Europe
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 When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title.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 other communities.
- 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 @EuroMod@feddit.org
view the rest of the comments
Oh, casual Racism is a plague all over the World and, worse, some of the countries which supposedly have gone beyond it, really just changed the lists of "good"/"deserving" races and "bad"/"undeserving" races and called the discriminatory behaviour anchored in those new lists "positive", as if treating people differently depending on their race is a good thing as long as it's only for certain races but a bad thing for others.
Racism is always a coin with two faces - there are always some who are presumed to, due to their ethnicity, be relatively better people and thus treated in a relatively better way, and others who due to their ethnicity are presumed to be relatively worst people and treated in a relatively worst way - and just because one goes around empasysing the "positive" side of treating some better due to their race doesn't make the thing any less Prejudiced, Discriminatory and unjust.
The boundary between Racism and not-Racism is not defined by which are the races for which you will treat individuals better and which for which you treat individuals worst, or even on the focusing on positive treatment for some races (the modern spin on Racism) rather than negative treatment for other races (the Fascist spin on Racism), it's defined by judging and treating or not people differently depending on their race.
To eliminate Racism you need to eliminate the way of thing thinking that is the foundation of Racism: that the character of people, their worth and the treatment they deserved depends on their ethnicity.
"Positive" Discrimination doesn't eliminate Racism, it just moves the unfair, Racist, treatment to favour different ethnicities - a different list of ubermenschen and untermenschen rather than just treating all as equally being menschen.
Whilst you (rightly!) point out and criticize the casual racism all over the place done with the traditional (Fascist) spin on racism, you seem to be totally oblivious to the Racism with the modern neoliberal spin which is just as unjust, prejudiced and discriminatory (hence just as Racist) as practiced in Germany, where it is systemic and even weaved into the structures of power (exactly as shown in this news story, with people being deported without trial for being against it), and the powerful activelly practicing discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and suppressing criticism of it with laws that bypass the Courts, is a far, FAR worse situation than merely the powerless being casually racist.
The takeover of Israel by a nakedly ethno-Fascist regime which has started a full-blown Genocide along ethnic lines of proportions and cruelty exceeded only by the Holocaust, is what shined a harsh light on the reality that the whole business of presuming things and treating people based on their ethnicity is wrong even when you spin it as "positive", and Germany was so far down into Racism with that modern neoliberal spin that the country, unlike many other countries in Europe which also previously supported Israel, has been unable to pull itself out of it when it de facto transformed into support of a very extreme form of Fascist-style Racism.
I agree with that: I don't think any "people" has an intrinsically heightened disposition for racism.
In fact, if I thought otherwise I would be quite the hypocrite as that would be pure and simple racist prejudice.
What I do think is that the Press and Political environment in Germany for the past decades have promoted race-based thinking thus increasing the acceptance of racism and even a certain blindness to it because the dominant forms were "benevolent" racism. This is how Germany ended up were it is now: by the active normalizing of a dysfunctional behavior as being "benevolent" rather than due to predisposition of those living there for such things.
You see a lot of that too in places like the US were one party is Racist in the traditional sense and the other spins their Racism in the modern sense (but when it comes to, for example, Muslims, they're both traditional racists).
The really alarming thing is that rather than stop and re-evaluate that posture in light of how that ended up with the German Government supporting the most extreme Genocide of this century (so far :/ ) very overtly due to the race of the genociders, the German authorities have instead doubled down with authoritarian measures (IMHO, bypassing the Courts to expel dissidents is pretty authoritarian for a supposedly Democratic nation).
IMHO, such climate of race-based thinking and normalization of racial prejudice and discrimination (even if spinned as "positive") is also fertile ground for the growth of traditional racists such as the AfD in Germany and the MAGAs in America - the moral and ethical distance between "those people should be supported because of their race" and the traditional racists' "we should be supported because of our race" is much, much smaller than the distance between "people's race should not mater for how they are seen or treated" and "we should be supported because of our race" - "if it's OK to do it for them then it's OK to do it for us" is quite a tiny mental step.
I don't actually think that Germany is worse in this than for example the US, it's just that I had a far, far better opinion of Germany than I had of the US previously and the deep disappointment of figuring out the dark nature of racial policies in German Politics makes it hit me harder than what's happening in the US.