Newsweek

  • badbytes@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How quickly we forget history. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself come a villain.

    • pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe
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      1 year ago

      That quote is so stupid. Not everyone is inevitably fated to turn to evil. Sure, humanity is inherently evil, but we can make the choice to be better than that.

      And that’s assuming heroism is morally good and villainy bad anyway, and I have serious beef with that assumption.

    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Well, sometimes you can replace “villain” with “a miserable thieving creature that may not be a villain, but can’t even die with dignity”.

      That’s about a certain subset of Armenians who aren’t anything like heroes themselves and eagerly betray others who are. Who happen to control Armenia’s government.

      This is off topic, of course. I’m just confused whether to envy Israelis who seem to lack this particular problem.

    • TokenBoomer@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I had a similar thought recently. Germans were a victim of WW1. Then became aggressors and the Jews were victims in WW2. Now Israel is the aggressor and Palestinians are the victims. Just a thought.

      • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        The German state in WW1 was as last as greedy for territory as it was in the second world war. They through they could improve they land holdings in Europe and in Africa. They were one of the leading causes the war escalated into a world war, instead of a Balkan one.

        Hence the severity of the reparations that were forced upon her. You could argue (like Hitler did) that the reason Germany had to surrender was a betrayal of the jews, and he convinced many to put the blame of losing the war was that people, not the Germans.

        We all know where that lead. There’s one thing, though that you cannot claim, it’s that Germany was a victim of WW1. The Emperor, his hawkish generals, politicians and investors bit off more than they could chew and got served the bill.

      • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        Germans were a victim of WW1.

        That’s … an interesting way to describe the power which practically controlled Ottoman empire’s state apparatus so that it wouldn’t crumble through the years which cleansed Asia Minor and Western Armenia of civilized presence by murdering and breaking people constituting that presence in every way possible.

        Which was also allied to Austria-Hungary which started the war in the first place, and also committed plenty of war crimes in Serbia and Western Ukraine.

        Obviously Germans themselves did plenty of that too.

        It’s just that the war wasn’t on German territory mostly.

        • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Which was also allied to Austria-Hungary which started the war in the first place

          Last time I checked it was Serbia that started the war.

          • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            Serbia agreed to almost every point of the AH ultimatum regarding the investigation of FF’s murder. The one they rejected was about Serbian police working under AH supervision or something like that. Something no nation would accept, both extremely humiliating and dangerous.

            Anyway, rejecting an ultimatum doesn’t give you right to invade. It may be polite and civilized to give ultimatums in general, as compared to outright invasion without warning, but see the previous sentence.

          • Sibelius Ginsterberg@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            But Jews weren’t aggressors before WW2.

            I won’t argue, that the Israeli government is anti-democratic and tries to dehumanise palaestinians. But comparing them with a regime that industrialised the murder of (not only, but especially) jews is absurd.

            • TokenBoomer@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 year ago

              You seem to be arguing. You’re focused on the aggressors. I’m focusing on the victims. This was not historical. It was a shower thought. I just found it interesting, nothing more.

      • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Germans were a victim of WW1.

        umm

        Perhaps victims of the aftermath though. But not like Jews whose worst crimes are mythological.

        • mightyfoolish@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t think Maccabee was mythological. He forcefully converted a lot of different ethnic groups into Judaism. Ironically, I would argue he was a giant step for a Palestinian identity as what do all these “Jews” get called when they convert to Christianity in Roman Palestine?

        • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Well they allied with the country that got their leader assassinated, while I wouldn’t call them a “victim” until the post war period when everyone agreed that it was exclusively their fault somehow, most people have no fucking clue why WW1 was started and just assume it’s “Nazis round 1” which just… Isn’t true in the slightest.

          Austria Hungary lost their archduke to a serbian assassin and then Germany used it as an excuse to take land and invade neighboring countries. While not a good thing, it’s not much different than what every other country in the history of warfare has done.

      • Mo5560@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        The Nazis deliberately spread their propaganda in the middle east. Just a thought.

        • TokenBoomer@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          Ya know. I could edit my comment or try to explain it better, but what’s the point? People want to hate so I’ll let them.