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 When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title.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 [email protected]. (They're cool, you should subscribe there too!)
- 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: RT, news-pravda:com, GB News, Fox, Breitbart, Daily Caller, OAN, sociable:co, citjourno:com, brusselssignal:eu, europesays:com, geo-trends:eu, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons)
- 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. 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 any of the mods: @[email protected], @[email protected], or @[email protected].
view the rest of the comments
Frontex literally sends them back to get raped & tortured and literally is the reason thousands per year drown in the Mediterranean Sea. We hate migrants, that is a European core value.
Not convinced? After 2nd world war, Germans even hated German refugees. Since then, migrants in Western/Northern Europe have been 2nd class citizens. Brexit went through partly as a campaign against migrants from Poland & Romania.
Still not convinced? It’s not about cultural compatibility or religion or skin color or anything. Ukrainian refugees have been met with empathy because of their skin color and religion at first (but we‘re _ definitely_ not racist and sorry for saying the quiet part out loud). However, in countries like Poland, Hungary and Germany who took on most of the refugees politicians already started using Ukrainians as scapegoats and the hate mongering hit them too.
Think it will be different with Americans? They’re gonna be the ones who took our jobs, always act entitled, destroy our work culture by always being available and ruining the housing market (as if that weren’t already fucked up). To an extent, this is how we see Americans already.
We are a racist, backwards continent. I wish it were different, but this is who we are.
Other places bad isn’t really an excuse for us to suck as well
Not bad. Infinitely worse.
And truly. Having frontier control and regulations is not even bad.
Also, most Europeans are not racist. Your analysis on why Ukrainian refugees are treated differently than syrian refugees (for instance) is incredibly shallow. As people take in consideration a lot more things when judging a person, and attributing it to skin color is just to make yourself a nice strawman to attack.
It's perfectly valid to be able to have control on who you want to share your life with, as it will wildly influence your own life and well being.
I honestly made an argument using facts to back it up ,and your reaction so far has been whataboutism and deflection. I’m also not sure how exactly you would argue against this when most European countries have right wing (extremist) governments right now and do I really have to explain that a core feature of right wingers is to hate immigrants?
You facts:
-People racists because I said so.
The fact that you just said that MOST european countries have extremist right wing governments just said everything that needs to be said. And how you generalize to everyone who vote for any right or centrist party without even care for their reasons to do so... Also systematic downvoting every comment of anyone not agreeing with you shows a specific character trait.
There's nothing to argue here. That's my bad.
Have a good day.
Is the Wikipedia article on logical fallacies a bucket list for you?
If everything I’m saying is so obviously wrong it should be super easy to make a sound argument against mine instead of just trying to derail the discussion.
@[email protected] Ftr, the rules of this community specifically say not to do this. I am leaving this entire thread here, because I think @shaserlark did a great job -- but let me emphasize that institutionalized racism is not good and you rushing to defend it here is not good either.
I take you are a mod, my app doesn't show mods of communities for some reason.
Just a fair and square question. As you quote the fallacy thing.
And please be sincere. As it would be very important for my continuity in this community even in lemmy as a whole.
Why my supposed fallacies are being judged here but not his? He made fallacies also. Are the fallacies on the question or it's the opinion?
Can anything be debated here? As in would you allow opinions that are different than yours on the slightest?
Because at no point I defended any kind of racism, not institutionalized not anything. It would be irrational, as I'm clearly against racism, I consider racism something terrible thus why I get offended when not racist people get accused of being racist.
You clearly agree with the other part. Are you giving me heat because of that? If so please I need a list of what can be said exactly in this community.
Because I would defend in from of a judge with a cristaline conscience, that migration or border policies different from completely open borders are not racism. And that I don't think the European Union have racist policies written in their law with the purpose of putting people down for their race. Quite the contrary I think the European Union have done wonders integrating races, and teaching everyone here not to be racist through incredible programs and policies with foreign countries (including the mentioned refugee programs) and forcing eu members to remove any racial law from their legislation.
If even that sentence cannot be debated here, please let me know. And put it more clear in the rules to which political party do you need to be affiliated to be allowed to post here.
Because calling the EPP or Renew Europe racist just because (and you say nothing about that) feels completely antieuropean. And I don't even vote for those parties, btw (I don't vote), but it hurts me very much when radicalization demonize normal people that may vote or belong to a party for whatever reason.
That's my two cents, from here do what you want to do.
Have a good day.
This will be my last contribution to this community at least from a while. I don't think this particular moderation action was well done or contributive to the benefit of the community or Lemmy as a whole, sorry. If you don't agree with me you could argue with me as a normal user, same as I have done with the other person, with arguments from both sides, each one giving our opinion, which are normal, either of us are defending anything bad, we just disagree on what consists a racist policy, or what European border and immigration policies should be better. I think both me and the other user (and you) agree on all humans being born equal with the same fundamental rights. But confronting a normal opinion with moderative actions from a moderator account is not great.
And just some final though. I think it's disheartening that more and more it feels like you need to have a very specific political affiliation to participate in Lemmy in general. You are free to look at my posts, here in c/europe and in many other communites, I think my political affiliation is very clear from what I write. And see what kind of policial ideas have a person that more and more feels uncomfortable here.
I'm sorry if this comment read angry or heated. But you must understand that in this space you are the authority, and it's not the same being confronted from equal to equal any difference of opinion we could have (that's why we are here to read what other people have to say) than to be confronted by moderation. If from your heart you really think that this moderation was needed because I, and only I, broke the rules and not because your own opinions made you make this action so be it. But from my opinion the authority broke the neutrality needed for good moderation here.
That's a fun use of supposed. When, in your very first reply, you started out with "I'm amazed to find out what's your opinion of any other place on earth." - what exactly is that if not a deflection/whataboutism?
In your third reply, when you subtly removed the parentheses around the word "extremism" and suggested that @shaserlark had said that *"most EU governments are right-wing extremist", even though what they said amounted to "most EU governments are right-wing, some are even right-wing extremists" (fact)? Was that an honest mistake?
So their fallacies are real and don't deserve the label "supposed"?! Interesting.
Fwiw, I can't say that I noticed such a density of bad-faith patterns in @shaserlark's comments. But feel free to point them out.
Yes. However, there are rules. In particular, there are rules 2, 3, and 4. You know, provide facts, don't be a bigot, stuff like that.
So you'd be offended if someone called you racist and ... that is why you can't be racist? I am sure this tactic has a name; I really should read that h*cking Wikipedia page top to bottom at some point. :) In any case, this is nowhere near a valid argument.
Fun bit: There are no human races, we're all the same race. Phenotypes are a terrible indicator of genome composition even; the genome difference between a white person and a black person may be much smaller than the difference between two white people.
When people talk about racism, what they actually mean is phenotype-based group-oriented enmity. The term "racism" is used because there are people who claim there may be human races (i.e. "racists") and not because that is actually true.
So, for one, no one says you need to have "completely open borders". It's just that the practices of Frontex are often very very far removed from treating humans with any dignity. Or in a way that helps European societies improve.
On that, you may want to look up what Frontex does (or just read @Shaserlark's comment, for a summary). You may also want to look up former Frontex head Fabrice Leggeri, including his political background.
At the very least, Frontex is massively betraying humanitarian ideals. I am sure there are fun ways to justify their behavior. Of course, to a large degree it's "lawful" -- but that does not mean it's good, just, fair or not racist.
You can even argue that Frontex treats people badly because they come on shitty boats, whereas Ukrainians who largely came on buses and in cars. I guess that argument would then be "we hate poor people", imo that does not make it any better. But it's not challenging to find marginally cloaked racism from a bunch of EU politicians talking about "Christian values" and "cultural compatibility" and whatnot, to justify that Ukrainians should be treated completely differently from Syrians or Afghans. E.g. here in Germany, Ukrainians somehow immediately received work permits and regular social benefits which are usually denied to other groups of migrants for years or until deportation. Poland actually changed its stance on migrants--as long as they are Ukrainian.
Sure - there are no (few?) blatantly racist laws in the EU. But that doesn't stop bureaucrats, police officers or judges from selectively applying laws, and that is something we see a lot of. And beyond all that is reported on the topic, a lot stays private and untold. If you are not a person affected by racism in your society, it's quite hard to understand.
Feelings? Really? We have lots of indications that many EPP feel closer ideologically to ECR, ID, and PfE than to the anti-racist groups of the parliament. H*ck, the prospective future German chancelor, member of EPP associate party CDU, ran his entire campaign on racism thinly cloaked as "protecting public safety". (Besides calling Muslim-raised boys "little pachas" and complaining about to-be-deported refugees blocking his dental appointments.)
Opinions that are not based in facts are worthless. In fact, worth than useless, they waste people's time.
Just look through your own comment and check how many times you refer to feelings and yourself being offended at the thought of something and whatnot. None of these things is grounded in facts.
I won't be spending more time in this community if moderators behave like this. Thank you for making this decision easy for me.
Enjoy your day.
Sure. Fwiw though, there was no need to make a report.
I would and I will. But I have little hopes for a rational discussion.
European are not racists. If white people would come by sea in the same conditions as african people come they would face the same fate. The prove to this argument have two evidences. Black people migrating from America does not face those issues. And white people immigrating from south America do face integration issues.
Also while being both white Ukrainian migrants tend to face way different inclusion issues than Romanian immigrants.
There are none racial laws whatsoever in europe and have not been for ages. This is not one of those countries that have actual racism written in the law of have had it until very recently.
So it's clear and evident that race or skin color is not of relevance for European people when they chose if they want to be welcoming to someone or not.
And not wanting fully open borders does not make anyone racist or a extremist. Many would argue that open borders is actually an extremist political view. And the moderate approach is border control. Having completely closed borders is the other extremist approach that is evidently not being implemented not even proposed, by any european government.
Also by every definition of extremist right wing, we could not consider most european governments as such. As most of them fall under one of three groups. S&D moderate left, EPP moderate right and Renew Europe, centre-right. Most governments are lead from a prime minister of one of those groups. None of which is extreme right. There are very few european countries actually lead by extremists. And there's no evidence whatsoever that people who vote for Renew or EPP (I don't know if you even include S&D as right wing extremist, I wouldn't be surprised) are racists, or have racism as a core trait of their politics. As racism is not in their parties manifestos, politics, or campaigns.
I would say your entire argument is based on an approach where you create a definition of racism that's extremely narrow and then claim it doesn't exist in Europe because it doesn't meet your specific criteria.
Frontex literally pushes people back at sea where they drown, sends people to places where they're tortured and raped, and we collectively allow this to happen. That's institutionalized racism whether you like it or not.
Your claim that "if white people came by sea they'd face the same fate" is a hypothetical that can't be verified - it's a classic counterfactual fallacy. The reality is that we don't see masses of white people drowning in the Mediterranean while the EU turns a blind eye.
You're also trying to define racism only as "racial laws" which is an incredibly narrow definition that no sociologist would accept. Structural racism manifests in policies, practices, and institutions - it doesn't require explicit "whites only" signs to exist.
Regarding Ukrainian refugees versus other refugee groups: initially there was indeed more acceptance based on perceived cultural similarity and yes, race. But as I already mentioned, even Ukrainian refugees are now being scapegoated by politicians in Poland, Hungary and other countries. The pattern is clear - initial acceptance followed by growing hostility.
The European Parliament groupings you mention are irrelevant to my argument. I was clearly talking about national politics where far-right parties have either gained power or significant influence in Hungary, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Netherlands, France and Germany among others.
Your attempt to frame this as "open borders extremism" versus "moderate border control" is a classic false dichotomy. There's a massive difference between reasonable border management and letting people drown at sea, which is what Frontex does.
I stand by what I said - Europe has deeply ingrained xenophobia, and Americans coming here will discover that too once the novelty wears off. They'll be blamed for housing problems, job market issues, and changing the culture - just like every other immigrant group before them.
So if we have no comparison on what would happen with white people coming by sea why would you assume is racism.
I gave the counterexample you conveniently ignored that's black people coming by other means or from other country facing no discrimination or way different integration issues.
The life of a USA black person, a south American Black person and an African Black person is on average completely different in europe. So race is not considered here. It's not a narrow racism definition, it's no racism because race does not have any weight in the equation on how someone is valued or not in europe.
If we where racism we would be doing the same to black americans and we are not. So the issue is different. The reason some people are treated differently is other, not race. That's just evident because plenty of black people face no issues whatsoever. And plenty of black people face way different issues that those faced by africans who come by the Mediterranean.
I live in a place where most black population is not African but American. And they have the same integration issues as white Americans, despite having a completely different skin color. Because those issues have different roots that race.
This is not the USA or other countries where race it's taken into account for how people are treated, and thus we could talk about racism. In USA there's plenty of people now who where alive when racial laws where still in place, way different situation than in Europe, same rethorics could not apply.
You're cherry-picking examples and artificially narrowing this to "Black Americans vs. African migrants" when my original point was about Europe's broader treatment of migrants and refugees from many backgrounds.
Why are we suddenly only discussing Black people? My original comments covered migrants from various regions, including Middle Eastern refugees, Ukrainians, and Southern Europeans. This selective focus is a distraction from the systemic issues I highlighted.
Even if we accept your unsupported claim about differential treatment (which needs actual evidence), it doesn't disprove discrimination - it just shows how xenophobia intersects with class, perceived cultural compatibility, and legal status.
The documented policy failures at Europe's borders affect migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, various African nations, and elsewhere. Focusing on how "Black Americans face no issues" (which is itself questionable) ignores the thousands who drown in the Mediterranean or face abuse in detention centers.
Let's return to the actual evidence: Europe has policies that result in documented human rights abuses at borders. We criminalize rescue operations. We fund dictatorships to stop migrants before they reach us. We've created a system where people die rather than receive help.
These aren't opinions - they're documented facts. Whether you call it racism, xenophobia or "migration management," we've normalized treating certain groups of human beings as disposable.
But you are saying. Because people who come in handmade boats drown in the sea we are racist. There is no logical correlation between those two issues.
You just want to stamp a negative connotation label on us over that.
The fact that we want to control who enters our countries does not make us racist. That's just a fact, as it does not fit into the definition of racism. Race have nothing to do with it.
Wanting to control immigration is not racism.
Racisms is making policies to harm people of different colour (or race) living in our country. Our politics have nothing to so with race, but with border control. We don't care of the colour of the skin, we just care that they are coming through an unregulated migrational path, that it's actually pretty dangerous to them. We are not even actually trying to kill anybody.
And it's of maximum importance to considere the massive amount of immigrants of all races and colours that come to Europe by different migrational path and face not those issues. So it's EVIDENT that the treatment to those who come on handmade boats are caused by HOW the come, and not by what their colour or race is.
Are people of the exact same race coming by plane sinking in the sea by european policies? No, then race is not the cause.
Also, sorry, but the voices of a few politicians of two countries about Ukrainian refugees does not make EUROPE.
It's also very important to differentiate the concepts of not supporting immigration, or wanting to have control over the borders to the concept of racism. As they have nothing to do with each other, once again racism here is just used as a punitive label, a fallacy of those you like so much, to avoid talking seriously about the pros and cons on different border and immigration policies.
Your argument is a perfect example of how we sanitize our migration policies with euphemisms. "Border control" sounds neutral and reasonable, but what we're really talking about is active policies that regularly result in preventable deaths.
Frontex doesn't just "control borders" - they push migrants back to Libya where they face documented torture and sexual violence. They don't accidentally fail to rescue people - they actively avoid responding to distress calls. These aren't unintended consequences; they're the designed outcome of policies meant to create a "deterrent effect."
Whether it's technically "racism" by your narrow definition is beside the point. The reality is we apply completely different standards to different groups of migrants. When Ukrainians needed refuge, we quickly created special protection status. When Syrian doctors needed refuge, we let their families drown in the Mediterranean. The difference isn't "HOW they come" - it's who they are and where they're from.
Your claim that "we don't care about the color of their skin" is contradicted by statements from European politicians who explicitly advocated for Ukrainian refugees because they were "European" with "blue eyes and blonde hair" (as multiple news anchors and politicians stated in 2022).
And yes, a "few politicians" absolutely represent broader European attitudes when they're leading political parties and setting policy. Friedrich Merz isn't some random person - he's likely to be Germany's next Chancellor. When these politicians face no meaningful backlash for their statements, it reveals societal acceptance.
The problem isn't that we want functioning migration systems. It's that we've created a two-tier system where people from certain regions are forced into deadly routes and then blamed for taking them, while we pretend this isn't connected to who they are.
Every syrian got asylum not just doctors.
I think is a well known fact, given all that has been talked about Syrian refugees
All violent death is preventable, the question is what's the best way to prevent those is, and who is to made responsible. Those torturers you talk about are as human as you and me, thus respinsible for their actions.