The best time to mount a resistance is years ago. The second best time is today.
The arrival and processing of an entire transport of Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, a region annexed in 1939 to Hungary from Czechoslovakia, at Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland, in May of 1944. The picture was donated to Yad Vashem in 1980 by Lili Jacob.There’s a genocide happening in Palestine right now and anyone calling out the terrorist IDF army gets called “antisemetic”.
It is much easier to accept the situation than to suffer and try to change it. This is how we live even now…
If I remember my history correctly, a major point of the gas chambers was that the prisoners were convinced that they had been sent to a labour camp, and were sent into the chambers to shower. By convincing people that they weren’t in immediate life threatening danger, it was much easier to control them.
Of course, nobody could even imagine the absolute horror of the Holocaust. If you told me that someone would take hundreds of thousands (millions) of fit, working age people and simply wipe them out, I would have a much easier time believing the other guy that said “no, you’re being sent to take a shower before being placed in a labour camp. Life will be hard, but obviously we wouldn’t waste resources just killing everyone on the spot.”
That’s a good point
Of course, nobody could even imagine the absolute horror of the Holocaust.
The Armenians could. As could the Nambians. As could the residents of Nanjing, China and Gando, Korea.
But these mass murders were so chronically under-reported - even deliberately suppressed - in media controlled by the political opposition and its allies, that it was possible to never know they’d happened much less consider they could happen locally.
I would also note how the Israel assassination of journalists across Gaza and the West Bank has gone a long way towards suppressing the size and scale of their genocide, particularly at the upper reaches of western media. You absolutely can talk to people in DC or London or Berlin who will (either deliberately or out of their own cloistered media consumption habits) not recognize the scale of atrocity.
But even if you could have convinced someone staring into a cattle car in Poland or Austria that this was the beginning of the end, what would you expect this person to do? Surrounded by armed men who were, in turn, surrounded by tanks and supported by bombers, how were they expected to respond?
The countries had already been defeated. Their people had already been broken on the wheel of war. They were civilians without the training, much less the materials, to mount any kind of guerrilla campaign. They had no Che Guevara or Ho Chi Mein or even a Huey P. Newton to rally them. There certainly wasn’t a Mao on hand to lead them in a Long March for their survival and eventual return.
They’d put their trust in the established state lords. Those lords had failed. And now there was nothing standing between them and the gas chambers. Feels trite to say they all should have rushed the guards in a mob, when the Charge of the Light Brigade was the last famous incident of such epic folly.
Of course, historically people “could have imagined”. I’m talking about seeing this through the eyes of a civilian that is brought off a train wagon and told they are being put in a labour camp. In that situation, I think very few people have it in them to imagine that their captors are organising the largest and most industrialised mass murder in history, and that they won’t even make it out of the “showers” alive.
I don’t expect them to launch a revolt, but with prisoners outnumbering guards 100:1, I don’t think so many would have walked to their execution in orderly files. I think there would have been a lot more kicking and screaming involved if they knew what was coming. Remember that these weren’t strangers either: We’re talking about whole families and all their friends sitting calmly together on the train and walking willingly into the gas chambers. That only happens if people are lured into thinking this is something other than it is.
Apart from a broken spirit, there’s also a lot of denial. “This can’t be happening. It can’t be that bad. It all will be over soon. We’ll make it through.”
prisoners outnumbering guards 100:1
100 unarmed, malnourished civilians, many of them old, young or female and almost all of them never having killed or even seriously hurt anyone in their lives vs 1 murderous soldier who has already murdered dozens of people today alone, armed with training, guns and fortified positions… It’s not a winnable fight. Maybe if you put exactly these 101 people in one room the 100 could stand somewhat of a chance, but that’s not what happened here.
Look for example at the referenced Sonderkommando revolt. From what I can find, the Sonderkommando consisted of able-bodied men in somewhat ok condition. They were pretty much the best-suited for a revolt. And still at the end of the revolt, 452 Sonderkommando members were dead and only 3 Nazi soldiers died. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
Also, compared to the regular prisoners, the Sonderkommando members actually knew what was going on and that nobody was supposed to make it out of the camp alive. They managed to keep the extermination a secret even inside the camps.
I never said the kicking and screaming would have been successful. I’m just trying to explain why I think so many people went quietly, and pointing out that most people, when faced with the prospect that their entire family, all their friends, and they themselves face imminent death if they do nothing will tend to do something, regardless of whether it’s likely to succeed.
The time for retreat and insurrection was the day Kraków fell, not the day you stepped out of a prison train.
Go read about the Colditz Castle Prison Break. That involved full units of British POWs collaborating in the waning days of Nazi occupation. And it still failed, getting virtually everyone killed.
To be fair some did try but there was surprisingly little resistance
I mean, you can see this to some degree in cities like LA or Chicago or even Houston. Collective resistance efforts happen. You can - and people occasionally do - throw rocks or fire guns or even just fling their sandwiches at the occupying paramilitary.
But much like with the occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan or the capture of Syria or the bombings in Yemen or the invasion of Ukraine or the militarization of far-right governments in Guatamala and El Salvador and Honduras and Argentina, the state can bring a lot more violence against a nascent resistance movement than the movement can repel.
Without an active armed ally - like the French during the American Revolution or the Soviets in Vietnam - a government with the benefit of mass surveillance and air power and armored infantry is very difficult to dislodge.
Just look at Cuba, a country that’s been suffering the armed occupation of Guantanamo Bay for 60 years. Or Gaza, for that matter.
😭
How many people are upvoting this while still eating meat and not realising they are the fascists in the non-human animal’s world?
ROFL!!!
Damn g chill out, vegans be out there in Hollywood pestering studios to use ethically killed worms in their films while real people are getting glassed. Maybe create an hierarchy of empathy before treating a chicken equal to a human’s life
Now is not the time.
While OP’s comment was a bit unpromtped, the irony is glorious.
“Maybe create a hierarchy of empathy” is certainly a take
You sure you thought this through?
Do animals know what fascists are?
No, but we do.
Believe it or not, fascism in the human world is generally considered to be more concerning by most people. I sure do wonder why.
So you agree that this is in fact fascism but you don’t care because the victims are lesser than you? Gee, I wonder where I heard that before.
I choose to stay alive over giving my life to my neighbour, not because they are an inherently lesser being, but because I value my own life over another.
Not eating a burger will literally kill me
You rn.
Im fine with being against factory farming cause that shit is fucked and causes exreme suffering.
But I am an animal like any other and I eat meat. Like many other animals. We evolved as omnivores. We evolved to eat meat as well as plants. I do not feel guilty eating meat. It would be like judging a lion for eating a gazelle. Thats nature. Thats life.
I dont buy into this idea that we are somehow above it all. We are part of the food cycle.
I dont buy into this idea that we are somehow above it all.
You do in fact buy into that idea and I can show you with a single example: Do you consider consent important for procreation?
Also, Omnivore tells you what you can eat, not what you have to.
Thats a terrible analogy and you know it. Arguing in bad faith aint gonna get you anywhere.
It’s not an analogy, it’s an example that shows you being “above it all”. Just saying “nature tho” is pretty lazy and I think you know that.
Do you consider consent important for procreation?
I mean, you really should also consider consent when you’re doing it just doing it for fun.
But in this case it doesn’t matter since you can’t get pigs pregnant anyway.
Le epic funny reddit comment
Also, Omnivore tells you what you can eat, not what you have to.
This is true. Only a vegan tells you what you have to.
😂
I am a specists, and I believe equal rights and dignity extend to all humans. And farm animals are not humans.
Now, obviously morality shifts as the society evolves so I am open to reconsider my position. Maybe the day we let farm animals vote will be the day I become vegan.
Other animals are lesser than humans. This is why people think self driving cars who have to crash into either a human or an pet should crash into the latter.
What is true about those other animals that, if it were true about a human, would also make you consider the human to be lesser?
What makes other animals comparable to humans? If you had to choose between a human and a pet dying, which would it be? Could you go up to a holocaust survivor and with a straight face tell them that their suffering is equally bad to a domesticated cow?
Yeah I figured that you couldn’t answer my question. Maybe think on that.
ntt is a fallacious line of argument. it falls prey to the spectrum fallacy.
Could you go up to a holocaust survivor and with a straight face tell them that their suffering is equally bad to a domesticated cow?
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severity is not the only axis of comparison
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Hail Sheepler!
May his glorious wool forevermore cover our eyes
Is my farm cat a fascist in the mice world? I’ve been concerned for a while now.
Does your cat build death factories like this one? Then maybe.
No one is coming to save you, my friends. Strength, as always, lies in community building.
Also better written: “my friends: Strengthen yourselves together, you can achieve miracles when you bond.”
@AntiBullyRanger they better remain peaceful. They don’t want to give the meatpacker an excuse to harm them
Then the sheep mounts a resistance by doing the best it can (killing the farmer or shouting very loudly), see that whatever it has done hasn’t changed anything and that nobody is joining or paying attention to it, and then it’s an express ticket to meatpacking plant or worse.
Mounting a resistance is much harder than “just doing something”
Giving up before trying is the best way to help the enemy
Have you tried the French Method
If Americans aren’t even willing to protest, truly protest, they’ve already lost their country to the first tinpot dictator that came along. It’s horrifying seeing someone downvote a post like yours that urges them to defend themselves.
America is lost and it’s because of Americans.
French method is how we got in the situation we are in, it literally led us from the rule of aristocrats to rule of capitalists
It’s better to not even try. Sounds very American.
It’s more of a critique of the “just do something” culture. Killing one farmer will just result in that farmer getting replaced with an identical cog in the machine, it also won’t magically inspire all the sheep to kill their oppressors as seen historically with humans - that kind of thing is only found within books.
Pretty much the only kind of effective action if the goal is to change things rather than merely feel good in the moment is organization, but it is a slow, tedious and dangerous process - it’s not something that can be achieved immediately or individually.
I grew up playing baseball. I’d rather go down swinging.
I used to think that a good death would be in my sleep, in my old age. Now I think of that as a waste. I’ve come to the conclusion that my end will have a twist ending, and I intend to make the best of it.
and then it’s an express ticket to meatpacking plant or worse.
Where the sheep was going anyways in the first place. If we go out, why not make the best of it?
Cool, we’ll wait for you to do something instead of being edgy on the internet.
Damn! I thought the OP ignited a flame and you’d join the fray. I’m the same as you I guess, being flippant to the folk who are concerned but helpless. Let’s all wait!
@AntiBullyRanger At least now I understand how “ordinary russians” came to be. Soon, “ordinary Americans” will be saying how they can’t do anything, because they will be getting arrested for holding a plain white paper. It won’t get easier and the fascist are not going to stop voluntarily or democratically, that’s kinda their whole point.
I highly reccomend the book ‘Blessed is the Flame’ for a more in-depth take on this mindset, and how it breaks. It’s a short read, but quite incredible.
@AntiBullyRanger
#alttext A black-and-white cartoon depicting a herd of sheep approaching a meatpacking facility. One sheep suggests mounting a resistance, while another sheep responds that now is not the time.The dude forgot to draw “Democrats” on collars.
No, redundancy doesn’t make it funnier.
*Oligarchs
I’ve gotten flack from supposed anarchists, or fascists really.
I believe you mean sheeple. It’s funny how “freedom” is written on everything, in every politician’s speeches, and uttered in media at least once per segment. And yet these same people who wrote and speak about it would never lift a finger to uphold the freedom of others, and break down and cry, exclusively, when their freedom is taken away for just being themselves.
And yet these same people who wrote and speak about it would never lift a finger to uphold the freedom of others, and break down and cry, exclusively, when their freedom is taken away for just being themselves.
I enjoyed OPs comic, but from that linked exchange OP is telling people to buy weapons and body armor to fight the government but then says they wouldn’t participate in this because they’re in Japan and would potentially be detained by ICE if they came here. They’re engaging in exactly what I quoted from your comment, which is why they’re getting flack. They’re deriding people for not throwing themselves into a meat grinder all the while safely sitting 6,000 miles away in comfort.
It’s exactly the opposite, stickly@ has given up on saving his own family and friends, when I asked them to insurrect. They are absolutely welcome to surrender. I have not.
I challenged them 🧵 to even dismantle tourist deportations, and downvoted my motion. I can face fascism to the barrel, but not by myself.
Are you?when I asked them to insurrect
Do it yourself then. You’re not doing jack shit and everyone knows it.
🪞
I’m genuinely trying not to be mean, but this is some of the most cartoonish “tough guy” language I’ve seen in a long time.
You’re literally just sitting at your home 6,000 miles away anonymously goading others into amassing weapons and armor to fight one of the largest super powers in the world, talking about how you’re “willing to stare down the barrel of a gun,” while whining about downvotes on a website and saying that you can’t participate because you might get temporarily detained at the airport.
Can I not have sympathy for Americans getting sent to deathcamps simply because I do not want them dead? How is it cartoonish to have sympathy at destroying fascism whenever it crops up, when it affects me too? You think I don’t have fascists raining down my neck because my imperialists never left?
I want everyone to live free. Be able to choose who they want to engage with, who to befriend, who to communicate, etc… Since we know your current despot will not help us, I choose to help folks that I can. And those are you.
It is a challenge of priorities. I don’t care about votes. Do you care to see your friends and family get abducted? That is the crux.
I don’t. So I’m fighting to keep my loved ones safe. I am revolting. Are you?
Can I not have sympathy for Americans getting sent to deathcamps simply because I do not want them dead?
Can you not tell us to kill each over your idiotic uninformed exaggerations?
sheeple
Let’s not dehumanize stupidity. It’s a serious mal-evolution we have to fight against constantly, esp. in a up-downvote network.
Rage against the machine mentioned something similar.
“What? The land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy”
Thyme
With some garlic and olive oil.
Forgot where I read because it’s been years ago, but someone said that humans should be blessed being born human and not as sheep, as sheep can be led anywhere without question including for slaughter.
Blacks, women and LGBT folks have been the largest gun buying demographic for several years. You suburban white boys didn’t get the memo?
It’s a commitment for sure, NOT to be taken lightly. You do you.
