@sim @Moon every war, except maybe some revolutions, works like that. They're all ordinary people's wars as they are the ones fighting, losing their relatives, on at least one side losing their homes and birthplaces, and the ones most affected otherwise. No peasant has ever said "you know what, fuck these people far away that I've never seen so much I'm willing to die for it".

@Amikke @Moon I wouldn't call that ordinary people's wars, of course they would make up the bulk of the forces and experience the heavy losses. But they are not the ones leading and making the decisions to go to war. In the past, a lot of the wars were based on royal disputes between each other, and it was a way of gaining more land, to extract resources and to fill the coffers. Sometimes to further influence like religious influence. When it wasn't defensive.

I hope you can understand why I don't consider those wars to be the people's war. I think it is a mistake to think of it like that and would even legitimise a war when we think it is done for the ordinary people. Leaders get away with so much bullshit from that excuse rather than taking responsibility for their war and actions.

@sim @Moon I'm just saying that using your qualifiers nearly no war ever was an ordinary people's war. Which I disagree with especially since from what I understood you're using this one's "not the ordinary people's war" status to make light of its horrors.

@Amikke @Moon Where did I make light of the horrors of war exactly?

@Amikke @Moon If anything, if we enter another world war this year then I would consider it insulting to hear you tell me that because I was pressured or conscripted into the war efforts and suffered a lot of loss in the process... that this makes the war my war when I didn't start the war as an ordinary citizen of my country. It is an insult.

@sim @Moon I wouldn't say that's what "my war" means. You can interpret it in multiple ways, but usually it means something like "war that directly affects me".

@Amikke @Moon I would still be careful about internalising war in that way though, especially because we know that it has been used to justify a war and often people have been propagandised to. If ordinary citizens can separate war from themselves then all the better. Phrasing it as a war that has directly affected you sounds better than personalising the war as your war.

@sim @Amikke @Moon
>Does being in a war make it good for ordinary people to collect and post and gloat over snuff videos all day long on social media
I do think people should be able to post war videos, but for the opposite reason, to see how awful and non-romantic it really is.

The gloating thing is evil sociopathic shit, which is used in propaganda for the "us vs them" team sports zero-sum game collectivist thing. The war machines need this, because people don't naturally want mass death.

War is not something for glee and gloating, that's just degeneracy. An honorable soldier may take pride in the killing of an enemy, not because the enemy died, but because their country and people were defended by the killing. Similar to stopping a school shooter by killing them, it's not honor for the life taken, it's honor for the lives saved by that taking.

"The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom."

(also without gloating over corpses)

@sim @Amikke @Moon also I can't help but feel that the gloating is a sort of LARPing, acting as though you were a part of it, safely from your computer. Kind of an "internet tough guy" thing to do.

@sim @Moon that's what I understood since you used it to defend collecting, posting and gloating over snuff of said ordinary people and the horrors of war they experience.

@Amikke @Moon Then I confess to not knowing what a snuff video was and that part was my ignorance showing since I don't collect that kind of stuff. I didn't know why the two were connected at the time, and I think snuff videos are bad even when we separate them from the original context. Getting deep into that propaganda and witnessing it... who knows how bad psychologically it is.

@Amikke @Moon I was more arguing the point "Does being in a war make it good" than what was collected.