The thing about Europe: it’s the actual land of the free now

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Germany is not Eastern Europe. The GDR ended 35 years ago. Geographically the center of Europe is somewhere around Eastern Poland, Belarus, Ukraine or Western Russia depending on the method used.

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There's no bypassing the judiciary any action or non-action of the administration can be challenged before court. And the affected people here did exactly that.

Not all laws that exist are criminal in nature. Not all courts deal with criminal matters. The minister who overrode the opinion of the lower-ranking staff is not a separate branch, they are that branch. Their opinion is the opinion of that branch.

You won't see me defend the Berlin administration in any way, they're a failed state after all, have been since the Weimar Republic at least, but what they did not break any law and the affected people still can resort to the courts to overrule the administration.

You, standing here, saying "Germany is a despotic regime" is echoing Nazi talking points. Think about what you're doing.

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I said that acting in such a way is despotism and given the development of Germany over the past years, especially looking at the plans of the new government coalition likely to be, dismantling civil rights and giving more authority to the executive that previously required an approval by the judiciary, Germany is making more and more steps towards making despotism a prevalent way of the government to act. In particular in Berlin in regards to activities being critical of Israels actions or in support of Palestinian rights there have been many despotic decisions.

Blanket bans on protests that had to be overturned by courts, influencing a state bank to freeze the account of a jewish antizionist organization to jeopardize them organizing a discussion panel, arbitrarily revoking funding for cultural spaces because they allowed events discussing the situation of Palestinians to hold place, arbitrarily revoking entry to internationaly renowned doctors so they could not give testimony of the horrors they witnessed in Gaza, arbitrarily storming and breaking up events with police force. Countless cases of police violence, especially against women and minors. Exerting pressure on event places to cancel events last minutes. Having the far-right Axel-Springer media target Professors who demanded the observation of constitutional rights in cooperation with the federal ministry for education and research. Having the education minister demand funding to be revoked for the scientists in questions and subsequently wiggling out by firing her secretary and forbidding the secretary from speaking out about what happened...

In a larger scope the federal parliament passed two resolutions demanding an end to academic freedom and involvement of the interior intelligence in assessing which scientists are "not without a doubt not antisemitic". Despite strong criticism of Scientists these resolutions were passed without even listening to the Scientists. Of course the Fascists from the AfD were cheering as they passed these resolutions together with supposed parties of the center of politics. While these resolutions are technically non binding they are used by administrative bodies and sometimes even courts to interpret laws.

When it comes to Palestine Germany and in particular Berlin are using every dirty trick of the despotic arsenal. And the problem is that even if the decision are later overruled by courts, the damage is already done. And the responsible people in the administration and police face no repercussion.

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I said that acting in such a way is despotism

And I explained to you how you're dead wrong. How the judiciary is absolutely still involved.

The rest, thus, is nonsense I won't even read.

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Of course closing your eyes is the easiest way to not see any forms or precursors of despotism. But then you also should not be surprised, when it develops to its more blatant forms.

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Yep, we agree. In Western Europe I was thinking of Portugal and Eastern Europe the Baltics etc.

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Of course closing your eyes is the easiest way to not see any forms or precursors of despotism.

Precursors of despotism like, *checks notes*, the rule of law being adhered to.

Touch grass.

You know, like deporting non binary people to be persecuted in Hungary, despite a court order to the contrary.

https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2025/bvg25-013.html?nn=68666

that a court decision after the fact cannot heal the damage that an illegal action by the executive already did.

What is your alternative? That there be no courts checking executive decisions? You cannot at the same time claim that judicial review is what keeps us from despotism, and then slam juridical review for doing exactly that when the executive fucked up.

If you manage to accept this as an example of problems in Germanys executive actions

Of Berlins executive actions. The federation has nothing to do with it. And yes there's plenty of rotten parts in the executive. May I remind you that I already called Berlin a failed state.

Palestine

Narrowing things down to Palestine doesn't help your overall case. If you care about the rule of law, then the issue is broader. If all you care about is Palestine then don't get into the rule of law, you're damaging it by instrumentalising the topic politically.

As if this case would even be close to the Hungary case in terms of denial of rights, or what happened to Oury Jalloh. In this case, the administration didn't create irreversible facts. Reign in your campism.

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American obsession with money is weird when you think about it. Money is only useful when the human creativity, ingenuity, effort, etc. you want is for sale. Billionaires think their bunkers will save them after they make the world go to shit, but nobody is going to take care of these helpless bastards when there is nothing for their money to buy. Then there is the fact that money often ruins intrinsic motivation, which is why, for example, looking at the work of great artists and composers from the past, it’s clearly evident which works were commissioned vs. which ones were truly inspired work. A lot of open source software is inspired work that can be used without the limitations of paid software. Anyone using the arr stack with Jellyfin, for example, knows there’s no paid service that offers a superior experience. People with a loving and supportive family are wealthier than Elon Musk, who despite his net worth reeks of desperation for any superficial attention he can get. America is supposedly a “wealthy” country, but any country with a government that actually cares about its people and ensures they have a social safety net, clean food to eat without 1000 toxic additives, etc. is infinitely more wealthy than the USA.

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What is your alternative? That there be no courts checking executive decisions? You cannot at the same time claim that judicial review is what keeps us from despotism, and then slam juridical review for doing exactly that when the executive fucked up.

I don't understand this conclusion from what i said. It should be obvious that such decision have to be made by a court, before there is action taken by the executive. And then the executive action needs to be in accordance with the court decision. If the executive acts in a way that is in violation of the court decision, or they act on matters where a court decision is necessary, without having the court decided on it, there needs to be consequences.

You are narrowing things down to protests regarding Palestine. Those are the most blatant examples of despotic actions by the executive, but it is not exclusive to people standing up for Palestinian rights. We also see attacks on the right to protest in regards to climate protests for instance. Palestinian rights are merely the issue, where thanks to "Staatsräson" they are testing the waters with how far the executive can go with despotic actions. They will not stop at this issue and instead expand on to any other issue of civil society not falling in line with the authoritarian demands.

This is why it is so crucial to understand the despotism that is developed here and to oppose it now, even if you want to ignore the issue of Palestine otherwise. Because it will affect everyone in the long run that dares to speak up about any issue.

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I don’t understand this conclusion from what i said. It should be obvious that such decision have to be made by a court, before there is action taken by the executive.

And that's what's happening: Noone has been deported.

Or do you want the administration to first ask a court each time before it does anything? Like, speeding ticket, ask a court first before telling the driver they have to pay up? Someone dumps garbage on the street, ask a court before issuing a fine and billing the perpetrator for the cleanup?

All you'd do with that is grind state action to a halt. And you wouldn't change a thing, worse, you'd get courts used to rubber-stamping everything unread.

Those are the most blatant examples of despotic actions by the executive,

No, they aren't, the extradition to Hungary is a way worse case. That you can't see this makes me conclude that you're blinded by campism. You're not judging the cases by what happened, legally, how big the fuck-up was, but by whether the people affected were closer to your pet political case.

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from this article: "somehow europeans managed to squeeze their employers into giving them more of it"; it's called a union, not "convinced to grant" (like an "ottriate constitution" from a king). we (others before us) work politically with political subjects through conflict (strike, demonstrations, public debate and parliamentary discussions).
anyway we don't do it enough, but we still have the remains of the communist, socialist and social democratic parties of the second after the war, despite the fact that anglo-saxon neoliberalism tried (and partly succeeded) to eradicate the welfare state (both from a regulatory point of view and through the culture of consumption and overabundance).
however, we hope that in the future we will work less and we live better

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The Economist is a very Neoliberal British magazine (I should know, I had a subscription for almost a decade) and as such they have the vices of both:

The magical thinking of Neoliberals, were the solution for the social and economic problems caused by deregulation is even more deregulation.
The almost universal practice amongst the British Press and Political class of claiming everywhere is a shithole compared to Britain, especially Europe (and by that they mean Continental Europe).

So yeah, of course for them America sliding into Fascism isn't the fault of the explosion of inequality and total freezing of Social Mobility there, which was the direct consequence of 4 decades of Neoliberalism and the destruction or defanging of all powers in the land (including Unions and the State) except for the Power Of Money, and of course Europe is "problematic" because they haven't destroyed enough Unions, Worker Rights and other non-Money powers and workers are still entitled to things like a month of vacations, retiring before they're dead and time for activities other than sleeping and working (oh, the horror!).

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I hope so, because in a decade of subscribing to that magazine I've often seen variants of the "worker rights are bad for the Economy" pitch in their articles and they were dead serious about it.

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Well, 13h in with now being 5:30 PM in most of Europe and judging by the number of upvotes and downvotes on your post (13 to nil), I would like to think that your expectations on the lack of awareness of Racism in Europe by lemmie crowd that frequents c/Europe, have not been proven.

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Immigrants are getting deported for those wrong views, though, so… yeah.

Ah, good old Germany and their good old ways...

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And that’s what’s happening: Noone has been deported.

They have been threatened with deportation and only by demanding a court to review the decision they got a temporary reprieve, that is if the executive doesn't choose to ignore the court like they did with the deportation to Hungary. And it is already in the structure of the argument of the administration that they do not want to wait until a court has ruled on any criminal charge, or even let the investigators decide whether there is any reasonable evidence to even make a criminal charge in some of the cases.

This is at the core about taking away matters from courts, where the question of criminality or danger is subject to evidence and neutrality, rather than political affiliation and motivation.

Nowhere did i say that the deportation to Hungary is not worse. I said in case of repression against people standing up for Palestinian rights it is the most blatant, the most obvious. I recommend you to read through your past comments. They have been quite aggressive and filled with strawman arguments. I think by pointing out how despotic the deportation to Hungary is, you yourself acknowledge that Germany has a problem with growing despotism. Which brings us back to the very beginning of all of this discussion. The freedoms and rights granted by the EU and their member states are under serious attacks in particular in Germany. So instead of praising places like Germany as some beacon of freedom and rights, when the current political powers for the most part are eager to limit the very same freedoms and rights.

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FYI, Spain's dictatorship lasted for another 2 years after the one in Portugal fell.

Also in my experience both Spain and Portugal tend to be tought of as Southern Europe, even though geographically they are indeed to the West of almost all of Europe (Iceland is further to the West, whilst the Republic of Ireland and Great Britain are at around the same longitude)

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They have been threatened with deportation and only by demanding a court to review the decision they got a temporary reprieve

And the same happens when you get a traffic ticket.

And it is already in the structure of the argument of the administration that they do not want to wait until a court has ruled on any criminal charge

Criminal. Criminal. The administrative court will decide on whether or not the deportation will happen before the criminal case is finished. The administration, of course, is within its rights to have an opinion on that. So the affected people. But the administrative court will decide because this is an administrative matter.

This is at the core about taking away matters from court

No, it isn't. I explained it like five times now. At this point you're either deliberately misunderstanding the issue, deliberately misrepresenting the issue, or actually dense.

I said in case of repression against people standing up for Palestinian rights it is the most blatant, the most obvious.

Not Oury Jalloh? Not Gustl Mollath? Do you even have sufficient knowledge of administrative failings and fuckups to make such a call.

I think by pointing out how despotic the deportation to Hungary is, you yourself acknowledge that Germany has a problem with growing despotism.

...you don't. Or you'd know that it's been like this for decades. Actually got better, pre-RAF was atrocious and let's not talk about WWII and before.

Go ahead, argue the Palestinian case, I applaud that. But stop shooting yourself in the foot, hurting the Palestinian case, by making bullshit arguments that are both factually incorrect and tone-deaf AF. Just because it makes you feel good in the moment or something like that doesn't mean that you're helping. A bad thing done in the name of a good thing is still a bad thing. Dunno maybe read some Kant or something.

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Or, differently put: You can't just pick out a random signifier, such as "Muslim", and expect the numbers to tell you much.

It's a good shorthand that allows us to see what, say, Germans think of an archetypical Other.

It's also important to distinguish anti-immigration vs. anti-immigrant sentiment. Especially in the East with its overall low percentage of foreigners (which, yet, grew much faster than it ever did in the west so people had less time to get used to it), it's often "we don't want more" in unison with "we really like Hasan he's the only one raising the village's flag on Sunday, the only place where you can go, and he makes really good food".

My dude don't try to convince me that "ban Muslim immigration" and "we really like Hasan" are compatible statements except in a "he's one of the good ones" kind of way. "We don't want more" can only come from someone who believes immigrants are a problem that needs to be solved.

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When you look at GDP per hour worked then Western Europe is at about the same level as the US. It is just that Europeans work a lot less then Americans, hence they earn more money.

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The thing about Europe: it’s the actual land of the free now