kcstarke:

that-binese-guy:

in-place-of-fear:

boggycreekll:

boggycreekll:

I have never seen an advertising campaign more evil, more insidious than the one for the army currently airing in the UK

“This is belonging”

We’re introduced to a group of earnest young men. they’re white, they’re black. they drink tea. they play practical jokes. they quote popular TV shows. they talk about sports. they face their fears. it’s loving and domestic and all too easy to overlook the guns and camo and helicopters blaring overhead.

make no mistake, these adverts are aimed at the young and disenfranchised. poor people, people of colour, people who have been bullied and abused by society and made to feel like they don’t belong anywhere. Join the army, they’re told, and you can have the love and acceptance you crave but have always been denied. Elsewhere, you might get called racial slurs. you might get called a pansy or a fairy, but not here. You belong with us.

For example: Islamophobia is rampant in the UK. here we have an advert of a Muslim soldier praying while his squadron, armed to the teeth, sits in silence. the message is clear – while the rest of society may despise you, here, you will be respected. this is belonging.

here’s one called ‘expressing my emotions’, featuring a white man in his 40s – practically the posterchild for the UK’s current mental health crisis.

you don’t have to worry about bottling up your feelings in the army. after all, this is belonging.

here’s another one called ‘can I be gay in the army?’. we’re told: “I was really worried about whether I’d be accepted, but within days, I was more than confident in being who I was.” Clearly homophobia is a thing of the past in the army. don’t worry. this is belonging.

and it works. while the response to these adverts from an unfortunately vocal number of people is basically “fuck you, we’re racist and proud of it!” there are young people being taken in by this. I have met gay children, trans children who are determined to join the army because, after being rejected by their parents and peers, they’re now being told “here you will be accepted. here you will be loved.”

fuck that. don’t be groomed; don’t let the vulnerable and desperate people in your life be groomed. we need to fight the root causes of these problems in our society and stamp them out so that wielding a gun and cowering in some blown-out building in a country you helped destroy is no longer seen as some sort of salvation. fight racism. fight homophobia and transphobia. fight the stigmatisation of mental illness. fight the system that prioritises the rich and leaves the rest of us to rot.

don’t be taken in by something that offers easy answers, chews you up and spits you out, destroyed, guilty, with PTSD and nowhere to go. where do you belong when you can’t fight any more? where do you belong when you can no longer be used?

i just want to add that not only is the UK the only country in Europe that recruits 16 year olds (known as ‘recruitment of child soldiers’ when other countries do it), they also target their recruitment to secondary schools in economically deprived areas with high long-term unemployment. in areas where there is a sense among kids that they should move somewhere else as soon as possible, the army tries to be the first people kids encounter to offer that.

and as OP says, it works. A quarter of the army’s untrained intake are under 18.

Yeah, they play these ads in cinemas as well, it’s why i stopped going in at the scheduled time and waited till AFTER the ads before entering

Today is Armistice Day, and so we as a nation wrap ourselves in an uncomfortable tension; pride, joy, loss and sorrow mingling with awareness and anger.

On this Armistice Day, let’s remember all the people who fought in our armed forces because they didn’t think they had other options. Let’s remember the times when our politicians have used our forces as a blunt instrument for personal political gain. Let’s remember unjust wars. Unneeded wars. Wars that gobble up our young, our poor, our needy – and drain the money that could have been spent on our most vulnerable.

War has a cost. Don’t let our political situation draw us into mindless complacency and blind nationalism.

Our military-industrial complex is not to be praised or lionised. Remember our veterans, used up and thrown away by a country with no more use for them. Remember the children recruited to feed our seemingly endless wars, in far-away places we can comfortably ignore. It’s true that 16 year olds can’t serve on the front line, but they can’t just quit if they turn 18 and don’t want to be deployed to combat. 16 year olds can’t drive, can’t vote, can’t drink – but they can sign their life away?

We need to reform our military, the way we use it, and the way we treat our serving soldiers. Not cover our bloodstained hands in poppies and hide their costs under empty promises of remembrance.