US Army Officer Declares the Glories of Marx

[Kubra]

People inhabit the military, and people are political by nature.
Really now, do you wish to disown the gaullist committee of public safety?

Why would I? It wasn't a Republic to begin with but rather, as it's very name indicate, a Dictature du Salut Public established to respond to the necessities of war.
The two things you're talking about are so utterly unrelated I can't even begin to see the point you're trying to make honestly.

very few will call attempting to topple ones civilian government by military force and rule simply a "necessity of war". In any case, it's a far more political act than being a particularly vocal member of the DSA.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

If the type of educational institution that gave us our teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and scientists can be accused of promoting communism, that doesn't speak well of capitalism.

Effective indoctrination is not evidence of anything.

Did you just call teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers and scientists "indoctrinated?"

[Kramania]

Effective indoctrination is not evidence of anything.

Did you just call teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers and scientists "indoctrinated?"

Ah, no.

[Fartsniffage]

People who don't agree with the status quo shouldn't want to serve? I don't agree with you on that one.

There is a difference between having an opinion, and using your uniform to voice it. Do you want to see troops parading at political rallies? I sure don't.

I'm pretty much okay with it as long as it's done out of personal choice. I don't think being in the army makes one an unperson.

[Evil Wolf]

The problem isn't what political ideology he's advocating for, the problem is that he's doing it in uniform.

It would have been just as inappropriate if the shirt he was wearing was a Bernie Sanders head, or if his cover had said "Make America Great Again". American military, by their nature, are required to be as apolitical as possible while in uniform. American Military personnel are strictly forbidden from participating in any political rally or action while in uniform. This ban includes volunteering for various political campaign efforts out of uniform as well. In fact, active duty military are forbidden from running for any political office, even if that position is as minor as "town treasurer".

With that in mind, there are also law for the Reservists, who have less strict restrictions placed against them, that they can't use their military position in advertising their campaigns. Even simply saying your rank in a political advertisement is strictly verboten.

So this guy should be hosed for doing what he did, but not because he's a Communist.

Now, that all being said, this dude earned a Combat Infantry Badge. For all I care, he can be a Commie all he wants out of uniform so long as he remains loyal to the United States.

[Brads third hell]

Why would any self-respecting Marxist join the US military? That's like saying your a feminist and then going to fight for Saudi Arabia. Maybe he became Class Concscious after he joined? I don't respect his decision to join the imperialist army but I certainly support him spreading class consciousness

[Genivaria]

Why would any self-respecting Marxist join the US military? That's like saying your a feminist and then going to fight for Saudi Arabia. Maybe he became Class Concscious after he joined? I don't respect his decision to join the imperialist army but I certainly support him spreading class consciousness

My stupid marxist phase in high school was the only reason I didn't join the military right out of HS.
So many fucking regrets.
Also "Imperialist Army" I'm sorry fucking what?

[Liriena]

I did not accuse you of wanting all commies dead. I merely implied that you probably do, in fact, have the low opinion of them you expressed in your joke:

I mean, it was already evident, you know, considering he's a commie. :^)

Or do you, in fact, think communists are just as smart as everybody else?

Apologies, you implied, rather than accused. Nevertheless, I don't appreciate implications being levelled at me based on what was quite obviously a joke, or, if that was not what caused the implication to be levelled at me, whatever bullshit it was.

To actually clarify my beliefs on the matter, it is the latter. Communists, no matter how much I think their ideology harms the nation, is as human as I — thus they are due the rights everyone else has, they are due the compassion that I, as a Christian, would give another.

I'm sorry, then. I assumed too much, and I was unfair to you.

[Napkiraly]

Many people are fine with military personnel parading at overtly partisan political rallies until it's a fascist one or otherwise for a cause they don't like. Then it's calls for kicking them out. Do you want to know one reason why active duty soldiers are prevented from making many overtly partisan political actions? Because the rest of society shouldn't doubt or question the willingness and loyalty of the military to the nation as a whole. Because the military should not be seen as a partisan organ of the state but rather one that is there for all people of the nation.

[Liriena]

Any thug with a gun, the backing of the armed forces and the promise of no accountability can kill defenseless, unarmed people en masse. If the bastards had actually had any courage in their convictions as self-proclaimed saviors of Western civilization and keepers of lawful order, they would have given each of their victims a fair, public trial. It's a testament to the cowardice and immorality inherent to right-wing authoritarianism that they had to hide their supposedly necessary and heroic brutality, and the best they can do to defend themselves is either going full denier or trying to excuse themselves with the childish excuse of "the others did it too".

Fam, where did I deny it happened? Also, on a historical note, you conveniently forgot to mention the Communist militias that were active in the leadup to the coup.

Thanks for proving my point.

trying to excuse themselves with the childish excuse of "the others did it too"

[Engleberg]

Yeah, I'd prefer no reds being in the military.

If they're so actively communist like this, what prevents them from going and giving secrets or spying for the enemies of the US?

[Neanderthaland]

Yeah, I'd prefer no reds being in the military.

If they're so actively communist like this, what prevents them from going and giving secrets or spying for the enemies of the US?

The fact that he loudly and publicly announced his affiliations?

I'm sure he'd make a great spy.

[TURTLESHROOM II]

Many people are fine with military personnel parading at overtly partisan political rallies until it's a fascist one or otherwise for a cause they don't like. Then it's calls for kicking them out. Do you want to know one reason why active duty soldiers are prevented from making many overtly partisan political actions? Because the rest of society shouldn't doubt or question the willingness and loyalty of the military to the nation as a whole. Because the military should not be seen as a partisan organ of the state but rather one that is there for all people of the nation.

Absolutely well said.

Here's one example. Until Obama made an exception, the militatry could not march in LGBT penis parades because it would imply the military endorses or condones a specific. (IIRC, even Obama stopped allowing that after the military brass complained.)
Likewise, it is illegal for a commanding officer to endorse or condemn any candidate or cause by name.

It's not just the military, though. It's called the Hatch Act.
All civilian civil servants in service to the federal government are explicitly forbidden from endorsing political candidates or causes when on the job unless the President explicitly authorizes it. My grandfather worked with my state's Department of Labor and he's pointed out that you can be punished, or even lose your job, if you show up to work with a pro-candidate button in an election year.

[TURTLESHROOM II]

Yeah, I'd prefer no reds being in the military.

If they're so actively communist like this, what prevents them from going and giving secrets or spying for the enemies of the US?

The fact that he loudly and publicly announced his affiliations? I'm sure he'd make a great spy.

He was stupid enough to brag about it. Haven't you seen the stories about robbers that pull a successful heist, and the police can't find them until they boast about their haul on the Facebook? The guy's Twitter account was not under his name, and they had no idea who was doing it until they tracked it down to the guy.

The man infiltrated the military with the express intent to serve the Marxist cause. As he is innocent until proven guilty, the only punishment the military could (and must) give him right now is expulsion and dishonorable discharge.

[Liriena]

Oh, yeah, the illegal, cowardly and clandestine killing of innocents and dissidents is so funny and worth gloating about. It's funny because many real innocent people were unjustly and unlawfully killed by cowardly right-wing scum who knew that what they were doing was a crime against humanity, and so they committed their atrocities under a veil of secrecy like the pathetic, corrupt thugs they were.

Do you make Holocaust jokes too? Joke about sending communists to the gas chambers? Or would that show your true colors a bit too much? ;3

Ah yes, the poor Commies. All they wanted to do was steal peoples' farms and violently overthrow the government in peace. Damn Pinochet, wouldn't let Allende launder money from the KGB and allow him to bankrupt the Chilean economy. All those poor, innocent lives lost. Truly the Right is full of terrible people whose only desire is to oppress us innocent Commies. Can't be because we tried to turn half of Latin America into Soviet puppet states. No siree, we're totally the victims here.

Ah yes, because everyone who was murdered by the dead tyrants you are so slavishly making excuses for was definitely guilty of a crime worthy of torture and death. Every single person kidnapped, tortured and killed was definitely, unequivocally, beyond any reasonable doubt, guilty... even though there was no due process and no fair trials. Do you blindly believe everything every right-wing dictator and their propagandists have ever said?

Gawd, your "joke" was a sad little turd already, but your honest, unironic apologism for torture and genocide carried out by power-grabbing scum is so profoundly pathetic...

[Liriena]

Allende would have been known as an incompetent fool who drove chile to the ground if the coup didn't happen, instead he is a martyr.

Better a strong Chile that isn't in ruins than yet another desolated mess we can blame on the Commies.

Martyrdom means nothing if those who would mourn your death no longer exist. Pinochet's mistake was the same as most Hispanic dictators of his era. He wasn't sufficiently thorough with his persecutions.

I bet you wish some dictator would come and kidnap, torture and murder me as well, don't you? You've already made it quite clear that you hold me in contempt for my ideals, and since you are so supportive of people who share my ideals being butchered by the thousands, I cannot imagine why you would not feel the same way about me, and every other leftist NSGer.

[Evil Wolf]

The man infiltrated the military with the express intent to serve the Marxist cause.

I...what?

I'm not sure where people get the take away that he "infiltrated" for any cause. He's a Marxist and he wanted to serve his country. The two are not mutually exclusive, you can do both.

Just being a Marxist doesn't make him an enemy of the state, unless we as a country have regressed all the way back to the Red Scare.

[TURTLESHROOM II]

You've already made it quite clear that you hold me in contempt for my ideals, and since you are so supportive of people who share my ideals being butchered by the thousands, I cannot imagine why you would not feel the same way about me, and every other leftist NSGer.

You do not have to agree with what Pinochet did to understand why he did it. Pinochet is the savior of Chile and he is the primary reason Chile is not in Venezuelan shambles. As tragic as the fact that innocents may have been swept up in the matter is, the needs of the many overrode the needs of the few. In butchering several thousand souls, he saved well over ten million from famine, death, torment, and an even worse dictatorship.

Keep in mind that Venezuela is the natural conclusion of Marxist principles. Pinochet stoped Chile from going down that path, and that, not his treatment of Marxists, is why he has respect amongst the right wing.

The man who Chile overthrew was already working to consolidate power and gradually erode the freedoms of Chile- just as Pinochet would do -and EXACTLY as Maduro in Venezuela was doing right now. Contemporary historian James Whelan called the government of Pinochet predecessor a "cannibalistic democracy" that was slowly consuming itself. The Marxist party in which Pinochet's predecessor rose to power did not have a majority or a mandate. They were simply the highest in a parliamentary democracy, and the courts (IIRC) had to determine the winner because it was that close.

In the end, Pinochet stepped down of his own free will after sixteen years of dictatorship and called a free and fair election. The Castro regime has been in power for fifteen years.

If you are interested in the context of Pinochet's rise to power and the corrupt government he overthrew and replaced with equal corruption, the Hoover Institute has an excellent article explaining how bad Allende was and why he needed to be tossed out.

Pinochet directed the coup of September 11, 1973, and presided until 1990 over a military regime that violated human rights, shut down political parties, canceled elections, constrained the press and trade unions, and engaged in other undemocratic actions during its more than sixteen years of rule. These facts are important and widely recounted.

A number of other important truths about the Pinochet period and its legacy are equally well documented but less well known. Indeed, they are often not acknowledged at all. We will focus on the generally neglected, discounted, distorted, and sometimes falsely denied or suppressed aspects of the Pinochet legacy that have truly made Chile, despite its continuing challenges, “Latin America’s most successful country.”

Before Pinochet attacked, the Supreme Court of Chile condemned Pinochet's predecessor for his vagrant violations and abuses against the Chile Constitution and law.

[TURTLESHROOM II]

I'm not sure where people get the take away that he "infiltrated" for any cause. He's a Marxist and he wanted to serve his country. The two are not mutually exclusive, you can do both.

No you can't. You are literally contradicting yourself. He did not want to serve his country. At the least, he wanted to infiltrate the military and spread Marxism in the ranks. At worst, he wanted to tbe the next Bradley Manning.

Marxism, while no longer a direct threat to America, is nonetheless antithetical to everything positive America has ever been about. It was, is, and always will be the enemy of America.

The man in question absolutely infiltrated the military. He did not declare his Marxist loyalties upon entry and he made a mockery of his uniform when he anonymously posed pictures of his uniform being defaced with Marxist propaganda. He knew full well that military law forbids a man in uniform from explicitly participating in the endorsement or rejection of a candidate, party, or ideology. He had no respect for his uniform or his fellow soldiers.

The punishment for preaching Marxism in the military in the Cold War was steep: years in prison or even life in prison, and in rare cases, death. Today, though Marxism is not a direct enemy, it is still forbidden in the military. The punishment is dishonorable discharge and immediate expulsion.

[Gauthier]

I'm not sure where people get the take away that he "infiltrated" for any cause. He's a Marxist and he wanted to serve his country. The two are not mutually exclusive, you can do both.

No you can't. You are literally contradicting yourself. He did not want to serve his country. At the least, he wanted to infiltrate the military and spread Marxism in the ranks. At worst, he wanted to tbe the next Bradley Manning.

Marxism, while no longer a direct threat to America, is nonetheless antithetical to everything positive America has ever been about. It was, is, and always will be the enemy of America.

The man in question absolutely infiltrated the military. He did not declare his Marxist loyalties upon entry and he made a mockery of his uniform when he anonymously posed pictures of his uniform being defaced with Marxist propaganda. He knew full well that military law forbids a man in uniform from explicitly participating in the endorsement or rejection of a candidate, party, or ideology. He had no respect for his uniform or his fellow soldiers.

The punishment for preaching Marxism in the military in the Cold War was steep: years in prison or even life in prison, and in rare cases, death. Today, though Marxism is not a direct enemy, it is still forbidden in the military. The punishment is dishonorable discharge and immediate expulsion.

If he was an infiltrator he certainly set the bar low settling for declaring his allegiance while in uniform.

[TURTLESHROOM II]

If he was an infiltrator he certainly set the bar low settling for declaring his allegiance while in uniform.

Correct, and that is to our gain. You hear stories about dumb criminals boasting of their crimes online, and getting caught because of it. Heck, Tumblr has an entire shoplifting crime ring that occasionally gets busted and is still under surveillance,.

[Gauthier]

If he was an infiltrator he certainly set the bar low settling for declaring his allegiance while in uniform.

Correct, and that is to our gain. You hear stories about dumb criminals boasting of their crimes online, and getting caught because of it. Heck, Tumblr has an entire shoplifting crime ring that occasionally gets busted and is still under surveillance,.

He's no more an infiltrator than protestors barging into lectures or rallies and raising a stink then. "Infiltrator" strongly implies someone going undercover or sneaking for a long haul to inflict significant changes or damage.

[Zitrone]

It doesn't really matter what the heck he thinks or believes in about anything as long as it doesn't interfere with his ability to fulfill his duties and he does not act in a violent or unconstitutional manner upon those beliefs. Any good country that dedicated itself to freedom of speech would surely recognize as much, I think. Besides, banning even the expression of such beliefs, even if in the military, just seems like the first step of a slippery slope on the pathway to free speech's demise.

[Evil Wolf]

No you can't. You are literally contradicting yourself. He did not want to serve his country. At the least, he wanted to infiltrate the military and spread Marxism in the ranks. At worst, he wanted to tbe the next Bradley Manning.

This assumes quite a lot. You assume that all Marxists think exactly identical (which just glancing at any political ideology ever is laughably wrong, especially with any form of Communism). You assume he generally does not want to serve his country. Considering that the man is an Afghanistan combat veteran who went from enlisted to officer, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you probably don't have the first idea what motivates him. And then you assume he wants to betray his country simply because he's a Marxist, which is generally silly.

Marxism, while no longer a direct threat to America, is nonetheless antithetical to everything positive America has ever been about. It was, is, and always will be the enemy of America.

I don't remember our founding fathers espousing anti-communist rhetoric, probably because it wasn't an ideology yet in 1776. Hell, some of them, I'm looking at you Thomas Jefferson, might have even been sympathetic to some of the ideals of Marxism had it been around then.

Capitalism is not quintessentially American nor it is the defining characteristic of the USA.

He did not declare his Marxist loyalties upon entry

'

That's...not a thing.

You've never been part of the US Military, have you?

He knew full well that military law forbids a man in uniform from explicitly participating in the endorsement or rejection of a candidate, party, or ideology. He had no respect for his uniform or his fellow soldiers.

On this we can agree.

The punishment is dishonorable discharge and immediate expulsion.

Probably not. Most likely his punishment will be an Article 15 and a loss of pay/temporary confinement/extra duties. Even if he is discharged, it will probably be characterized as Other Than Honorable. Dishonorable discharges are typically reserved for serious crimes, like assault, rape, or murder.

[Rostavykhan]

The punishment for preaching Marxism in the military in the Cold War was steep: years in prison or even life in prison, and in rare cases, death. Today, though Marxism is not a direct enemy, it is still forbidden in the military. The punishment is dishonorable discharge and immediate expulsion.

Yet I didn't get a dishonorable discharge or imprisonment, when I was very actively Communist, and carried Mao's Little Red Book with me.

I still carry a copy of Mao's Quotations with me.