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I find it somewhat disturbing that this sort of thing is not considered a career killer for politicians.
by darby_nine 2y ago
I find it somewhat disturbing that this sort of thing is not considered a career killer for politicians.
- Semaphor 2y agoAlmost nothing is. Local politicians fail upwards to the EU (at least in Germany) or some private job, if they fail at all. Most of the time, you can do what you want, and the voters don’t care.
- kqr 2y agoAnd, on the flip side of the coin: once you are sufficiently disliked, almost anything can be taken as the trigger point for a scandal.
- account42 2y agoBut when was the last time a "scandal" has resulted in actual negative outcomes for a politician?
- pfortuny 2y agoSame in Spain.
- lukan 2y ago"and the voters don’t care." Then why did so many vote extremist anti EU? There just has been EU election in germany and the nationalist gained a lot. And none of the big parties otherwise said a clear no to that, so what could I do, except vote a small party against that, but too small to really do something? Voters care. But they see often no point in voting anymore.
- Tuna-Fish 2y agoThat's precisely the thing. Whenever EU does something people don't like, they hate EU, not the council members who voted for it.
- gillesjacobs 2y agoBecause it is exactly the EU governance that lacks democratic representation, enabling unfavoured politicians to remain in significant power. You can only elect MEPs (via party lists) locally. The majority of legalislation is drafted by the technocratic European Commission and legislation is mostly passed through parlaiment unchanged from there. There are many nationally disgraced politicians seating in the EP, EC or council. Only the ones in the EP were electible. The people have correctly identified that a massive supranational unaccountable government is the problem, enabling corrupt people to keep ruling which undermines the core functioning of representative democracy.
- Double_a_92 2y agoBy voting for the members of parliament, and the parliament then deciding everything else... Ideally things should work out as the people want it. Otherwise it would mean that democracy just doesn't work...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gillesjacobs 2y agoSupranational/federalist "representative" particracy does not work. Representative democracy works better with increased locality, where policy and politicians are directly beholden to constituents.
- mariusor 2y agoIn this specific case I believe that it's the EU Council that pushes for the current iteration of the law, which is formed of the head of states for each EU member. So, even if they might not be explicitly elected to be in the EU governance, most of them have reached that spot through more or less democratic means. "More or less" because Prime Ministers are usually nominated not elected, but that's still as part of each country's democratic process.
- blumomo 2y ago> Then why did so many vote extremist anti EU? Is the EU really a benefit to the people? Or is it a shit pool full of scum bags providing quite some damage to societies?
- ricardobeat 2y agoAll things considered I think that’s a strong yes. Open borders, free trade, technological collaboration, and shared health, industry and consumer regulations help accelerate economic development. Can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
- simianparrot 2y agoFirst two have been utter disasters however, and are directly affecting people on a daily basis now. Here in Scandinavia it’s coming to a head but it’s a similar story further south, in Germany in particular.
- iknowstuff 2y ago[flagged]
- ricardobeat 2y agoImmigration, which I assume is what you’re hinting at, has nothing to do with open borders between EU states.
- simianparrot 2y agoUnchecked cheap labor from eastern european countries has had a dramatic effect. That's directly related. But illegal immigration also does because the moment you get in to one lax EU country with open borders to another, your movement is a lot easier. I live this reality and have family in law enforcement. You might not want to believe it but it's absolutely the truth on the ground. We need to control our borders much more strictly.
- 2y ago
- vladvasiliu 2y agoHow many people did actually bother to vote in Germany? Here in France, the "extremists" got a bit over 30% of votes. But turnout was only 51%. According to [0] average turnout is 51%. Some countries have very high numbers (IIRC voting is mandatory in Belgium?), others ridiculously low. This, to me, means pretty much that "voters don't care". [0] https://results.elections.europa.eu/en/turnout/ https://results.elections.europa.eu/en/turnout/
- fabianholzer 2y ago> How many people did actually bother to vote in Germany? 64.78%, or over 40 million in absolute terms.
- pxtail 2y ago> How many people did actually bother to vote in Germany? People (including me) doesn't want to bother with voting when the whole thing is a farce - it's beyond my understanding why would someone be enticed to vote for incompetent politicians who get parachuted into EU parliament to earn hefty wage - very often as a reward for outrageous behavior, there are multiple examples of this, influencer from Cyprus, that polish MP who got expelled from Poland's parliament for outrageous behavior - surprise surprise - he got comfy EP seat. Absolutely disgusting.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- account42 2y agoI find a better action than not voting is to vote for the smallest most extremist fracton you can find even if you don't agree with most of their policies. Low voter turnout doesn't make headlines, the "bad" parties gaining traction does.
- prmoustache 2y ago> This, to me, means pretty much that "voters don't care". This is simplistic. Some have simply lost confidence in their representatives and/or cannot find a decent candidate.
- Semaphor 2y ago> Then why did so many vote extremist anti EU? Like the parties (again, here in Germany, don’t know enough about other countries) that manage to be even more corrupt? That actually supports my point. The biggest winners here were the anti-EU-pro-Russia AfD and the pro-EU CDU both with the biggest corruption scandals in recent years, and the CDU is even the party that sent the horror that is EU commission president von der Leyen.
- kbrkbr 2y ago> There just has been EU election in germany and the nationalist gained a lot. That really depends on your point of comparison. Compared to their 22% high in February, they lost a lot with 16% actual votes (more than 25% down). 84% voted something else. https://interaktiv.tagesspiegel.de/lab/europawahl-2024-sonntagsfrage-wahlumfragen/ https://interaktiv.tagesspiegel.de/lab/europawahl-2024-sonnt...
- raxxorraxor 2y ago> Then why did so many vote extremist anti EU? That is one of the issues, no EU election would have changed what the commission is doing at all.
- account42 2y agoMost people probably don't even know the EU policies of the candidates they are voting for and are just going by national party lines. Why nationalist parties are winning when the current and previous governments have been going full steam ahead in the other direction while ignoring the entirely valid concerns of the populance should surprise no one.
- blumomo 2y agoThose not yet brain washed voters do actually care. But then there are the „Wahlhelfer“ who openly proud themselves in Twitter to invalidate votes for parties they disagree with. This is democracy?
- FabHK 2y agoSources?
- bun_terminator 2y agoIt's their job and goal in life to hurt the population
- Aeolun 2y agoThey can literally just sit there and it would be better…
- ffgjgf1 2y agoThey have to justify their existence and maximize growth and headcount. In this case I’m not sure if it’s the politicians themselves as much to blame as the EU apparatchiks and lobbyists
- HenryBemis 2y agoMore control is the objective.
- thomostin 2y agoAbsolutely. It only works because they claim it's for the protection of children.
- miroljub 2y agoThey ride the wave and find always some excuse. It was fighting the terrorists until a few years ago, now it's children again. Next year could be to help the climate or protect lbtgqi++ rights.
- darby_nine 2y ago> Next year could be to help the climate or protect lbtgqi++ rights. Unlikely—this would actually benefit people.
- miroljub 2y agoChat control would benefit people, if they say it's for climate or lbqtg++ protection? But it won't benefit if they say it's to fight the terror or protect the children? If you really think that spying is OK, if they have "good enough" excuse, no wonder we get all this shit enacted.
- darby_nine 2y ago[flagged]
- dTal 2y agoWhich is a very interesting asymmetry, if we're stipulating that these are merely excuses. It implies that "think of the gays" will lose you more votes than it gains, compared to "think of the children". Terrorists and children are apparently the optimally intersectional bogeymen and helpless wards respectively.
- fsflover 2y ago
- isodev 2y agoWell, people wanted even more alt-right representation in parliament, MEP support for the entire package of policy "Chat Control" is part of is now higher than ever. There is a lot more "for the children" policy coming up.
- anonzzzies 2y agoYeah, although really no-one of the 'regular people' (well, I have even educated programmer friends saying it's good to catch criminals) care/know (they glaze over when I talk about 'another tech blah') about this, they did vote the people in who like this kind of stuff (and probably are somewhere making $ with it).
- gillesjacobs 2y agoThis isn't necessarily true: the Identity and Democracy faction is explicitly pro-privacy, digital rights and against Chat Control. - https://id-party.eu/program/ https://id-party.eu/program/ (ID Party Official Site) - https://idgroup.eu/news/online-censorship-is-a-threat-to-european-democracies-april-23-2024 https://idgroup.eu/news/online-censorship-is-a-threat-to-eur... (ID Group News) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_and_Democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_and_Democracy (Wikipedia Overview) - https://id-party.eu/declaration-of-antwerp/ https://id-party.eu/declaration-of-antwerp/ (ID Party Official Site) The ID group is opposed to EU-wide surveillance measures, and promises to protecting individual privacy and national sovereignty.
- pgraf 2y agoFYI, 84% of ID has voted pro chat-control in 2021. https://mepwatch.eu/9/vote.html?v=134463&eugroup=ID https://mepwatch.eu/9/vote.html?v=134463&eugroup=ID
- gillesjacobs 2y agoI stand corrected. Guess all that posturing about privacy was all empty election promises then. Seems like only the Greens, the left and within ID the AFD voted against.
- wickedsickeune 2y agoIn Greece, we recently elected as representatives for the EU Parliament: * a 71 year old lady, with no social media and no public speeches ever. * a guy who used a nickname for his last name, that matched with a military general (who is well known), and many people thought he was the general * a "journalist" that was caught twice talking on live TV, conversing with a pre-recorded video * a convicted criminal It's impressive to manage to fail as a politician.
- patates 2y agoHello neighbor. You will never win the competition for choosing the worst possible politicians as long as Turkey has Erdoğan :)
- bratwurst3000 2y agoYou forget they have Mazedonia and Bulgaria as neighbors ;)
- nbzso 2y agoHi, Malakas.
- skilled 2y agoAlso -> YouTube prankster voted in as Cyprus MEP - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4nnrwr72dqo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4nnrwr72dqo
- oliwarner 2y agoYup that's the problem with PR: people actually get what they vote for. And people are idiots.
- FabHK 2y agoWhile your other examples are damning, I see nothing wrong with an elderly politician without social media profiles.
- gravescale 2y agoMy pet made-up theory is that careers aren't really killable like that any more, since Cambridge Analytica. Before CA, the received wisdom was that if you do something bad, you will need to resign before you are pushed for causing damage to the organisation reputation and therefore electability. This was perhaps borne out with enormous error bars by focus groups and polls asking "would you still vote for X in case of Y". After CA, and in particular the live social media sentiment data that was gathered around the debacle of the UK Brexit referendum, the data showed that actually egregious misbehaviour did not materially affect sentiments, and perhaps even appealed to a larger proportion of people than believed. For example, the famous "shy Tory" might not show up well in a focus group, but it all hangs out after analysing Facebook's data. With that data in hand, people started doing things that they would never have dared to do before, knowing that it won't actually harm them, at least in the short run (since this data only shows short term effects). And that's how we go from resigning over fairly small gaffes to the "screw it, what you gonna do, we know you won't vote for the others, we've seen your data" of today. Not long ago, calling a woman a bigot on a hot mic was a dreadful PR disaster. Now, you can physically snatch a journalist's phone and it barely registers. It does, however stack up over time with catastrophic final effects, much like chasing only quarterly figures or always postponing dealing with technical or real debt.
- hoseja 2y agoWe have to make the more traditional methods popular again.
- gravescale 2y agoThe problem is that this (if my theory is not just bunk) isn't something you can really go back and do differently. An emergent property of the reactions of polarised groups to the behaviours of their leaders was discovered to be quite different to what had been assumed. You may as well say "we have to go back to the old ways" when lamenting the relativity makes physics too complicated. Though, as to the point I think you're actually making, it's also been made very difficult to object to these things in any terms that could possibly have an effect without being thoroughly denounced as a nutter, an extremist, or worse. After all, the "right" thing to do is always to simply "vote!".
- mschuster91 2y agoThe populace is clueless and/or ignorant, and Brussels has a well earned reputation for being a popular toxic waste dump for unpopular politicians. To give some examples from Germany, we dumped Günther Oettinger and Ursula von der Leyen there in the last two elections, and this year our far-right party managed to place a suspected traitor on the top of their list.
- argentier 2y agoThanks for that Germany. Won't you take her back and make her Minister for Castles or something,
- raxxorraxor 2y agoOne of its champions, Ursula von der Leyen, is pretty popular. One of the main reasons for that is that people don't understand what she is saying.
- account42 2y agoPopular or infamous? Never heard the nickname Zensursula?
- nobutterbetter 2y ago[dead]
- cdmoyer 2y agoI mean, if you asked many people "is it ok if the government can read some of your chat messages in exchange for catching a bunch of child pornographers," this will be a very popular "yes" vote. People are generally very willing to trade some rights and freedoms for safety. Or don't realize the trade-off they're making.
- krick 2y agoWe need to define "politicians" first. I can see your point if "politician career" means "being repeatedly elected" (even though other people pointed out what are the problems in this case). But the EU Commission isn't elected. These people are appointed by some fucked up complicated process. They definitely seem to have pretty good careers, but what are these careers — I wish I knew.