4 ms·

You’re focusing on the US. In Europe, worker protections are great. However, Europe has been lagging behind the US for a couple of decades and the gap has been

by brabel 9mo ago

You’re focusing on the US. In Europe, worker protections are great. However, Europe has been lagging behind the US for a couple of decades and the gap has been growing. All tech giants are based in the US or China. Maybe things will collapse in the US now, but very unlikely to do so in Europe unless the impact from the US is so great it propagates to Europe, despite Europe itself not having done the things that caused such collapse in the US , which seems to be the result of prioritizing profit and greed above everything else, including people wellbeing.

jmyeet 9mo ago
Oh I couldn't disagree more. Europe is on the verge of full-blown fascism. Europe has Reform (UK), AfD (Germany) and National Front (France) as well as Hungary. Europe created the Russia-Ukraine problem by giving their energy security to Russia. Interestingly, this is a (super) rare win for the first Trump administration: forcing Europe to build an LNG port in 2018 [1] and warning against the dangers of dependence on Russian natural gas. This warning has been completely vindicated. Europe has stagnant wages, a declining social safety net (eg raising the retirement age in France), a housing affordability crisis in most places (notably exlucding Vienna and there needs to more attention on why this is), inflation problems and skyrocketing energy costs. It's the same 1930s economic conditions that gave rise to fascism last time. Europe has the same rising anti-immigrant rise in response to declining material conditions that the US hass. In Europe's case it's against Syrians and North Africans. In the UK this also included Polish people. France is really a perfect example here. Despite all the economic problems you have Macro siding with Le Pen to keep Melenchon and the left out of power. All of this is neoliberalism run amok and it comes from decisions in WW1, WW2 and post-WW2, most notably that Europe (and the US) decided the biggest threat was socialism and communism. And who's really good at killing communists? Nazis. Just look at the resume of Adolf Heusinger, an early NATO chair [2]. Europe has also outsourced their security to the US via NATO. And NATO is on the verge of collapse. There's a lot of thinking that Congress won't allow Trump to withdraw from NATO, as many in his administration want to do, but NATO could well splinter if Trump takes Greenland. What happens to Europe with an expansionist Russia and no US security guarantee? Oh and speaking of worker protections, what happens when the price of bailing out European energy or security issues is the privatizing of your otherwise universal healthcare? It was rumored that parts of the administration wanted the UK to privatize the NHS as part of a post-Brexit trade deal. 15 years of austerity has primed the population to accept this kind of thing. Many Europeans (rightly) look down on the insanity that's currently going on in the US but at the same time they don't realize just how dire the situation is in Europe. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/germany-to-build-lng-plant-in-gesture-to-us-drive-to-sell-more-idUSKCN1LY2J6/ https://www.reuters.com/article/business/germany-to-build-ln... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger
- rightbyte 9mo ago
  This is so depressing to read but I can't help feeling you are right. The feeling is quite surreal becouse if I turn off my computer I can't notice the difference locally in my county. It is like lunatics from "the internet" runs alot of things now irl.
- CodeMage 9mo ago
  > There's a lot of thinking that Congress won't allow Trump to withdraw from NATO I wonder how that is supposed to work when the Executive branch has proven they can do whatever they want regardless of the other two branches. The rules are worthless if there are no consequences for breaking them.
- jimbokun 9mo ago
  I was following you until you implied everyone who’s not a communist is a Nazi.
  - jmyeet 9mo ago
    Yeah, they don't really teach this part in history [1]: > At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet “assets,” declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called “moral lapses” in their service to the Third Reich. And NATO [2]: > The most senior officers of the latter group were Hans Speidel and Adolf Heusinger, who on Oct. 10 and Nov. 12, 1955, respectively, were sworn in as the Bundeswehr’s first two lieutenant generals... Heusinger, a POW until 1948, ... > That spring Heusinger succeeded Speidel as chief of Combined Forces when the latter was appointed commander in chief of Allied Land Forces in Central Europe becoming the first German officer to hold a NATO commander in chief position And it goes on. Nazi links are well-established to Operation Paperclip [3] under Werner von braun. And there are many others [4]. I didn't say all the non-communists were Nazi. I said the neoliberal and imperialist projects of the US and Western Europe post-WW2 sided with and gave haven to Nazis to fight communism, which is true. Fascism in the US didn't begin with the Nazis however. You can trace back the roots to the white supremacy the US was founded on, the slave trade, the Civil War, Reconstruction and even the Business Plot [5] that sought to overthrow FDR in 1933, probably labelling him a communist. But the Nazis were very popular in the US, culminating with the German American Bund rally in Madison Square Gardens in 1939 [6]. Oh and let's not forget Henry Ford's contribution to all this, notably The International Jew [7], so much so that Hitler praised him in Mein Kampf. Personally, I'm of the view that a lot of this can be traced back to simply not stringing up all the former slave owners after the Civil War. [1]: https://archive.ph/A8HHC https://archive.ph/A8HHC [2]: https://www.historynet.com/these-nato-generals-had-unusual-backgrounds-they-served-in-the-third-reich/ https://www.historynet.com/these-nato-generals-had-unusual-b... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip [4]: https://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-nazis-were-rewarded-with-life-in-the-u-s https://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-na... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Squ... [7]: https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/488496/ https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digita...
raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
Worker protection doesn’t do you any good if companies refuse to hire people abd the government can’t afford the social safety net.

by brabel 9mo ago

jmyeet 9mo ago

Oh I couldn't disagree more. Europe is on the verge of full-blown fascism. Europe has Reform (UK), AfD (Germany) and National Front (France) as well as Hungary. Europe created the Russia-Ukraine problem by giving their energy security to Russia. Interestingly, this is a (super) rare win for the first Trump administration: forcing Europe to build an LNG port in 2018 [1] and warning against the dangers of dependence on Russian natural gas. This warning has been completely vindicated. Europe has stagnant wages, a declining social safety net (eg raising the retirement age in France), a housing affordability crisis in most places (notably exlucding Vienna and there needs to more attention on why this is), inflation problems and skyrocketing energy costs. It's the same 1930s economic conditions that gave rise to fascism last time. Europe has the same rising anti-immigrant rise in response to declining material conditions that the US hass. In Europe's case it's against Syrians and North Africans. In the UK this also included Polish people. France is really a perfect example here. Despite all the economic problems you have Macro siding with Le Pen to keep Melenchon and the left out of power. All of this is neoliberalism run amok and it comes from decisions in WW1, WW2 and post-WW2, most notably that Europe (and the US) decided the biggest threat was socialism and communism. And who's really good at killing communists? Nazis. Just look at the resume of Adolf Heusinger, an early NATO chair [2]. Europe has also outsourced their security to the US via NATO. And NATO is on the verge of collapse. There's a lot of thinking that Congress won't allow Trump to withdraw from NATO, as many in his administration want to do, but NATO could well splinter if Trump takes Greenland. What happens to Europe with an expansionist Russia and no US security guarantee? Oh and speaking of worker protections, what happens when the price of bailing out European energy or security issues is the privatizing of your otherwise universal healthcare? It was rumored that parts of the administration wanted the UK to privatize the NHS as part of a post-Brexit trade deal. 15 years of austerity has primed the population to accept this kind of thing. Many Europeans (rightly) look down on the insanity that's currently going on in the US but at the same time they don't realize just how dire the situation is in Europe. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/germany-to-build-lng-plant-in-gesture-to-us-drive-to-sell-more-idUSKCN1LY2J6/ https://www.reuters.com/article/business/germany-to-build-ln... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger

rightbyte 9mo ago
This is so depressing to read but I can't help feeling you are right. The feeling is quite surreal becouse if I turn off my computer I can't notice the difference locally in my county. It is like lunatics from "the internet" runs alot of things now irl.
CodeMage 9mo ago
> There's a lot of thinking that Congress won't allow Trump to withdraw from NATO I wonder how that is supposed to work when the Executive branch has proven they can do whatever they want regardless of the other two branches. The rules are worthless if there are no consequences for breaking them.
jimbokun 9mo ago
I was following you until you implied everyone who’s not a communist is a Nazi.
- jmyeet 9mo ago
  Yeah, they don't really teach this part in history [1]: > At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet “assets,” declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called “moral lapses” in their service to the Third Reich. And NATO [2]: > The most senior officers of the latter group were Hans Speidel and Adolf Heusinger, who on Oct. 10 and Nov. 12, 1955, respectively, were sworn in as the Bundeswehr’s first two lieutenant generals... Heusinger, a POW until 1948, ... > That spring Heusinger succeeded Speidel as chief of Combined Forces when the latter was appointed commander in chief of Allied Land Forces in Central Europe becoming the first German officer to hold a NATO commander in chief position And it goes on. Nazi links are well-established to Operation Paperclip [3] under Werner von braun. And there are many others [4]. I didn't say all the non-communists were Nazi. I said the neoliberal and imperialist projects of the US and Western Europe post-WW2 sided with and gave haven to Nazis to fight communism, which is true. Fascism in the US didn't begin with the Nazis however. You can trace back the roots to the white supremacy the US was founded on, the slave trade, the Civil War, Reconstruction and even the Business Plot [5] that sought to overthrow FDR in 1933, probably labelling him a communist. But the Nazis were very popular in the US, culminating with the German American Bund rally in Madison Square Gardens in 1939 [6]. Oh and let's not forget Henry Ford's contribution to all this, notably The International Jew [7], so much so that Hitler praised him in Mein Kampf. Personally, I'm of the view that a lot of this can be traced back to simply not stringing up all the former slave owners after the Civil War. [1]: https://archive.ph/A8HHC https://archive.ph/A8HHC [2]: https://www.historynet.com/these-nato-generals-had-unusual-backgrounds-they-served-in-the-third-reich/ https://www.historynet.com/these-nato-generals-had-unusual-b... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip [4]: https://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-nazis-were-rewarded-with-life-in-the-u-s https://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-na... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Squ... [7]: https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/488496/ https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digita...

raw_anon_1111 9mo ago

Worker protection doesn’t do you any good if companies refuse to hire people abd the government can’t afford the social safety net.