Imagine how bad your political establishment and economic structure has to fail for people to be nostalgic about that.

He blames Lenin and the Bolsheviks for Ukraine having its own identity. This is indicative of his attitude: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/25/vladmir-putin-accuses-lenin-of-placing-a-time-bomb-under-russia

See also: https://jacobin.com/2022/02/putin-anti-bolshevik-tsarist-mythic-history-ukraine

I mean liberal. Pavel was supported by parties like ODS, TOP09, KDU, which are economically liberal parties. More generally, European liberalism is represented by groupings such as ALDE, or Renew. But European technocratic liberalism is strong in both the centre left and centre right parties all over Europe.

Disengaging, this is not a good faith discussion. Cheers.

I did not say you changed wording. I am saying I started replying when your comment only contained the line “Yes through hybrid warfare and illegal police. Also our extreme right is oddly pro-China.” and did not see what you added until after. You can either accept that asynchronous communications sometimes has this issue or you can believe that I’m an evil manipulative person whose trying to win internet points. 🤷

Now that I took a peek at the articles you posted, here is my sense (and it’s just a sense): none of these things are existential. They are all problems, but they do are not at the level of needing to start clamping down freedom of extreme speech in Europe, the way the Czech law does. The same cannot be said for the very real and existential threat to democracy that the resurgence and mainstream-ization of far right extremism is a threat. Meloni, Orban, Lepen, Wiilders, these kind of fascist assholes are much more of a threat to European democracy than Xi is at the moment.

China is friends with Russia. Yes, so are the rest of BRICS: India, Brazil, South Africa. How high do you want to build the wall?

This is not “whataboutism” by the way. It is looking for the balance. Liberal democracy is striking a balance and that means managing the “about these” and “about those”. In this balancing act, the kind of no holds barred demonizing of China that I think you’re pushing for is NOT where European democracy needs to be.

You edited your article afterwards, I responded to your post when it was just the first line.

I don’t know what Chinese hybrid warfare you are talking about. Any articles I’ve found with these keywords always seem to lump China with Russia, which I find just sensationalist. China is one of our biggest trading partners and I don’t see any reason why Europe cannot find a live and let live modus vivendi with them. I mean if we can stomach the Palestinian genocide at our doorstep without a fucking peep, the Uighurs are far enough…

The illegal police issue is nowhere near an existentially serious problem that affects the viability of European democratic institutions.

And the danger of the far right has nothing to do with China.

China is an authoritarian state, yes, but it’s one that for 3 decades at least has played nice with us. They are far less disruptive and threatening than the Trumpist Americans are. If Europe can find a way to work with Trumpist USA, why not with China too?

Putin hates Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Yes, he lionizes Stalin, but only to the extent that he can cast it as Russian imperialism. The beef is with Russian nationalism, there is zero need to drive a wedge with European left parties eg in the South, there is no reason to distract from the actual danger which is Russian imperialism and authoritarianism and it is in fact extremely dangerous to be building the legal infrastructure that fascists can and will use to crush the left.

Is China threatening European democratic institutions in any way shape or form?

Sure, like right wingers fight pedophilia when they target LGBT people.

But ok, let’s take it at face value. There is no threat of a Soviet style takeover in Europe. They’re beating a dead horse. So as far as dead horses go, why stop at Soviet oppression, start passing law legislating I don’t know, glorifying Roman imperialism and Ottoman expansionism. Ban glorification of hussites and violent Anabaptists. Take your revenge on history. I hope the orgasm is worth it.

But then remember that there is however a rabid far right that calls European institutions “Soviet” and that has no interest in any checks and balances. They love calling social democrats “communists” and they love to talk about the threat of antifa and they love giving police more power to crack protestor skulls. If you can’t see how these laws today are going to be used tomorrow by the fascists, even after what Trump is doing at the US, I don’t know what else to tell you.

He was widely lauded as a pro-western anti-populist liberal when he was elected. His political positions as re generally aligned with liberal parties across Europe.

It’s fascinating that in a world where to far right is surging everywhere, having captured the only superpower, with the richest man in the world throwing sieg heils on live primetime television, where we are entering an era of new concentration camps, these kinds of liberals find it useful to do stupid shit like this. Do they not see that if/when the fascists capture their presidency they will use exactly these laws to turn the screws on everyone to the left of the far right?

Neoliberal «moderates» paving the road to the fascist right again. Happened in the US. Next up is UK, France, Germany, maybe Canada… Meanwhile, the Left everywhere, the only actual alternative, is derided as «delusional».

Bazooka! Bazooka! Bazooka!

Wealth=capital

Work=labour

Who gets taxed, tells you something about what the system we’re running is called.

Poor french people confusing Suisse and Suède.

The only thing I knew about them before this article is that the were proscribed at the same legislation as Palestine Action. Learning these things makes the proscription of Palestine Action that much more absurd and ridiculous.

Unfortunately for Europe and for human rights in Palestine, they might. Trump is sending Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece and her confirmation hearing has received a lot of attention in Greece. It seems both Ds and Rs are interested in helping the “loyal ally” stay balanced. In other words, so long as Greece plays the good boy doggo and keeps paying for US weapons, the US has an interest in maintaining the stupid status quo.

The only way out would be if our European partners took Greek and Cypriot defense and national interests as seriously as they take those of, say, the Baltics.

For example, in the Southeast, Greece and Cyprus are trying their best to hedge against Trump’s best-dictator-buddies attitude with Erdogan. They are both regularly bullied by the Turkish military and half of Cyprus remains occupied by the Turkish army. For both of them, staying on the “good boy” list of the US is a matter of survival. Meanwhile, everyone else is squarely focused on Russia and placating Turkey, when Cyprus is already living the post-apocalypse of their defeat at the hands of a Turkish “special military operation”.