Donald Trump’s administration is planning to spend $4 million to bolster right-wing media in Europe, part of a package of at least $25 million for civil society groups working on conservative causes in the region, according to four people familiar with the funding.
The grants risk deepening tensions between the Trump administration and European governments, some of which have already accused Washington of interfering in their domestic politics.
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) says the funding is meant to strengthen transatlantic ties and promote free speech. It comes as European countries prepare for elections over the next couple of years, and as the Trump administration openly backs Europe’s populist right-wing and far-right parties.
Sorry to tell you but the swamp is emerging everywhere (in the first world anyway) all at once. Trump and co. definitely aren’t helping, but European far-right politics are definitely not an American import.
These people are all working together, organized and well funded.
There have always been dormant racists waiting to hatch but the concerted efforts and the real emergence happened around the Brexit/Trump first presidency time. It’s a combination of events that allowed them to feel comfortable being misanthropes and come out of their shell. We’ve been going downhill ever since.
We certainly have had our own share of problematic groups but our society isn’t yet rotten to the core in order to allow what’s happening in the US right now with so little resistance. We are being affected though. And it’s terrifying.
Not quite; the key event seems to have been the 2015 refugee crisis. The cleanest interpretation of the available evidence would be that Europeans just didn’t have enough clear outsiders to trigger the near-hysterical reaction we’re seeing now before that (the Roma being a clear example of how European societies treated clear outsiders even before Trump).
I mean, Europeans are even more anti-immigration than Americans. For the most part it seems to be that European countries/societies are exporting their dirty work to the Mediterranean instead. Besides, I mean, FrontEx isn’t exactly a bastion of human rights, and neither are national forces. The rot you describe has been in Europe from the start; it just wasn’t visible unless you paid attention.
Edit: See also: https://fedia.io/m/[email protected]/t/2583036/Good-imperialism-and-bad-imperialism
While there is truth in what you’re saying, and while the European immigration strategy has been to close eyes and it will go away, there is no comparison of what is happening in the US at the state level with how things are in the last decade in the EU, even at our worst.
Britain seems to be going downhill fast. If you’re trans, America is straight up a better deal at this point. Part of the problem is the coalitions you get in parliaments happen within our two major parties. So rather than a cogent far right base that has to compromise with moderates, they were able to hijack half our political structure with one win. Even so, until parties like AfD and its equivalents are banned, I wouldn’t act smug. Looking at how political winds are blowing on both sides, we might soon be in a position where we’re already rebuilding while you’re in the thick of it.
Agreed, but I prefer his position. What can we do? We have strength in our numbers, but we have to fight the misinformation. How can we steal from them the control of information? How can we fight the bots they control? Federated networks help to some degree, but it’s clear they are within us. Could we build an AI network to fight this? We can’t throw the towel, we have to fight them!
The problem isn’t information; it’s actual things happening in real life. The far-right is as strong as it is because its lies contain a grain of truth: It offers (cruel and ineffective) solutions to people’s very real problems. This means the only realistic solution here is to deny them that grain of truth by offering effective solutions to those problems. Now some effort is being made here—it’s no coincidence that the left is rising as if in response to the far-right—but more of that needs to happen and fast. The focus on misinformation misses the fundamental reasons that misinformation works as well as it does (after all it’s not like lying was invented in 2016).
That’s a REALLY good point. We basically need a lot more Mamdanis.
While other lefties are arguing symantic nuances of political theory and purity testing and excommunicating themselves, this guy is fixing potholes and makes the busses run on time and gets workers paid. People SEE that stuff, they FEEL that stuff.
If the side of empathy and compassion moves in swiftly and shows how good life can be under them, people will see that abundance is possible.
'Pubbies and their fascist friends get followers because they pretend we’re forever on a deserted island, and their first move is
"We gotta make the ‘hard decisions’ and cull the people we personally conveniently don’t like and take all your resources…for survival." And it riles up everybody’s fear-monkey-brain into thinking they must know what they’re talking about.
Lord of the Flies was bullshit about fundamental human nature, but it got so lauded because the fashies get to tell us that’s what they’re “protecting us from.”
When we aren’t even on a desert island at all, and people actually enjoy helping each other get along. They need to condition us to cockfight for them.
Yes, high-control systems are like that, they demand obedience to the dogma even when data shows other way is better. Low-control systems encourage curiosity, discovery, update knowledge with latest for human benefit. For some it’s easier to do what told, don’t think much, and appeals at times of scarcity, some of which is controlled by the wealthy, to keep people worried and seek a “strong hero”, fall for the propaganda and vote right-wing. Please see through it, the pattern is clear, regression for the majority like Russia, Argentina and with maga policies.
There’s a reason why some very bright people in tech with decades of experience aren’t dismissing AI whole cloth.
The dangers are vast. The social harm is a real effect. The brain atrophy is an actual pitfall to be avoided, even at the cost of tying yourself to the metaphorical ship mast.
But the possibilities are also real, else they wouldn’t be using them against us.
The hatred is fine and all, but I really really wish the kind of people who frequent the Fediverse and spouted all of the encouraging anti-establishment stances…also minded their basic Sun Tzu: