Rolling Stone first out of the gate with the true elbow-drop of a headline this news deserves, and a beefy polemic to back it up.
This article, along with every other news site’s, has been sitting there primed and ready to release for years and years, needing nothing but a minor edit to add the relevant details of his passing and the date. Someone at Rolling Stone is delighted today to have finally hit “Publish” .
And too right they should. It’s a great day.
Every other news article is like
“Henry Kissinger, diplomat beloved by the wealthy, is dead at 100”
This is the best summary I could come up with: Henry Kissinger, war criminal and complete piece of shit, has finally died. The world is a better place now.
This is well known, but I think it suits this thread well
Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. […] Witness what Henry did in Cambodia- the fruits of his genius for statesmanship- and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. While Henry continues to nibble nori rolls and remake at A-list parties, Cambodia, the neutral nation he secretly and illegally bombed, invaded, under-mined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg.
Anthony Bourdain
RIP my hero… Maybe now you’ll get your chance to introduce Kissinger’s afterlife to your knuckles.
If there is an afterlife, hopefully they’re not in the same place.
Anthony Bourdain, a well spoken man who reached his boiling point with existence a fair bit to soon, always had a lot to say about Kissinger. An excerpt from a book he wrote “about” culinary tourism from, if anyone wasn’t aware…
Saddest part is that he gets to die living a long, comfortable life after making his mark upon the world, meaning he gets to die happy.
Don’t celebrate that he died. Mourn that he lived.
Or if you take a Buddhist view he died the most miserable and painful death because he finally realized what an evil shit he was.
I feel like that’s just coping tbh.
The title is strong, but article itself is brutal
three and four million people
That would make the list go: Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Kissinger. With the difference that the US has been a terrorist state for over a hundred years, while the other names on the list have been individuals while Kissingers was part of a greater evil.
The ‘Behind the Bastards’ 6 part series on him was fucking brilliant, well worth a listen. Also, if BtB has to do a 6 part series to cover all the fucked up shit you did…? You’re one of histories greatest monsters…
Robert also did six parts on McMahon which I thought was… weird
Ed McMahon?
Vince
Jim?
You think because the names you listed were leaders of their countries doesn’t make them part of a greater evil? No one person commits atrocities alone; there must be some backing.
One single name doesn’t get to make decisions… There must be a greater body at play. There has to be support of some sort, otherwise the people would have just said no, and killed that person.
I’d rather not have an internet argument, but I’ll give you a pointer that you can use to google for more information of the issue is of actual interest to you:
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Mao, Stalin and Hitler were tyrants that forced their way to leadership and killed everyone who opposed them. Kissinger was the advisor of a terrorist government that existed long before him and will continue to exist.
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“just said no, and killed that person” is a naive Disney fantasy. In actual reality people that “just say no” get vanished, tortured and killed. And their neighbours suddenly turn reaaally quiet after that. However, there is always a certain joint guitl and complicity, I agree with that. And it weighs especially heavy if “the people” are very free to protest their nation’s terrorism but don’t do so.
There is a big difference between a single dictator being a plague upon the world for the 10-50 years he’s in power, and an nation with constently changing leadership being a permanent plague upon this world for 100+ years.
That’s the reason why Kissinger sticks out of the list: Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Kissinger*.
I agree with your overall thesis but your characterizations of the three tyrants are casually backwards.
Mao was a leader of a militant group first. He won political power in that group and that group won a large following of people over several decades. His status as tyrant emerges from that history and cultivated in a desperate militaristic role which is already predisposed to authoritarian rule.
Hitler was similar, his authotarianism, is on display much earlier in the process, and part of his charismatic attraction. It was clear early on that Hitler was going to mow down anyone in his way. Still, he needed to acquire popular and then political power. He leveraged existing sentiment and thuggish groups such as the Freikorp.
Stalin was just a bureaucrat.
Just kidding. I know very little of Stalin’s rise to power except that it was internal to a party that already had seized power.Great analysis thanks
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I agree with the sentiment in context of these “next level” atrocities, for lack of better way to phrase it.
But I disagree with “No one person commits atrocities alone; there must be some backing”. Plenty of atrocities have happened because one person decided to be a dickhead
I actually can’t think of one on a geopolitical scale. There’s always some other people involved.
Oh yeah, geopolitical is probably a better way to phrase it than “next level”.
That I agree with. I just felt like saying “nobody commits atrocities alone” removes some blame from some monsters out there that have done terrible shit.
Oh absolutely. That’s why I made a point to qualify it like that. Atrocities can go from a mass shooting carried out by one person to a genocide carried out by an entire government.
Also Pol Pot of Cambodia.
Which can be blamed on… Kissinger!
Bingo!
Ding dong the witch is dead!
About fucking time, holy shit.
Can someone please explain what he did to be labeled a war criminal?
Genuine question, because I only know this guy as an asshole who suggested Ukraine should give up it’s occupied territories.
He’s got a 6-8 part Behind the Bastard series about him but the article here is a tldr. Basically he is directly responsible for killing about four million people, basically carpet bombed Vietnam and was in Watergate.
Figures. I don’t think that the Ukrainians who were pissed about his suggested “peace deal” knew about this. Either that, or they didn’t mention it. And I remember his article was widely discussed in the Ukrainian media. Maybe if his background was more widely known, his opinion would have been more easily dismissed.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-kissinger-94160733/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-two-kissinger-94268769/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-six-kissinger-94899290/
He drove us policy for decades, especially “the ends justify the means” stuff.
As a partial explanation, not an excuse, y’all have to remember this was the Cold War. A lot of this was accepted as a necessary evil to prevent the big EVIL. If you thought you had to choose between civilization ending WWIII, vs interfering in a third world conflict, the evil may not be as clear cut as y’all think. Kissinger drove the bus but we all went along.
Falling for however much of that was propaganda is all on us.
We also mostly fell for it in Iraq. If you take anything from this diplomat’s life work, DONT FALL FOR THE PROPAGANDA. it’s easy to see the evil with hindsight and in a different world, but we all need to develop the skepticism and questioning to see this for it is when it happens again.
I’m proud of my country but that includes seeing where we’ve failed and it’s all of our duty to see when it’s stepping off the ideal path and do our part to get it back on track
Won’t miss him.
I heard Henry Kissinger ran into a tree and all his money fell out of his pockets and the teens called him Sonic the Bitchhog while he tried to get at least one coin so he could go on.
Henry Kissinger How I’m missing yer You’re the Doctor of my dreams
With your crinkly hair and your glassy stare And your machiavellian schemes I know they say that you are very vain And short and fat and pushy but at least you’re not insane
Henry Kissinger How I’m missing yer And wishing you were here
Henry Kissinger How I’m missing yer You’re so chubby and so neat
With your funny clothes and your squishy nose You’re like a German parakeet All right so people say that you don’t care But you’ve got nicer legs than Hitler And bigger tits than Cher
Henry Kissinger How I’m missing yer And wishing you were here
If you are going to have a news thread and allow opinionated titles, that means your community supports political commentary headlines and not factual news.
The titles should be nothing other than neural summaries.
“Henry Kissenger died at age 100, He was a controversial figure in American politics”. That’s a factual title.
The published title of this post is opinionated commentary and not factual news posting.
EDIT: You won’t even support the idea of non-bias news posts. And you expect to be taken seriously. Fucking shaking my head right now.
It’s Rolling Stone, they mostly do editorials. They’re not the AP lmao.
I’m not saying RS is irrelevant. But it is still not academic papers. As much as they piss me off.
Editorials are almost always opinion pieces, peer review isn’t really part of that process. 😅
Do we want this to be the equivalent of editorials?
That’s basically all media these days and look how fucked they are.
I’m not asking for it to be peer reviewed, that also sucks based on the current view of the “publish or die” culture of academia.
I have no easy answers. I only have questions and counterpoints.
Yes, I prefer RS keep their format they got famous for with greats such as Hunter S Thompson and Chuck Palahniuk. They’re not beat reporters, they’re journalists.
See: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/
I can’t discount your point of view. But I disagree with it.
Hunter S, while awesome, was not a journalist. He was a commentator. He injected his perspective into his writing. That isn’t journalism, that is commentary.
He literally invented Gonzo journalism and pioneered the New Journalism movement, while writing for RS no less, what are you talking about.
