Where are all those "as an EU citizen" commenters? You are but a subject of an ultra-national government whose sole objective is ever increased control over your life and euros.
Where are all those "as an EU citizen" commenters? You are but a subject of an ultra-national government whose sole objective is ever increased control over your life and euros.
As a EU citizen, it pisses me off that the US is (with others outside the EU) trying this hard to lobby to undermine our democracy and freedom of speech.
https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/1162053712243153...
And I’d still take this clusterfuck over the alternative current state of the US. At least this situation we can (and have been) striking down, despite all the naysayers on HN. Here’s to hoping we’re able to do so again!
We Europeans have a pathological habit of blaming Orange Man Bad for all our many problems (which are often the fault of the EU and our socialist, collectivist tendencies)
> We Europeans have a pathological habit of blaming Orange Man Bad for all our many problems
Speak for yourself. I don’t even think Trump is to blame for all the US’s problems (he’s a symptom of a much larger system), let alone the EU’s.
I also mentioned others outside the EU and US, as does the link I posted.
Furthermore, I don’t think I personally know anyone from the EU who blames “all our many problems” on the US.
more like, Europeans have a habit of making "Orange Man Bad" criticisms to deflect from criticism of the EU. But yeah you're on the right lines.
> socialist, collectivist tendencies
Lots of places are socialist or collectivist and have a different set of problems, so the argument that EU problems can be solely attributed to that don't make sense.
I'm also not sure "collectivist" is the correct label. We can't describe Japan (and the PRC, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam, a couple other SEasian nations) and the EU as both collectivist, considering Japan is the far more extreme version of it (I would say, only Japan is collectivist, not the EU). One or the other needs a different word.
> We Europeans have a pathological habit of blaming Orange Man Bad for all our many problems
Might be a different social circle, but I have not met a single European in my entire life of living in Europe who would blame Donald Trump or the US in general for the problems that we are currently facing. It doesn't take a genius to summarize that trans-continental geopolitics is much more complex than that
Freedom of speech is not a European value.
Based on what?
https://rsf.org/en/index
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-ind...
I would be more worried about police and wannabe police shooting people on the streets, detaining citizens without due process, sending billions to war in Iran while regular people are struggling with day-to-day life. Your universities and primary schools are restricted what they can teach or say either by government or religious movements.
Sure, the chat control is a serious privacy issue but acting like US is some sort of bastion of free speech is not based on anything real. And yes, while hate speech is not allowed in europe like in the US, we at least understand that freedom comes with responsibility.
I was reading an essay by Kant called “what is Enlightenment?” It argues that people should be permitted to say whatever they wanted, provided they obey the laws.
He bases it on the idea that we should not be subject to be “lifelong tuteledge.” At some point we must speak up and contribute.
We can be wrong. Very wrong. We can advise our rulers to do terrible things. The Holocaust hadn’t happened yet, but the Wars of Relgion had - he knew how bad people could be.
Europe doesn’t seem to reject lifelong tuteledge any more. There want opinion and thought to be guided and formed by an elite class, not a noisy crowd of peers.
This is new. It was foreign to Kant, foreign to Locke, Hobbes, Marx, etc.
It’s a bit scary the Europe is leading the way on this. And it does seem they are poking at speech specifically.
Most recently the EU is considering a “ban conversion therapy.” Not medical malpractice legislation - just a very specific type of medical malpractice that has a very specific political constituency.
Meanwhile people who are subject to quacky things like past life regression or Freudian analysis are left with the normal malpractice system.
Really Europe (and other places) are using it as a way to weaken freedom of speech.
Maybe I’m connecting dots where there are none, but there seems to be a big international shift away from free speech, with Europe taking the lead.
In America this manifests itself as “it would be nice if we could restrict speech like normal countries do, but we have to worry about the Republicans, so let’s not do that - yet.”
But it’s pretty clear free speech is going the way of right to bear arms and trial by jury.
What Kant, Locke or Hobbes imagined has only little to do with current societal environment. Our politics and structures are global and the age of internet has mixed it even more. The religions and christianity especially tried to control everything was said under their hemisphere by controlling who could print books or distribute them.
The european (or EU in this context) is truly multinational representative political instance (not a government). While it provides lots of opportunities and lets voices from dozens of different cultures to be heard, it also makes decision making hard. The opposite way to rule is authoritan or totalitarian way where there is just one ruler who has not real opposing forces. In that light you could argue that while EU is large political and economical alliance, it also fails to satisfy every political need of it's elected members.
what US is showing that less there is political variety (powerful parties) less there is moving space for expression, freedoms and change.
As a person who has masters in politics, I appreciate the fact that you brought Kant but more Hobbes and Locke into this. They are excellent reference point for those thinking about origins of societies and liberties. John Locke would have hate everything what current representative democracies are (including US). He would have loved the ideal of ultimate personal freedom but at the same time he would have loathed every control that governments have today over their citizens. There is no separation of state and religion in most of the western nations for example.
We are closer to world what Focault said but he is more recent scholar.
this seems like a very delusional take to me
> It argues that people should be permitted to say whatever they wanted, provided they obey the laws. that's exactly how it works
> Most recently the EU is considering a “ban conversion therapy.”
this has nothing to do with the opinions that are expressed in conversion therapy but with the insane practices - which actually try to enforce people to think like they believe is the "right" way to think about the world, which is far more restrictive than just letting people be themselves
> Really Europe (and other places) are using it as a way to weaken freedom of speech.
this is unfortunately true, too many extreme right wing politicians have been successful recently
> It’s a bit scary the Europe is leading the way on this.
it isn't, the US (though not just the US of course) famously collects data and searches through all of it if they need, and recently ICE had a hand full of incidents where they clearly used databases to profile people (just look at their use of AI cameras at protests)
Privacy (from state surveillance) and freedoms of speech are very different issues.
But they are both issues where Americans have greater protections than Europeans.
EU is not a government for all EU members. You should look into what EU is and how it works before attacking it. Claiming that it's "ultra national" would mean that all of EU is one nation which shares one ideological, cultural and political sphere. There are 27 EU members with 24 official languages, 20 of those countries are part of the Euro currency zone.
But if you are a US citizen, I would refrain talking about increased control of life outside of your own turf. Your education system is controlled either government or religious groups. Your streets are patrolled by uneducated police troops without control and they are detaining even US citizens without due process. Now your government says they will block all foreign made routers. And did you forget NSA Prism program? Your voting system is controlled via gerrymandered maps which are changing constantly depending who's in the control. Lots of your citizens are living paycheck to paycheck and one health issue can bankrupt them and only way to survive is to ask money from strangers via gofundme. All because of healthcare and insurance companies greed and politicians lack of interests of their constituents.
Yeah, the EU legislation about privacy and chat control is problematic but saying that US is doing so much better for it's citizens is a stretch.
Yes the correct name would be "super/supra" national instead of ultra national
>You are but a subject of an ultra-national government whose sole objective is ever increased control over your life and euros.
Yes, but who isn't? Not the other side of the pond for sure.
As an EU citizen I have to remind you that as a (most likely) US citizen, you've had the Patiot act sanction the NSA to have free reign for this sort of thing for the past 25 years.
We've shot it down before, and we'll shoot it down again, regardless of how relentless Palantir lobbying gets.
> you've had the Patiot act sanction the NSA to have free reign for this sort of thing for the past 25 years.
This is not true. No part of the Patriot Act required all people all private messages and photos to be scanned or have a backdoor to encryption. You're saying this to minimize what's about to happen to Europe, which is not helpful. The NSA made deals with private companies to tap lines, and used its influence and US intelligence's secret ownership of a Swiss encryption company to encourage us to use broken algorithms.
> We've shot it down before, and we'll shoot it down again, regardless of how relentless Palantir lobbying gets.
I wish you luck. But there's nothing keeping the EU from doing, and having always done, what the NSA has also done. What you're trying to stop is the requirement to serve your communications to your rulers on a silver platter.
Thanks for the luck, it got rejected by a single vote, lmao
https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/189574
As an EU citizen, I'm happy that the parliament has once again rejected the proposal, which at least gives credence to the notion that it not just there to rubber-stamp what the commission decides.
But the price of freedom is indeed eternal vigilance.
As an EU citizen I hate this but I know it‘s a „when?“ not an „if“ topic.
I realise the EU is our only hope to defend ourselves against big players like China and the US and smaller bullies like Russia.
But at the same time I realise the EU we have in this timeline is one of the worst possible: a criminal venture, a safe heaven for the corrupt elite + their lobbyists and an organisation that‘s hell bent on harming and controlling its citizens.
Majorities for sane parties are not possible. Democracy is too slow, too indirect. Hell, this is barely a democracy at all, just like on the national level. As EU citizens we as powerless as every other citizen in the world.
The EU has always been focused on harming its citizens. This is nothing new, very on brand actually. It's not like we have a choice lol.
Sounds like russian troll talking point.
I don't think dismissing anyone as an agitproppist or foreign agent who expresses a dim view of the EU's tendency toward overreach and habit of asking the same question over and over until it's answered "correctly" is fair. Not when McCarthy did it, and not today. And I can promise you that nobody's paying me to post online, anyway!
Do you always take baseless claims at face value?
Yawn
> The EU has always been focused on harming its citizens.
Insanely bonkers take. What sources do you have for this?
Being German lol