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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:EDIT: what the hell is wrong with Istanbul? I guess he plays to the old rivalry with the Ottoman Turks, when their armies nearly conquered Vienna and besieged the city several times? Being German I don't know if the old Habsburg-Ottoman enmity is still relevant or remembered in Austria. Or it is just a general revulsion to a majority Islamic city.
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Riso posted:Trumped up charges deligitimise the whole process, but thanks for playing. Although I am not clear on all of these charges, most of these charges seem quite plausible for a violent criminal organization. If the Golden Dawn is really deeply connected to organized crime, I would not be surprised if most of these charges are true. Which of them do you think are trumped up?
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Oct 2, 2013 12:30
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Riso posted:I'd prefer a system where politicians have to be directly elected by their constituents, and not simply by party lists. Some direct democracy from Switzerland to allow citizen to force politicians to act on a certain topic would also be a very welcome change. You are looking at the USA and think: "Yes, directly elected politicians are a good idea."?  Welcome, gerrymandered districts in which the most right wing people are assured election in their districts, and in which it is basically a race to see who can outflank their opponents ON THE RIGHT! Or look to Britain, where Labour got 35% of the vote in 2005, but because it is first past the post they got 355 of 646 seats in the House of Commons. Does that look like democracy? Direct democracy in the vein of Switzerland is probably a good idea for most nations, but I cannot think of any system in which proportional representation and party elections is not superior to directly elected politicians. The example of the USA should really show everybody what a lovely system it is.
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Oct 7, 2013 10:20
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cargo cult posted:Europe is racist as poo poo and as a minority I've never felt welcomed anywhere there, with the sole exception of the UK, probably cause they have a hard-on for Americans and especially American Minorities, anyway, point being I think it's a lost cause and I'm not sure why anyone would even bother with anti-fascist action there. Just let them go all nationalist and kill the gently caress out of each other as they've been doing for basically all of history. Travelling through Spain and especially Holland were the absolute worst, I have no idea how the Dutch have managed to cultivate a reputation for tolerance, whatsoever. Wow, you win the thread for failing to recognize that there are no differences between the several European countries. And of course you don't understand that many of the European racists/nationalists are actually pretty relaxed about other white Europeans so there would not be any mutual killing anyway. And of course if you look at America, where they totally freaked out with a massive overreaction after 9/11 and started killing Muslims in the thousands and are responsible for tens of thousand dead Muslims because they cannot keep the peace in Afghanistan or Iraq. Not to mention how absolutely enlightened they were when there was this issue with the Islamic community center on Ground Zero. Oh and thankfully only one of the two parties in the USA is racist, much better than in Europe because reasons. And hey, nice that after living closely together with black and hispanic people for centuries the American whites are a bit less racist than the rather homogeneous European societies. But when the Republicans have finally managed to restrict voting rights to whites only you are certainly welcome to emigrate to Europe for a better life. Edit: Not to say that there are no serious problems with racism in Europe, because they are certainly present to varying degrees in every European country, but this post was just rubbish, just as my reaction was a bit of an exaggeration (except the part about 9/1).
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Jan 8, 2014 22:39
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computer parts posted:That was a pretty big exaggeration too because several European countries were part of the Afghan war. I think the Afghanistan war could have been defended. If the US had not invaded Iraw afterwards but instead concentrated on Afghanistan it the war might have been won. But Iraq was the nail in the coffin. And what I meant about 9/11 being not an exaggeration was that the USA really did have a massive overreaction. Just look at that NSA stuff, airport security, FBI changing it's primary mission statement from law enforcement to "national security", the militarization of ordinary police forces, Guantanamo and blatant disregard of the Geneva conventions etc. And there are serious pundits out there who tell the people that the world is a more dangerous place than it was at the height of the Cold War  and especially the radio audiences swallowing it up.And remember that Bush Jr. got something like 75% of the Muslim vote in 2000? Can you really see the GOP repeating that feat in the next elections, the way they turned on the Muslims? Benghazi truthers, Obama the secret anti-American Kenyan Muslim (one in six Americans believed this!), these things are all a massive overreaction to 9/11.
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Jan 8, 2014 22:54
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Enjoy posted:What policies do Republicans advocate that Britain's Conservative Party isn't actively implementing? Voter suppression? And apart from racism, fascists and Republicans are also generally not fond of gay marriage.
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Jan 10, 2014 17:25
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Enjoy posted:People keep asserting this but please explain how so! So imagine a minority of the Republicans in Congress would be for same-sex marriage. Can you imagine Boehner allowing a vote on it to happen, in the knowledge that it would pass with D assistance? Can you imagine a president Romney whipping up support for SSM against much of his own party? Are the Conservatives trying to privatize the NHS? Banning abortion? Injecting intelligent design into the school curriculum? As a non-Brit I am seriously asking. I don't think they are but please correct me if I'm wrong.
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Jan 10, 2014 22:32
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Antisemitism is probably a topic where pan-European generalizations don't really work. The (now a decade old, there has been developments since then) report on antisemitism from the EUMC identified young males with a Palestinian/Arabic/Muslim background as the main perpetrators in Denmark, and similarly North Africans in France, while in the Netherlands the perpetrators are 80% 'white'. Sweden similarly has a significant "White Power" bent to their attacks, which are also far more common than in Denmark, Sweden being one of the most antisemitic countries in Europe apparently. Pan-European generalizations are generally (sorry!) useless, since the differences in wealth/culture/education/religion etc. between various European states are immense. History also makes a huge difference. You have the Balkans, which were conquered by the Muslims and had to endure several centuries of occupation by the Ottomans. And you have the Brits, with a British Empire that colonized several Muslim nations. The fight of the Austrian Habsburgs against the invading Ottomans, culminating in the siege of Vienna is a huge part of Austrian identity. Unfortunately there are several sources of fascist ideology in the different European states.
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Jan 11, 2014 16:30
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A Buttery Pastry posted:True, but I was comparing Denmark and Sweden here, on the subject of antisemitism. In that case, the two diverge a whole lot, despite their overall similarities, where anti-Muslim sentiment across Europe is the opposite situation. Yeah, this is really the one subject where it is correct to say Europe is racists as gently caress. I simply cannot understand how so many people in so many different cultures can hate Roma, who are relatively few people and who never had any kind of power, so they did never perpetrate any massive atrocities. Hating Mongols in a country that was a victim of the Golden Horde is understandable to a degree for example, but what did Roma ever do to the European people?
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Jan 11, 2014 17:32
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The latest news revealed that this had nothing to do with fascism. It was a 13 year old boy who is member of the youth fire department. He confessed the crime, and is now in psychological treatment (in Germany, children under 14 year old cannot be held accountable for any crimes the commit, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_infancy). So while this was a big tragedy it was at least not motivated by xenophobia.
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Feb 8, 2014 15:32
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OwlBot 2000 posted:Their favorite catch phrase is, "It's supposed to be a Republic, not a Democracy!" and talk about how the founding-fathers never wanted the Senate to be directly elected because that would allow poor people to vote away the property of the rich. But unlike the European far right they don't have any "democracy is rotten and depraved" rhetoric and would never (consciously) support a Leader as the embodiment of The Eternal Nation and the Will of the People or anything really fascist. On the other hand I cannot even count the number of times I have read US right wingers write comment under Politico articles and the like, with the content about this: "If you don't pay taxes you should not be able to vote, if you get more money from the state than you pay in taxes you should not be able to vote, etc." Not to mention the fact that it is actually possible for the minority to win the presidency, House and Senate. How democratic is a nation anyways in which the party with less votes controls the lower house? And of course, Republican attempts at voter disenfranchisement should not be ignored either. And gerrymandering strikes me as pretty undemocratic as well.
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Mar 7, 2014 13:00
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OwlBot 2000 posted:Undemocratic is not the same as Fascist. And their objections to full democracy is from an Enlightenment and Liberal perspective, "tyranny of the majority" and "mob rule." Fascists oppose democracies because they think it is weak, watered down and decadent, and that voting can never actualize the will of the people in the same way a Leader can. Also, the American right talks constantly of 'individual rights', whereas Fascists view individuals as meaningless except in the context of being sons, fathers and soldiers of the Nation. I'm not saying that being undemocratic and being a fascist are the same, I was just replying to the posts that made it seem like democracy is something nearly every American supports, when there are quite a few people whose commitment to "true" democracy seems doubtful to me. And the American right might talk about individual rights all day long, if they don't include a right to vote (or a right to have consensual sex in the privacy of one's home), then I think they are coming up short. Pyromancer posted:That system was shaped by technical limitations of 18th century, but US keeps holding onto it. Probably because the ones to change the law aren't interested in changing it - it got them into their seats in the first place. Very true. It was groundbreaking when it was introduced but it is just dated now. And I really cannot understand that none of the three elections (House, Senate, presidency) has a guarantee for the majority to win.
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Mar 7, 2014 14:04
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computer parts posted:The House elections are because the states run single member districts instead of being a cohesive party. This is to encourage regional support rather than having them be a faceless party from "the other end of the state" (this is an issue in geographically large or highly populous states, e.g. Northern Virginia vs the rest, East/West/South Texas, etc). The interesting thing is that this is not actually a system in the constitution - it's put up purely by tradition and the state legislatures (and maybe a federal statute sometime in the past 40 years). I see this reaction often, and I find this quite problematic. I am sure you had noble intentions, but from my vantage this is an American explaining the US political system, because poor dumb non-Americans cannot understand it. I know very well why the system is the way it is, and it is still bullshit. You have a constitution that reserves for the states every lawmaking and executive function not expressively granted to the federal government. You have extensive statewide elections, even for individual executive posts, a bicameral state legislature in nearly all states, and this repeats itself at the local level (you guys can vote for the local school board for god's sake), and you even elect many judges and other members of the judiciary/executive (and electing the district attorney -> need to seem tough on crime and good at solving cases -> suspect is most likely innocent but there is nobody else to convict -> DA worries about reelection, pulls every trick to assure conviction for somebody he doesn't think guilty -> gets conviction, wins reelection, and achieves justice!... well, the problems are obvious, same with electing judges). The USA gives incredible powers to local communities. And then you have the federal government. With the oft-maligned pork-barrel-spending allegedly eliminated by the Republicans, what reason is there to elect local representatives? You have the Senate to defend the interests of the states (though how good this works is questionable, I think the German system does a much better job in this regard). But even if you think you need the two parts of the legislature to represent local interests, there has to be at least one institution that is concerned with the welfare of the whole United States. And here you have the electoral college, which is just ridiculous. It massively disenfranchises voters in many states (which reduces overall turnout for local elections as well), does not fulfill it's original function of having wiser elder statesmen choose the president instead of the uninformed mob and made it possible for Bush to win over Gore. There is no reason why the presidency is not decided by popular vote if the House and Senate can be won by the minority, and indeed I would consign every other nation to the "undemocratic/ of questionable democracy" states pile if the outright minority can win the legislature and executive over the majority. By way of probability it is just a matter of time until the stars align and House, Senate and presidency are won by the part which got fewer votes. And I know of the origins of this arrangement, and that the Articles of Confederations left the United States an ungovernable mess, and that the founding fathers blatantly ignored the requirement for unanimous consent when they replaced the Articles with the new US constitution, but that is merely an explanation, not a valid reason for why these system still works as if the USA was a pre-industrial agrarian society. Anyway, I probably wrote too much off topic here. Is there something like the sandcastle of the LP subforum for D&D? I think a thread for discussing political systems could be quite interesting. To return to fascism and democracy: Read the Volokh Conspiracy and watch Ilya Somin argue that higher voter participation is not only nothing worth to pursue, but actually harmful for a functioning "democracy", because the unwashed masses are uninformed or misinformed (because they are not libertarians, you see), and think again about how fine the dividing lines are in some matters between fascists and the extreme right in the USA.
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Mar 7, 2014 19:51
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^^ Yes, that is true.computer parts posted:Pork barrel spending is getting federal funds for local places, it has nothing to do with local governments. So that's one thing you misunderstand. I understand that, but if a representative (in the House of Representatives) can no longer bring federal funds to his district, what advantage is there to appoint MP's by district instead of through proportional representation? quote:Actually, presidential elections are the highest turnout races we have. Midterms (which do not utilize the electoral college ) are much lower in turnout, as are special elections or state races. Yes, but turnout in safe states is lower than turnout in swing states. Which is only logical after all. If you were a Californian Republican in the last presidential election, you might as well have abstained in the ballot for president, since Obama was sure to carry the state. quote:Again though that's not a function of the system set up in the Constitution. States are free to allocate their electoral votes to the winner of the overall popular vote if they so choose (and there is currently a compact to make that law). They can also just as easily award them proportionately. Perhaps it's the fault of the constitution for not specifying a specific way, but it's disingenuous to say that the Constitution requires winner take all allotment. When did I fault the constitution? The electoral college currently functions as I described. If states enact the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, all my criticism will become invalid. You could simply abolish the electoral college at this point, but it doesn't really matter if it is kept. Because at that point, at least the executive would be won by the party with the most votes, and things like Bush winning over Gore could not happen again. But as long as it is possible for the minority to win the majority of votes in the EC, I will see that as a big flaw in US democracy. quote:None of the systems you mentioned are really handicapped by technical issues at all, it's the philosophies which are not currently popular, specifically that states are literally States (countries) rather than provinces. I don't care if the states see themselves as literally countries united in a federation, as long as that makes the whole United States less democratic. Gerrymandering is a big problem of course:  Proportional representation knows no gerrymandering. You can even have local representatives in mixe-member-proportional representation and gerrymandering would be useless as well. You can also eliminate gerrymandering in FPTP electoral systems of course, like the British have done, but this is sadly not in the cards for most of the USA currently, mostly because it is a matter for the states.
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Mar 7, 2014 23:14
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Install Windows posted:It's not what states see themselves as, it is the literal basis of the country. But it cannot be taken seriously. "Real" states are sovereign entities, free to join or leave organizations as they please. None of the states may leave the USA, if they break away the rest will use force of arms to take back the seceding members. They may have been countries at the time of the founding, but this era is long over. The founding cantons of Switzerland saw themselves as sovereign entities centuries before the creation of the USA, but they are integral part of Switzerland today. And it doesn't even matter, because it is the results that matter. So the constitution forbids a unified nationwide election law? Change it. You can eliminate gerrymandering by creating an independent board for redistricting and abolish the electoral college by creating direct elections for the presidency. And while you are at it you could create a new national holiday or move an old one so that the USA stops embarrassing itself every election day by having hours long waiting times at the ballot. And increase the size of the House so that Americans are no longer the worst represented people on Earth, with 700.000 people per representative, when the next worst legislature has 400.000 people per representative.
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Mar 7, 2014 23:34
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Install Windows posted:I'm going to stop you right here because you're wrong. It is widely held that states would be free to leave in the same manner that they joined, which is to say by a majority of the other states consenting to the leaving as the majority had to consent to them joining. Additionally, fully sovereign rights are implicitly delegated to the federal government by ratifying the constitution. And this just proves that the states are not real countries, because sovereign states can leave any organization they wish even without consent of the remaining members of the organization. And if your sovereign rights are delegated to the federal government, and constitutional changes don't require unanimous consents (a requirement for changing the European Union treaties for example, which are the only ways to delegate more power from EU members to Brussels), so that for example educational policy can be delegated to the federal government against the wishes of a certain (small) number of states via constitutional amendment, how can the states be said to be countries? They simply aren't.
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Mar 7, 2014 23:44
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Mans posted:Because Europe turning further to the right either means more neoliberal policy, austerity and decision making in Brussels overriding democratic wishes in EU states or nationalist, xenophobic euro-skepticism that will replace the former's problems with something worse. Or possibly, if the left in Portugal, Greece or the Czech Republic to name a few starts to grow too much, a healthy mixture of all of the above to make sure nothing changes in the economic policy of the Eurozone. I wonder about the EU-is-anti-democratic attitude. When there is a European Parliament that is elected in fair and free elections, which also elects the European Commission, then that seems pretty democratic to me. If they are overriding the wishes of some EU states, it is no different to the US federal government enacting a policy that is against the wishes of certain governors and the population of certain states. And even the Front National got only 7%! of the votes in France. Meaning the mainstream party still had the support of over 90% of the electorate, hardly the sign of a second coming of the Nazis.
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Mar 25, 2014 08:19
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HighClassSwankyTime posted:You cannot compare individual, sovereign states with states that are within a bigger (federal) union, like the USA. In the EU, only MEPs are elected. Commission members? Appointed. EU Presidency? Appointed. And what is the European parliament for the most part? A collection of (fanatical) pro-EU Martin Schulz clones; the opposition is either (far-)right nationalists, Nigel Farage and sometimes a random soundbite from someone nobody's ever heard of. And by the way, the European Parliament is a great way to get rid of uppity/stupid national politicians; send 'em off to Brussels and you can safely ignore them. I don't understand. The Commission is the executive. It is proposed by the council and elected by the Parliament. And here in Germany, the Chancellor and her cabinet are appointed by the Bundestag (German parliament), which was elected by the people. In fact, neither the German president nor the Chancellor and her cabinet are elected directly. The British executive comes from parliament and is not directly elected. The Italian president proposed a prime minister and both houses of parliament must approve him. None of these governments were elected directly by the people, yet nobody says these countries are not democracies. They are just normal parliamentary democracies. EU presidency? Chosen by the members of the European council, i.e. the (democratically elected) heads of the member states. That is not as democratic as it could be, but there is some accountability through the national governments. And anyway, the guy has no power. Has Van Rompuy done anything important since he got the post? And you complaining about the makeup of the EU parliament is probably a good sign. You are free to vote for other candidates, but the fact that pro-European politicians captured most of the seats in free and fair elections is quite nice, isn't it?
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Mar 25, 2014 10:19
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HighClassSwankyTime posted:It's bad sign because EU "elections" are basically an illusion of free choice. Even leftist parties are pro-EU and EU criticism comes, almost exclusively, from nationalist parties. The only notable exception I know is the Greek far-left SYRIZA party, but don't think a few parties that are moderate and EU skeptical have any real say in policy. Yeah, "illusion of choice" is nice. If there was such a big demand for a left wing anti-european party, it would have gained seats anyway. I cannot vote for anti-European left wing parties in my national elections, are they also only offering an "illusion of choice"? Electronico6 posted:The majority of Europeans, have no idea what the EU actually does or how it works. In here the example of Portugal. Of course there are still problems in the EU. European Parliament elections should get much more attention from the media, since they could in theory be quite important for all of Europe. But it seems it is easier to ignore them and blame all problems on Brussels. Remember when the EP voted down the first SWIFT agreement? Or that they are one of the stumbling blocks for the current EU-USA free trade deal? They are not powerless, but they do reflect the attitudes of the countries that they are from. Considering that the European Council can only nominate Commission presidents, which have to be approved by parliament, I would hardly call them powerless. And I still wonder how the EU can be such a bad capitalist institution when the British Tories desperately want to exempt Britain from EU labor laws for being to onerous on business... The situation with Italy and Greece is also more complex than EU = bad. You say that Italy is now on it's third unelected government, but that is just not true. It is a fact that the executive serves at the pleasure of the legislature in a parliamentary system, and so it is it's legitimate right to fire it's current government and install a new one. It is a procedure that is explicitly allowed in parliamentary systems. Something similar happened in Germany in the 80s, when the liberals ended their coalition with the social democrats and instead formed one with the conservatives, dismissing the social democrat chancellor and electing a conservative one, without any intervening elections. I can only count two "unelected" governments in Italy (Berlusconi -> Mario Monti and Enrico Letta -> Matteo Renzi), and it is a bit worrying that they are changing governments, but this is Italy. I thought went through about one government per year since WW2? In any way, it is not primarily the fault of the EU. Greece had adopted a technocrat government after heavy pressure from the EU, and the conditions for emergency loans were also incredibly harsh, but again the situation is more complex. The real problem was and is the Euro. If Greece was not a part of the Euro-zone, it would have three options to deal with it's financial crisis: 1. Print money to pay off debtors, massively increasing inflation. That option would only be available if their debts were in Drachmas, which is unlikely. Their currency was never seen as all too stable, which is why they wanted to join the Euro in the first place. So their debts would most likely be in Euros, Dollars or D-Marks, which eliminates the printing press as an option. 2. Default on their loans. That may have been better than the current option, but it would not have been without costs as well. Greece had a structural deficit, they would have to cut services and fire people employed by the state anyway, because they would have been unable to pay them, and they would be unable to make new debt to finance it. Not to mention that there are quite a few Greeks who hold/held Greek government debt, and Greek banks, which would all have been hurt by a default. Still a bad option. 3. Go cap in hand to the IMF and receive loans in exchange for similar obligations as they got now. And I would bet that they got a marginally better deal from their EU partners than they would have gotten from the IMF alone. That's not really an alternative to the current scenario. So Greece was hosed anyway. Of course if they had never adopted the Euro they might not be in the mess they currently are, but that is very difficult to tell. Still I agree that the richer Union states should have helped the struggling members much more than they currently are, but it is not that easy. Take this sentence: quote:What's more convenient to the German politician, is worth more than lives of 10 million. That is completely divorced from reality. If Merkel and co. had helped Portugal by sending billions of German Euros to prop up their economy they would have lost last fall's elections. The sad truth is that the heads of the rich EU countries have the backing of their voters in refusing to pay for the debts of the struggling EU members. The balance of power in the EU is skewed, but in a pretty "natural" way. The rich creditor countries have power over the poor debtor countries, it doesn't matter if they are in the EU or not. The EU itself is fine, it is the Euro that's a mess. There should have been much more economical and financial integration in the Euro-zone, with a robust financial transfer. But it didn't happen, and there was no support for it in both the people and the politicians. You said it yourself: quote:The EU needs to change. Be much more open and clear to the citizens of the member states, and be much more active and participant in their lives. The Eurozone also needs to seriously move into a proper monetary union, and have the ECB support the Euro the same way the american Federal bank supports the dollar. If this union was already in place much grief could've been spared in these last 5 years. Even a single EU army would go a long way. This is true. It can be better, it HAS to be better. But I just get tired of people blaming everything on the EU.
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Mar 25, 2014 14:57
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Nektu posted:While I wouldnt agree all that readily to the first half of that sentence, the second half is very true: without the devastations caused by the euro the EU would never have moved into the center of attention like it is now. They could have happily continued their thing in bruessels without anybody minding them all that much. That depends on what you mean with the EU "surviving". I cannot really see the common market going away anytime soon. It is just too beneficial, the EFTA nations even accept to implement certain EU regulations that they cannot influence in any way just to get access to it. The deeper political integration on the other hand probably won't survive an Euro breakup, and EU regulations will certainly go away with the Euro. But speaking of Euro devastations, it's not like it was not beneficial for those now struggling members when they adopted it. They enjoyed cheaper credits, lower inflation and in most cases higher growth than before they adopted it. You can argue that they would have been better off with lower growth and higher inflation if they could have been spared the Euro crisis in exchange, but it is not quite that clear cut.
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Mar 25, 2014 15:21
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HighClassSwankyTime posted:If it were 90 against 10, then yes, you'd have a point. EU skepticism is significantly larger than 10% of the population in many countries and ignoring those votes (and voices) is further evidence how the EU only seeks to expand itself, continues to see democracy as a convenient tool to legitimate themselves, regardless of what Europeans think of the EU. The leftist love of the EU is really strange, since it's quite clear that the EU only cares about big businesses while the European people can foot the bill for whatever extravaganza Brussels comes up with. This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about democracy. Here in Germany we have the anti-Euro (as being against the currency) party AfD, which represents a position shared by quite a number of Germans. But they still only got slightly less than 5% of all votes, even though about 27% of all Germans want to go back to the D-Mark (at least that was the number in the last poll I read). Most people are not single issue voters and thus the AfD got only 20% of the votes it "should" have gotten. So maybe there are many people unhappy about the EU, but it is not the EU's fault if these people don't decide to vote for Euroskeptic parties.
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Mar 26, 2014 10:23
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^^ Edit: I don't even get it, if you propose a deal to somebody and he rejects it, are you forever barred from trying to form a similar deal again or can you improve your offer and see if he agrees? That the EU asked the Irish again after they made changes to the treaty is not evil Cerebral Bore posted:No, this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about democracy. What you're describing in the textbook example of managed democracy where the voice of the people is selectively shut out on key issues by the political establishment. As you note, most people aren't single-issue voters, or even can be single issue-voters. However, this doesn't chance the fact that their democratic will isn't being represented, and this is deliberate. No, you don't get it. Not all political positions need to be represented in politics. In fact, it is sometimes impossible. Have you seen the polls in the USA where the people want less taxes, more social spending AND a balanced budget? How are politicians supposed to achieve this miracle? What about people that want more environmental/consumer protection AND less regulations/bureaucracy? To go back to the D-Mark fans in Germany, how much do I need to worry that no establishment party represents the minority position? A position that would not get a majority if there was a referendum about it? You can found a new party if you want to. Nobody cared about those protesting against nuclear power in Germany until the Greens founded their own party, and now they are part of the establishment. If your issue is important enough then it is possible to challenge the old parties for votes. But don't complain if people that agree with your main policy in principle still vote for other parties that they prefer for other reasons. Torrannor fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Mar 26, 2014 |
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Mar 26, 2014 12:34
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Rutkowski posted:I've gotten several calls tonight from relatives. They're asking me about possible countries to move to where fascism isn't growing. Germany. The worst we have is growing euroscepicism. Install Windows posted:Canada and the United States. Don't know if fascists are worse than certain Tea Party members.
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May 25, 2014 23:22
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I think it was much more important to have a common heritage and roughly similar culture, while being different from those around you.
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May 26, 2014 12:47
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Crowsbeak posted:Germans ? You're kidding right? I mean its not like they didn't fight a war to dominate Europe and Africa with them on the top in a racial hierarchy or anything? The difference is that Germany surrendered unconditionally to those it attacked, while the colonial powers were only forced out of their colonies or even left voluntarily. No colonized nation ever attacked one of their former masters at their home.
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May 27, 2014 22:29
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Bob le Moche posted:Note also that this isn't anything new, fascism has often presented itself as a third position that supposedly transcends the left/right dichotomy. It always turns out to be a lie, of course. I always thought that there was quite some truth to the claim. Certain strands of communism reject the notion of different cultures (as in multiculturalism) as incompatible with communist unity culture, while the fascists reject multiculturalism in favor of their preferred "superior" culture. The Nazis had no problems nationalizing large swathes of the economy, not really concerned with the free hand of the market. And radical communists/fascists often share their disdain for democracy. I think those groups can sometimes be quite close in parts of their ideologies, indeed transcending the traditional left/right dichotomy. Of course that doesn't say anything positive about fascists though.
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Jun 1, 2014 16:16
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Still loving ashamed that we let some neo-nazis run around the country killing immigrants, while our law enforcement agencies thought it was some kind of gang/mafia violence. Also, radical Muslims are now pretty much stealing the spotlight from all other radical groups.
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Oct 10, 2014 19:07
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Horrible news, though I'm not sure why this belongs into this thread. It actually appears to be an attack by radical islamists, who aren't really the heirs of European fascists.
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Jan 7, 2015 13:41
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Forgall posted:Well, it's certainly going to boost FN a whole lot, that's for sure. Right, I forgot. Marine Le Pen must be very pleased 
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Jan 7, 2015 13:56
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Jippa posted:I see there is a specific thread on it now. I agree this isn't the right place but I couldn't see a french thread. No worries, I didn't want to backseat moderate. It probably won't take too much time until we can discuss the improved fortunes of the FN after this attack. I also fear what this will do to boost the PEGIDA idiots protesting against the "islamization of the Occident" here in Germany.
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Jan 7, 2015 14:08
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slogsdon posted:I love the irony of the Europeans being so protective of their culture. They're so afraid that what they've done to cultures around the world is going to happen to theirs. What makes you say this? It's difficult to understand that without context, and i'm not reading 500 posts just do understand your point. I don't know what's ironic about Europeans being protective of their culture. It's not unique (see a whole lot Americans who would love to deport all these foreigner Mexicans etc.).
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Jan 7, 2015 21:38
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e:^^I don't see where he is saying these things you attribute to him at all. I don't know what happened in Lisbon, but to me it seems as if he is arguing that the police were "merely" stopping a group of teenagers from further robbing/looting a shopping mall. They would have done this regardless of the race of the perpetrators, just that in this case it was a group of extremely disadvantaged black teenagers. He was contrasting this with Mans assertion that all black people were banned from Lisbon's inner city just because two black men got into a fight with each other. Jack2142 posted:#BarbarianInavsion476 I wanted to post that!  Angles, Saxons and Jutes in England as well. Torrannor fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Jan 8, 2015 |
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Jan 8, 2015 09:08
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drilldo squirt posted:Not punish other people who look like them? I think he was arguing that the police stopped everybody from going into the mall while the looting/robbing was going on, and that it was just for the time they needed to "disperse the crowd and make arrests".
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Jan 8, 2015 09:16
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Nintendo Kid posted:If US culture is so "garbage" then why do the rest of you lot love it so much. Don't try to pretend you don't, we all see how well our stuff sells in your countries. What kind of stuff? Television shows, films, music etc.? McDonalds, Ford, mortgage backed securities? Also, by this metric you would have to acknowledge that football is better than any American sport, like handegg, baseball and basketball.
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Jan 9, 2015 08:49
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Kopijeger posted:Is Greece truly considered "the West" in Russia? It's part of NATO, so I don't think it's wrong to consider them part of the West? Besides, Western culture basically originated in Greece. Look at the wikipedia article of the Western World, the first image you see is the Parthenon.
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Jan 18, 2015 13:59
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Disinterested posted:Hahaha. Who says the Freudian slip is a dead concept? Ionians didn't even live in Greece, so it's doubly awesome.
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Jan 22, 2015 15:44
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