this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
347 points (91.6% liked)
Europe
6461 readers
892 users here now
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in [email protected]. (They're cool, you should subscribe there too!)
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media. Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the primary mod account @[email protected]
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Don't overinterpret my tongue-in-cheek wording there. Afd is fearmongering about Muslims, Afd wants mass deportation of foreigners, Afd wants an end to to the right to asylum, and Afd wants people with multiple citizenships to give up their German citizenship so they can be deported. And given that they are the German party who got support from Elmo this past election, none of this should be a surprise.
Please look at the US here—the urges of these parties are all very similar anyway. Research grants for anything containing such evil, woke words like "woman" or "female" were cancelled. The USDA is no longer allowed to communicate about "microplastics". NOAA is deleting climate-change research data.
Silencing minorities and women, or in your words, "ridding unis of racist DEI policies", is just part of this attack. There is also a coordinated attack on accurate recording of reality.
No doubt, it's certainly possible that some DEI don't work well — in which case you bring data and improve them. But for what it's worth, there is very little in terms of DEI policies in German universities, especially compared to the US.
Simply having a majority rule while squashing any minorities is not a democracy, at least not one in the sense that any of us
So you're saying that people should be allowed to lie and mislead and sow unwarranted fear of minorities? How is that making society better?
Those damn "woke" values, or as we used to call them traditionally: "human rights", are the reason we have semi-functional democracies in the first place.
So how then are you suggesting to prevent self-coups? I.e. the kinda thing that Hitler did historically, Orban/Trump/Erdogan do now.
I am not. Their election program is misrepresenting their worldview to a degree. This is a legal strategy to avoid being too bannable by courts, nothing more. But look at quotes from influential people like Björn Höcke, Max Krah, Rene Aust, Lena Kotre or ...
In their words:
"We have to proceed very peacefully and deliberately, adapt if necessary and butter up the opponent, but when we're finally ready, we'll put them all up against the wall. (...) Dig a pit, get everyone in and put slaked lime on top."
Almost anyone who wants to claim asylum in Germany, needs to cross the border unlawfully, in their world view that makes people "illegal". The term is used to discredit people whether they ultimately gain asylum or a protection status or not.
Their policy documents are half-truths that point in a direction, their speeches in front of followers are often more to the point.
And these quote collections are really all over the German-language interwebs, e.g. https://www.watson.ch/international/rechtsextremismus/291420759-rechtsextremismus-in-der-afd-diese-21-zitate-sprechen-fuer-sich
And guess what kind of materials court proceedings against Afd would be based on? Quotes and overheard conversations.
I don't. People aren't "illegal", unless you dabble in dehumanizing language.
Not currently.
It's a fairly transparent proposal to remove the rights of asylum seekers for any kind of due process and remove any kind of oversight. Regular German judges, lawyers, civil-rights organizations will all be far away.
Some private operator will get rich off running an internment camp. An airline will get rich off the flights there.
Germany is part of the EU, Germany is part of the Schengen agreement that is supposed to guarantee free movement within Europe, and Germany should help the EU as a whole succeed. The latter includes integrating refugees into the society.
How do people that just live and go to work hurt the system? (I.e. the vastest majority of undocumented and overstaying immigrants in the US.)
The US is currently doing a bang-up job deporting family father of 3 with no priors while not getting ahold of people who actually are criminal. (Iirc, 90% of the nameless, supposed "worst of the worst" gang members recently deported from the US had no priors.)
Normally, law enforcement capacity is scarce and normally, you should prioritize the cases that actually hurt society.
Incidentally, on a much smaller scale, so is Germany: Deporting the easy people, the people who show up to appointments and live at their registered place of residence.
Possibly because these people likely are a net positive to society, have built a life, have friends, have integrated to a degree, just normal humaning.
Cool story.
Nice strawman! Where did you buy it? I usually get mine at Aldi's, but I've recently wondered whether I should switch up.
On a more serious note: Of course, immigration should be controlled. It should not be cut off though.
Absolutely in good faith. There's a reason why the phrasing "illegal immigrant" was coined: It's a derogatory term to criminalize people who are usually fleeing their home countries. And often enough, it's even shortened to "illegals", making the intended dehumanization even more obvious.
Now that's a bad-faith argument! Again, that process usually centers around "welcome centers" or whatever the euphemism du jour is, in other words: offshored internment camps. I suspect there may be reasons why Italy's Albanian camp project and the UK's Rwandan camp project were each struck down by courts multiple times. Notably, cost projection for both of these were rather interesting too. But gotta make someone rich in the process, right?
Don't know the specific case; is that the case with the photoshopped knuckle tattoo though?
In any case, I was referring the sort of average profile of a person that ends up getting deported. Statistically, the chances of the deported being violent criminals is becoming much lower, the higher the number of deportations. And that's pretty logical: most people are not actually criminal, and if you're just deporting to juice the stats, you'll obviously deport the people you can arrest easily. Deportations are a shit tool if your goal is justice or safety, and they are extremely easy to abuse.
I know someone who was nearly deported and who does live in constant fear of deportation. They are not allowed to take a job, are completely dependent on the welfare, they feel absolutely miserable all the time, and they are certainly not a career criminal.
Lol. "Like I said, your position is", even to you that wording should be cue.
Your experience as a landlord seemed irrelevant to the topic.
Shall we recap this discussion between the two of us?
I'd still love to know, what you think of the positions that I wrote up above. Just take them at face value. Are those positions of a normal democratic party that should remain allowed?
I am copying what I wrote above again:
I've actually bolded the one thing I still would like to see you answer in my above comment. Stop beating around the bush.
Was in the process of editing answers/questions down the bottom of my post.
Targetting dual citizenship holders first who are deemed criminals. If I had wild guess, criminals means supermarket thieves as much as climate protesters. But who knows what the end result may look like.
Fun side note: The German constitution does not allow the state to revoke citizenships unilaterally. The reason for that is that it was one the things that the historical Nazis used to legal-wash removing parts of the population. You know, just like the German constitution includes the right to asylum, specifically because so many countries refused to take in refugees from Germany in the Nazi era.
So you're just saying that I lie because of ... what? I made an informed guess on who would ultimately likely be affected, the rest of it is part of discussions [de]. And as gonservatives like to copy fascists these days, adding some form of it to the coalition treaty [de] was in fact discussed (but luckily not included in the final treaty).
To change the constitution, you only need a 2/3 majority in parliament and 2/3 in the council of states. But that's not even the point — the point is that there are political forces who want to do away with provisions in the constitution that were specifically created because of Germany's past.
It appears you absolutely don't understand modern democratic societies or what they're good for, i.e. giving every one of their members a livable, just, free, safe life. That's why e.g., there are equal rights in modern democracies, including for minorities.
You're somehow equivocating "democracy" with a "dictatorship of the majority". That is, frankly, incredibly uneducated at best.
You even advocate for the option that modern societies should simply be allowed to regress into slaveholder societies. Why? How is this congruent with allowing everyone decent quality of life? And if 75% of the populace decided that you have to become a slave, would you find this just? Would you go along with it?
Man, you seem scarily enthusiastic at the prospect. But no, fascism doesn't win landslides. In a deeply polarized society with an FPTP system, Trump won just 53%. In the richer party landscape of Germany, AfD is below 30%. The way fascism wins is not with landslides but through the undermining of democratic society.
You may need to look at definitions. You are simply arguing against modern democracy. It may comply with the Greek definition of the term but things have changed.
If those 75% unjustly take away the rights of a part of the citizenship? Obviously the 25% overrule them. Human rights come before majority vote.
Tell that to the person responsible for your phrasing.
Trump somehow keeps dropping hints that people won't need to vote again. Weird how that happens, especially given that the admin ignores parliament and law and due process wherever it can. Trump's ratings of course drop right now. The only reason for him to even allow another election to go ahead is if there's propaganda win to be wrung out of it.
For one thing, in Germany legal proceedings both could and should have occurred against Afd at some point in the past years. Germany shouldn't even be at this point, the constitution does allow a way out. Politicians of democratic forces literally didn't do their job.
The constitution does also include Art. 20 p. 4, legitimizing a general strike against people trying to undo the constitutional order. Realistically, it likely wouldn't happen nearly at the level needed to make a difference though.
In any case, no, you shouldn't give power to obviously antidemocratic forces.
So, for one, no it's obviously not just about renewables. It's about enabling environmental abuse of whatever sort. You can literally look at Trump in many ways. Afd is, in large part, propped by the same people as he is. Elmo even spoke at their party convention.
And nuclear is not cheap. The only reason why people think that is that usually the cost of building plants as well as the cost of insurance is subsidized somehow, and the cost of final storage for 100k+ years is a complete unknown. It doesn't even make sense to even think about final storage in economic terms, because who knows what people are capable of in 100k years. But when a nuclear plant is built, and has been humming along for a couple years, people start to think it's cheap because they fail to see either end of the process. Cheap nuclear is a mirage.
Solar and wind actually are cheap, can be rolled out decentrally, don't require consumables, but you have to deal with their intermittency.
Also, you have delved again into yet more topics. Which certainly is a fun distraction.
Are you going to just keep removing all of my comments that you disagree with and say “bad faith”? Funny that you removed ones where I asked someone if they just want a dictatorship of their preferred party and they literally said “yes” as “bad faith” lol
Yes, I removed many of your comments from other threads. In case you're wondering, yes, I did notice you're not arguing in good faith in this thread either.
So when you're trying to force me into ever smaller sub-discussions just to not have to give an answer, ignore any bit of information you can't use in a retort, set up the strawman about "uncontrolled migration", added the completely misguided landlord metaphor, or the misinfo about mining and recycling needed for renewables infrastructure – that was all in good faith?
We may have different definitions of "good", I suppose.
Not sure if serious but I posed the question right at the top. I posed it multiple times, I bolded it, I made you aware that I bolded it.
If you can't see a difference between running a country and renting a house ... Maybe have a think and you'll find a myriad ways in which the situations don't compare.
Of course I can. I don't need to spend time writing up everything before I allow myself to think it. But here you go:
You compared the lifetime of a battery to the half-life of nuclear waste, which is dumb. You assumed that solar panels or batteries are unrecyclable, which is false. You conveniently omitted that uranium must be mined as well, which is kind of a relevant omission.