Fred "Mitch" Linck, Socialist for US Senate in Connecticut

While the guy you're responding to is a fucking moron, there is still a world of difference between starving conscripts and professional volunteers.

not only are you an imperialist, but you have dogshit taste in anime.

shut the fuck up you FUCKING FOUR.

he is not truly sorry, and WHY THE FUCK is he their candidate? BECAUSE THEY'RE IMPERIALIST TROTS.

take off that flag you scum.

Please show me with the doll where Leon Trotsky touched you.

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I don't know, most likely because he's charismatic and because americans respect veterans a lot

I don't understand what is fucking wrong with people joining the military at a pretty young age, seeing war and the capitalist machine that spews it with their own eyes, and then coming back home and advocating for the end of said wars and political system after seeing the truth for what it is.

that respect is reactionary and if you use it you're a fucking dipshit opportunist who has no respect for the people he supposedly advocates for.

Most certainly, it's not a 1:1 equivalence and it does muddle the class character of the rank-and-file solider. But a good many do have proletarian backgrounds and joined because recruiters in high school promise them sweet benefits so writing them off as a whole would be silly.

Stop indulging in moral outrage as a degenerated replacement for material analysis.

they belong in jail, not on the ballot box

No, no, haven't you heard? Trots are lowkey Freikorps who are literally trying to rape Rosa Luxemburg's corpse.

It's true that veterans can have a sincere change of art but that would have to be thoroughly investigated by a reputable party (which this literally who trot sect is not).

Let me guess, that "reputable party" would have to be…whichever tiny ML party you personally see as the vanguard of the global revolution?

Take yer meds, "comrade". Even on her worst days, the BO was never this autistic.

And you shut your whore mouth about mai waifu. If wanting to fuck your little sister is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

TBH, I know literally nothing about Trotskyism and why it's hated by some folks here. By my mark, any socialist (or even Social Democrat) traction in the U.S. can only be a good thing.

Pretty much, yeah. Though what I'll never get is how every other vet seems to end up a Gadsen Flag-flying neocon who drank the Kool-Aid and laughs when sandniggers get killed. Is the propaganda machine really that strong?

Random American ML sects are also not reputable

Come on, soldiers in America get great health care and free education. The rank and file infantry here have a distinct class character of proletarian, it's the officers and on up who are unrepentant bourgeoisie. Being raised to believe a certain thing, while having your material condition and wants push you in the same direction, make for quite the lure to drag poor around this country into service. It's the poor and proletarian who go to fight and die overseas, killing naively for the imperialist cause, being misled to destroy their own allies and fellow human beings. The ones who should be jailed are those on high, the officers and generals who come from the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie.

I can't understand the remarkable lack of empathy and any kind of actual materialist basis that would cause a "socialist" to not only disagree with this, but to attack the prole soldiers for their "crimes." The Russian Revolution could not have been won without the soldiers.

Absolutely. The military recruits everywhere; high schools, universities, hell, I've even seen them try to recruit at an anime convention. Other than being hyped up about the "benefits" of joining, chances are most of these people don't really ever see much combat, so they come back with a hero's praise and they eat that shit up.

In fact, attacking working class soldiers on that basis is nothing but pure reactionary idealism.

Anything that isn't the combined forces of the proles, peasants, and lumpenproles standing in solidarity to democratize resource distribution isn't reputable.

They often (definitely not always) come from proletarian backgrounds, but US soldiers are TRAITORS to that class.

Why? They're not like police who keep the revolution in the home base down.

While I'd say you always wanna support the anti-imperialist factions fighting the imperalists in the wars directly, (tho, don't make the mistake of supporting reactionary/bourgeoisie/fascist/etc etc factions purporting to be "anti-imperialist") but for ur own revolution back home ya gotta win over/support the prole vets/soldiers. They're part of the proletariat too.

because they were reactionaries BEFORE joining the army

Ladies and gentleman, ideology at it's blindest.

Yeah, instead of keeping a non-existent revolution down in the USA, they murder real revolutionaries in foreign countries.

Much as American cops suppress the American proletariat, American soldiers suppress the proletariat of other countries. It's actually funny that you bring up cops when soldiers have caused immensely more suffering worldwide (not saying cops aren't bad). I suspect you have a problem with cops but not soldiers because you yourself or people you know have been oppressed by police but you don't know any of the millions of people killed, harmed, or dispossessed by the US military.

Revolution from the outside in has failed dog, capitalism cannot fail as a system by being attacked by an outside socialist force, that's how you get Social Democrats and Fascists to save the day.

what are you talking about you dumbass

Fighting American hegemony is actually existing socialism in the sense that it is the only activity that could possibly allow us to build socialism in the future. Everything else is just LARPing.

Sickly puritanical attitudes such as those remind me so much of the christian concept of the original sin, except that even blind fundamentalists tend to uphold some path of redemption, some confession to free you from the burden of your flawed past.

You are correct that the armed forces keep down revolution abroad, but discharged veterans do not, not unless they actively work towards such goals. Here we see a man actively working against such suppression, furthering our interests.
These individuals have perhaps participated in it in the past, but not anymore. Some regret what they've done, perhaps wishing to make up for their past sins.
Google Smedley Butler.

noice

I'm aware that such individuals can be reformed; hence . Nevertheless, I have no proof that such is the case with this would-be senator.

Your actually being huge fucking hypocrites here

We've had anons criticize this idea of "class essence" before

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Shouldn't we examine the ideas and the theory guiding him or his actions in and after the military rather than just letting the fact that he's a veteran determining whether he's condemned or not

Wow, saged and and all empathy for proletarians in the military banned? You people are so deluded(>>>/leftpol/)

A socialist movement isn't and shouldn't be about some antiquated desire for "justice", but instead doing what is absolutely necessary to abolish capitalism through whatever revolutionary force can mustered. Your denying people out of moralism, not out of any kind of logical praxis.(dude freikorps are comrades lmao)

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Jesus fucking Christ.

BO, how do you not have a mental breakdown literally every day of your life if it's THIS fucking easy to get you triggered?

Weird how there are millions of people in poverty in the US who would be capable of joining the military but most don't do so.
There are reasons beyond moralism to be highly skeptical of ex-military. They are significantly more likely than non-ex-military to be spies or saboteurs, and they likely carry over reactionary ideas even if they believe themselves to be reformed, such as thinking that the military itself is fine and it just needs slightly better leadership (this is what Chelsea Manning thinks).
And, for the last time, I don't recommend denying anyone SOLELY on the basis of being a veteran, but rather recommend significant investigation into the backgrounds and characters of such individuals before allowing them entry into a socialist organization (and certainly before making them any sort of leader or public figure).

Hey BO you stupid faggot, if it's impossible for soldiers to be revolutionaries then how do you explain Marx, Engels, and Lenin saying a victorious socialist revolution is absolutely impossible without the support of a significant section of the nation's military?

Oh, I forgot, you don't know how to debate people, so you're just gonna ban me instead

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Answer me you fucking retard

I'm not bo you dummy

There's actually a good analogy with the freikorps in America's various mercenary companies like Blackwater (or whatever they're going by these days) and if we were recruiting "private military contractors" I could definitely see the problem, but this guy is a normal vet. Normal veterans are not all "freikorps". You're off you're gourd OP.

I meant BO

The bans are linked to BO.

how about the US police forces which are full to the brim with vets, or the militia movement which is majority vets, or evidently the American socdem and trot parties, which can't stop running vets as their candidates?

Whatever "fighting American hegemony" is, it certainly doesn't look like a bunch of shitposters declaring their critical support for whatever fucking Islamist or right-wing movement strikes their fancy on the internet. These people aren't doing anything for you, they probably don't even know you exist, so there's no reason to support them. It is enough that you simply oppose imperialist war.

The closest we could get to a real movement to oppose imperialism is a real movement to promote socialist politics in your own country, and that starts with appealing to the self-interest of working and oppressed people in your own country, not moralizing about events happening an ocean or a continent away, and it certainly isn't LARPing as the premier of your own personal SSR and acting like your "critical support" actually means anything. You might as well be sending people in the third world "thoughts and prayers".

I'm going to post something I posted a while back before this IP gets banned as well

On a separate note, its never about whether you "hate" or "like" a group of people or a person. Its necessary to come to the acknowledgement that there may very well be noticeably nice or generally oblivious people whose removal may be necessary. Everyone ends up where they are by the inevitability of system, every role will eventually be filled by somebody and it will most likely be in their interest to do so. You can't very well blame a solider for being a solider just as much as you can blame a worker for being a worker or even a bourgeoisie for being a bourgeoisie. It is inevitable as well that someone with honestly "good" intentions or character will be in a position antagonistic to the working class while someone who you view as a scumbag will be your "comrade". People become shaped by their circumstances or class. People will continue to work in their rational self interest within the system till its very ceasing. At the end of the day its pointless to assign blame or talk of how someone is "good" or "bad"or "nice" or "scum", to "like" or "dislike". All that will ever matter in revolutionary terms is what is necessary or unnecessary, what needs to be done and what doesn't. Let go of your righteous indignation.

Going to miss effort posting, see you guys in a month.

I don't follow the other major us socialist parties, but who else is putting out a "vet?"

And stop acting like they're all the exact same - this guy here hasn't been in the military for a decade now, is a prole who's working the wage-slave grind like all of us, is actively fighting against the capitalist system through politics as well as work-place organizing & unionizing, and now is running a propaganda campaign calling for the destruction of Capitalism.

What the fuck are you (and all of you tearing this poor guy apart for having been suckered in to the army, through the US prop machine & material conditions) even doing? Are you doing anything remotely productive at all?

Chelsea Manning has been getting pushed hard by the Democrat Cops of America though as far as I'm aware she isn't an official member, see my post about one of the problems with her.
I FUCKING SAID YOU CAN TAKE VETS IF YOU INVESTIGATE THEM FIRST

Do you know what the freikorps was? It was a generic name for a number of German mercenary companies that typically hired military vets.

I don't know why you're so allergic to the military. Most Americans are blissfully ignorant of what the real purpose of their military is, most seem to think that the military is somehow trying to defend their country rather than maintain an empire, and the existence of the empire couldn't be further from recruiter's lips. Not to mention that the only real half-way functioning welfare state only really exists within the military (many Americans join the military to go to college on the GI bill), so I wouldn't take participation in the military has blanket approval for American empire.

yeah but post-wwii it was just gangs of vets in general. the darlings of German social democracy.

hence why socialists need to focus intense energy on countering US military propaganda, and that starts with ripping apart troop worship.

There's actually a lot of these "socialist veteran" electoral candidates, but Democrat Cops of America explicitly campaigned for this guy
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Carter_(politician)
newrepublic.com/article/145727/socialist-beat-one-virginias-powerful-republicans

You can combat troop worship without flipping to the other extreme end and vilifying vets.

just read what the tank user is saying, there's no point responding to your tripe

I've read what he said. What's your point, BO?

He even said that vets are okay so long as they're investigated.

you're an infantile idiot, you are literally incapable of reading comprehension and analysis. maybe you'll grow up in a few years, who knows.

Right here, boss.

What am I misinterpreting?

are you just going to keep blithely repeating yourself?

I'm not trying to, I'm just asking a question. Tank poster said it was okay to take vets so long as you investigated them. You said I somehow didn't understand him. Where did I go wrong?

Are you maybe referring to this post?

I've already voiced my disagreement with tank poster's perspective. There's a certain ideology that avoids the subject of empire entirely, and huge benefits to joining so that people who don't give a rat's ass about the military's purpose will join anyway because it's a job with free room and board, free healthcare and they can retire at 45 with benefits exclusive themselves, and get to go to college for free whenever they decide to re-enter civilian society. in fact, it's role as the largest and most functional welfare program is the real reason it's so popular with many proles.

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user you were taking to before still banned, even the fucking Paris Commune was orchestrated by non-conscripted military members

This, the National Guard were all volunteer and were fucking called "The Guard of the bourgeois" by frenchmen. They still lead the first major communist uprising ever.