Europe
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons), archive:is,ph,today (their JS DDoS websites)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)
view the rest of the comments
Not a fan. This is inherently anti-democratic, regardless of the views that the efn espouses.
I'm not a fan of killing cockroaches but I'd rather do that than let them run around the house.
That said, these particular cockroaches are everywhere now.
You are wrong. People like this shouldn't be given a chance to be voted for, lest their propaganda wins and we end up in a full blown WW3.
Obviously these powers to ban a party must be kept under high scrutiny of the public incase they start banning all of their competition, but in this case right now It is good.
These groups are themselves anti-democratic. Democracy is allowed to defend itself.
I would go further, democracy must defend itself. It's an embarrassing failure to allow anti-democratic parties to gain power through democratic means.
Well, this is democracy undermining itself. Parties with millions of supporters don't just randomly pop up for no reason. They come about due to real people having real problems.
Banning parties is a good way to become blind to that.
That is just a pragmatic argument, independent of my conviction that every citizen should have a right to equal representation, a right to be heard. No ifs' and buts' and no "but not like that" if I find their opinions unpalatable.
It is the same foundation I stand on to assert my own right. I will have my say. If that were taken away, I'd be inclined to tear it all down.
One very angry person can do a lot of damage today. How about the ten million who voted for AFD in the most recent German election? Or maybe just the seventy thousand who are active members? They are surely more extreme than you or I. That's more people than there are jail cells in Germany right now.
Those aren't real problems. They are lies specifically meant to influence people into believing that foreigners are a problem. That is why they are antidemocratic and must be banned. There's already plenty of official evidence from a legal standpoint. How is this so difficult to understand?
Did you even read my comment?
Let me repeat the most important part for you:
That is my conviction, regardless of ideology. It doesn't matter how much you highlight what the AFD stand for, because it is fundamentally irrelevant to my opinion on the subject.
Which problems?
Decreasing standard of living? Rising energy prices? High home prices? A stagnating economy?
You don't convince someone to change ideology by saying "your problems aren't real". You do it by identifying the real problems, because I promise you that they exist. Then, convince them that a better solution exists than what their current ideology proposes.
When people are being brainwashed into focussing on brown people = bad, then no. Fuck that. That has nothing to do with democracy. The AfD stands for nothing other than their own gains.
And the problems you listed aren't the things they're addressing.
There is no reasoning. It's pure brain washing. Don't support that kind of shit.
They claim to (read their party program), and they've convinced millions to agree regardless of how we feel about that.
This is the easy way out, dismissing them outright, simply retreating. Without understanding and addressing their claims, however false they may be, you are fundamentally handicapped in challenging them - it is one of the key reasons that the AFD have managed to become so large in the first place.
Such rhetoric might get clamor and agreement from those who already reject their ideas, but is unlikely to convince many, if anybody in the other camp.
It is definitely far too late for this, it should've been done 10 years ago, but better late than never. The cancer should've been surgically removed when it was small, now it has grown very large and removing it means losing an arm and half a lung but that's no reason to give up and let it overtake the rest of the body.
There is no room for fascists.
Check out the concept of the tolerance paradox, it might shift your point of view a bit. Think there's a copy pasta of a nazi bar that's in a similar context
I'm familiar with both, and the nazi bar equivalency is a false parallell.
The antidote to anti-establishment movements in democracies (which AFD & their related parties across Europe are at this point) is strengthening public trust and legitimacy, not creating the tools to dismantle it.
That’s like saying that since crime is mostly a symptom of a systemic issue, we shouldn’t prosecute it.
No, it's like saying the police shouldn't fight crime by breaking the law, because it undermines trust in the legal system.
For a prime example of that in action, see the US.
That’s… not at all equivalent.
How so?
Because long term policies require short term patches, so problems don’t get out of hand too early.
Policing crime and implementing mechanisms so people don’t need to resort to it in the long term, are complementary, but without the former, chances of the latter to work are slim.
From your point of view, it’s fine to let nazis win now as long as we set out to fix the root cause later, which is naive at several levels, most importantly because if they find their way to office, they will fight any policy that could make them irrelevant. Even more, since they are purely reactionary parties with no real policies, they are incentivized to manufacture more enemies and false issues. And if you don’t believe me, look at pretty much any reactionary cabinet in the world from the past 20 years, from the US to Russia to Hungary.