I’ve seen this word said a lot, specifically for Americans. I understand the basic throughline, that Americans benefit from imperialism and thus are complicit in its crimes.
But…what would be the difference in action if they weren’t?
There is land back, but that doesn’t include what happened in Africa and the middle east. If the average American is complicit in the genocide of Palestinians, what do you do about it? Is it just supposed to guilttrip them? Is it reparations? Is it a mass trial of a couple hundred million people…?
its quite easy for americans to dish this out but impossible for them to accept it. largely malnourished and psychologically ruined japanese populace had the choice to revolt against hirohito so the bombs are ok and also we send them orders to evacuate. russians should dislike their government and home country because we said so, sanctions and racism against them is ok.
we revolt against government? well, we are frail little californian boys and we cant get guns here. we are brainwashed little southerners so we are incapable of turning on our government (even though we are armed to the teeth and dont hesitate to shoot minorities and kids). its not safe for me to be out in the streets, i have so and so disability, i dont wanna lose my job, i have a dog to take care of etc.
Did you really have to throw disabled people under the bus in the last section? That’s extremely disgusting and ableist.
The people saying they wouldn’t be able to participate in a revolution because of their disability were most likely radicalized by the insane systemic discrimination the disabled face. Crushing medical debt, untreated illnesses, and so on.
Yeah, disabled people are hardly the ones to be criticizing for inaction. How debilitating a disability is can vary; some people would be more able to help than others. But even if someone is on the less disabled range of disabled, it’s still shitty to portray it like they’re making an excuse for inaction. Recognizing that disabilities make it harder to take various actions for the person, that they can’t simply overcome this with willpower, is like half the battle with fighting against ableism. Now sometimes a disabled person may be able to get help that makes it easier to overcome the limitations of their disability, but that’s far from a bootstraps thing. It should be a community responsibility to help them out.
But individualism can tripped up on thinking people are supposed to individually arrive at the correct place of their own volition (literally or figuratively), which is far less effective and highly unreliable compared to organizing them.
Like imagine if I said “people should really be meeting me at xyz address at n time of day” and I pushed this as a view online for years on end. And then I showed up at that address at that time every day. I might get some people to show up now and then (and god knows who), but it would not be anything resembling a reliable organization. Point being, we can try to steer people in the right direction (ex: with political education), but we can’t organize them via individualist proclamations about responsibility and neglect of it.
its not ableist and i myself have a disability. im only pointing out that americans can understand practical issues when it comes to them and not other people.
Claiming that people use disabilities as a “Get out of jail free card” and a way to avoid blame is absolutely ableist. Having a disability also does not preclude someone from making ableist statements.
Understanding practical issues is also not a uniquely American phenomenon. Everything you stated is easily applicable to quite literally every single group on the planet. But singling out disabled people is vile.
im not talking about disabled people as a whole, im talking about americans who dont have empathy for victims of imperialism but all the empathy for themselves. but i guess u must be american if u got this offended. i hope u dont talk negatively about israelis and ukrainians then
No, I got offended because I’m disabled, and that’s an ableist statement.
well im also disabled and i dont think its an ableist statement
Sad.
I’m not asking US-ians though, I’m asking everyone here