the bar for what is considered free now is just lower
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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It's not that they're free. It's that they're exceedingly privileged from exploiting the global south. And then racist against their victims. Basically the same as USA. It was never about "freedom" but rather genocide, slavery, exploitation, etc.
- Deported From Europe, Murdered by Israel
- Germany Turns to U.S. Playbook: Deportations Target Gaza War Protesters
- Nearly 9,000 migrant deaths recorded last year by UN migration agency, real death toll likely higher
The Economist is an imperial rag promoting pseudo-scientific capitalist ideology. They only care about pale skins.
Already was. While the us was occupied with cosplaying as freedom freaks and destroying countless democracies for the sake of freedom, europe actually became free.
It's a different idea of freedom. In the US it's about freedom to X, in the EU it's freedom from X.
For example, in the US you have the freedom to say just about anything you want. In the EU you're free from people making you unsafe by misinformation, lies, etc. In the US you're free to take pictures of anything you want that can be seen from the street. In Germany you're free from having pictures of your property posted online without your consent. The result is that Google's Street View covers everything in the US and almost nothing in Germany. In the US people or companies are free to take public information and hold onto it or publish it as they see fit without interference. In the EU, you're free from having that information out there forever beyond your control. You're free to demand that it be deleted under certain circumstances.
In the end, the European way is more about regulating things. It asks what kinds of things prevent people from living their lives freely and without worries, and tries to regulate those things. The American way is more about removing every regulation and rule possible and saying the end result is freedom so it must be good.
I think it's more that in Europe there's freedom for citizens, in the US there's freedom for corporations.
No, there aren't special rules that give corporations more freedom. Citizens have the same freedoms. The difference is that they're freedoms that may intrude on other people's privacy, or on their mental well-being, etc.
American obsession with money is weird when you think about it. Money is only useful when the human creativity, ingenuity, effort, etc. you want is for sale. Billionaires think their bunkers will save them after they make the world go to shit, but nobody is going to take care of these helpless bastards when there is nothing for their money to buy. Then there is the fact that money often ruins intrinsic motivation, which is why, for example, looking at the work of great artists and composers from the past, it’s clearly evident which works were commissioned vs. which ones were truly inspired work. A lot of open source software is inspired work that can be used without the limitations of paid software. Anyone running the arr stack with Jellyfin on a shitty old laptop knows all the enshittified streaming services combined can’t offer a superior experience. People with a loving and supportive family are wealthier than Elon Musk, who despite his net worth reeks of desperation for any superficial attention he can get. America is supposedly a “wealthy” country, but any country with a government that actually cares about its people and ensures they have a social safety net, clean food to eat without 1000 toxic additives, etc. is infinitely more wealthy than the USA.
People with a loving and supportive family are wealthier than Elon Musk
And they'll never have to wonder if they're truly loved for themselves or because they're rich. At a certain level of wealth, you'll never know for sure if someone likes you for who you are vs. your wealth. At Elon's level of wealth, he can't even trust that his family is being honest with him.
At Elon’s level of wealth, he can’t even trust that his family is being honest with him.
Well… his trans daughter probably is.
When you look at GDP per hour worked then Western Europe is at about the same level as the US. It is just that Europeans work a lot less then Americans, hence they earn more money.
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.
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.
The Economist is a very Neoliberal British magazine (I should know, I had a subscription for almost a decade) and as such they have the vices of both:
- The magical thinking of Neoliberals, were the solution for the social and economic problems caused by deregulation is even more deregulation.
- The almost universal practice amongst the British Press and Political class of claiming everywhere is a shithole compared to Britain, especially Europe (and by that they mean Continental Europe).
So yeah, of course for them America sliding into Fascism isn't the fault of the explosion of inequality and total freezing of Social Mobility there, which was the direct consequence of 4 decades of Neoliberalism and the destruction or defanging of all powers in the land (including Unions and the State) except for the Power Of Money, and of course Europe is "problematic" because they haven't destroyed enough Unions, Worker Rights and other non-Money powers and workers are still entitled to things like a month of vacations, retiring before they're dead and time for activities other than sleeping and working (oh, the horror!).
These guys have basically the ideology of the Democrat Party leadership, but only on Economics and with a British twist, possibly even harder Neoliberal (so, even more Rightwing, though towards Oligarchy rather than Fascism), and they certainly see it as their mission to "make opinion" (not Journalism) so their stories are almost invariably spined in some way to sell their ideology.
France should take the statue of liberty away from us tbh
It’s now a monument to how things used to be
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Chat control and any similar proposal should be killed once and for all before such big statements are made.
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.
from this article: "somehow europeans managed to squeeze their employers into giving them more of it"; it's called a union, not "convinced to grant" (like an "ottriate constitution" from a king). we (others before us) work politically with political subjects through conflict (strike, demonstrations, public debate and parliamentary discussions). anyway we don't do it enough, but we still have the remains of the communist, socialist and social democratic parties of the second after the war, despite the fact that anglo-saxon neoliberalism tried (and partly succeeded) to eradicate the welfare state (both from a regulatory point of view and through the culture of consumption and overabundance). however, we hope that in the future we will work less and we live better :)
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.
I disagree. Hungary and Poland going utterly authoritarian came before America. If anything, they are parallel processes going on in Europe and the US.
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.
"hidden" racism in german is so awful. They be talking about some minority and how chill everything is and then comes a but,... and you just already know the discussions has gone to the dogs.
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))
Or, differently put: You can't just pick out a random signifier, such as "Muslim", and expect the numbers to tell you much.
It's a good shorthand that allows us to see what, say, Germans think of an archetypical Other.
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".
My dude don't try to convince me that "ban Muslim immigration" and "we really like Hasan" are compatible statements except in a "he's one of the good ones" kind of way. "We don't want more" can only come from someone who believes immigrants are a problem that needs to be solved.
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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.
Immigrants are getting deported for those wrong views, though, so… yeah.
Ah, good old Germany and their good old ways...
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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.
Now? Always has been
Uh, we historically had some rather repressive regimes, and some countries were ruled by dictators until the 90s. People like Franco and Ceausescu and Tito weren't that long ago.
But it's generally been pretty good in the millennial lifetime.
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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.
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Europe has had the ability to change one’s station in life - what people might equate to the “American Dream” - for a long time now, and has had it better than America has. You can go from poor to a middle class life more easily. However going from rags-to-riches is far more rare. Unfortunately, here in America we’ve equated the Dream and Freedom to mean going from middle class to Fuck You Money, having a personal arsenal, and breaking every social contract we possibly can. The only ones trotting out The American Dream ™️ as still existing are politicians and the people fighting any restrictions on getting richer while the rest of us are crabs in a bucket all stepping on each other trying to keep from drowning. Now, with trump, we have the basic Constitution under attack and what few freedoms that guaranteed we had left being eroded. Well, except 2A, but he’ll get to that eventually.
Yeah, Europe has absolutely been “free-er” and better in multiple ways for a long while now. The only reason most Americans don’t understand this is because guns and chasing fuck you money.
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.
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