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It feels like Europe is asleep at the wheel. We are in a cold war with Russia, right now. Why is there barely any resistance to blatant attempts to undermine de
by cedws 2y ago
It feels like Europe is asleep at the wheel. We are in a cold war with Russia, right now. Why is there barely any resistance to blatant attempts to undermine democracy?
- n1b0m 2y agoA Cold War? I don’t think it feels very cold to the Ukrainians
- tombert 2y agoI mean, the US cold war had several "real" wars as a result of it. Korea and Vietnam were actual wars with humans shooting at each other, but they're considered part of the "Cold War" because both of them were sort of indirect, since the real enemy was the USSR.
- boredhedgehog 2y agoBut Ukrainians aren't part of any "We", from my perspective. We prudently formed no alliances with them.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jowea 2y agoJust a proxy conflict. Just need to figure out if Russia is the main power or the Chinese (or NK) proxy.
- oneshtein 2y agoIf so, then Russia is the proxy of China, while Ukraine is proxy of Canada, Germany, Poland, Australia, etc.
- fridder 2y agoMoney and nukes. The worst thing Europe did was get addicted to cheap Russian gas. It was a trojan horse that encouraged governments to look the other way.
- AustinDev 2y agoJust 5 years ago Europeans were laughing in derision when this was pointed out.
- monkeyfun 2y agoWhich is sadly how it goes -- you have to be willing to take a stand against people without capital-V Vision sometimes. They'll only ever perceive what's right in front of their eyes, and only ever believe that what's possible is what's already recently happened (and nothing more). Totally unrelated but now I wanna jab my elbow at Ariane 6 (rocket)...
- bboozzoo 2y agoNot all of Europe. The immediate neighbors were always wary of Russia's game, but attempts to bring that up only got them labeled as rusophobic.
- krhaf 2y agoThe immediate neighbors collected transit fees for Russian gas and oil. Ukraine itself collected transit fees for gas deliveries to Austria until very recently. The Drushba pipeline through Poland was open at the same time that Sikorski congratulated the U.S. for blowing up Nord Stream. It remained open long after that. Both France and the U.S. were buying uranium from Russia until 2024. No complaints from Sikorski about that. Nordstream was owned by Russia, Germany, France, and The Netherlands. There was a pipeline from the German terminal to Britain. There are many hypocrites of the first order in the oil/gas game. In the context of this submission, it is appropriate to note that so called "far right" or "far left" parties are the only ones who point out facts like the above in public. Voters notice this and blaming Russian interference is a very weak game that endangers the democracies in the EU.
- throw_pm23 2y agoThis news shows exactly that the constitutional court was not asleep. They took a bold decision.
- cedws 2y agoBut as comments have said, even acknowledging interference after the fact and rejecting the result is a failure in democracy, because it's ripe for abuse. Thus, the Russian interference has still succeeded.
- throw_pm23 2y agoThis is a bit like a football referee looking at the videos after a goal and deciding that it was a handball, thus invalidating the goal. It is not an easy decision to make but better to do it quickly.
- creer 2y agoWe'll have to see the replacement election to decide that. Will the population change their vote in response or not.
- throw_pm23 2y agoAt least everyone has some time to cool down and think and absorb all the information that came out in the last few days.
- ossobuco 2y agoWait, you voted the wrong way! Here, take a few days to think about it, and then let's try again, ok?
- tomp 2y agoUnlikely. The leading candidate is already being investigated by the police. Chances are he’ll be jailed or otherwise prevented from running.
- cowpig 2y agoEurope?
- ValentinA23 2y ago"The truth is that the Americans will eventually make themselves hated by everyone, even by their most unconditional allies. All the manipulations the Americans imagine are contradicted by events." — Charles de Gaulle
- coliveira 2y agoAnd now you know why they need to spend so much money to buy and influence media outlets all over the world. Tip: it is not because media is such a profitable industry...
- HideousKojima 2y agoFrance under de Gaulle is hardly a bastion of freedom and liberal democracy, I have a hard time taking anything he said or did post-WW2 seriously
- georgeecollins 2y agoBy "France under de Gaulle" do you mean the French Fifth Republic which was proposed by de Gaulle? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fifth_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fifth_Republic Hint: That's the current government of France to this day. To me, that is a liberal democracy. I would recommend reading "When France Fell" for more context on de Gaulle. You are talking about a complicated figure. I also would point out that he faced attempts on his life for getting France out of the former colony of Algeria.
- stracer 2y ago> All the manipulations the Americans imagine are contradicted by events. What does this mean?
- ValentinA23 2y agoWMD in Iraq is an instance of this.
- rs999gti 2y ago
- mrtksn 2y agoEurope is just getting adjusted to the new reality and the reality is not black-and-white. Russians didn't discover magic words that they use to hypnotise people and make them vote for pro-Russia candidate. In fact, everywhere in the world the incumbent politics are losing ground because the system is in crisis and people are looking for a change everywhere and Russia appears to be able to propel politicians who are closer to the their politics simply because the incumbent ones screwed up. Is America different? Just a month ago in the American election – those who are anti-establishment and pro-Russian won. US and Europe will go through a soul searching and hopefully will come out of this in a better shape. It has to go through this because the ideology collapsed, economy doesn't perform and the hypocrisy is unbearable anymore. For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are blocking the Chinese electric cars? Can't stand others making the world better place better than they do? Can you tell me if US is about freedom and respect of the international law, borders and trande? If so why they support Ukraine against Russian invasion and then support Israel who occupies Palestinian territories since many years? Can you tell me why people should drink from paper straws when the rich fly private jets? Can you tell me why the capital can go anywhere but people should be stopped at the borders? Can you tell me how the economy is s great when so many people suffer? The west is in crisis, the ideology doesn't hold and the economy doesn't provide and all the Russians have to do is to point it out. They don't use spell, they just tell what everyone sees. This needs to get fixed, let's hope that the damage wouldn't be too big.
- cowpig 2y agoTechnology has changed the landscape of possibility very quickly, and our institutions are not keeping up. The world will need to figure out ways to deal with the new reality. Social media have made it far more lucrative to make up whatever than to report on facts. Meanwhile it's harder than ever to run a sustainable business in journalism. Meanwhile autocrats have noticed that it's cheaper than ever to run massive campaigns of propaganda and misinformation abroad, because they don't have to involve anywhere near the number of local accomplices. LLMs are accelerating the trend. You're right that the US democracy is in crisis as well.
- 2y ago
- ossobuco 2y agoIsn't it democracy when a candidate gets more votes than the rest? The only way to undermine democracy is to reject the results of the elections. If propaganda from the "enemy" really is that effective, then either it's rooted in truth and resonates with the electors, or we have to admit that the general public is so easily influenceable that allowing them to vote is a danger for democracy, which means democracy isn't really worth much in the first place.
- throw_pm23 2y agoNo, this is about common rules for everyone. Campaign material had to be marked as such and campaign finances had to be declared. One candidate blatantly failed to do so and won the first round. The court took a bold decision.
- ossobuco 2y ago[flagged]
- warkdarrior 2y agoWTF is "NAFO"?
- Calavar 2y agoIt's really hard to take this line of argument seriously. Drawing parallels between a Twitter meme account run by a half dozen guys and a state intelligence apparatus is absurd.
- mns 2y agoBecause this is what happens when the country is ran by corrupt and/or incompetent politicians. I've seen what people are posting and commenting here, blaming everything on Russia, but this is exactly the same message that the far right uses when they blame everything on the EU. The thing is that when the 2 biggest parties in the country come to govern together, they have no opposition, they weakened out justice system, weakened the secret services to gain power and be able to do whatever they want, they allowed and ignored the rise of far-right parties thinking they would use them to scare people into still voting for them and now we're here. There was so much evidence that both this guy and the other 2 extreme parties are doing a lot of crap and getting all kind of external support, but they just ignored them and hoped to use them, thinking they will never get above a certain level. You had vloggers and online people showing signs of all the fake accounts and crap that was being promoted and the authorities just pretended not to see anything. Then they banned one of the 3 heads of the far right side, and this just made things worse, because instead of letting the far right eat themselves up (because they are so insane, that they can't help but fight each other and fragment their share of the votes), they allowed this absolutely insane (in the worst way possible) charismatic guy gather even more votes. Now all of the sudden, after ignoring and pretending not to see anything, thinking that these far right candidates will help them, the establishment realized they messed up and now decide to take extreme measures and basically say that 9 milion votes don't matter. This won't end well...
- throw_pm23 2y agoA similar thing happened in Austria in 2016 where election results were cancelled due to campaign finances violations.
- mns 2y agoYeah, but here it's so obvious. The BEC (Central Electoral Bureau) should have checked constantly the campaign spending. They didn't do that, probably also not to upset the ruling parties that were doing their own financial "optimizations" for campaign spending, and completely ignored the fact that this guy that was doing influencer campaigns and was promoted all over TikTok was declaring nothing, so 0 spending. When you ask the institutions that are supposed to guard our country and democracy to close their eye so you can do whatever you want, you shouldn't act surprised when someone even more evil will take advantage of that.
- wumeow 2y ago> Why is there barely any resistance to blatant attempts to undermine democracy? Because of normalcy bias[0] after the fall of the USSR. The West assumed that we'd all hold hands and walk together into the future but that was not the case. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
- protomolecule 2y agoYeah, right. Holding hands. Excerpts From Pentagon's Plan: 'Prevent the Re-Emergence of a New Rival' [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/08/world/excerpts-from-pentagon-s-plan-prevent-the-re-emergence-of-a-new-rival.html https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/08/world/excerpts-from-penta...
- jaimsam 2y agoYou misspelled "hot war".
- byyll 2y agoAh, yes, we must protect democracy by... checks notes.. canceling the democratic elections because we don't like the results.
- mschuster91 2y agoBecause we are afraid to call the war being a war, because our armies have gone to shit and the US won't back us.
- Applejinx 2y agoBecause just as much effort is spent by Russia to present the appearance of a broad variety of demographics all uniting to mock and make light of the very idea that Russia is spending great effort to undermine democracy and get their people in there. That's pretty fundamental. I've seen these efforts be real heavyhanded. It's almost more important to hide their tracks as it is to push 'vox populi' that appear to advocate for a political outcome. They really try very hard to not be publically associated in these things. What with various things out of TASS, MTG etc recently, I think they're trying to have it both ways, and both ride on general public skepticism of their role while also publically threatening those who are privy to their works.
- wyager 2y ago"Undermining democracy" is when you win an election. "Protecting democracy" is when an unelected court unilaterally removes an elected candidate.
- enraged_camel 2y agoIn most locales, courts being unelected is by design. It's how a system based on checks-and-balances is supposed to work.
- amaurose 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- riehwvfbk 2y agoDemocracy: keep politicians who are failing the people and their countries economies in office because of the goodness of their hearts and the virtue of their stated values. If the people vote differently, cancel the result because that's not democracy. For definition of democracy, see above.
- mmooss 2y agoDemocracy has worked exceptionally well, relative to any other option, for generations. Far more free, prosperous, and safe and stable. The idea that it's somehow incompetent or incapable or uncertain is bizarre, on a factual basis.
- riehwvfbk 2y ago'But Brawndo has what plants crave! It's got electrolytes!' '...Okay - what are electrolytes? Do you know? Yeah. It's what they use to make Brawndo.' 'But why do they use them in Brawndo? What do they do?' 'They're part of what plants crave. 'But why do plants crave them? 'Because plants crave Brawndo, and Brawndo has electrolytes.' Also: you forgot to disagree with my definition of democracy and basically said "yeah, but this hypocrisy works"? So if the only valid vote is for "the right people", why bother with voting at all? Just put them in charge and be done. That would still be democracy, right?
- cbg0 2y agoDo you have a different solution than democracy? We've already tried communism in Romania for like 45 years and it was garbage. For the parliament election that happened last week, the winning parties of parliament were the establishment parties. They did lose some support compared to 4 years ago, so democracy is definitely working, but they still have reasonable backing by the people.
- elorant 2y agoSo when Russia interferes with our politics it’s cold war, but when CIA does it’s just another day?
- rdm_blackhole 2y agoEurope has made it's own bed and now it has to lie in it. Why is the far right rising on the old continent? Is it because: A: everybody is stupid B: people realize that the mainstream media has been feeding them propaganda for the last 30 years and decided that they want change. You can't keep ignoring a part of the population and then claim that they are not voting properly. At some point some kind of reckoning is inevitable.
- cbg0 2y agoOptions A and B are definitely not the reason why far right is on the rise in my opinion. It boils down to more basic things, like a healthy economy, immigration, health care, rising cost of living, and various country specific issues.
- VoodooJuJu 2y ago>It feels like Europe is asleep at the wheel Obviously not, because a European court literally just overturned the results of a democratic election due to foreign influence on the voting population.
- kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jbverschoor 2y agoBecause only the French know how to deal with their government.
- eaglelamp 2y ago[flagged]