How can progressive "European patriots" protect Europe from the right-populists who want to destroy Europe as we know it?
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Sorry what..? The US is quite literally taken over by fascists and fascist ideas and you claim that the biggest issue is that someone calls that out?
Also, your original claim was this:
Their left wing tries to dehumanise their right wing.
Seems like you moved the goal post. Calling someone fascist is not dehumanizing, especially when they actually support fascist ideas.
He also blatantly disregarded data I linked that disproves his point.
He is not arguing in good faith, at all.
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100% unconditional intolerance for fascists. You can’t give them a millimeter or they’ll take the entire country.
I suggest watching Thought Slime’s recent video if you wish to know how to effectively counteract fascists.
The gist is that you shouldn’t try to argue with them, they don’t care about reality. Don’t let them look reasonable by arguing as if they were, insist on pointing out they’re being assholes (which they are) and that anything they suggest is so obviously wrong it doesn’t even need to be explained why it’s wrong (which is true).
I have a rule: I don't pronounce the word fascist (in private or in public, I don't care) without prefixing it with "lurid" in English and in Italian appending "di merda" after fascista/i.
As someone who had nightmares at night about them, given the testimony of my grandmother, I feel that not qualifying fascist people is somehow working in their favor.The day I will see a politician using that rule in a TV interview I will know that we have again a chance.
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Push for more european countries to pass proportional representation to strengthen their state stability and democracy.
The countries that have some form of pr are coloured:
Propotional representation? As in party lists? How much country needs it to be marked?
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Propotional representation? As in party lists? How much country needs it to be marked?
Most countries use party lists, some mixed member proportional and Ireland uses the single transferable vote.
I’m not sure I understand your question. I would say every country should receive some form of pr as democracies are more fair and peaceful.
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Most countries use party lists, some mixed member proportional and Ireland uses the single transferable vote.
I’m not sure I understand your question. I would say every country should receive some form of pr as democracies are more fair and peaceful.
In Russia gosduma is mixed member proportional. 50% parties, 50% districts.
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This is quite literally the opposite of how you actually get people to support your cause. Ask any psychologist.
Shutting them out completely might work fine when they're a tiny minority, but when in some cases a quarter of the population agrees with them enough to vote for them, doing that is simply impossible. They will have reach.
I also still think we need people throwing their morals about manipulating people to the wind and starting to peddle left wing conspiracy theories just like the right wingers are doing. For example with how perfectly it fits there really should be an actual movement behind the whole trump=the biblical antichrist thing in the US, but I've only seen it as satire in spaces that are already left wing.
If 75 percent block together, 25 permanent can be blocked. The rest is limited. If you legitimate them through participation, you risk them being seen more acceptable a reasonable option.
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You do pay taxes in the EU if you own assets in the EU.
China taxes quite a lot less than the EU I'm sure. Otherwise nobody would have built their factories there.
The CCP is special. It's politicking very much takes it's people's happiness (or the people perceived happiness) into account.
Also While they do allow the whole weath inequality gap to increase, they very much control the wealthy, instead of having it the other way around.
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Why would they invest in your apartment if they have to pay taxes on it? Unless they can charge the tax to you as well.
You're going to need the public to build your apartment. And sadly, in Singapore where this is the case, rent is ridiculously high.
Lower revenues for residential property means lower prices for land. It means lower prices for buying houses and makes it cheaper for people to own their house or flat. If you are a developer that builds properties, you sell them to individual owners that live there instead of institutional investors like corporations or real estate funds. Wealth tax only applies for people that own big estates. When done well it does not apply to people that own their own property or rent out a few flats.
That way, super rich people that look for investment opportunities for their enormous wealth make less profit with real estate and move towards other assets. Land owners (who are usually really wealthy themselves) and large investors are the only losers here, and that's exactly the intention.
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That is what I wonder. Don't know about you guys, but I feel like a European patriot, even though this maybe does not make sense to some.
Being a true European patriot means to me is caring about our freedom and democracies, is to value the open pluralist societies we developed since WW2, wanting to protect what the reactionaries want to take away from us all and want to lock us all up, back in small closed-minded nation-states we all come from, which will ultimately lick the boots of either US or China/Russia.
They are well organized, but what is the organization, the movement that fights against this ongoing attack on our shared values and mode of existence?
The post-WW2 Europe is an oasis of bliss in a world which is on fire, and we are all under attack. How can we fight against this destruction from the inside as well as from the outside ?
Fight hunger, fight drug addiction, fight the destruction of the European values. If you want to destroy something then you have to pinpoint a target that can be destroyed. "Destruction from the inside" is not a target.
However, do you really want to destroy something or don't you rather want to build something?
It doesn't come with the thrill of fear, but uniting people to build something is more sustainable.
In any case, take a close look and check if the oasis is not already burning or even spreading fire all over the world.
If you choose construction, make sure that the values you are going to implement are consistent and operational. Progressive means nothing but promising everybody that the world will develop according to the progess they envision. That won't happen. There can only be one direction.
My personal opinion is that Pluralism makes it difficult to unite people. People follow their leaders. If the idea would be enough, this post would explode, there would be discussions until people agreed on what to do and then do it. In a pluralist society you have to convince all leaders, and they have to agree to get active at the same time.
So start with finding the leaders and let them convince their communities.
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That is what I wonder. Don't know about you guys, but I feel like a European patriot, even though this maybe does not make sense to some.
Being a true European patriot means to me is caring about our freedom and democracies, is to value the open pluralist societies we developed since WW2, wanting to protect what the reactionaries want to take away from us all and want to lock us all up, back in small closed-minded nation-states we all come from, which will ultimately lick the boots of either US or China/Russia.
They are well organized, but what is the organization, the movement that fights against this ongoing attack on our shared values and mode of existence?
The post-WW2 Europe is an oasis of bliss in a world which is on fire, and we are all under attack. How can we fight against this destruction from the inside as well as from the outside ?
Being a patriot is quite dumb if I may say so. And even dumber if you are a patriot for a imperialist and neoliberal organisation that even compared to a so-called liberal "democracy" is undemocratic. Instead of calling yourself a patriot you should read a book. And then call yourself something based on that.
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Fix wealth inequality. Rich people accumulate so much money that there's hardly any left for average people. Rich people hoard assets like houses and increase their prices and the cost of living. As long as we don't fix this, things will get worse. As long as politicians don't fix this other parties will get more popular no matter what they offer.
Migrants are just scapegoats. They have no lobby, they are easy to blame. They are one piece in a bigger equation. They are used as a ruse to distract from bigger problems. If the housing market was functional it could handle the influx of Ukranian refugees and the way smaller number of refugees from countries like Afghanistan or regions like Africa.
If countries had funds from wealth and inheritance taxes they could fund a working administration, faster justice systems, working infrastructure and so on. It would be absolutely beautiful and I cannot say why there isn't a bigger movement for that solution.
It's not about taxing 100.000€ in stock, or you inheriting your mum's cottage, but about taxing people who have been living off intergenerational wealth for decades without ever working at all.
That's quite reformist. But I would agree. It would be an ok step to start constructing a socialist state.
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Fight hunger, fight drug addiction, fight the destruction of the European values. If you want to destroy something then you have to pinpoint a target that can be destroyed. "Destruction from the inside" is not a target.
However, do you really want to destroy something or don't you rather want to build something?
It doesn't come with the thrill of fear, but uniting people to build something is more sustainable.
In any case, take a close look and check if the oasis is not already burning or even spreading fire all over the world.
If you choose construction, make sure that the values you are going to implement are consistent and operational. Progressive means nothing but promising everybody that the world will develop according to the progess they envision. That won't happen. There can only be one direction.
My personal opinion is that Pluralism makes it difficult to unite people. People follow their leaders. If the idea would be enough, this post would explode, there would be discussions until people agreed on what to do and then do it. In a pluralist society you have to convince all leaders, and they have to agree to get active at the same time.
So start with finding the leaders and let them convince their communities.
Good Points in general. But where did you read about me wanting to destroy something? The only thing I actively think we need to destroy is fascism and imbalance of power, which is slowly corrupting everything like mold.
Pluralistic democracy in that regard is a more abstract concept than a concrete agenda and it is hard to unite people for such an abstract value. This value should only be a proxy value for other concrete outcomes/values, ideally. But let's turn it around. Only because it's free and democratic does not guarantee it is effective and doing good. But without it, there will be no chance for good outcomes.
I agree with your general message, it probably would be better to have a cause "for" something good and not against something bad. Only sadly it seems that in practice people are easier to unite against something or out of fear of something.
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Being a patriot is quite dumb if I may say so. And even dumber if you are a patriot for a imperialist and neoliberal organisation that even compared to a so-called liberal "democracy" is undemocratic. Instead of calling yourself a patriot you should read a book. And then call yourself something based on that.
Are you one of those "tankies" everyone is talking about here on Lemmy?
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Being a patriot is quite dumb if I may say so. And even dumber if you are a patriot for a imperialist and neoliberal organisation that even compared to a so-called liberal "democracy" is undemocratic. Instead of calling yourself a patriot you should read a book. And then call yourself something based on that.
By the way, nice username. I got some of these recently.
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Are you one of those "tankies" everyone is talking about here on Lemmy?
Which part of what literature didn't you accept?
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By the way, nice username. I got some of these recently.
A product so good that only a socialist state sold them.
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Good Points in general. But where did you read about me wanting to destroy something? The only thing I actively think we need to destroy is fascism and imbalance of power, which is slowly corrupting everything like mold.
Pluralistic democracy in that regard is a more abstract concept than a concrete agenda and it is hard to unite people for such an abstract value. This value should only be a proxy value for other concrete outcomes/values, ideally. But let's turn it around. Only because it's free and democratic does not guarantee it is effective and doing good. But without it, there will be no chance for good outcomes.
I agree with your general message, it probably would be better to have a cause "for" something good and not against something bad. Only sadly it seems that in practice people are easier to unite against something or out of fear of something.
You have to destroy something when you 'fight against this destruction'. But you can't fight abstract things, not even Fascism or imbalance.
Yes, people are easier to unite against something. The famous outside attacker. But how to fight fascism if it promises to fulfill what people want? People have to see that democracy is better. Maybe fight corruption, so that democracy can be at its best?
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Which part of what literature didn't you accept?
Let's better say what I do accept. I have read Marx and accept his analysis of dynamics of capital as correct, it's hard not to see that it is spot-on. I accept the general paradigm that the foundation of all such dynamics is the underlying material conditions, i.e. wealth inequality, which leads to power inequality. He however never outlined a clear way out.
I read enough secondary literature about whatever people tried to build on Marx as ways out and have seen enough of evidence against "real existing socialism" and have first-hand family experience from this system. I know all the objections that it was state capitalism or whatever, but I am pessimistic about human nature.
Actual socialism emerging from a revolution and whatever leadership to stay uncorrupted instead of eventually seizing power seems very utopian and unlikely to me, just as utopian and naive as anarchists believe that self-organized structures will not degenerate back to capitalistic tribalism with a few extra steps that will just redistribute the power a little bit and new opportunists to win the next round.
You misunderstood my "European patriotism" (in quotes!), because I never said anything about loving or approving everything done by the organisation you criticize (EU). What I was talking about was the ethos of wanting to protect the least shitty system I see anywhere on earth right now, which is deployed most successfully around Europe-the-continent, the "real existing faulty bureaucratic democracy".
You seem to be of the opinion that it needs to be dismantled and replaced by something else. The right extremists say the same. The problem is that it's easy to call for destruction but it's difficult to build. All I see is "we need to tear it down... And then we'll somehow magically build something new from scratch".
I am a software developer by profession. You know how this works? You have to work with shitty systems other people you despise built over decades. I wish I could throw it all into the garbage and just build from scratch. But unlike politics, where talk is cheap, here I can see and quantify how much fucking work it is both technically and socially. It's just like wanting to "just build a different sky scraper" without understanding anything about engineering. You can try, and probably will end up with another flavor if ugly mess. You also need to (re)educate other developers, you need to convince people, and finally the users need to either not be bothered by your "improvements" and you cannot allow such a long down time or reconstruction phase because the outside world is not waiting for you to get your shit together.
Now, I think politics is exactly the same. Law is the code of society, and developers and users need to buy into different paradigms I.e. accept other values and standards and possibly form of organization. I don't see any proposed alternative being even close to have a clear realistic path, except of a strong faith that "it somehow will work out". I doubt that it works that way. History works incrementally, and complex systems become incrementally fucked up, does not matter where you start.
The radical left is losing against the fascists because the fascists learned how to incrementally win mind-share of the people and hide it's radical nature, while the radical left is continuing to engage in black and white thinking and pushing regular people away.
That leads me to the hypothesis that the only way to fix the system is actually good people low-key moving up in power and tweaking it from the inside, that means the reverse direction of what is happening right now.
Then I believe we need "pro-social propaganda", working in a subtle way like the capitalistic matrix, which means that you have to win back the media. If you have the media, you can win the hearts and minds of people.
The classic approach of the left only works in a society where the majority is in such distress that they are open to extreme changes and have nothing to lose. But the system we are in is a system of "good enough".
So I don't believe in the tactics of the radical left and I don't believe in the existence of a solid plan, there is at most a "concept of a plan", in the words of a well-known dictator. I doubt the practical experience and competence of radical left thinkers and intellectuals, who have never worked inside a complex system such as academia or a company and have a simplistic idea of "change management" for social, bureaucratic and technical structures. Being able to organize some demonstration or violent resistance to break something does not necessarily correlate with the ability to build something better in its place and possible damage done in between.
So what is the way forward? I have no idea. But that is why I hope for some genuine and smartly executed "reformist" movement and would not expect any good outcomes from naive "revolutionary" ambitions. The revolutionary left is ultimately also a collection of populist movements, in the sense of promising simple answers to complex problems.
What does that make me ideologically? No idea. I don't care about labels. Call it "pragmatic realistic left" or whatever.
