The widespread rejoicing over Henry Kissinger's death is repugnant
The widespread rejoicing over Henry Kissinger's death is repugnant
I'll get this out of the way right now, I'm a progressive socialist and Kissinger's legacy in the world is one of reactionary repression and suffering. I find pretty much everything he stood for to be wrongheaded and harmful to society.
That said, celebrating someone dying in the way that's happening now shows disrespect to human life and an utter lack of humanity. I understand the motivation, but it should be fought against by remembering that no one is ever just one thing, everyone is a mix of good and bad, and we certainly shouldn't give in to the desire to rejoice at another's death, no matter what we think of them.
Fuck that opinion.
Is celebrating the death of a human being mildly unpleasant? Sure. But is it more unpleasant than the 3-4 million deaths he caused? Fuck no.
Celebrate the death of an evil man. Go for it. And for the neo-Victorian scolds who want to say that it's bad to speak ill of the dead:
You know what goes here!
FUCK YOU!
Celebrate the death of an evil man. Go for it.
This is where I'm at too. I feel no guilt celebrating the death of an evil person.
I'm not going to pretend he was a good person. The world is a better place with him gone.
If we cannot celebrate the death of an evil man, how will younger generations learn to avoid the mistakes of the past?
Pretending he never existed amounts to a coverup of his crimes.
Alfred Nobel's death was celebrated prematurely. He held several very lucrative patents all related to explosive munitions. A newspaper accidentally ran his obituary which described him as the "merchant of death" and equated his life's work to creating new ways to "mutilate and kill". He was so distraught by what society thought of him that he used his massive fortune to create the Nobel Prize. He had hoped that this would change how people would remember him.
I also think people who lead terrible lives should be remembered as such. Hopefully it causes other politicians to wonder what their own obituary will look like.
I'll bet Kissinger winning the Nobel Peace Prize wasn't on his radar, though.
No one's asking anyone to pretend he was a good person, or that he never existed. We don't have to do any of that in not celebrating his death.
Younger generations can learn to avoid the mistakes of the past through being educated by those who lived through it and by being exposed to human kindness and compassion instead of retributive hatred.
So if people celebrated the death of Hitler, you'd say the exact same thing right?
There are times when it's ok to celebrate the death of evil. The witch is dead was a UK #1 when Thatcher died. For good reason
No that makes the kids feel bad to learn the shitty mistakes we made in the past. Can’t teach that. /s
Hate and anger are human emotions. Ironic how you claim it’s inhumane to use those emotions.
I bet you would think different if his actions directly impacted you.
For my part, I agree. I don't celebrate death. I sure as hell ain't gonna mourn evil people, or pretend the world isn't objectively better off without them. I'm also not gonna lose any sleep over other people doing it. I'll happily celebrate any good things resulting from their death. But death itself isn't to be celebrated, not for me.
Congratulations, you actually posted an unpopular opinion.
I think the best comment in response is from @mawkishdave.
I bet you would think different if his actions directly impacted you.
That said, celebrating someone dying in the way that’s happening now shows disrespect to human life
The man in question disrespected human life his entire life. He is just receiving what he dished out.
The man is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. You’re god damn right I’m going to cheer his own. I wish it was long and painful. I also wish he was locked up in “The Hague” when he died. Alone.
But I know you’re just looking for engagement because nobody would be THAT naive to not think he deserves death and so much more.
I am not OP but the argument appears to be the difference between Justice vs. Vengeance - i.e. even actively cheering for his death is not quite the same as celebrating it happening, after the fact.
I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion from what OP wrote.
I wish he died a long time ago. And I’m happy he’s dead now.
He lived to 100. He died a powerful and rich man. It’s not like some incredible violence happened to him and everyone is celebrating his pain. It seems to me he lived his best possible life, from his perspective. I’m sure he died without regrets. He was a psychopath.
There’s nothing wrong with celebrating that this man is gone. I hope historians can illuminate his crimes. I hope we can collectively remember him as a villain, and accept his war crimes are something the USA is directly responsible for.
I regret that he was never tried at The Hague.
It's an opinion. I don't like it. It's in the correct community though.
A truly unpopular opinion!
celebrating someone dying in the way that’s happening now shows disrespect to human life and an utter lack of humanity.
I disagree with this when applied to Kissenger. His actions directly contributed to millions of people unnecessarily dying. This is not an exaggeration.
He committed treason against his country by purposely sabotaging Vietnam peace talks. He did this to ingratiate himself to Nixon, not for any sort of higher reason.
His evil deeds are very much still fucking things up in the present day.
Kissenger was one of the worst monsters of the modern era.
To top it all off, he never received justice for any of his misdeeds. He was widely venerated and powerful until his death.
Evil people deserve to be hated.
Tolerance of intolerance (what you are doing here) is intolerance.
Intolerance of intolerance (what people expressing joy over Kissingers death) is tolerance.
Get off your fucking high horse, stop looking down your nose at actual good people, stop speaking up in defense of bad people.
Not that fucking hard to understand.
We’re not rejoicing his death per se but rejoicing in a new world where the murderer of over 4 million no longer walks among us.
How can this be so hard for people to understand?
Gotta wonder if OP, being plopped in say, Paris 1945, would have also criticised people for celebrating Hitler finally ridding the world of himself..
Fucking centrists. smdhThat's a really good way of putting it.
It’s weird how more and more people celebrate death because of this really extreme “us vs them” mentality that’s been developed.
I recall a lot of people were strangely happy when the people in that Titantic sub fucking died solely because the victims were rich people. Like… seriously? It was also weirdly morbid how people treated it like a spectacle with the Twitter account that was counting down the hours of air left.
If you can't celebrate the death of a monster responsible for literally millions of dead human beings, what can you celebrate? If you can't celebrate the deaths of rent-seeking purveyors of misery and exploitation, what can you celebrate?
Oh, I know! You can only celebrate entirely fictitious things like the birth of a "saviour", right?
Incredibly presumptuous of you :) I personally think we should celebrate the Feast of Sol Invictus - at least we’re celebrating a tangible thing that gives us life!
If you can’t celebrate the death of a monster responsible for literally millions of dead human beings, what can you celebrate? If you can’t celebrate the deaths of rent-seeking purveyors of misery and exploitation, what can you celebrate?
How about instead of wasting energy celebrating the death of an asshole, we spend it towards helping the people who got fucked over by those assholes? Kissinger did some pretty awful shit, but celebrating his death does just as much as mourning his death imo. Maybe we should try and advocate change for the people of Cambodia or something? That part I don’t know - what can we do to help those that were directly affected in a negative manner by these fuckin douchenozzle rich assholes in power?
How is it weird or bizzare?
The class war has taken us back to Depression era levels of poverty for the masses.
Eat the rich.
How is it weird or bizzare?
Because of shit like your post. You basically went ahead and justified celebrating death by spouting some banal left-sounding rhetoric. It’s honestly the same kind of energy that right-wing nuts have whenever they talk about “taking America back” and idealizing the death of liberals and left-leaning people.
There’s a fine line between a “good riddance” and “WOOHOOO THIS FUCKER IS DEAD” - the latter should truly be reserved for people like Hitler. I can see the latter for a piece of shit like Kissinger, but not for the Titantic sub people.
But unfortunately, most of the internet nowadays won’t take a more level-headed approach until either Critikal or Asmongold does (if they do).
I would never celebrate the death of the people on the Titanic.
But they were not responsible for the deaths of millions of people and the suffering of millions more.
I don't think people here are very receptive to what you are trying to say - fwiw I don't think what you want to convey can be taught in mere words, as it relates to people's underlying worldview with which they filter everything. But some of us get what you mean, no matter what words are chosen, and I want to say kudos for standing up for decency.:-)
Kissinger is responsible for the deaths of millions
Cheering his death is decency.
I guess to the point of your statement, that everyone is a combination of both good and bad. I am just genuinely curious, what good did Kissinger do?
He made bomb makers SUPER rich.
The bomb makers thought that was good.
Ha ha you're dead
I expected this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG4AawcYdSE
@LopensLeftArm I totally understand what you're saying. With most of these high profile deaths (Thatcher, for example) I would tend to agree with you.
But Kissinger was a mass murderer on an unimaginable scale.
Celebrating his death is like celebrating the eradication of malaria or smallpox. Even though life on earth is sacred, there are some living things that cause so much misery it's okay that they are extinguished.
The fact that he thrived, admired and celebrated, completely insulated from his crimes, cast a long shadow over us. To learn about Kissinger was to lose your innocence. For many of us, knowing he is dead makes the world feel brighter.
Simple thought experiment. If you were alive during Hitler's death would you still feel the same way?
I don't like the idea of celebrating death because there's usually at least one person who is mourning and deserves to be respected in that. If people were celebrating the death of my loved one then yeah i'd feel pretty shitty about that.
But there is a certain category of person where this doesn't apply. If you're famous for doing war crimes then your death should be celebrated. It's less about the person and more about what they symbolise. If you use your existence to bring such suffering upon the world then humanity kind of has a duty to celebrate the loss of that existence from the world.
Lol, you respect human life? You must be very young or incredibly sheltered.
Thank god he's dead, it fills me with warmth. I'm glad they sent him to superhell, alongside thatcher and reagan <3
In general I agree, but we're talking about a man who is directly responsible for the entirely needless deaths of hundreds of thousands (millions) and the ruining of untold tens of millions more. Nations like Cambodia are still feeling the effects to this day. I'm not sure where exactly the cutoff is where your death should be celebrated, but Kissinger bound far past it long, long ago.
Fuck you.
Permanently Deleted
That said, celebrating someone dying in the way that’s happening now shows disrespect to human life and an utter lack of humanity.
If he had been murdered, sure. But the fucker lived to be 100 years old and died peacefully, unlike countless other people's deaths that he was responsible for. Celebrating the peaceful death of a monster isn't anything to be upset about.
I understand the motivation, but it should be fought against by remembering that no one is ever just one thing, everyone is a mix of good and bad
Was Kissinger though? What good has he done, and is it even a fraction of the evil he has done?
as the Rolling Stones’ headline put it, “beloved by the ruling class” – while the ruling class probably isn’t hanging out in the fediverse, there’s still plenty of bootlickers, dickriders, sycophants, gusanos, and “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” willing to defend the indefensible
Not to mention he lived a long life free of any consequences for his actions. I'd agree with OP in a lot of cases but not here.