Polly on Twitter asks, “Is there a pejorative term for military like what pig is for cops?”
Dear Polly,
No, but there should be. We need to start stigmatizing that shit.
It is not okay to be a stormtrooper for the western empire. It is not honorable. It is not worthy of respect. If you are a westerner who is considering joining the military, you should choose a different career path instead.
Don’t thank soldiers for their “service”. Don’t play along with the lie that your nation’s soldiers fight for your rights or your freedom. It only encourages more people to join the military when you do that. It’s irresponsible and unethical.
If you live in the west and you join the military, at no point will you ever be acting in defense of your country; you will be murdering people who are trying to defend their country. You will be murdering them in order to make rich men richer, to make powerful men more powerful, and to help bend the world to the rule of tyrants. And for no other reason.
Whenever I point out obvious facts like these I always get brainwashed westerners in my replies telling me I mustn’t say such things, because you should always place 100% of the blame on the powerful people who send the troops to war and 0% of the blame on the troops themselves. I have less than zero respect for these mindless objections. They are the reflexive product of blind indoctrination.
It serves nobody but the powerful to pretend soldiers bear no moral culpability for their actions in the nations they attack. It just makes it easier to recruit personnel into the armed forces of the most destructive power structure on earth, and to get them to obey immoral commands once they are enlisted.
These are grown adults engaging in behavior that would incur the harshest legal penalties in the books if they were inflicted upon westerners in their own country without the blessing of the powerful. It is only because they’re being inflicted on foreigners in the global south with the go-ahead from the relevant authority figures that participating in mass murder can be framed as acceptable.
It is true that these individuals are less evil than the oligarchs and empire managers who start the wars and hand out the orders, but that’s a low bar. It’s not okay to join the military of the western empire, and it’s not okay to obey orders when you are told to murder people. Never do these things. Ever.
Joining the military should be regarded as the most dishonorable career path anyone could possibly choose. Whatever’s the most obscene and undignified way to earn money your imagination can come up with, joining the military as a westerner should rank significantly lower than that. It should be as taboo and unappealing as it gets.
The crimes of the empire will continue until people stop facilitating those crimes. Anyone who volunteers to help the empire inflict murder and devastation on targeted populations should be regarded as the lowest of the low.
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Caitlin Johnstone 