USA! USA! USA!
mandatory service isn't a thing because there's a steady stream of impoverished youth to exploit, but it's early history was the most extreme genocide anywhere alongside chattel slavery
this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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There was a thread on here the other day about how armed services recruits were primarily from the middle class and low income is underrepresented. They posted a ton of data to back it up. I admit I did not really look at it closely to verify. If I can find it again I will link to it, if you were curious about it that is.
yes please I didn't see that. are you talking US or Israel? In either case I think it is quite plausible for different reasons.
Can't speak for their source, but here's what I found:
Over 60 percent of 2016 enlistments came from neighborhoods with a median household income between $38,345 and $80,912. The quintiles below and above that band were underrepresented, with the poorest quintile providing 19 percent of the force and the richest Americans enlisting at a rate of 17 percent...Over the last 20 years as civilian wages plateaued, military compensation for the post-9/11 force steadily increased.
A mid-grade enlisted sailor, soldier, or airman (at an E5 paygrade) made 10 percent less than the median American in 2000 and at the time was eligible for food stamps. By 2011, service members of the same rank were making 10 percent more than the median American, even without including benefits.
The article is a bit short on analysis, but it seems like the standards for Army recruits were raised and the pay was also raised. So, these days, an army grunt makes a bit more than the average middle class civilian would make.
It makes sense if you consider that low income people are more likely to be in situations that are disqualifying or making it difficult to join the armed forces. For example to be tangled up in legal issues, non citizens, lower literacy/education, health inequalities.
E.g. https://www.goarmy.com/how-to-join/requirements:
Asthma will only prevent you from joining if you were diagnosed with it after your 13th birthday.
All that means is that the person didn't have as good health care as a child.
Also that page is saying a highschool diploma is required and there is a limited number of spaces for people who have GEDs instead of regular diplomas.
So on the population level, lots of low income people will be filtered out and directed away on all these basis.
I think mandatory military service is important because by the time you are 25 years old you have already either directly participated in, or knowingly collaborated in, some awful heinous crimes. furthermore, you know everyone you ever loved is also guilty. like all those snipers who spend their days kneecapping kids, those people are all integrated in society, they are loved by families who know what they do.
in USA those experiences are not as equally distributed.
I contend that israel is more homogeneously fascist, like psychologically fascist, beating the present-day US for this reason. possibly past US could make an argument although I wonder if that kind of fascist mind-state is really possible prior to mass media?
like all those snipers who spend their days kneecapping kids, those people are all integrated in society, they are loved by families who know what they do.
you know, i never thought about it like that. that is fucking insane.
If thats your description of a Fascist society then actually the number 1 is the United States of Amerikkka, 1 its self explanatory, for 2 just look at the history of the USA and their veneration for settlers fighting the native people and manifest destiny they basically adopted conquest and pillage as american culture, 3 pretty much US civil religion view of their armed forces, 4 is manifest destiny again, 5 i think pretty much every society does that, 6 there was no USA 3 centuries ago its as made up as you can get
I think in USA all this is present. But also it is a much larger territory and population so not as homogenous. Israel is small and therefore these qualities are able to be more concentrated. Like a country being highly specialized in textile industry. Sure there are textiles being traded (and to at least some extent, manufactured) everywhere on earth but for various reasons there are locations where things are clumped up more. And just as you can find places where the average involvement and dependence on textiles is more than others (Bangladesh, Pakistan), I think the same is the case if you consider fascism and israel. But in both cases, the US is heavily involved in benefiting and controlling.
Amerikkkan exceptionalism on Hexbear? Shut it down, we're cooked. The bedrock of amerikkka is genocide, from day one. It has been a Hitlerite state since before Hitler was born.
Can't agree or disagree until you provide your definition of fascism.
I was taught that fascist states have an authoritarian rule under a dictator, along with control of industry/business.
While there are many countries which lean towards fascism in some manner or another, they are might be classified as authoritarian, but not necessarily full-blown fascist. Taking your points above, Switzerland ticks many of the boxes. Mandatory military service, special treatment (collaboration with Nazis without significant consequence), etc.
A country full of war-mongering assholes doesn't necessarily equate to fascism. (But I do recognize that Israel is in reality a lot closer to fascism than Switzerland ever was!)
Well I don't think fascism is the same as a dictatorship or authoritarianism. Like there have been many monarchies over history and geography, but they can't all be collapsed into fascism. And also there is the question of whether the USSR was just as bad as nazi germany?
Wrt swiss military, it is irrelevant as I specified the kind of activities which entail a plurality of the citizenry participating in the brutality and subjugation of another people. What people are the swiss attempting to eradicate? What people have generations of swiss dedicated themselves to replacing? It isn't the structure of the military, it is the mandatory lived experience and indoctrination in the processes of ongoing genocide. As an individual, you are forced to reconcile your intrinsic morals and solidarity with your own actions, which due to the advanced form of indoctrination present in israel, leads rarely to rejection of the state project. Most people are able to use the tools provided to them to bend their morality, and accept the state's motivations fully as their own.