oriental’ with a Western process of racializing Asians as forever opposite ‘others’”,[21] by making a distinction between “Western” and “Eastern” ancestral origins.
Saying something is from the orient means its from Asia… Calling a person or a group of people like an army oriental is saying they are Asian.
Read your own source… Or just use common sense?
When have you ever heard of a European living in Europe being referred to as oriental?
Russia is in Asia…
Americans really not beating the illiteracy allegations 🤣
Lol, the irony is neither of you even read the source…
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Oriental = Asian to you I guess.
Americans really not beating those illiteracy allegations.
Lol…I would have deleted that too…
Don’t be chiding other people when you literally just used the word oriental without bothering to check what it actually meant.
Yes, but whenever someone hints that an “eastern” country might not be the best, whataboutisms fly out everyone’s collective asses.
If it’s okay to criticize one way, it should be okay to criticize (when appropriately applicable) the opposing way.
You do see the fucking irony here, right?
I do, but apparently pointing it out gets me down votes.
You didn’t point it out though
“Our Glorious Eastern Soldiers”
“Their heathen rapist genocidal evil brutish westoids”
The message is good, the title is needlessly inflammatory, as if ANY major country has clean hands.
Reading comprehension is clearly low in this thread.
That is, indeed, you completely missing the irony. The exact opposite of “pointing it out”
You, and most of the comments here, are literally whatabouting out of your collective asses because you heard a hint of critism of western countries.
To be fair, more people join the army for Healthcare or to not be homeless than for a college education. Poverty is the main driver of recruitment in the US.
lol, “if you lack adequate healthcare and housing, it’s understandable you would go abroad and murder innocent people.”
Absolutely insane logic, and I know for a fact you wouldn’t even entertain these excuses if the victims were white people.
In my opinion this is a reductive take on the issue. Realize that human beings can make mistakes and that not everyone understands the world the same way or even has the same knowledge.
I won’t excuse murdering innocent people, but I don’t think most people joining the US military go into it thinking “yippie time to murder innocents.”
I think most people who join have been indoctrinated (usually from a very early age) to think that the military is something it is not. While this does not excuse their behavior, it helps us to understand that the issue is not about an individuals misguided decision to join the military but rather the large scale manipulation/brainwashing of poor people. Blaming the soldier makes sense if they do something horrible or if they are truly aware of how bad the military’s actions are and continue to serve, but blaming ALL soldiers just for the act of joining is pointless because most of them don’t fully understand what is going on.
I don’t think most people joining the US military go into it thinking “yippie time to murder innocents.”
Everyone joining the army understands fully that military force is violent and involves killing people. The army isn’t some vague concept that people are getting tricked into. Violent military force is one of the most celebrated concepts in America. What the absolute fuck are you talking about?
Well I am talking about how I think most people who join the military are brainwashed.
More explicitly: yes they know that the military is about violent force, but I think most of them have a warped worldview pressed on them from a young age (often from an upbringing in a military family) that describes the situation very differently from how you or I would see it. They are indoctrinated to understand their participation in the military as a duty - both to their family and to an inner voice. I think most of them would say (when first joining) that the military kills “bad guys,” which obviously isn’t true but they have been conditioned to see it that way and much of history (especially concerning military atrocities) is omitted from their upbringing. So in my opinion your take that they are joining with the intention of murdering innocent people isn’t really accurate for most of them.
You don’t apply this logic to nazis do you? Their victims were worthy enough for you to dismiss excuses like this, but not the victims of modern imperialism. One group of victims were white Europeans, and the other group are Arab/Muslim. I see exactly who you are. You’re not slick.
Yes I do in fact apply this same exact logic to soldiers in WWII - just as it applies to many of the people who made up fighting forces in the past. There is a long, loooong history of using dogma, duty, brainwashing, even intoxication, to manipulate people into fighting to the death.
If you read firsthand accounts from German soldiers (or really ANY nationality) during WWII, you will quickly realize that they were heavily propagandized in a way we can only begin to understand today. Young German men during WWII had grown up under Nazi rule and had it drilled into their heads at every possible moment. And the choice was to conform or to be shunned (or more likely killed). This does not excuse any of the atrocities they committed, but gives context to their actions and shows how blaming only the soldiers misses a big part of the picture. The same goes for atrocities perpetrated upon the German people by the red army, or for atrocities carried out by IDF in Palestine, etc…
Also, I think you should reflect on the language you use in your comments. I am attempting to be polite, but your comments are outwardly rude.
Sorry if I’m not the kindest to a person that is defending nazis.
Also you’re framing my point as being only critical of soldiers and not the administrations that use them, which is just incorrect and a poor read of my comments. Truly insane what you’re trying to minimize right now.
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We condemned and still condemn every attack on civilians who are not participant in any sort of aggression or colonialism (otherwise it will be called resistance)
That’s the difference between you and us
The Muslim world suffered the most from terrorism done by people who claim to be Muslim or doing it for Islam. Algeria was in the 90s the most affected country by terrorism by people who claim they are doing it for Islam, nobody supports when this shit is done to Europeans too.
Comrades, is not supporting capitalist invasions the same as terrorists attacks?
Jesus Christ, listen to yourself.
I always make it a point to NEVER utter the words “thank you for your service” to these so called “heroes”. However, I do say this to people who have actually earned this phrase, such as teachers, nurses, etc.
Those words and honours are reserved for actual service workers.
Although they better unionize the fuck up already
“I was just following orders” is what all the Nazis said.
I yearn for the day that American soldiers are put on trial and hanged for their crimes against humanity.
The US has given itself permission to invade the Hague before allowing that to happen.
Ooh, ooh, can we start with the Commander in Chief? Why did the assassins have to miss 😥
All Americans are welcome to (re)try. They even have an Amendment for that.
I believe that should not be a valid defense, ever.
If you’re not OK with what you’re ordered to do, you should not do it (and we should have a system of justice and social support which honors that).
If you actually do something you’re responsible for that deed, ie possibly culpable.
If you’re being pressured/manipulated/… the person doing so is responsible for that, so culpable as well - but not in place - if applicable.
German law actually contains an apologetic first step in this direction, called ‘Remonstration’. I think we can all guess how it wound up in that particular legal system.
Besides being able to point at the article and say “see, we fixed it”, I’m not aware of a single (let alone significant) case where it was actually/successfully used.
In somewhat interesting contrast, German law does not codify protection of whistle blowers, for example.
I have mixed feelings on the matter. When the state can force you to comitt atrocities each person is going to have to weigh at what point are they willing to forfeit their own lives.
If your military is committing war crimes then they’re probably not above imprisioning you for a very long time or just executing you. So at what point does your morals outweigh your innate drive to survive? This gets more complicated if you have a family back home.
Of course this goes away when you are looking at a voluntary military. Part of the reason the US went this route. They can grab the desperate/poor and feed them into the war machine. The average citizen then ignores the suffering and the country never creates ladders out of poverty so they can keep a steady supply of soldiers.
All in all it’s pretty fucked
Had someone from the IDF explain to me why they are the most moral army in the world.
He told me that they are ordered to disobey illegal order (wow,really? like every army in the world technically does?)
He then explained that they have absolute trust in orders because it is the most moral army in the world, and defying an order is a crime, because the order cannot be immoral or illegal because the IDF is the most moral army in the world.
I think I stopped the conversation around there, because I doubt they can understand basic logic that goes beyond propaganda.
Last I heard of him he was sad because he got alcoholism from doing minor war crimes in gaza, just casually talking about the things he looted, which he considers “rescuing” from the rubble.
In somewhat interesting contrast, German law does not codify protection of whistle blowers, for example.
No, there is the Hinweisgeberschutzgesetz from 2023, which does codify whistleblowing. I have no idea how good it is and it is new enough that it has to prove itself in the real world, but then again codify is a low bar.
Disagree. One of the main purposes of military training (in most, maybe all, cases) is to strip everyone of their individual autonomy.
If you’re not OK with what you’re ordered to do, you should not do it
The problem with this that soldiers are explicitly trained to not even consider their own judgement of their orders. They don’t stop, judge, then pull the trigger. They just pull the trigger. If they disobey an order, they’re court martialed. It’s the military’s justice system that then gets to decide if the order was unlawful. The system is designed to strip soldiers of their power.
If a 28yo enlists, they share some responsibility simply by knowingly joining an immoral organization. But most new recruits are in high school. They don’t know what the hell is going on.
All this to say: the leaders who have stripped young boys of their autonomy in order to have them commit horrific acts that will scar them for life in order to protect their own regime, they’re the real villains. I see the individual soldiers as victims.
If you’re being pressured/manipulated/… the person doing so is responsible for that, so culpable as well - but not in place - if applicable.
This would then also be valid for young people being brainwashed into blindly following orders. Nonetheless, I feel like they still are partly responsible. And all those soldiers abusing their power and committing atrocities are also responsible for that (although the structure they are in also enables and produces this abuse).
German law does not codify protection for whistle blowers
gross. Although in the US the law is pretty much useless, so I guess at least Germany is honest? 🤷♀️
Holy fuck, how did this shitshow slip through the cracks?
