8 ms·

Yeah, it was shocking here in Stockholm when there were BLM protests in 2020. It's like people are more involved in US politics than their national politics.

• forinti 4y ago
  I had to get books on MLK and Rosa Parks for my kid's school. Why?? This drives me crazy. They are not part of my country's history and we have plenty of local heroes.
  • wolverine876 4y ago
    Why restrict your kid's knowledge? I know about plenty of people in plenty of countries.
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      Did you have to read books about Slovenian history in school? There's not enough time to include everything about everyone. The history of the descendants of US slaves might be more interesting to people because of our cultural reach, but it's not necessary for Slovenian kids to learn except as an example of a well documented protest movement.
      • aa-jv 4y ago
        Serious question: does Slovenia have civil rights events in its history comparable to those in the USA? Because, try as I might, I can't think of another country with as serious a history of civil rights (abuses and promotion) than the USA - I'd love to hear of an underrated civil rights movement in Slovenia.
        • forinti 4y ago
          You see, that's the whole issue right there. Slovenia has its own history, its own problems, and its own heroes. Those things are important for the Slovenian people, not the problems created and sort of solved by the US. In my country (Brazil if you must know) the cultural avalanche that comes from the US is such that some people genuinely admire the US civil rights movement and its leaders, but will not tolerate anything similar locally. Such is the power of propaganda: you get tied up in the problems of the US and ignore your own.
          • aa-jv 4y ago
            Very good point, and I agree. But I don't see how it'll ever change for as long as the Slovenian people who know about the countrys' history never speak up and let the rest of the world know about it. America is good at one thing: being very loud, when everyone else isn't. It's a pity that we therefore associate being loud as being American...
      • wolverine876 4y ago
        > Did you have to read books about Slovenian history in school? I read about the histories of many countries. Didn't you? England in particular, all of Europe, China .... How can you understand the world without knowing about more than your own corner? Why would you limit yourself?
  • slim 4y ago
    maybe they are studying racism ? racism can't be studied on the local level alone. it looks like you're from Brazil. Brazil has a common history with US with regards to enslavement and import of africans, for example.
• hanniabu 4y ago
  Maybe racism isn't just a US thing
  • hanniabu 4y ago
    I'm amazed this is being downvoted. Do people really think that racism only exists in America?
    • pb7 4y ago
      Yes, many Europeans think that because they don’t talk about it and refuse to collect statistics to show it that racism doesn’t exist within their borders. Europe is just as, if not more, racist than the US. Just ask them what they think of the Roma people.
      • gbrindisi 4y ago
        Racism is everywhere, what I think eludes americans is that in Europe identities are way more tied to nationality rather than ethnicity.
        • pb7 4y ago
          It doesn’t elude us. Anyone that looks outside of the country knows that but hate is hate. You don’t choose the color of your skin any more than you choose where you are born.
      • pkaye 4y ago
        Interestingly US has a large Romani diaspora (1M) but I think they have integrated into the US culture over time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_Americans
    • TulliusCicero 4y ago
      Some European countries are behind the states on accepting that racism exists there, yes. E.g. in Germany there's still a very common attitude of, "well, we're not racist here" even as anyone with a non-German name and especially anyone not white struggles to rent an apartment. At this point in the US, acting like racism isn't a big deal or isn't common at all has become somewhat of a far-right position. Now, in some ways the impact of racism is lesser in Europe, because there's less police violence generally and typically a much stronger social safety net.
• unmole 4y ago
  There was a protest march in Mumbai against gun violence in the US. That was the only time I ever wanted to punch someone for expressing a political opinion in person.
  • whitemary 4y ago
    Wow. I knew it was bad, but this angers me on a whole new level. FWIW, if working class Americans (the kind liberals hate) realized this was happening, I think you would have their sympathy. Unfortunately, however, they will probably never realize it.
  • orbital-decay 4y ago
    I don't understand this sentiment. People in various countries often protest against or in support for politics in other countries they have no relationship to. Practically anything of note that happens in the world causes public campaigns somewhere else, this is neither new nor exclusive to US politics.
  • humanistbot 4y ago
    > There was a protest march in Mumbai against gun violence in the US. That was the only time I ever wanted to punch someone for expressing a political opinion in person. Let me get this correct, because your comment is baffling to me. People often protest the actions of other countries, usually by protesting in their home country at the embassy of the other country that is doing something they want to protest. For example, people in countries around the world routinely protest against the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs by protesting in their country at the local Chinese embassy. Their goal is ostensibly to get the Chinese government to change their policies, or at least generate media coverage to raise awareness about the issue. I'm assuming this is the event you're referring to in Mumbai, and I'll use a source that holds as cynical of a view as you do in covering it: https://www.indiatoday.in/lifestyle/what-s-hot/story/mumbaikars-took-to-the-streets-for-march-for-our-lives-rally-get-trolled-on-social-media-1197965-2018-03-26 https://www.indiatoday.in/lifestyle/what-s-hot/story/mumbaik... The protesters assembled at the US Consulate in Mumbai to protest policies by the US government that are directly leading to innocent people in the US being murdered almost every day in mass shootings. In the same way that Chinese government treatment of Uyghurs is not an issue outside of China, US government policies around guns is not an issue outside of the US (even though it actually is, because the US is a major supplier of guns around the world). How is this any different than protesting at the Chinese embassy over internal Chinese government policy? I'll also say that if you felt an urge to use physical violence to respond to someone expressing a political opinion, then you need to get mental health treatment immediately.
• adventured 4y ago
  Racism is at least as prevalent - and far more out-in-the-open - in Europe than in the US. There should be BLM or equivalent protests all over Europe, frankly. It's shocking how openly racist Europeans are (whether eg Italians about Africans, Germans about anyone, or Europeans routinely about gypsies). Ever gone on Reddit and looked at what Swedes say about refugees and immigrants (post ~2014 or so; in 2015 they were burning refugee camps)? The racist, anti-non-Swede, nationalism type is only going to get a lot worse there. The integration of refugees into Swedish society has been a complete failure, which you can see in the crime and employment outcomes. If it were the US, the blame would be squarely placed on racist behavior / dominant culture preventing the refugees from thriving.
  • malkia 4y ago
    Everytime I hear someone from my dear Bulgaria claiming pure aryan race, and I roll my eyes. Of all the countries in Europe we must be one of the most mixed (lol, for good reasons) - as we are one of the connection points between Europe & Asia... but no ... pure Bulgarian race.... WAT?! (Actually our (10%) predecessors came somewhere from Bactria in Afghanistan... so really...)
  • nivenkos 4y ago
    I live in Sweden, but I think Europe is much less race-oriented (although classism is still a massive issue). Like in the UK the Prime Minister, Home Secretary, and Scottish First Minister are all from immigrant family backgrounds. As for the refugees, it's not so much racism as just a very difficult situation - a nation can't accept literally millions of young men with no language skills or qualifications and expect things to work out well. The real question is why Europe has to deal with it when it was the USA which started the wars.
    • chimeracoder 4y ago
      > I live in Sweden, but I think Europe is much less race-oriented (although classism is still a massive issue). Europe is not less racist than the US. However, Europeans are much less used to reflecting on and taking about racism in their own countries than Americans are. That reluctance to talk about race is exacerbated by the fact that, in many European counties (Sweden being one of them), it is either difficult or impossible to legally collect meaningful data about race, making it impossible to actually report on objective racial disparities and issues. > The real question is why Europe has to deal with it when it was the USA which started the wars. I see Europeans express sentiments like this quite often, and it's quite amusing. Racism isn't something foreign to Europe - Europe is literally the birthplace of white supremacist ideology, and racism has been ingrained in European society for centuries. It's quite ludicrous to pretend that it somehow evaporated overnight without cause, and even more absurd to make that assertion when there's copious evidence of direct and overt racism in across Europe literally every day.
• hunglee2 4y ago
  yes indeed. Probably everyone in Stockholm knows 'George Floyd' but would be entirely unaware of the names of locals who have suffered police brutality right there at home
  • SilasX 4y ago
    But, I mean, aren't Swedish police much better at respecting the rights of suspects and thus already better at avoiding George Floyd-type situations?
    • gordian-mind 4y ago
      There are also less people called George in Sweden, which helps since the police doesn't have to arrest them in the first place.
• jimbob45 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • valar_m 4y ago
    Do protests ever actually happen organically? I guess I always just assumed people organized protests on purpose. How else would everyone know where to show up?
    • tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
      I presume they mean organic as in "organized by a local person because they care about the political cause they're protesting about" vs. "organized by someone who is trying to stir shit on behalf of a foreign nation-state".
• dehrmann 4y ago
  Weird; you'd think the protesters would have been more concerned with the rise of SD than police practices in another country. Not only that, everything I've heard about Swedish police is they're generally chill compared to US police.
• kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  They awarded Obama a Nobel before he ever had a chance to do anything. There is a whole magic negro thing going on with Europeans intent on demonstrating that they aren't bigots. Right until the point they have brown immigrants entering their own country.
  • tpmx 4y ago
    > They awarded Obama a Nobel before he ever had a chance to do anything. That one was the celebrity-hungry Norwegian Nobel Committee's fault. They award the peace prize.
    • kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      Obama got a reception like he was the Pope on his first European trip. It spans more than just the Nobel committee.
      • arlort 4y ago
        That's got more to do with Bush than anything else
      • sobkas 4y ago
        > Obama got a reception like he was the Pope on his first European trip. It spans more than just the Nobel committee. First not being Bush wrote a lot of checks he couldn't cash. People believed for some reason that he was leftist, and later discovered how much to the right, American "left" is. And American media also distorted a bit what was actually happening. Neither democratic nor republican media would show their beloved leaders(you can guess which media support which president) in bad light.
        • giobox 4y ago
          > People believed for some reason that he was leftist, and later discovered how much to the right, American "left" is. What nonsense. That US Democratic Party politics often leans more right than many popular European parties on the left is not some modern post-Obama discovery, and was widely understood long before Obama's presidency. Literally read any political memoir or history by a left-leaning European politician who interacted with the US and Democratic party leadership prior to Obama and you will pick up a sense of this. I can accept arguments Obama may have been treated with much more interest and excitement than perhaps he warranted in European media at that time, but I see little evidence this was because his politics were misunderstood - Obama's policy positions were generally easy to articulate. I think a simpler explanation might well lie in the obvious historic nature of the event; he was the first black man to hold the office, and the first Democratic president after two terms of Bush. These facts alone are "newsworthy" by the standards of modern media. "leftist" is an absolutely terrible classification to use in any debate about politics, given its generally only ever used reductively and is almost devoid of any actual meaning.
• gbrindisi 4y ago
  Sweden is such a weird experience. On one hand there seems to be a strong sentiment of what swedish culture is and is not, on the other there is also an unusual higher permeability to american culture compared to other EU countries.
• Aeolun 4y ago
  But their national politics are fine. I personally wouldn’t particularly mind any of the parties in the Netherlands getting elected, they’re all variations of the same (aside from some ultra right/left wing wankers, but they have no serious chance).
• tayo42 4y ago
  I remember being really surprised that a guy from the Netherlands was talking to me about American governors. I didn't even really care about his opinion, I was more interested in why we knew something like a foreign countries states governors. I couldn't even tell you what kind of government the Netherlands has lol could be a monarchy for all is know hah
• pkaye 4y ago
  I notice that foreign media tends to focus a lot of things that happen in US. In some countries its even used to distract for what is happening locally. Another thing is Europeans like to blame US for their own problems. For example the British complain that the NHS is getting privatized because of the US. The reality is they picked terrible politicians to run the country and they keep reelecting them.
  • revelio 4y ago
    The European left does like to engage in US bashing, but you won't find many British conservatives making claims like that about the USA. And it's the conservatives who tend to win elections. So, don't generalize too far.
• NalNezumi 4y ago
  Oh I remember that. I found it hilarious when so many of my Swedish (female) friends posted angrily about the racism in USA and that we are better than this. The same people went to the same engineering uni as me, which had a lot of middle eastern and east Asian classmates that they couldn't give a single fuck about how they subtly mistreated them. US focus also serves as a convenient denial of our own daily misdeeds here. I'm still to this day shocked to meet a lot of (continental) Europeans that think (systematic) racism is a US thing, and can't possibly be happening here.
• thefz 4y ago
  > It's like people are more involved in US politics than their national politics. You know when someone is incessantly speaking louder than others, drowning their conversations? ... yeah.