Chat control and any similar proposal should be killed once and for all before such big statements are made.
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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In the land of the blind, the one eye is king.
Sure, it could be better, but it isn't better anywhere else.
"The best in the world" but with a footnote describing how low that bar actually is.
The thing about Europe is its economy is permanently stuck in the doldrums, a global cautionary tale. And no wonder. Europeans enjoy August off, retire in their prime and spend more time eating and socialising with their families than inhabitants of any other region. Oddly, surveys show people in countries both rich and poor value such leisure time; somehow Europeans managed to squeeze their employers into giving them more of it. Even as they were depressing GDP by wasting time playing with their kids, the denizens of Europe also managed to keep inequality relatively low while it ballooned elsewhere in the past 20 years. Nobody in Europe has spent the past week looking at their stock portfolio, wondering if they could still afford to send their kids to university. Europeans have no idea what “medical bankruptcy” is. Oh, and no EU leader has ever launched their own cryptocurrency.
This whole paragraph had me on edge, a little unsure of whether The Economist, (edit for clarity: from presumably) an American publication (wing), legitimately thought these were good things or not.
The Economist is British. This is absolutely about ridiculing Americans and their ridiculous ideas of being the envy of the world.
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an American publication
According to Wikipedia, its mostly written and edited in London, and was started in Britain in the 1800s (to raise support for abolishing import tariffs in fact)
I kind of got both that impression and its exact opposite, like the whole paragraph feels like a long wink and a nudge, like the author would like to say "maybe fixating on 'line go up' distracts you from all that is good in life" but that would negate The Economist's entire raison d'être.
It's like Schrodinger's argument.
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Nice article, I like how it is basically a list of things about Europe that aren't that great but then ends with "But in their own plodding way, Europeans have created a place where they are guaranteed rights to what others yearn for: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Yeah... For now. It's a fatal mistake to think what's going on here in the US hasn't already been spreading.
As an American it's wild to me that there are people in other countries who have seen what he did in his last term, are seeing what he's doing now, seeing the effects of that, and thinking to themselves "I want that in MY country!"
They're not; I don't think far-right followers are closely following American politics or even know that Trump is a far-right leader. What Trump ripoff fans do think is "I want those undesirables out of my country," and while Europe is more egalitarian than America in many ways Europeans are in general pretty racist. ~~I'll probably get downvoted to hell because this is c/Europe~~ (maybe not), but I mean take a look at this shit:
According to a study in 2018 by Leipzig University, 56% of Germans sometimes thought the many Muslims made them feel like strangers in their own country, up from 43% in 2014. In 2018, 44% thought immigration by Muslims should be banned, up from 37% in 2014.[26]
And this is in 2018, with Muslim migrants taking up less than 7% of the population. And before anyone says anything about crime, that's rightwing propaganda and exactly what I'm talking about. Migrants, Muslim or not, aren't more likely to commit crimes and immigration isn't linked to increased crime rates. It's not a surprise at all that the far-right is making headways in Europe to be honest.
Ask how many Berliners are worried about Swabians taking over the city and you'll hear a similar answer, including the "stranger in their own city" part. You'd also be surprised how much friction there is between people with Turkish background and fresh Arab arrivals.
Or, differently put: You can't just pick out a random signifier, such as "Muslim", and expect the numbers to tell you much. In particular because you'll hear the answer "yeah let's not invite any more Muslims" from many Muslims. Those being Turks saying "we don't want Arabs and their clan structures here, don't want Germany to become bumfuck Anatolia".
It's also important to distinguish anti-immigration vs. anti-immigrant sentiment. Especially in the East with its overall low percentage of foreigners (which, yet, grew much faster than it ever did in the west so people had less time to get used to it), it's often "we don't want more" in unison with "we really like Hasan he's the only one raising the village's flag on Sunday, the only place where you can go, and he makes really good food".
Lastly, you don't have to do your own analysis, here. You jumped from "feels like a stranger in their own country when seeing a Turkish marriage", which is an a priori, subjective, judgement, to "is racist". That's not how things work, people are perfectly capable of feeling one way at one time and then say "well that was one time and I'm happy for the couple". What you're looking for are the numbers for (geschlossenes) rechtsextremes Weltbild ((closed) right-extreme worldview) as well as measurements of various forms of gruppenbezogene Menschenfeindlichkeit (group-focussed enmity).
Try this study. (There's an "English summary" link there, full version is only available in German. The FES is a foundation independent of, but associated with the SPD (SocDems, at least on their good days))
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Stares at chat control, anti-end to end encryption stuff and crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protesters I think Europe has a bit of a way to go before claiming that title.
No detention centres await foreign students who hold the wrong views on Gaza; news outfits are not sued for interviewing opposition politicians.
Immigrants are getting deported for those wrong views, though, so... yeah.
Those 4 people which are very loud in the media right now are being deported for being part in a violent occupation of a university where staff was threatened with axes and crowbars, property damage of 100.000€, and trying to liberate people arrested by the police.
They always forget to say this, in their news stories.
The only thing criticworthy about this, is that the authorities didn't waited for the legal proceedings to finish. Otherwise if found guilty, that will get you a prison sentence and/or deported in most countries as a foreigner.
Those 4 people which are very loud in the media right now are being deported for being part in a violent occupation of a university where staff was threatened with axes and crowbars, property damage of 100.000€, and trying to liberate people arrested by the police.
Yeah that's not a crime unless they did these things themselves, which isn't the case; they were just peacefully taking part in the protest where these things happened, but they're not even accused of taking part in these actions. Here's the same event by the Intercept.
None of the protesters are accused of any particular acts of vandalism or the de-arrest at the university. Instead, the deportation order cites the suspicion that they took part in a coordinated group action.
And from the (machine translated version of the) article you linked:
These only contain brief descriptions of the crime and with regard to what happened at the FU, the contributions to the crime are not individually assigned to the people affected.
To repeat: These students are not even accused of committing the crime for which they're being deported.
To repeat: These students are not even accused of committing the crime for which they're being deported.
That's wrong. Right would be "They aren't accused by the Public Prosecutors yet".
In my linked LTO-Article you can see that the LKA accused them of being part in the crimes and send their evidence and investigation documents to the Berlin State Prosecution Service which then decides if they will prosecute them. That this hasn't happened yet, is just a result of Berlin State Prosecution Service being chronically underfunded and overworked. The same with the courts and other parts of Berlin Public Service
The LKA's descriptions in the expulsion notices read less brutal, but still threatening. They speak of 20 people who had gained access to the building, graffitied the walls and destroyed the technical equipment. They are said to have carried crowbars or “cow feet” with them. They are said to have used these to try to break down a door to a room in which a very frightened FU employee had barricaded himself. Axes, saws and clubs are not mentioned. Following the occupation, arrests were made. Ten suspects - including the four activists - are said to have tried to prevent this.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
And here the part with the Prosecution Service
However, the case is now with the Berlin public prosecutor's office, a spokesperson confirmed in response to an inquiry from LTO.** However, the investigation is still ongoing**. “It is not yet possible to predict when these will be completed and what the conclusion will look like.”
So they're trying to deport them before/without any semblance of due process. That's... fucking ridiculous, to say the least, and speaks to the extent of either anti-Palestinian crackdowns or the lack of respect for the rule of law in general in Germany. Neither is exactly a good thing.
Well, the Irish Citizen filed an injunction and got a temporary relief, until the lawsuit from them against the Berlin Migration Department is finished.
But according to German Law, they don't need to wait for a conviction in the court proceedings related to the alleged violent behaviour. (I'm not a fan of this, but didn't knew this before. I agree it would be better, if a conviction would be necessary).
But they would have needed to conduct at least their own investigation into this matter, which they apparently didn't sufficiently.
The barrier of deportation for EU Citizens is also higher, than for the one accused US Citizen
There's no need for a criminal conviction because "threat to public safety", which is what's necessary to deport a EU citizen, does not require a crime to be committed the first place. You can be, say, homeless, which is not a crime, and get deported over that, "go apply for welfare in your home country". On the flipside, you can be convicted of a crime but still not be considered a threat to public safety, say, fare evasion.
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You can express a controversial view on any European campus (outside Hungary, at least) without fear of losing your tenure or your grant.
You can freely express any controversial view on Hungarian campuses, nobody cares at all. Most people in Hungary don't care about the whole Gaza situation one way or another, with a slight exaggeration if you asked the average university student in Hungary where Gaza is, they would think you're looking for some nightclub.
The only people who care about Palestine in Hungary are the far-right, Orbán's far right being pro-Israel because kleptocrats stick together, while the extreme far right is pro-Palestine because they hate Jews. They usually won't be university educated either.
As faculty, you can also express whatever views, a lot of people were straight up protesting the government at one point, but there is not much they can do with them legally and Orbán's gang didn't care enough to alter the laws for that.
It always was.
Always is a stretch. Lol
You can drink an open container of alcohol outside. You can legally be outside without Money on you, you can be safe outside without worrying of being shot. All basic necessities of Life are cared for. You don't have to worry of starving, being homeless, or having a health condition that doesn't get cared for.
Modern Europe has always been free
Modern day Europe for sure. No argument there. Europe was also the stage for some of the most oppressive regimes and largest wars in history.
I’m not a delusional American who thinks highly of his nation either. We’ve had systemic oppression and elitist corruption since our inception. The only reason they allow us the “freedom” to use hate speech is to fuel the machine that powers our social division.
Sorry, what do you mean when you say "legally be outside withot money?" Is that really illegal somewhere?
In the US it’s usually euphemised under ‘loitering’ or ‘vagrancy’ or some such rubbish
Ah, I get it. Thank you.
I'm not really arguing that we have a lot of freedom here.
A small counterpoint would be that in a few countries they're pretty strict about having to carry personal identification at all times in public.
The last dictatorship in Western Europe was 50 years ago. Eastern Europe was between 35 years ago and today.
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Depends on what you define as "Europe". Soviet Russia, its satellite states and Franco Spain weren't really more free than the USA, even while they were legally segregating races in the south. EU was definitely more free from the start, though.
We really should unironically and systematicaly slap all the Yankee slogans about freedom and democracy and being a beacon and stuff on pictures of EU flags and photos of our parliaments etc.