6 ms·

> t feels like a nominally populist, anti-bureaucratic/anti-establishment movement (the extent of the truth in that being debatable) has been able to make a sub

> t feels like a nominally populist, anti-bureaucratic/anti-establishment movement (the extent of the truth in that being debatable) has been able to make a substantial impact with that platform, due in part to the abject inability of that establishment to deal with and neutralise the movement. It's happening all over the world: Austria, France (National Front), China, Japan, Turkey, Israel, etc etc. It's like the world forgot the lessons of the past - the curses of nationalism, populism and ideology - and nobody has stood up to remind them. The latter really angers and depresses me; nobody with a platform is making the well-known arguments about why these things are very dangerous.

thomasahle 10y ago
> It's like the world forgot the lessons of the past - the curses of nationalism, populism and ideology It could also be, that we are doing something wrong in the society, something we did better after the last wars. Such as not including everybody in the growth of the economy. At least I'd like to think we don't have to kill hundreds of millions of people every century, to make people remember...
- tyre 10y ago
  We have to find something to better than fear or hate to unify nations. Company cultures have been shifting from fear-driven-development to a more human focus. Still a ways to go (especially compared with the marketing around it), but a step in the right direction.
lossolo 10y ago
Unfortunately people do not change. Look at our history, i fear that it's only a matter of time when we will see another hitler in disguise, but this time this will not be the jews that will be the target but muslims. You can feel populism all over the Europe, (i am from EU) every month right wing parties getting stronger and stronger, nationalism and populism EVERYWHERE. Only 30 thousand votes saved Austria from radical right wing president. Look at US also, political correctness in really excessive levels and not speaking about things made Trump so popular. There is a problem with education also, we should teach our kids what populism and nationalism is, what are the consequences of radical nationalism. "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."
- hackuser 10y ago
  > Unfortunately people do not change We are a long way from the Middle Ages; things do change quite a bit. Look at civil rights in the U.S.: Two generations ago, women needed their husbands permission to get a job, and were only allowed in teaching and nursing for the most part. Look at the spread of democracy.
  - highwind 10y ago
    I guess the changes happen too slow for a single person to notice within a span of single generation. So I guess I'll have to die in hopes that I have done my duty to change the world for the better and the next generation will carry the torch for me.
  - lossolo 10y ago
    I just hope that trend you are talking about will keep up but... I know someone that took part in World War II, he is alive still, this was not a long time ago, we are far from change my friend. Then look rwanda, somalia, balkans now middle east, north africa etc.
mathattack 10y ago
Perhaps it's been too long since we've had Beggar Thy Neighbor recessions or World Wars induced by stupidity?
coolandsmartrr 10y ago
You mention Japan, but even as a local I'm not sure which movement you're referring to regarding anti-beueaucratic populism. Perhaps, are you alluding to SEALDs and those against revising the constitution? If so, I don't think their voice are comparably as loud as those overseas.
- hackuser 10y ago
  I was talking about nationalism and populism more generally. For example, I've read many times that the revisionist far right has growing influence, re-writing history books to hide Japan's actions in WWII, launching campaigns against those who criticize that period, etc.
jordanb 10y ago
It's possible to argue the same thing from the other side: the political establishment in many countries have forgotten that they have to earn their legitimacy by working for the benefit of their compatriots. We've had a political class who've decided that the hoi polloi don't really matter anymore and that governance is a matter of maintaining consensus at the top. Now the working classes are lashing back and sure it's ugly but it's a predictable consequence of the last few decades of tone deaf technocratic government.
- panic 10y ago
  But the way we're lashing back seems completely unproductive. Why not organize around a sane leader instead of electing bigger and bigger idiots in some kind of suicidal hope that the system will collapse?
  - jordanb 10y ago
    You're asking why the angry mob is so disorganized? Angry mobs are angry mobs and demagogues are demagogues. My point is that the fault doesn't lie with the mob it lies with the people who let things come to this.
    - panic 10y ago
      An angry mob is made of people who are individually responsible for their decisions. It doesn't matter whose fault it is; if the government won't fix it, the people have to organize to do it on their own, and an angry mob is not the best way to do that.
      - oh_sigh 10y ago
        They aren't an "angry mob". They are people voting for what they feel to be their best interest. I find it interesting that you believe people voting to be an "angry mob" because 1) they don't listen to the political establishment on who they should vote for, and 2) they don't listen to the academic establishment on who they should vote for.
aphextron 10y ago
>nobody with a platform is making the well-known arguments about why these things are very dangerous. This is the inherent problem in dealing with demagoguery. Logical arguments do not matter, and the left doesn't seem to understand this. You have to fight fire with fire. Feelings with feelings. You have to speak to people's guts, not their minds.
orbifold 10y ago
I want to like the EU and this in fact what was pushed really hard for by the school system at least in Germany. But I can't fail to notice its many disadvantages. It is fundamentally even less democratic than the representative democracies it unites, supposedly run by technocrats that in fact follow agendas set by corporations/industry, with decisions that get sold to the public as inevitable. I hate what the Bologna reforms did to higher education for example, but there are many other instances where EU decisions had extremely negative impact, with sometimes almost no popular support. Point being not only right wing basket cases don't like the EU. The far left doesn't really like it either. It is a project conceived by US planners and executed by the French and German elites pushed onto the rest of the continent. Whenever there is talk about the "democracy deficit" it is brushed aside as something that will be fixed once Europe has become more integrated.
- hiram112 10y ago
  >It is a project conceived by US planners... Any proof of that? From a US perspective, I can't see how a unified Europe would benefit the US - neither economically nor militarily. The EU is the only state (besides China with 4x the population of the US) that can compare to the US economy. Dealing with smaller countries gives the US an advantage compared with similar deals with the EU itself. A unified EU military would be the only state both large enough and advanced enough to pose a valid military challenge to US hegemony.
  - leakybit 10y ago
    It benefited Wall Street pretty good after they sold hundreds of billions in bonds that were in reality; junk.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    Europe is a US ally; the US wants them stronger. Also, dis-unified Europe cost the US quite a bit in the first half of the 20th century.
- tomp 10y ago
  > I hate what the Bologna reforms did to higher education A bit off-topic, but what exactly do you hate about Bologna? I liked it that it shortened my studies (math) from 4 years to 3, although I would have appreciated a bit more depth (more elective subjects)... But then, I only have a very limited perspective, so I'm very curious about what other people think, and what possible improvements they see.
int_19h 10y ago
There is a theory that this is what happens when you have several generations live their lives without seeing a major war or crisis, and feeling its results firsthand. Presumably, that's when people, and societies as a whole, get too "cocky" and less compromising, because they don't fear the consequences enough.
- ericd 10y ago
  Yeah, I think after a few generations of stability, when the last survivors of the last major calamity leave power, people start believing that this time is different, we've moved past war, without realizing that humans haven't fundamentally changed.
aorloff 10y ago
I think its more a statement on the perception of globalization and how it affects the working class in western countries, combined with some actual breaking down on how the whole trade thing is supposed to work (WTO, Doha round is now 15 years old !!!)
narrator 10y ago
>It's like the world forgot the lessons of the past - the curses of nationalism, populism and ideology - and nobody has stood up to remind them. The average worker in the western nations did a lot better when the cold war was in full swing than afterwards. Peaceful competition among nations and economic systems seems to work best.
- hiram112 10y ago
  I've read that the reason US and other Western workers have done worse since the Cold War is due to the breakup of the Soviet Union, and with it, the fear that the population might support communism if capitalism became too predatory. Once the USSR and its satellite states disappeared, US capitalism had no fear of a revolution ever gaining hand, and the results for the middle class have been as expected. Seems like a valid idea. I do know that in the aftermath of WWII, the Allies, under the Morgenthau Plan, treated the German population in the West very poorly. Essentially, the goal was to keep them in an agrarian state so they'd never be able to pose a military challenge. After it became apparent that a large ideological battle between the communist and capitalist systems among the German population was being waged, and that the western population might just begin to choose communism, should things not improve, the Allies did begin to allow the West to re-industrialize.
  - nradov 10y ago
    In the US this started during the Great Depression. Political leaders at the time were legitimately afraid of a socialist / communist uprising. The New Deal social welfare and income redistribution programs might have helped to prevent such an event.
    - hiram112 10y ago
      Yes, exactly. I watched the Grapes of Wrath (1940) a few years ago. The amount of pro-communist idealization in the film would never, ever be allowed to play in a main-stream theater in the US today. I think most younger people don't realize that communism was a huge threat to the US Capitalist system pre-Soviet-breakup, and because of that, a very large propaganda campaign was waged until the 90's. The remnants we see today are why an effective attack on Bernie Sanders was to associate him with socialism / communism. Obviously, young people didn't fall for the tactic. Older folks who had been taught to fear and hate communism for much of their earlier lives, on the other hand, were influenced heavily by the attack.
devishard 10y ago
What are the well-known arguments?
fdsaaf 10y ago
I don't think it's so much the forgetting of history as much as overreach on the part of those who would try to deny that human nature exists. When people can see all around them that gender, nationality, race, and religion convey useful information about the people they meet, and they live under the rule of an elite which claims that these things are irrelevant, then when some demagogue or other comes along who acknowledges the truth about these things but who lies everything else, people are going to go running into the arms of that demagogue. Had these people advocated a fair and humane acknowledgement of these obvious, day-to-day truths instead of adopted a posture of absolute denial of the obvious, we wouldn't have Trump in the US and Brexit across the Atlantic.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > When people can see all around them that gender, nationality, race, and religion convey useful information about the people they meet > absolute denial of the obvious You say that as if it's assumed, but I don't agree and neither do very many others. I agree it's obviously a human instinct to think that, but that's true of many other bad ideas - we're not beasts, our intellectual abilities take us far beyond our instincts. That tribal instinct has led to terrible destruction - arguably it's caused more harm than any other idea. Of course I'm not speaking in absolutes (and I hope you don't you mean to). There's a little bit of information there, but generally I find people are the same everywhere; there are good and bad, smart and dumb, happy and sad, capable and incompetent, kind and cruel, etc. just as much in every group. It's really the individual that matters. It's also essential to liberty and basic fairness: An individual need to be judged on their own merits, by their own action, and not by the color of their skin, their nationalities, their religion, gender, sexual preference, etc. If we say, "people in religion X are thieves", then it will be an injustice to almost all the individuals in that religion. It leads to widespread injustice even in peace, when a skilled woman or minority, for example, is judged instead on their race or gender and denied the job.
  - fdsaaf 10y ago
    > You say that as if it's assumed, but I don't agree and neither do very many others. It turns out that stereotypes, however distasteful, usually do have a certain degree of accuracy: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/03/30/are-stereotypes-accurate/ http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/03/30/are-stereotypes-accur.... You may not want to live in the world where they do, but that reality is what it is. When you ask people to deny the evidence of their own eyes, you're setting up a kind of resentment that can lead only to bad outcomes. Of course, it'd be awful to be individually assumed to be a thief because you come from a group full of people unusually likely to be thieves. My point is that if it's a matter of fact that people of that group are more likely to be thieves, whatever the reason, and you tell people that, no, that group isn't full of thieves, and people are terrible for thinking so, then as soon as some demagogue acknowledges the truth, people will run to him no matter how bad his other opinions and no matter how ruinous his policies. People hate liars, and even more, they hate being compelled by social forces of shame and ridicule to deny their true beliefs. It's better to have an honest conversation about these things than to repress them and create the kind of pressure cooker that explodes and makes a Trump president. In an EU context, maybe it'd have been better to accept some restrictions on freedom of movement. Maybe it'd have been better to scale back centrally-imposed regulations on consumer goods (e.g., the EU banning traditional UK tea kettles). Now we're going to see the EU damaged because well-meaning people tried to bring about the world they'd like to see by demanding everyone pretend it be so, and only children play pretend.
Radim 10y ago
As someone born and raised in a communist country (what is now Czech Republic), I can tell you it is precisely because we DID NOT FORGET what it was like, that we're against the direction EU is going [0]. The parallels between our (still recent) past are absolutely striking: EU's propaganda, censorship efforts, ideological idiocy that nobody takes seriously any more (incl. economic). But most of all, there's the scary disconnect between how real people live their lives vs what the official "party line" dictates. We're re-learning to read between the propaganda lines, again. IMO we don't need condescending comments about how stupid everyone is (populists!), nor a platform explaining why this "central planning" ideology is appealing but very dangerous. We know very well, and we vote accordingly. [0] "we" = majority of the country: http://zpravy.idnes.cz/ctenari-idnes-cz-anketa-czexit-de5-/domaci.aspx?c=A160621_155453_domaci_jw http://zpravy.idnes.cz/ctenari-idnes-cz-anketa-czexit-de5-/d...
- toyg 10y ago
  Honestly? Eastern Europeans, of all people, got massively subsidized by the EU. Biting the hands that feed you is a great recipe for building resentment and mistrust, which brings conflict and ultimately war.
  - Radim 10y ago
    That's kinda the point, isn't it? Wouldn't a voluntary exchange of trade, labour and policies, in place of "a feeding hand" (what a condescending remark!) be better for everyone? By the way, the subsidies feed mostly the politicians, and the hands of their well-connected friends who are the true benefactors. And that's no coincidence -- as I said, we've already lived through the reality disconnect that is the result of top-down social engineering. What the linked poll shows you is that normal people are telling you to take your oh-so-generous subsidies and shove them. If it means being part of a political union they have no say in.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > the subsidies feed mostly the politicians, and the hands of their well-connected friends who are the true benefactors. You'll need to provide some data. It sounds like what any anti-EU propagandist would first think of asserting. And what about the businesses with access to the world's largest market?

thomasahle 10y ago

> It's like the world forgot the lessons of the past - the curses of nationalism, populism and ideology It could also be, that we are doing something wrong in the society, something we did better after the last wars. Such as not including everybody in the growth of the economy. At least I'd like to think we don't have to kill hundreds of millions of people every century, to make people remember...

tyre 10y ago
We have to find something to better than fear or hate to unify nations. Company cultures have been shifting from fear-driven-development to a more human focus. Still a ways to go (especially compared with the marketing around it), but a step in the right direction.

lossolo 10y ago

Unfortunately people do not change. Look at our history, i fear that it's only a matter of time when we will see another hitler in disguise, but this time this will not be the jews that will be the target but muslims. You can feel populism all over the Europe, (i am from EU) every month right wing parties getting stronger and stronger, nationalism and populism EVERYWHERE. Only 30 thousand votes saved Austria from radical right wing president. Look at US also, political correctness in really excessive levels and not speaking about things made Trump so popular. There is a problem with education also, we should teach our kids what populism and nationalism is, what are the consequences of radical nationalism. "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."

hackuser 10y ago
> Unfortunately people do not change We are a long way from the Middle Ages; things do change quite a bit. Look at civil rights in the U.S.: Two generations ago, women needed their husbands permission to get a job, and were only allowed in teaching and nursing for the most part. Look at the spread of democracy.
- highwind 10y ago
  I guess the changes happen too slow for a single person to notice within a span of single generation. So I guess I'll have to die in hopes that I have done my duty to change the world for the better and the next generation will carry the torch for me.
- lossolo 10y ago
  I just hope that trend you are talking about will keep up but... I know someone that took part in World War II, he is alive still, this was not a long time ago, we are far from change my friend. Then look rwanda, somalia, balkans now middle east, north africa etc.

mathattack 10y ago

Perhaps it's been too long since we've had Beggar Thy Neighbor recessions or World Wars induced by stupidity?

coolandsmartrr 10y ago

You mention Japan, but even as a local I'm not sure which movement you're referring to regarding anti-beueaucratic populism. Perhaps, are you alluding to SEALDs and those against revising the constitution? If so, I don't think their voice are comparably as loud as those overseas.

hackuser 10y ago
I was talking about nationalism and populism more generally. For example, I've read many times that the revisionist far right has growing influence, re-writing history books to hide Japan's actions in WWII, launching campaigns against those who criticize that period, etc.

jordanb 10y ago

It's possible to argue the same thing from the other side: the political establishment in many countries have forgotten that they have to earn their legitimacy by working for the benefit of their compatriots. We've had a political class who've decided that the hoi polloi don't really matter anymore and that governance is a matter of maintaining consensus at the top. Now the working classes are lashing back and sure it's ugly but it's a predictable consequence of the last few decades of tone deaf technocratic government.

panic 10y ago
But the way we're lashing back seems completely unproductive. Why not organize around a sane leader instead of electing bigger and bigger idiots in some kind of suicidal hope that the system will collapse?
- jordanb 10y ago
  You're asking why the angry mob is so disorganized? Angry mobs are angry mobs and demagogues are demagogues. My point is that the fault doesn't lie with the mob it lies with the people who let things come to this.
  - panic 10y ago
    An angry mob is made of people who are individually responsible for their decisions. It doesn't matter whose fault it is; if the government won't fix it, the people have to organize to do it on their own, and an angry mob is not the best way to do that.
    - oh_sigh 10y ago
      They aren't an "angry mob". They are people voting for what they feel to be their best interest. I find it interesting that you believe people voting to be an "angry mob" because 1) they don't listen to the political establishment on who they should vote for, and 2) they don't listen to the academic establishment on who they should vote for.

aphextron 10y ago

>nobody with a platform is making the well-known arguments about why these things are very dangerous. This is the inherent problem in dealing with demagoguery. Logical arguments do not matter, and the left doesn't seem to understand this. You have to fight fire with fire. Feelings with feelings. You have to speak to people's guts, not their minds.

orbifold 10y ago

I want to like the EU and this in fact what was pushed really hard for by the school system at least in Germany. But I can't fail to notice its many disadvantages. It is fundamentally even less democratic than the representative democracies it unites, supposedly run by technocrats that in fact follow agendas set by corporations/industry, with decisions that get sold to the public as inevitable. I hate what the Bologna reforms did to higher education for example, but there are many other instances where EU decisions had extremely negative impact, with sometimes almost no popular support. Point being not only right wing basket cases don't like the EU. The far left doesn't really like it either. It is a project conceived by US planners and executed by the French and German elites pushed onto the rest of the continent. Whenever there is talk about the "democracy deficit" it is brushed aside as something that will be fixed once Europe has become more integrated.

hiram112 10y ago
>It is a project conceived by US planners... Any proof of that? From a US perspective, I can't see how a unified Europe would benefit the US - neither economically nor militarily. The EU is the only state (besides China with 4x the population of the US) that can compare to the US economy. Dealing with smaller countries gives the US an advantage compared with similar deals with the EU itself. A unified EU military would be the only state both large enough and advanced enough to pose a valid military challenge to US hegemony.
- leakybit 10y ago
  It benefited Wall Street pretty good after they sold hundreds of billions in bonds that were in reality; junk.
- hackuser 10y ago
  Europe is a US ally; the US wants them stronger. Also, dis-unified Europe cost the US quite a bit in the first half of the 20th century.
tomp 10y ago
> I hate what the Bologna reforms did to higher education A bit off-topic, but what exactly do you hate about Bologna? I liked it that it shortened my studies (math) from 4 years to 3, although I would have appreciated a bit more depth (more elective subjects)... But then, I only have a very limited perspective, so I'm very curious about what other people think, and what possible improvements they see.

int_19h 10y ago

There is a theory that this is what happens when you have several generations live their lives without seeing a major war or crisis, and feeling its results firsthand. Presumably, that's when people, and societies as a whole, get too "cocky" and less compromising, because they don't fear the consequences enough.

ericd 10y ago
Yeah, I think after a few generations of stability, when the last survivors of the last major calamity leave power, people start believing that this time is different, we've moved past war, without realizing that humans haven't fundamentally changed.

aorloff 10y ago

I think its more a statement on the perception of globalization and how it affects the working class in western countries, combined with some actual breaking down on how the whole trade thing is supposed to work (WTO, Doha round is now 15 years old !!!)

narrator 10y ago

>It's like the world forgot the lessons of the past - the curses of nationalism, populism and ideology - and nobody has stood up to remind them. The average worker in the western nations did a lot better when the cold war was in full swing than afterwards. Peaceful competition among nations and economic systems seems to work best.

hiram112 10y ago
I've read that the reason US and other Western workers have done worse since the Cold War is due to the breakup of the Soviet Union, and with it, the fear that the population might support communism if capitalism became too predatory. Once the USSR and its satellite states disappeared, US capitalism had no fear of a revolution ever gaining hand, and the results for the middle class have been as expected. Seems like a valid idea. I do know that in the aftermath of WWII, the Allies, under the Morgenthau Plan, treated the German population in the West very poorly. Essentially, the goal was to keep them in an agrarian state so they'd never be able to pose a military challenge. After it became apparent that a large ideological battle between the communist and capitalist systems among the German population was being waged, and that the western population might just begin to choose communism, should things not improve, the Allies did begin to allow the West to re-industrialize.
- nradov 10y ago
  In the US this started during the Great Depression. Political leaders at the time were legitimately afraid of a socialist / communist uprising. The New Deal social welfare and income redistribution programs might have helped to prevent such an event.
  - hiram112 10y ago
    Yes, exactly. I watched the Grapes of Wrath (1940) a few years ago. The amount of pro-communist idealization in the film would never, ever be allowed to play in a main-stream theater in the US today. I think most younger people don't realize that communism was a huge threat to the US Capitalist system pre-Soviet-breakup, and because of that, a very large propaganda campaign was waged until the 90's. The remnants we see today are why an effective attack on Bernie Sanders was to associate him with socialism / communism. Obviously, young people didn't fall for the tactic. Older folks who had been taught to fear and hate communism for much of their earlier lives, on the other hand, were influenced heavily by the attack.

devishard 10y ago

What are the well-known arguments?

fdsaaf 10y ago

I don't think it's so much the forgetting of history as much as overreach on the part of those who would try to deny that human nature exists. When people can see all around them that gender, nationality, race, and religion convey useful information about the people they meet, and they live under the rule of an elite which claims that these things are irrelevant, then when some demagogue or other comes along who acknowledges the truth about these things but who lies everything else, people are going to go running into the arms of that demagogue. Had these people advocated a fair and humane acknowledgement of these obvious, day-to-day truths instead of adopted a posture of absolute denial of the obvious, we wouldn't have Trump in the US and Brexit across the Atlantic.

hackuser 10y ago
> When people can see all around them that gender, nationality, race, and religion convey useful information about the people they meet > absolute denial of the obvious You say that as if it's assumed, but I don't agree and neither do very many others. I agree it's obviously a human instinct to think that, but that's true of many other bad ideas - we're not beasts, our intellectual abilities take us far beyond our instincts. That tribal instinct has led to terrible destruction - arguably it's caused more harm than any other idea. Of course I'm not speaking in absolutes (and I hope you don't you mean to). There's a little bit of information there, but generally I find people are the same everywhere; there are good and bad, smart and dumb, happy and sad, capable and incompetent, kind and cruel, etc. just as much in every group. It's really the individual that matters. It's also essential to liberty and basic fairness: An individual need to be judged on their own merits, by their own action, and not by the color of their skin, their nationalities, their religion, gender, sexual preference, etc. If we say, "people in religion X are thieves", then it will be an injustice to almost all the individuals in that religion. It leads to widespread injustice even in peace, when a skilled woman or minority, for example, is judged instead on their race or gender and denied the job.
- fdsaaf 10y ago
  > You say that as if it's assumed, but I don't agree and neither do very many others. It turns out that stereotypes, however distasteful, usually do have a certain degree of accuracy: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/03/30/are-stereotypes-accurate/ http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/03/30/are-stereotypes-accur.... You may not want to live in the world where they do, but that reality is what it is. When you ask people to deny the evidence of their own eyes, you're setting up a kind of resentment that can lead only to bad outcomes. Of course, it'd be awful to be individually assumed to be a thief because you come from a group full of people unusually likely to be thieves. My point is that if it's a matter of fact that people of that group are more likely to be thieves, whatever the reason, and you tell people that, no, that group isn't full of thieves, and people are terrible for thinking so, then as soon as some demagogue acknowledges the truth, people will run to him no matter how bad his other opinions and no matter how ruinous his policies. People hate liars, and even more, they hate being compelled by social forces of shame and ridicule to deny their true beliefs. It's better to have an honest conversation about these things than to repress them and create the kind of pressure cooker that explodes and makes a Trump president. In an EU context, maybe it'd have been better to accept some restrictions on freedom of movement. Maybe it'd have been better to scale back centrally-imposed regulations on consumer goods (e.g., the EU banning traditional UK tea kettles). Now we're going to see the EU damaged because well-meaning people tried to bring about the world they'd like to see by demanding everyone pretend it be so, and only children play pretend.

Radim 10y ago

As someone born and raised in a communist country (what is now Czech Republic), I can tell you it is precisely because we DID NOT FORGET what it was like, that we're against the direction EU is going [0]. The parallels between our (still recent) past are absolutely striking: EU's propaganda, censorship efforts, ideological idiocy that nobody takes seriously any more (incl. economic). But most of all, there's the scary disconnect between how real people live their lives vs what the official "party line" dictates. We're re-learning to read between the propaganda lines, again. IMO we don't need condescending comments about how stupid everyone is (populists!), nor a platform explaining why this "central planning" ideology is appealing but very dangerous. We know very well, and we vote accordingly. [0] "we" = majority of the country: http://zpravy.idnes.cz/ctenari-idnes-cz-anketa-czexit-de5-/domaci.aspx?c=A160621_155453_domaci_jw http://zpravy.idnes.cz/ctenari-idnes-cz-anketa-czexit-de5-/d...

toyg 10y ago
Honestly? Eastern Europeans, of all people, got massively subsidized by the EU. Biting the hands that feed you is a great recipe for building resentment and mistrust, which brings conflict and ultimately war.
- Radim 10y ago
  That's kinda the point, isn't it? Wouldn't a voluntary exchange of trade, labour and policies, in place of "a feeding hand" (what a condescending remark!) be better for everyone? By the way, the subsidies feed mostly the politicians, and the hands of their well-connected friends who are the true benefactors. And that's no coincidence -- as I said, we've already lived through the reality disconnect that is the result of top-down social engineering. What the linked poll shows you is that normal people are telling you to take your oh-so-generous subsidies and shove them. If it means being part of a political union they have no say in.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > the subsidies feed mostly the politicians, and the hands of their well-connected friends who are the true benefactors. You'll need to provide some data. It sounds like what any anti-EU propagandist would first think of asserting. And what about the businesses with access to the world's largest market?