Facebook bans famous war photo because the screaming, napalmed child's genitals are offensive

Why am I not surprised that that sounds like music to the ears of liberal white folks?

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I purposely avoid such material, but I’m told that such images are a huge part of the daily internet traffic.

Because you’re wallowing in cynicism to show your superiority over us?

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Your irrelevant tangent is irrelevant.

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Her words, not mine. I’m certainly deep in the atheist camp, but I am also aware that there are those who find solace in religions and that’s her call.

I think it’s less music to white liberals than it is music to those who argued for the war in the first place that “everything worked out well in the end!”

I don’t think it worked out well in the end. Religious forgiveness is not what I believe and certainly not music to my ears, but I’m not the one who needs to forgive anyone for horrific war crimes committed against me when I was nine. If I was her I’d still be fucking furious. But it’s her call.

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Because you’re wallowing in cynicism to show your superiority over us?

No. Because to feel forgiven is to feel absolved from complicity and responsibility.

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Just to be clear, I don’t agree with what Facebook has done, especially since the point wasn’t about the violence of the image, but because of the nudity. I remember that story when it aired and I think her wishes should be respected on this.

But I do think we should think about the effects of seeing endless suffering on POC, especially from other countries. I’m not sure that seeing that has made people more sensitive or made them care more. I think that many people already predisposed to worrying about these conflicts (and the American relationship to them, through our foreign policy) didn’t need images like this to be empathetic and to push for positive change. Did the images help? Maybe. But it’s clear that there are plenty of people who don’t care and wouldn’t care, even when they see these images.

I seem to remember a pretty strong anti-war sentiment even before the invasion which got ignored. I also remember talk about how the second image was staged. And I remember how there were some who dismissed the torture in abu ghraib and continue to dismiss Gitmo as being a problem… or for that matter, they dismiss problems in our OWN prisons, which is why there is that strike today.

Look, I get it… these images can be helpful at revealing unnecessary violence and I don’t think it’s helpful to ban them anywhere. I, too, when teaching the US survey employ distributing images (pictures from lynchings, the Buddhist monk self-immolating, etc), and such like. But the people upset by it likely were already aware of such things and the people who dismiss it by noting that “maybe those people deserved it” are pretty set on either side of that divide.

Agreed. Do you think that people who find police violence general justified saw a problem with almost any of the videos of black men and women getting shot by the cops?

Again, at what point does it just become another layer of torture porn, versus awareness raising?

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She apparently chooses not to be miserable. Instead she’s making her own life better by having a more enlightened mindset than fury. Thus, she wins, and those who would profit or advance their own agendas through her fury and misery can go suck eggs.

That being said, I’d probably still be furious too. Being able to see the benefits of enlightenment does not equate to being able to achieve it under all circumstances.

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And to not feel forgiven means to steel yourself in “what’s done is done”. Or maybe not, because the point you’re making is basically “you liberals are subconsciously evil and this will let you ignore it” … and that’s a point mostly made to establish that you have, unlike the liberals, seen the light.

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Honestly I don’t think we’d even be having a national discussion about police violence against POC if it weren’t for all the widely distributed footage of officers brutalizing unarmed black people. True, little tangible progress has been made by having that discussion—but our chances of fixing the problem are still better than if it had simply been ignored.

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Just because someone forgives you doesn’t mean you get to feel absolved. She might have forgiven the actions of others before I was born but that doesn’t mean that I am of the opinion that as a result we don’t have to look at what we, the United States, did during war and resolve to prevent further similar acts.

While this happened long before I was born I don’t feel forgiven. Hers is but one story in a long book of tales of horrible actions towards civilians in the name of my country. I’m responsible for Gitmo and am committed to closing it through my actions, my voice, my votes and my fiscal support. Just because it feels like there’s nothing I can do and even if the prisoners come out with butterflies in their hair and forgiveness flowing like honey doesn’t mean I get to be absolved of anything.

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This is before my time (as in before I was born and when I was a baby) but did we really get no pictures like this out of the genocides coming from the disintegration of Yugoslavia?

The “We don’t see pictures like this of POC” bit I mean. I’m no expert in anything even remotely close to this area.

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From the linked article, in Kim Phuc’s own words:

“Forgiveness made me free from hatred. I still have many scars on my body and severe pain most days but my heart is cleansed.”

You may think it sounds cynical and self-serving to “liberal white folks”, but that is what she believes. Who are you to disparage it?

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Unfortunately, many of us don’t. I’m not suggesting that I do.

I never insinuated any such thing of anyone here. More that it becomes just another violent image in our already violent media landscape and that makes is much easier to file away as a horrible thing that we really can’t do anything about. It’s especially true when it’s something going on far away, to POC, yet again and we just get this really flattened image of the rest of the world, and especially the global south, which becomes a sort of monochromatic land of suffering, which “we must do something about.”

Like almost any other giant corporation, it’s courage goes as deep as their stockholders concerns for their portfolio.

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I might agree with you, except that Ms Phuc is very active in antiwar activism and charities, and a lot of that is leveraged off that very (iconic) image. More power to her. We’re very proud of her up here. (She’s one of our citizens now.)

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Again, I don’t disagree. And there is a long history of civil rights activists using the mass media to their own advantage in such a way (the publication of Emmett Till’s funeral by Jet Magazine and the children’s march in Alabama in the 1960s both come to mind). But the second that Stokely Carmichael declared black power, many white activists were quickly turned off and refused to do what he asked them to do, which was to work on the racism and consiousness raising in their own communities. If there had been a comprehensive effort at such, rather than the very limited action that did happen, things might be very different today.

But one of the effects has been a certain level of digging in, too. The Dallas shootings of officers quickly overshadowed the two shootings of black, unarmed men that the march where the shootings took place were addressing. The media distorts just as much as it brings into focus, I think. It can only do so much without the work on the ground to push it in a more humane direction.[quote=“PatRx2, post:69, topic:85010”]
I might agree with you, except that Ms Phuc is very active in antiwar activism and charities, and a lot of that is leveraged off that very (iconic) image. More power to her.
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I never said otherwise, actually.

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I’m not disparaging it, nor her for saying or believing it. I’m disparaging those Americans who latch onto the forgiveness of those they’ve oppressed (she’s certainly not the first). The kind, forgiving ones are so much more favored by the oppressors than the angry, fighting ones.

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Apologies, I missed your point.

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No worries! I don’t think you’re the only one! :wink:

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Given that We (collectively; the US) have nominated someone for POTUS who advocates torture, and proposes a resumption of waterboarding and “a whole lot worse,” there are apparently large swathes of the populace who are perfectly OK with this, or at least perfectly OK with a POTUS who’s perfectly OK with it. I’d like to think there are larger swathes of the populace who are rightly revolted by it.

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