Ireland
Unfair, I like several European communist countries which no longer exist.
All them little Mediterranean islands probably done some evil stuff, but I sure couldn't tell you what.
half of them are tax havens populated entirely by secret pedophile groups with low tier noble titles like "oh yes we're the holy knights of saint blackberry cobbler"
not many people know this, but Malta got its name from the Knights Templar's practice of luring young children with malted milkshakes
It's not 1444 anymore, Knight Orders matter fuck all in places like Malta or Cyprus.
Malta actually had a surprisingly anti-imperialist demsoc government led by Dom Mintoff's Labour Party, being friendly to anti-colonial movements, having better relations with Romania, China or the DPRK than the west, illegally nationalizing companies by force
The economy then "stagnated" in the final years of his government (note: his successor Misfud Bonicci continued his policies, for example confiscating church property without any compensation, and the economy returned to growing faster than the western european average)
The party went socdem/lib in the 90s and beyond, as can be expected unfortunately.
guy who only upholds Transnistria but just cause of official state soviet aesthetics
I mean there is definitely a lot of nationalism there. I have family in Russia and acquaintances fighting in the Donbas, so I'm no stranger to the strange Russian phenomenon of ostensibly right wing nationalists that aren't anticommunist. It's not really as cut and dry as comfy western leftists make it out to be. When the government bans your language from being taught in schools or used in official business, and neonazi death squads commit acts of terrorism against people of your ethnic group, it's not surprising that nationalism grows. The cultural, historical and material conditions are so different there that viewing the situation from a western lens is pointless. Russian Nationalism in the Donbas is even different than Russian Nationalism in Russia. In Russia it often takes a chauvinistic form, while in the Donbas it's liberatory. For instance, there are majority ethnic Greek villages in the Donbas who have been subjected to hate crimes and terrorism by neonazi Ukrainians. These people are not ethnic Russians but they closely align with the Russian separatists because that's who protects them. It's like the IRA, some of them are socialists and some of them aren't, but they're inherently nationalistic and their cause is just.
No? I mean there are definitely Russian nationalist weirdos who are obsessed with both the USSR and Russian Empire I wouldn't say they're Nazis. The left in the region is absolutely socially conservative though, but that's kinda how it is literally everywhere except the west.
Named Greenland Greenland in one of the first acts of deceptive marketing.
Gets wannabe landlords to fuck off to a frozen tundra.
:comfy-cool:
Would they have even been able to conquer it? I feel like they would have only managed to gain a colony on Greenland but further inland and they wouldn't make it past the Iroquois Confederacy.
To my knowledge, the Vinland colony failed because they were so disconnected from Europe and lacked any form of military superiority over the natives, so they just kind of showed up, fought the natives for a couple months/years, realized this shit wasn't going to work and went home
Neoliberalism - The country
Hundreds of jews were denied asylum by Iceland before WW2. The chief of Police in 1939 was a Nazi who later founded a secret police that kept tabs on communists. We benefited from the Marshall plan even though the war hardly touched us, actually given the state of our infrastructure we might as well have been. We were the poorest country in Europe before WW2.
There was a kind of balance between social democracy and pure capitalism. Until the 90's when the neolibs took over. We made a fishing quota system that made fishing rights a commodity to be bought and sold, you can guess how that went. We had our own Reagan except he's still alive and is the editor of the oldest newspaper in the country, bankrolled by quota barons.
There was a market crash in 2008, like you've probably heard about, a government of socdems and left greens took over and promptly took an IMF loan. Next elections the right parties made a promise to give homeowners money because houses started costing less.
Every town was built up after the automobile, so you can imagine the sprawl. We sell our "green" energy on the cheap to multinationals to make aluminium. We are a third world country that acts like a first world country.
If thats the worst of Iceland then its better than everywhere else.
comes from being an insignificant backwater for most of our history, in a geopolitical sense. For instance the only reason we are in NATO is so that the US can have an airbase in the country.
On a positive note the labour movement came before industrialization so it's pretty strong in numbers but has been in a coma since the 90's. It's waking up again with more radical union leaders being elected in some of the bigger unions.
ETA apologised for being based, I no longer support Basque independence
if i have to work for walmart to get by ireland can do a little tax evasion to get by
The Svalbard Island is pretty cool. Legally part of Norway but pretty much “open” for anyone to travel, settle down, or do scientific research. Both Russia and Norway have towns there. the doomsday seed vault is there as well.
And in the main town Longyearbyen, you can literally bike from downtown to the airport.
Same, but also Romanians.
Unfortunately, one country is extremely fucked up by various kinds of nationalism and German imperialism and the other is just eastern-european brain worms.
Interestingly, the only eastern European socialist country (despite Ceausescu's massive revisionism) to get overthrown in a major uprising is among the least aggressively reactionary ones in the region (when compared to say Poland, Czechia, Serbia, etc.).
Scotland is tolerated, but it's on THIN FUCKING ICE.
Iceland's alright.
I can appreciate Sweden's commitment to neutrality, but that has led them to being "the good man doing nothing" WAY too many times, and thus desperately needs a de-nazification movement.
I don't hate Albania and I am too scared to even try. Last I need is for the last words I hear be "ALBANIAN MODE ACTIVATED!"
When the alternative was being overrun...
Not a lot of good options circa 1936. Nobody wanted to end up like Poland or France.
A good number of British soldiers for the empire would have been Scottish. Scotland when it entered into the union with England was considered an equal partner, in fact one of the things Scotland recieved as part of the union was access to the transatlantic slave trade. Scotland just came to have less influence over time as Scotland is more rural and less populated so the major economic development was in England where the ports are more convenient and there were more people to work in factories.
Sweden is not fine by any means. Neutrality is pretty much abandoned and we are about to join NATO. I kind of like Iceland and Norway, Andorra seems fine and I know so little about Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania currently that I can't really comment on them one way or another.
I didn't count Scotland, seeing as it isn't officially a sovereign nation.
