I think stuff like is fine because 1. It’s a Nazi and 2. It’s not a real person. I think is fine because it was a bunch of partisans getting retribution during wartime. They had no time or resources for a fair trial and they knew the people they executed anyway, so the evidence was pretty clear.

I think the reason that image crosses my line is because it depicts a traumatic event that happened to actual people, and some of those people didn’t really have the agency to do anything else. I’m not sad the Romanovs are dead, and I think the overthrow and owning of a doofus failson named Nicky is something that should be celebrated, but I just don’t think that justifies mocking people in their last moments. Had things been different then some of them might’ve gotten the Puyi treatment, it’s sad that that wasn’t possible. I’m not losing any sleep over it - they are caviar as their people were starving and dying at the front - but that doesn’t mean I think it should be turned into an object of ridicule.

It reeks of aesthetic communism. Like some chuds support the USSR because they think the holodomor was real and they think it was a good thing. They just like cool mosin nagant, human wave death machine, lol kill people. That’s what that image reeks of.

Having royal family members can provide some legitimacy to the insurrections. They didn’t know what was going to happen, only that the kids being gone may prevent an issue in the future and I would have agreed with them. The Bolsheviks were right on this instance

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Agree ti disagree then

I don’t get people that say they miss pre-federation, because these were the pre-federation vibes to me. People willfully misinterpreting another user, assuming the worst and digging their heels in, in order to score a dunk on a fellow leftist. There’s no libs in this thread and we’re still fighting.

In these situations in my experience it helps a lot to use “I statement” rather than “you”. So instead of saying “you’re reducing my argument to saying ‘killing kids is good’” then saying “I feel frustrated, because my argument has been reduced to that of ‘killings kids is good’”. It’s basic I know, but it does a lot for keeping hostility low.

I’d argue that China is a historical counter-example. Killing children for crimes that they MIGHT commit is still just murdering children and the kind of thing that the feudalists and bourgeois engage in regularly throughout history, to the detriment of humanity.

I agree with your points overall but i feel frustrated since the argument about avoiding revolution and counterrevolution was ignored.

My apologies. Thanks for calling that out and giving me a chance to respond before going on the offense, it was not intentional but came from a but if shock at how quickly several fellow leftists that I’ve had good interactions with, on a leftist unity site, turned on me seemingly without missing a beat.

The argument rests on the fact that it was not some malicious murder done out of evil in the heart of a vengeful prole (though I would not blame them for it) but instead a politically motived killing caused by the material reality and historical risk monarchial heirs have proven to be time and time again. This is not dehumanising.

I agree with nearly all of that. I do, disagree on the last bit though. To my thinking “they are x, so must be killed regardless of is they have committed crimes” is dehumanization. It is placing them in a category that exempts them from fundamental human rights. I do understand the motivation and it may have ultimately been the correct choice to prevent more suffering, especially in the absence of many examples at the time of heirs of deposed rulers NOT later attempting counter-revolution. China did later show that it can be done, I think.

I still cannot not agree with that “end justifies the means” ethics approach, especially when it comes to children, who have a greater ability to change.

I don’t really get the point about being jumpy by the mention of walls. For one thing it is a common refrain both on this site, and “to be put in front of the wall” or similar phrases are normal in many languages. Assuming that a left unity site would be talking of killing other leftists, strike me as a strange initial assumption.

I don’t really see why anarchists would be extra hurt by the talk of walls, if you are here referring to historical conflicts. It was not as though that fighting was a one-sided affair either. The makhnovosts made use of secret police, and were in a lot of ways quite repressive. Reaction and counterreaction is not tied to a specific ideology.

This comes from historical treatment of anarchists and other leftists in the aftermath of revolutions, not directly the meme itself. Dehumanization of a group of enemies makes it easier to later dehumanize allies who don’t fully agree on how to organize society. Summary execution and similar acts of violence forces those who carry it out to change in order to reduce the impact of the trauma, and is likely to cause reduction in empathy, etc. Empathy is vital. That’s why I object to such a thing being a common refrain.

When it comes to Makhno and the Greens, I do philosophically have to side with the Greens - my loyalty is to common folk who have always suffered the most in every conflict in documented history. Both Red and White armies treated them as ripe for exploitation and seizure of resources, without consideration of the impact on their ability to survive. The formation of a military force for mutual defense was a necessity.

I think the idea of wanting to take protection of minorities and LGBTQ+ seriously, but then also being squeamish at the allusion or mention of violence, strikes me as incoherent as well.

The language used was too open. It wasn’t “transphobes who have harmed people” or “bigots that participated in lynchings”. It was simply “transphobes”. Language and context matter greatly to me (possibly due to not being neurotypical), especially when talking about ending human lives. I took the meme to be akin to the monstrousity of “kill them all and let god sort them out”; alluding to indiscriminately killing without considering ignorance or psychological trauma from abuse that can be addressed.

Protecting people against reactionaires will, at times, require violence. Likewise will the changing of the system require violence.
That is to me a sad fact, but it is only grotesque because we do not consider how much violence is used every day to maintain the system as it is.

Sadly, I do agree. Non-violence alone did not win workers rights or the rights of minorities. As much as I detest it, it does appear from all evidence something that is a necessity, in the face of those that understand no other language.

I would hope they get rehabilitated into tolerant society rather than murdered.
Murder isn’t good. It’s necessary at times, but we shouldn’t celebrate murder of people in peacetime.

Summary executions come by as a result of the conditions of the society the executed exists in. There is not always time for a fair trial, or the society cannot be trusted to carry out a fair trial or the victims of the criminal are present and carry out the sentence as a result of need for immediate retribution- retribution which we can retroactively acknowledge as just as well. The Barbara pit was a combination of these three, which is why we can retroactively feel as though it was just. Had the partisans rounded up a group of suspected SS members in 1972 and thrown them into a pit, then that would’ve been a different story. We should want and expect fair trials - even of those that are suspected of heinous deeds. We cannot expect such trials in the modern west currently, but that does not mean we should celebrate summary executions - They are a necessary mean to an end, they are not an end goal to themselves.

Summary executions aren’t good in themselves though, and it is not something we should wish for society, or celebrate for a society in general.

Current day? Yeah transphobes get the wall, we can’t trust the government to do anything. If some transphobe rocks up to an event wielding a rifle, scaring people and generally escalating the situation, then I hope that person gets got, and Ill laugh about it too.
If we’re in some commie utopia were all that’s left is to deal with people’s regressive views, then I don’t think it would be good to make the woke-stazi kick in peoples doors and shoot them on the spot for writing shitty stuff online.

You can have a leftist community, or you can treat bigots with kid gloves. You can’t do both.

Where am I advocating for use of kid gloves? Any fair and just society must treat all as equal when it comes to criminal behavior, not having separate classes where some are “more equal”. Bigots trying to cause harm should see justice, as much as anyone else.

Summary execution is not something to be lauded or celebrated. Doing so diminishes you as well as much as it does your enemies.

We all make mistakes, they clarified and apologised, no need to dig your heels in and continue on the same path as before

I dunno. I’ve only been on Lemmy for a few months. Some people really enjoy being edgelords on the Internet. Without the context of what particular wall it was with bullet holes from summary executions, it could just as easily been a farmhouse where Black and Tans murdered someone for speaking Irish, to me.

Context matters and I didn’t have it - might be good to ensure that everyone is on the same page before deriding and belittling them. The world’s fucked up enough as it is without going off on each other or assuming malice when ignorance is the cause.