culpritus [any]

  • 113 Posts
  • 925 Comments
Joined 6 years ago
Cake day: October 20th, 2020
  • culpritus [any]@hexbear.nettoHistory@hexbear.net•The U.S. Air Force’s tendency to deliberately bomb civilians comes from a Fascist generalEnglish
    81·
    11 hours ago

    1943: Walt Disney produced a film, Victory Through Air Power, which opened with a filmed quote from General Mitchell, and is dedicated to him. The movie is based on a book by Major Alexander P. de Seversky, and is an explanation of how long range bombing and concentration of air power could shorten World War II, explaining the logistics and strategies that would give the Allies the upper hand at that time, as the Axis would be unable to develop similar aircraft and strategies due to their own issues. This film was shown to British prime minister Winston Churchill and U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt at a conference in Quebec, and reportedly made an impact on the planning and production of U.S. war material at the insistence of Roosevelt.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell

    I’m familiar with the Disney film that advocates for “strategic aerial bombardment” (which was also known as “terror bombing”), but I was not aware of the connection back to Douhet. Mitchell was court-martialed and only received praise after his death according to his wiki page.

    https://ieer.org/resource/commentary/strategic-bombing/

    This link I just found also makes a similar connection from Douhet to Mitchell.

    Theories of aerial bombardment of an enemy’s cities and economic infrastructure flourished in the early part of this century. But it wasn’t until later that the aircraft technology existed with which to put these theories to a test. Consequently, when the fighting broke out in World War II, the U.S. Army Air Forces was eager to apply the air power doctrine it had developed in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

    Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, the leading U.S. air power theorist of the 1920’s, conceptualized air power “will project the spear point” of a nation’s military force behind the frontlines of the battlefield to an enemy’s vital areas to render it “powerless to defend itself.” Aerial bombing would cause such destruction and paralysis that “resistance is no longer possible and capitulation is the outcome.”

    Brigadier Guilio Douhet, an Italian air power strategist, explained “The conception of belligerents and nonbelligerents is outmoded. Today it is not the armies but whole nations which make war; and all civilians are belligerents and all are exposed to the hazards of war. The only salvation will be in caves, but those caves cannot hold entire cities, fleets, railways, bridges, industries, etc.”

    Iran’s missile cities come to mind here.

    Mitchell was disingenuous about making the civilian population a chief target in air warfare. He wrote of subjecting the enemy’s productive capacities, “not so much the people themselves,” to bombing campaigns, as if the two could be neatly separated. He also argued air power could make war less destructive than older forms of warfare. “The result of warfare by air will be to bring about quick decisions. Superior air power will cause such havoc, in the opposing country that a long drawn out campaign will be impossible.”

    The first major effort to put limitations on aerial bombardment took place at an international conference at the Hague in 1899. The Russians came to the meeting with a proposal for a permanent ban on “the discharge of any kind of projectile or explosive from balloons or by similar means.” The U.S. delegate objected and proposed instead a five-year prohibition, noting technological advances may make aerial bombardment more precise. The temporary ban was adopted.

    Thanks for this additional historical depth on the development of this terrible military strategy.

  • culpritus [any]@hexbear.nettoeffort@hexbear.net•It's clear to me that leftists can't beat the propaganda of this capitalist hellscape. We need to do something. Is organising even enough in 2026?English
    22·
    2 days ago

    As the the constructed spectacle collapses into its own contradictions, people will become desperate for some other way to understand the world. Some will grasp at the answers provided to them by capital, but that is a diminishing pool.

    In many ways these demographics can be seen in the polling regarding Trump and the Dem establishment. This is why the success of demsocs in the recent primaries is such a huge threat to capital. It represents that narrative control is actually crumbling. Many people are already off the script, and this started mostly with BLM and COVID, escalated with Palestine, and now the war on Iran and global oil crisis will push it even further. The primary wins in NYC are most troubling because that is the representative keystone of the capital. “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”

    I think the focus on the online experience creates a false reality, because that is the entire point of the algorithmic apparatus, to reinforce the capitalist realism. Does it work on some people, most certainly. Yet it can also be undone when material reality contradicts that false digital spectacle. This is certainly a especially dangerous time because capital is getting increasingly desperate to reassert itself in powerful materialist ways, but that ultimately unmasks the spectacle even more. Capital can’t have its cake and eat it too basically. So the more things clamp down materially, the less effective the narrative control becomes.

    So it’s sort of a grimdark bloomer perspective that I take. Things will get worse, but it will inevitably sharpen the contradictions. Now there will be a portion of the population that is diehard for capital, and that will likely cause friction and flashpoints and potentially devastating fires, but I don’t believe these will be controlled burns. The silver lining is that people ensconced in narrative control are less likely to be materially effective in the ongoing struggle. If they are comfortably online and unbothered by all of this, they are not likely to be forces to be marshaled for the benefit of capital.

    That’s my hopefully perspective, but maybe it’s just my own copium talking.