At least 347 and up to 504 civilians, almost all women, children and elderly men, were murdered by U.S. Army soldiers. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, and some soldiers mutilated and raped children as young as 12.
only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., the leader of 1st Platoon in C Company, was convicted. He was found guilty of murdering 22 villagers and originally given a life sentence, but served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after his sentence was commuted.
Research has highlighted that the My Lai Massacre was not an isolated war crime. Nick Turse places it within a larger pattern of American atrocities enabled by deliberate policies from commanders, such as “free-fire zones” and “body counts”, as well as widespread racism amongst American military personnel. Many other atrocities were also covered up by commanders.
Why you should know about this: It is important to know about history so that we can learn from it, avoid the mistakes and atrocities of the past, and know which institutions have a history of performing atrocities, trying to cover them up, etc. and what that looks like.
We aren’t the ones deciding to go to war and cause a generation of men to have their psychological well-being put through a wood chipper. We don’t produce the propaganda that make men willing. We don’t make poverty rampant so men get desperate enough to enlist.
It doesn’t matter if we learn, plenty of us already know and it doesn’t change anything. People like Trump, like Putin, like Netanyahoo, don’t care about us or whoever ends up a victim of their ambitions. Putin and Netanyahoo know what their troops do and don’t give a fuck, they might even use it to their advantage.
The problem isn’t learning from the past, it’s that psychopaths are good at gaining power. They know and simply don’t care. If voters weren’t such ignorant imbeciles, maybe they wouldn’t vote for ppl like Trump, but they are, so here we are. If customers weren’t such ignorant, weak willed cowards incapable of not buying the new toys, we wouldn’t fund the people stealing all the property and making us poorer every generation. We are all victims of the decision-making prowess of the average voter, the average consumer.
I understand how you feel, but we actually do have the power to change our world. We need to first recognize that something needs to be done, build a popular consensus, network and build connections with like-minded people, and start a real movement for change.
Electoralism has not solved our problems in the past, and it won’t do so in the future. At best, it is harm prevention, and at worst, it’s a distraction from more effective efforts. I encourage people to vote for the candidates they feel best, but to be aware that it’s not a real, long term solution. It’s always just the best of two terrible candidates, both of whom ultimately serve the ruling class.
The problems we have did not start and will not end with Trump, they are in the fundamental roots of our society, and the road to change our society is a long and difficult one, but it is a journey we have to undertake. We are going to have to act if we want to live in a better world. Simply giving in to nihlism is not an option.
The people have never been roused to action simply because of a good idea, or a wise course of action. They are incapable of even identifying a good idea. Any individual that gains traction changing power structures is targetted and sometimes killed for it. We are all in a cage built by the wealthy and anything that’s effective is demonized through propaganda or made illegal and dealt with violence. We are also now on precipice of the greatest surveillance and propaganda system humanity has ever endured and people still don’t notice and stop supporting it. We are at the precipice of autonomous drone technology capable of killing that will be used for violence against the prisoners. All because the general population refuse to see the cage or the technologies that have built it, instead helping build their own system of subjugation. The average person is a threat and a traitor to their own interests.
Of course they have, all of human history is a story of ideas that have changed the world. Revolution is possible. You already see the problems, but you are so deep in the despair of the situation to see that a path out of it is possible. Don’t give up, help me instead.