The best time to mount a resistance is years ago. The second best time is today.
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.”
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.
To be fair some did try but there was surprisingly little resistance, most people just submitting to their "fate"
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."
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.
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.
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...
lmao this is dark... And a very good comparison of the world as it is now.
Reality is worse: 90% of sheep bred for meat are lambs slaughtered at less than 2 years old. Mutton (adult sheep) is cheaper and less preferred.
Has the sheep made any plans for this resistance? Have they made any preparations for it? Formed any organizations? No? They just expected all the other sheep to suddenly form themselves into an army, do all the work themselves, and then praise the guy who said "we should mount a resistance" as a great visionary hero?
The second sheep is right. That isn't the time to say "we should mount a resistance". It's the time to actually resist using whatever means you have available. Of course, that would take actual effort and sacrifice, so they'll just march to the slaughter wondering why the revolution never came.
Yeah I don't think they were talking about keyboard warriors that would never actually do anything.
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"
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?
It's better to not even try. Sounds very American.
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.
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.
Giving up before trying is the best way to help the enemy
How many people are upvoting this while still eating meat and not realising they are the fascists in the non-human animal's world?
Believe it or not, fascism in the human world is generally considered to be more concerning by most people. I sure do wonder why.
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?
Thyme
With some garlic and olive oil.
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.
The military can send missiles to any point on the globe with an accuracy of centimeters without losing a man. The time for a resistance was decades ago.
We overslept.
Yes. And the second best time is now.
Yeah… lol. It always looks good in text, doesn’t it?
“THE SECOND BEST TIME IS NOW.”
It’s such a bold and provocative statement. The problem is when it comes to actually do the work. Ninety one million people couldn’t bring themselves to check a box in November. So…. I predict that the castle will remain un-stormed.
and with such vast power and influence… name the victories the US has had verses an insurgency on their own turf?
and that’s considering untouchable industrial military complex, logistics pipeline, more numerous, better trained, and armed forces, unlimited money, and no real push back from the american populous.
if one appeared within the US… it would be absolutely devastating to the military
America didn't win in Afghanistan, and you think it would win a war if the military was forced to turn their guns on friends and family?
But rolling over is not an option. The military isn't going to kill all the workers. The workers are more important than any other group. If the workers strike, the rich suffer.
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