cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3680700
Austria accuses this couple of a terrorist crime just for expressing solidarity for Palestinians
cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3680700
Austria accuses this couple of a terrorist crime just for expressing solidarity for Palestinians
As a European, there is no doubt that Europe is genuinely descending into fascism. Every country puts in new, worse laws every year, the internet gets censored even heavier, more forms of protest get outlawed and control of media (TV/News/Social) is in ever fewer hands. We are quite literally at the point of punishing anybody who dares to suggest improving society somewhat
But remember it’s China that’s a police state
OUR sensible and proportionate limitations on free speech.
THEIR totalitarian censorship laws.
Not being allowed to kill my wife is 1984
Facing trial for my crimes is CEE CEE PEE TOTALITARIAN WINNIE THE POOH AUTHORITARIAN TIANANANANAMAN SQUARE FASCISM
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Speech in the US does have some bare protections that helps, but mostly I think the situation in Europe is a lot less stable and the chance of something really popping off there is higher there than the US (though still small), mainly due to the rapidly degrading economic situation in Europe directly related to Europeans shooting themselves in the foot w/r/t Russia and the fact that they are stuck being the junior partner to the US, who is more than happy to screw over Europe for their own benefit.
There is a directly inverse relationship between how much free speech a country has and how destabilizing free speech is to the current order. Sure, the USSR didn’t have as much free speech in the 20s and 30s compared to the US, but there was a crisis situation at the time and a real threat of capitalist restoration from the inside and out. Same with Cuba, maybe speech was restricted after the revolution but when the CIA’s budgeted for toppling your government is larger than your country’s GDP, you gotta make tough choices.
The US respects free speech now because it isn’t a threat to the capitalist order at the moment, not even a bit. Once it does become a threat, all those ideals of “well at least in the US, at least we can criticize our government unlike in CHINA!” will get thrown out the window faster than a Czech Catholic priest does by Protestant reformers.
Assuming you mean the 1419 defenestration, those guys yeeted from the windows weren't priests, but city council.
Was that the First Defenestration of Prague, or the Second? I'm pretty sure local legend says they were either saved by angels or deposited on a pile of manure.
1419 was the first. Well, few of them did survived since that window wasn't terribly high, unfortunately for them city hall was surrounded by angry mob who finished them.
The one with angels was the Third Defenestration in 1618, this time everyone survived (also there were no clergy thrown out afaik) because while the window was higher, they fell on the pile of manure which were in fact the leftovers of their own earlier feasts thrown out the same route (this wasn't angelic enough for official history but the real version was passed too).
The first amendment does actually make it difficult to pass laws that lead to the shit in the OP.
My analysis is that everything is already in place so that the bourgeoisie can use features of fascism when they need without taking the risk of giving total power to a bunch of anti-intellectual tinfoil hat nutjobs.
WW2 taught capital one lesson. You better posture as democratic and free like the US while committing the worse atrocities for money, rather than trying to combine revolutionary aesthetics and reactionary ideology.
The fascists in the 20s and 30s had to try and co-opt revolutionary aesthetics because everyone at the time wanted revolution. Communists and communism in Italy and Germany were gaining ground every year that went by. The communists in Italy were within a hair of taking power in the 20s. That’s why the capitalist west loved Mussolini - he put an end to a surging leftist movement. As the left grew in power, capital turned to fascism to counter it.
Today, the situation is entirely different. Fascism is just as much of a threat of course, but it’s going to look different from 20th c. fascism.
Totally agree. I have this horrible hypothesis that the new fascism is going to adopt the NGO style righteous consciousness of the new left. We already had a tiny bit of this in France, when a prominent far right group used an enormous budget to make a "defend Europe" demonstration where they went to the mountains to supposedly prevent immigrants from coming. The video they made had all the tropes of this mix between corporate coolness and NGO wholesomeness.