Firefighters

[Questionable]

Should firefighters be considered comrades?

I'm asking because they're usually considered to be in the same category as police, who we obviously oppose, but I never got that comparison because firefighters seemed more like social workers to me. They're not typically used, to my knowledge, for oppressive purposes, and just exist to provide general protection.

[Blake's Baby]

Depends on whether they're arseholes or not.

Anyone who considers the fire service to be the same as the police is... borderline deranged. At the very least, very very wrong.

Firefighters are definitely part of the proletariat.

[Goblin]

Firefighters are actually one of the few people i consider to be actual heroes. And as Blakes Baby mentioned, they are a part of the proletariat.

[Art Vandelay]

I actually think that firefighting would be a pretty cool job. Minus those dudes who I remember reading about from Tennessee who watched a family's home burn to the ground cause they couldn't pay for the service, they're pretty cool people.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Of course they are proletarians.

I don't see how they can be categorized into the same group as the police. As far as I know they don't actively defend the bourgeois state, like the police does.

[Decolonize The Left]

Should firefighters be considered comrades?

I'm asking because they're usually considered to be in the same category as police, who we obviously oppose, but I never got that comparison because firefighters seemed more like social workers to me. They're not typically used, to my knowledge, for oppressive purposes, and just exist to provide general protection.

Despite both groups being proletarian in the hard materialist context, the socio-political context of the two is totally different.

Now, if firefighters began to receive orders to not put out the fires in the houses of brown people and they obeyed those orders, then the socio-political context would change. But as it stands now, firefighters are not anywhere near as oppressive and repressive as police and very rarely are called upon to maintain the state of affairs in a political context.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Firefighters and EMT's etc. are working class.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I was a firefighter for a little while, not a bad job; you meet some interesting people. My fire-station was unionized: within there were liberals and conservatives, young and old. Mine was a volunteer position, no living wage. More of a hobby or side-endeavor really (maximum $2000 paycheck at the end of the year). Good people who worked hard and placed themselves in danger that worked a second job while doing so. Not a bad place to radicalize (not that I got that far). But as others have said: if the social purpose of firefighters changed, if they began to selectively choose which houses to put out and which not to, than it would be different. But as it stands, and they serve to keep the public at large safe, they are considered proletarian.