Just reposting this excellent point from lemmygrad
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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I don't like this. While it was probably necesarry to kill the royal family to avoid a counter-revolution or a government-in-exile, that does not mean we should make death, murder or the fear of those about to be murdered into something to laugh at.
Yes the Tzar was a murderous bastard encouraging pogroms and generally just a guy who got off easy, this photo doesn't really convey that to me. It seems like it's just laughing at something awful that happened to a family. Did the family deserve it? Yes. That doesn't mean we should make the act into something funny. Violence is necessary, but it shouldn't be glorified.
I don't think it's a black & white thing, but this image crosses my line anyway. Feels wrong.
I also don't like it, mostly because i fuckin hate wojak and every one of these images is incredibly ugly.
Gestures broadly at the Russian Civil War that happened anyway.
Here's a rule for those of you at home, don't machine gun kids.
I'm not ecstatic about it, but in the words of Brace Belden, ya gotta do what ya gotta do
Look at Mussolini's granddaughter now. They didn't finish the job.
If she's presents anything more than an annoyance on Twitter I'm sure the Italians will flip her right-side up.
Eh, I think it was necessary. I think the argument Robespierre made against Louis was also cogent for the Romanovs
The notion that printed symbols on a paper can change whether or not you should machine gun kids is silly, please refer back to the previous rule.
I don’t lose sleep over it
I'm not asking you to feel bad that it happened, I'm just making sure we're all on the same page about not machine gunning children.
I'm honestly shocked that this even has to be said here, let alone that apparently so many really aren't on the same page that machine-gunning children is both wrong and unjustifiable.
Eh, I know it's a minority position on the left but that's why it's a drum I beat every time it comes up. Unironically forced me back into religion when I realized that leftist politics without axiomatic moral grounding results in disaster.
Now I go to leftist meetings to avoid being useless and Quaker meeting to avoid being terrible.
I don't know, if the marxists or anarchists I work with irl ever said that kind of shit, I wouldn't work with them anymore (and we have discussed the topic). Simple as a that. Personally, I'm an atheist and haven't come up against any contradictions between my leftism and my morality or humanism. But if religion is what it takes for people to recognize that killing kids because of some hypothetical future scenario is wrong and will never be justified, then I say keep the churches full.
Agree ti disagree then
How are we supposed to convince people of our vision of a better world if we can't even get the easy stuff like "don't murder children" down? Christ even the liberals have the sense to pretend to feel bad about drones strikes on weddings when pressed.
I also think murdering children is bad. I think the specific situation with royal family of a monarchy is significantly different. Reducing my opinion to "machinegun kids lol" strikes me as very bad faith.
Either way I don't really think what you and I think of the murder of a royal family more than 100 years ago matters enough to get into an argument that can only sour relations. Seems unproductive. I apologise for making the mistake of stoking this argument.
I'm not looking to sour relations and am not going to take your position on the matter personally, and it's not that you stoked this argument, it's that I'm actively evangilizing a humanism first leftism. I think as soon as machine gunning kids enters into the political toolkit, regardless of what problems it resolves, we've lost the plot. Whatever nuance you want to inject into the scenario is fine, but at the end of the day it does boil down to you thinking that under certain circumstances it's acceptable, so I don't think I'm unfairly characterizing your position at all.
It doesn't seem to me like you're evangelizing a human first leftism. It seems to me like you're reducing a complex argument to "you're celebrating the killing of kids, and you think kids should be killed" you've compared it to the dropping of atomic bombs on two cities.
Again I'd sincerely urge you to read Robespierres arguments against king Louis. It is not a question of punishing an individual, but eradicating a system. Those children existed as parts of that system, and would in most circumstances always exist as that. Pretending like the fear of counter-revolution being fomented once again decades later around the figure of a royal heir as some statistical unlikelyhood, is absurd when we can see exactly that having happened throughout history. As you said yourself there are still bonapartists, orleanists and the like. There's no romanovists. While the orleanists are ridiculous now, they did previously and successfully lead a counter revolution. The bonarparists did as well.
In this sense the fear of the children becoming some later legitimising fixpoint for reaction is not some person "peering into the future", it is us peering into the past. Those children did nothing wrong, but by virtue of the system they were at the top of, they would forever be threats to the USSR. In this way those children were as much a victim of the system as anyone else dying senselessly.
literal infanticide becomes a political necessity as a product of MONARCHY
If they wanted their children to be safe, then they should not have forced them to be the sole inheritors of a brutal dictatorship
Just because people stomp up and down about 'political necessity' doesn't actually conjure that ideological abstraction up into material reality. China didn't machine gun Pu Yi and incidentally, their communist party is still running the show. I don't know how difficult it is not to machine gun a 13 year old, and no amount of "you made me do this" are going to change the fact that we're the ones making the (erroneous) decision to machine gun 13 year olds.
Kind to people, ruthless to systems, folks.
If Chinese rebels new this online argument was going to happen they probably would've killed whoever this guy is that they let live.
I mean they literally let him live after being a Japanese puppet during their atrocity spree in the 30's and 40's, so I think my dumb ass using him as a morality puppet would seem just about par for the course to them.
The last "Emperor" of China
It is a morbid image for sure but not more than what actually happens during a revolution.
The difference is that we are here depicting actual people that was in this actual situation as crying wojaks and the guy who shot them as the yes-chad. It's pretty clear the intent is to ridicule and glorify.
Yes I wouldn't have made or posted that image and I feel bad looking at it. Yet I also feel the same way looking at any (justified) combat or gore footage whatsoever and I ask myself where to draw the line. I'd be OK with pulling the trigger but I wouldn't have made a meme about it. Reading this out loud makes me sound like a hypocrite however. Where do we draw the line because I don't really know. I wish we could just turn them into cute animals instead like comrade Sonic did.
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.
I agree that we should definitely strive for higher standards for "when the time comes".
Aesthetic communism is when you support the actual, real life actions of an actual, real life revolution.
I know a bunch of dead Nazis in a pit that would disagree with that second statement.
Sounds very similar to Russia in 1918
Maybe it’s a response to the 100 years of liberals sobbing their hearts out for a murdering pogroming failson and his murdering pogroming family.
But no, I just like killing people. That’s it.
I don’t want to be hostile but I’ve got years of disingenuous libs grinding my patience down
Comrade, no reason to interpret this in the worst possible way. This wasn't meant as an insult to you or an attack on you.
Reducing this to me saying "the soviets were bad, their revolution was bad" is incredibly bad faith, or at the least incredibly reductive.
I'm sorry I've made you feel as though I think you think killing is good. It was not my intention, though I struggle to see how I created that experience
I guess it’s because that’s usually implied whenever a critique of the Romanov execution.
And I don’t mean to imply that you’re against the Soviets, I just find calling the execution “aesthetic communism” anathema.
I think talking about “killing” in a vacuum is meaningless. I’m sure most people would be against it in the abstract, but I think killing monarchs in a revolution is a justifiable action. I don’t feel insulted by anyone saying I support the Romanov execution, because that would be true, but by the implication that I support killing for the sake of it. It’s hard not to read that into the last paragraph of the comment I replied to. I certainly don’t think it takes bad faith to interpret it that way.
With the whole federation thing, it’s really hard to tell between genuine criticisms and liberals concern trolling. I’m sorry for the initial reaction.
I don't think the execution was aesthetic communism.
I dislike the picture you posted, and I tried to put into words why I felt it crossed my line. One of the reasons for that was that it gave me the vibe of being something an aesthetic communist would like - I don't know if you've ever met the type, but they're kinda weird. They're stalinists because of western propaganda, not in spite of it. I can see how my phrasing made it seem like I was accusing you of being such a type, and that was not my intent. I'm sorry.
I agree on the first part, I'm sorry about the second part.
I get it, though I also experienced this before federation (new account now, who dis?) and saw it happen as well. Wether it's wreckers or libs, we end up being on edge, and then this happens. It's regrettable but it is what it is. Thanks for your apology about your initial reaction.
Ah it's about that... Yeah death for me will always be a last resort. Because if it's glorified then we will be no better. We use death as a last ditch to resolve Contradictions.