“Every time Trump or members of his administration have lashed out at Europe, including Ukraine, Europeans have absorbed the blow with a forced smile and bent over backwards to flatter the White House.” (…)
“While a systemic answer to Europe’s security conundrum is not in sight, Europeans do have the levers to prevent Ukraine’s capitulation and create the conditions for a just peace.”
We are not alone, we have 26 others. That’s what the EU is. Not being alone, but being stronger, together.
did anyone think we could rely on a treacherous country such as the US?
They arent alone, eu, uk, the nordics. canada, australia, japan, taiwan, and a bunch of other nations all have common cause
And even the EU alone does not need to hide from the US. Including the other countries shifts it even more.
It is the US that is becoming more and more alone, especially if we finally do our homework and realise our potential.
They arent alone
Yes agreed , it’s been imo dramatically portrayed as we have been overly dependant on the US to take the lead after WWII. They were able to cut through most internal divisions, and now its enterily up to us.
Time to feel more confident and step out in the World, not as post-WWII Europe or an infant sucking at anyone’s tits, but as self conscious and aware Union with it’s own character, values and way of life.
How about falling to fascism and alignment with Russia or the USA, one country at a time? The process of undermining European democracy internally is already well underway.
How about falling to fascism
That would stop in the moment the other party (parties) would start to be a responsible party and not a driven_by_the_ideology_of_ the_day party.
What you call fascist in reality is mostly the right that started to talk about real problems that the left choose to ignore (if not making them worst) and then get elected.
True, there are some real fascists here and there and they are extremist but overall they are a minority of the right (and, tbh, these extremist are present also on the left and everything in between).That would stop in the moment the other party (parties) would start to be a responsible party and not a driven_by_the_ideology_of_ the_day party
Good point and very likely too. The moderate and left parties need to reinvent and redefine themselves better.
But imo simply talking about " the real issues " will not help us, and most solutions the (more) rightwinged parties offer are just false. The worries people have are real but comsider that this fear is also used for fear mongering and are often fed by propaganda.
But imo simply talking about " the real issues " will not help us,
Probably it will not help to solve the problem, but at least it is a start. True, you need then to act on the issues…
and most solutions the (more) rightwinged parties offer are just false.
… and you are right here. The rightwinged often offer solutions that are doomed to fail but at least they try.
More importantly, if you talk and act on these, you don’t leave the scene to just one side.
The worries people have are real but comsider that this fear is also used for fear mongering and are often fed by propaganda.
That’s the point, but let’s be honest: if we ignore the extremists on both sides, the right began to win exactly when the left decide to commit suicide following ideas and objectives which, while obviously deserving, are not what people were asking to act about.
That’s the point, but let’s be honest: if we ignore the extremists on both sides…
Ok , needed to read that sentence 3 times.
Tbh, I dont think I’m not actually ignoring them, though yes, they both get under my skin. I do believe that polarisation is a big issue, that’s apart from the question who is actually right or wrong. I also think that sofar, I haven’t seen any good or “easy” solution. Our isues are unique and complex, and sometimes solutions take time. So I guess we probably have to be confident we as a society will somehow find a way, without shutting eachother out. That means understanding. Fear for change or fear for too little change, for one could be a commonality. For now, in these trying times, maybe having a Government that mostly sort of works might be a great miracle already. I’m just saying…how do we even measure or compare it all? I don’t know.
How about falling
Yeah how about that? The rise of Facism is most certainly not uniquely a European problem for starters, they are growing roots everywhere There is a whole worldwide culture war going on.
The undermining of Europe has existed for a long while now actually; let’s say since after the construction of the Berlin wall. The difference now is that’s concentrated in the resurgence of the extreme right, also it seems more widespread , and the last years the efforts by US and or RF and CCP have intensified.
In a very weird way Europe should really thank the UK for the Brexit. If that event hadn’t shook Europe to it’s core, the anti-EU lobby would now have had a much stronger grip.
And with a “friend” like today’s usa we don’t need enemies
Yet what they all have in common primarily is that their population is majorily made up by morons. And so they all happily vote for right-wing populists preaching “nationalist interests” and “souvereignity” over common cause and blaming someone else for the problems they actively cause to enrich themselves.
In the article, it is highlighted the situation with Ukraine.
It is not clear if there are other countries other than the EU that can influence the situation(aside the US and Russia).
However, it is also time the EU becomes a bit egoistic not because it is necessary, but it will help in the future to determine what countries are willing to cooperate in the same manner.
Maybe the EU should offer reparations, that’d really stick it to all those nasty other imperialists which it is definitely not aligned with ideologically.
That is really complex. The imperialism of France is very different to that of Slovakia for example and the EU has members with everything in between.
It really isn’t, are there any states within the EU that do not benefit from the concentration of wealth that colonialism has generated?
Since the question is clearly meant to be rethorical, but it seems none obvious to me:
- How does Slovakia, which was part of Austria.Hungary, which did not hold land outside Europe, benefit as much from colonialism as France, which had massive pieces of land?
- The Irish claim that British rule over Ireland was a form of colonialism. So how did they benefit from that as much as the Dutch did from controlling Indonsia?
- Why is there no difference between the size and time countries had colonial Empires at all? Germany had one for 30years or so, but Spain for centuries.
It wasn’t rhetorical, it was meant to encourage you to question the current conditions the EU exists under because imperialism never ended despite the European assertion that everything is fine now because they feel bad about it. Yes, colonised people are part of the EU as they are part of ever fucking nation on this planet because of the scope of effect that trajectory of colonialism achieved. You’ll notice that Irish people are far more vocally decolonial than French or German people, how curious.
I do not care who was the naughtiest imperialist in the past – though that history teaches us a lot about how this system developed – because the EU is still fundamentally a colonial system. The dissonance many Europeans on these threads express is that their understanding of colonialism is conveniently drawn at the borders and exists on the scale of severity you described above. Notice how this understanding also positions the violence in the past, as though it functions to obscure the continuance of that violence. EU states invest in colonialism directly and foster corporations – which are also conveniently imagined as separate from formal organising despite neoliberal policies – that engage in colonialism. Pick any commodity around your house, and look up who owns the resources that built it. Where does your phone battery come from, the fish you eat, the oil that fuels your cities.
The world extends beyond your doorstep.
European fascists aren’t alone, though, and that’s the issue.
It’s really becoming a “ideological worldwar” or something. Supposedly there a three geospheres and the main topic is democracy versus autocracy.
Which democracy is not a masked autocracy where the rich control politics?
I’ll take a EU-style “masked autocracy” over an overt autocracy like Russia any day.
or whatever disgusting mess the US is sleepwalking into…
I believe that’s going to be an overt autocracy like Russia.
What is the EU-style “masked autocracy”? Can we be sure that it exists? If the EU does what the US wants there is not much EU in that autocracy.
No, “they” are not alone because those “Europeans” discussed here are not on Europe’s side but exclusively their own.
Just like the <1% everywhere else they will simply throw the population under the bus to be on the authoritarians good side as one of them.
Are we -the European populations- alone? Yes, very much so. But that’s okay because propaganda-induced brain-damage is for a long time preventing us from even recognizing reality. So we will happily keep voting people into power that are only there to enrich themselves and their buddies while blaming imaginary scape goats… immigrants in most cases still, then LGBTQ+ -as we can see in those countries without relevant immigration already-, probably followed by everyone with another political opinion (if history is any indication), then intellectuals in general because people still thinking on their own -even if they keep quiet- are a risk. And once we reached the “random people have to be the scape goat today”-stage they will all cry out and ask how it could have come that far.
Yup. This idea of geographical, ideological alignments or lack thereof between blocs or countries entirely misses what’s actually going on. It’s why it’s rarely revealing and it fails to create useful predictions. Instead I find that looking at the owner class as acting against the working classes domestically and internationaly provides a much better picture of the world.
