From all the large governmental institutions, the EU is the one currently holding up traditional western values. That gives it street cred in this subject.
From all the large governmental institutions, the EU is the one currently holding up traditional western values. That gives it street cred in this subject.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/feb/...
The age old joke;
A Russian and an American are drinking at a bar
The Russian says "I'm impressed by american propaganda. It's so subtle but effective."
The american responds "What are you talking about, we don't do propaganda."
The version in my fortune file is better:
A Russian and an American get on a plane in Moscow and get to talking. The Russian says he works for the Kremlin and he's on his way to go learn American propaganda techniques.
"What American propaganda techniques?" asks the American.
"Exactly," the Russian replies.
I'm of the opinion that there is considerably more wailing about US government propaganda than actual US government propaganda. People who reference supposed US government propaganda rarely provide much in the way of concrete examples. Probably because there are legal restrictions on covert propaganda in the US:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/covert_propaganda
To be clear, I'm happy to grant that:
* The Pentagon won't provide jets for your war movie if your war movie portrays the US military in a bad light
* The US engages in information operations in foreign countries, e.g. discouraging people in the Philippines from getting the Chinese COVID vaccine
* Voice of America and similar US-government sponsored outlets are, in fact, sponsored by the US government
But the notion that covert, English-language US government propaganda is ubiquitous and effective seems like a half-baked, un-falsifiable conspiracy theory with little supporting evidence.
The internet is full of false or misleading claims about the US which go un-refuted. There's just way too much low-hanging fruit going un-picked here to believe that the USG is running massive English-language covert propaganda ops.
A specific example of a false anti-American claim which is extremely widespread: Many Europeans believe that the US promised to protect Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. This is false. We only promised to go to the UN Security Council, which we did. You can verify for yourself with a quick trip to the UN website, the memorandum is not very long: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/P...
If the American government possessed the propaganda wizardry that people ascribe to it, I expect the entire internet would be well-acquainted with the actual contents of this memorandum. Instead, you have randos like me trying to fight a tsunami of misinformation (likely Ukrainian-origin) related to this memorandum, using only a shovel.
> Many Europeans believe that the US promised to protect Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
European here, following the Ukraine situation closely. I absolutely never heard that one. The main issue in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that has been mentioned in the media in recent years is that Russia would respect the independence, sovereignty, and existing borders of Ukraine, which is clearly there in article 1. Thanks for the link though, it is quite enlightening.
Have you ever read Manufacturing Consent? A conspiracy is not necessary for wide-spread propaganda campaigns—just a confluence of incentives that act against the common interest (even in the US) but work in the interest of the ruling class.
and then Chomsky goes on to form a deep online friendship with Jeffrey Epstein
The idea of reading is that you yourself think and reason about it, not that you blindly trust anything based on the author's name, deeds, or reputation. Ad hominems are a cheap way to remain ignorant and - yet again - fall into the trap of blindly believing some other third party.
> Many Europeans believe ...
> ... misinformation (likely Ukrainian-origin) ...
Your post is also "a half-baked, un-falsifiable conspiracy theory with little supporting evidence" ;)
Can you point me to any sort of Ukrainian law which would prohibit this type of info op? See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_of_Kyiv
If the US was attacked the way Ukraine was attacked, and foreign intervention was key to our survival as a nation, I expect the Pentagon would deploy foreign info ops in that situation. That doesn't seem like a heavy lift to me.
Occam's Razor: If something is a core/essential national interest, it's reasonable to expect a government to pull out all the stops. But governments are fairly ineffectual for the most part. Everyone saw how the USG mishandled e.g. COVID, mishandled the war with Iran, yet we expect the USG to be wizards at covert propaganda? It doesn't really track. I'm sure we are doing covert propaganda here and there, and we would ramp it up in an emergency.
Anyways, if you want to point to specific content you suspect as USG propaganda, be my guest. My point is, the fact that people rarely do this seems evidence against widespread USG propaganda. "They don't point it out because the propaganda is too good" has a suspicious un-falsifiable quality to it.
"UN Security Council action" is a broad term that can include deployment of international UN-led military forces, as in the Korean War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Command
A few years prior to the Budapest Memorandum, the UN Security Council had authorized military action to liberate Kuwait. 42 countries participated in the coalition that drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_Gulf_War
The expectation at the time was clearly more than just "we'll bring it up at the UN for dicussion". The current weaseling over the exact wording looks weak and pathetic, and has a certain flavor of propaganda that tries to convince everyone of something that's not quite true. The fact remains that the US strong-armed Ukraine out of nuclear weapons, and when Ukraine was eventually invaded, tried to strong-arm Ukraine into surrender. This reflects very poorly on the US.
"Russia blocks Security Council action on Ukraine"
...
"A ‘no’ vote from any one of the five permanent members of the Council stops action on any measure put before it. The body’s permanent members are: China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States."
https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/02/1112802
(emphasis mine)
This is 101-level UN stuff. If Ukrainian diplomats were unaware that Russia can veto Security Council resolutions, that means they were totally incompetent.
It's also misleading to say the US "strong-armed" Ukraine out of its nukes... it was originally Ukraine's idea to abandon nukes, and they didn't have the control codes for the nukes on their territory anyways. The US attempted influence via carrots (financial assistance), not sticks ("strong-arming").
In any case, we did far more than just bring it up at the UN for discussion. See this map from a year or two ago: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HKNCFWPbEAA7p5g?format=jpg&name=...
Mostly, in response to US generosity, Europeans just complained that the US should give even more. Your comment illustrates this perfectly--you speak as though the US only responded via UN diplomacy, completely neglecting over one hundred billion dollars the US sent in Ukraine aid, to a country which is not even a treaty ally of ours. When Biden was president, right after he saved Ukraine's butt in the initial invasion, public opinion of the US in Europe was barely even net-positive.
The real question is why Europeans spend so much time harassing the US for Ukraine funds, and so little time harassing tight-fisted countries which are actually in Europe like Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, etc. The answer: Europe has a transatlantic philosophy that the US brings the guns and the Europeans bring the scolding. As long as Ireland/Switzerland/Austria/Spain nod along with the scolding, they are doing their part, as far as Europe is concerned.
It is safe to say that the present lack of leadership from the US was not foreseen at the time. It was unimaginable that Russia would launch a major ground war in Europe and that the American president would blame the victim of the aggression and try to coerce them into surrender while sucking up to the aggressor. This is not how things were conducted back then. It was the era of Schwarzkopfs showing strength and resolve by giving presentations on how coalition tanks had pummeled the enemy in the past few weeks, not of Sullivans showing weakness and indecisiveness by endlessly yapping about "escalation".
The core problem is that the US has spent almost a century embedding itself in all kinds of relationships (cultural, political, economic, military), but has lost the ability to carry out that central role. Biden did not save Ukraine. The limited but valuable military support fostered an unhealthy relationship that gave the US a veto over Ukraine's (and other allies') actions, but the US leaders do not have the statemanship to use that power responsibly. Biden's legacy is the shortsighted micromanagement that turned the fast and effective Ukrainian counteroffensives of 2022 into slow and costly trench warfare of 2026, all while emboldening enemies like Iran to launch assaults like October 7th.
The Budapest Memorandum only requires going to the Security Council if nuclear weapons are involved. There's no required action at all for non-nuclear attacks. This isn't "weaseling over the exact wording," it's just the plain language of the memorandum.
It really amazes me how much misinformation is out there about this thing. It only has six points, each one a single paragraph long. It's very quick and easy to read, yet people apparently can't be bothered to look up the actual text of the thing they're discussing.
You can argue all day about the letter versus the spirit of the Budapest memorandum, but good luck getting any other countries to give up their nukes in the future.
That's only one consequence of Trump's de-facto betrayal of Ukraine in support of his daddy figure in the Kremlin.
I have a really hard time accepting the idea that the spirit of the memorandum was that the signatories should actively defend Ukraine against non-nuclear attack, when it would have been so easy to write that explicitly.
I completely agree about no countries giving up their nukes in the future, but that's a consequence of the weak agreement, plus other actions like knocking over Iraq and Libya but not North Korea, tearing up the JCPOA with Iran, and... well, it seems like non-proliferation is mostly lip service in general.
>I'm of the opinion that there is considerably more wailing about US government propaganda than actual US government propaganda.
okay....
>People who reference supposed US government propaganda rarely provide much in the way of concrete examples.
YOU'VE ALREADY SAID THAT
>traditional western values
This seems tautological because Europe is pretty weak on the values that people in the US might care about (freedom of speech, limited govt, etc).
What values specifically are you optimizing for here?
> values that people in the US might care about (freedom of speech, limited govt, etc).
The US federal government forced Paramount to take Colbert off the air. Seems that people in the US don’t actually value these things.
> What values specifically are you optimizing for here?
Probably not being fascist.
They currently have the military circling a pool to intimidate people trying to take photos of the botched paint job.
In fairness, it's our Berlin Wall, and I absolutely would want a piece of the delaminating paint as a souvenir. The difference is we are so early into the collapse that the armed guards are still there. But yeah, it's definitely not just pictures, I'd want a piece of the blue stuff. It'd be a souvenir and also me taking it away from there, so win/win. Of course there's armed guards guarding the swamp now, what else would there be?
Intimidation is the sincerest form of flattery.
> The US federal government forced Paramount to take Colbert off the air.
Not really; the Ellisons are quite close to Trump. Nobody was forced to do anything. Had the FCC actually revoked their license, and had Paramount actually been willing to fight, they could have sued. It's not easy to force anyone that rich to do anything; the state works on behalf of capital. It seems like europe is more aware of the meaningless bluster than the actual crimes being committed
There are much better things to point to to illustrate the deterioration of the rule of law, like blatantly illegal deportation of citizens without due process. Or raping children in concentration camps under the guise of cracking down on crime. We may never even know who was seized and what happened to them and there's little incentive for our very pro-corporate media to report on it.
But sure, paramount is the real victim here.
You might want to read the 3rd paragraph of this article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Skydance_Media_and_P...
Read that timeline and then see if you're still convinced that they didn't at least seem to have done a thing or 2 to appease the federal government
The UK can arrest you for hate speech. You can disagree with that policy on free speech terms if you want, and that’s really a maximal free speech position. It’s a very strange position to hold if you’re claiming that the U.S. is better when it comes to free speech. The U.S. administration is engaged in active smear campaigns against anyone who speaks loudly against them, threatened to revoke licenses of media companies, they’re suing people and corporations to silence them and pressure them into conformance, they’re threatening to deport people who are simply expressing anti-Israel views, threatened to remove funding from universities, deployed the military in cities they don’t like for no other reason than intimidation of political rivals. This is just off the top of my head.
There’s just no comparison really. You must really be inhaling some nonsense X propaganda if you think government overreach is worse in Western Europe.
The UK is not the EU, the UK is US "lite", they have always been that way, thats not something new.
> The UK can arrest you for hate speech.
https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=13879460433775...
I as a individual won’t get arrested for speaking my mind, and that’s much more important than some legal battle around corporate media.
„ deployed the military in cities they don’t like for no other reason than intimidation of political rivals” That’s one perspective on simply trying to enforce laws.
Moreover, let’s not forget about how Biden government tried to silence Rogan.
You know who else was simply enforcing laws? The Gestapo.
> The UK can arrest you for hate speech.
And that's a good thing.
I'm honestly not really sure what "traditional western values" have to do with where to store data. What does that even refer to—individualism? Christianity? Representation in court by lawyers? How does this intersect with the topic at hand?
Edit: c'mon people, if you're going to use such ambiguous phrases at least have the spine to clue the reader in to what you want them to refer to in this context.
Well there have been a lot.. philosopy, polis, democracy, hemlock cup, enlightenment (note the perversion of "the dark enlightenment"), modernity, the resistance (against Nazism), psychoanalysis, postmodernism and critical studies (postmodernism in the genuine sense of the philosophies/theories that you would assign that label to and not in the misguided sense of relativism as arbitrarity; basically continental philosophy, frankfurt school (e.g. adorno horkheimer, habermas) and the french (e.g. foucault, derrida, deleuze (& guattari))
Of course there were also absolutism, colonialism, the jacobines, nazism & facism, to name just a few. Part of western values, from my perspective at least, is an implicit promise, that what happened in the 20th century with facism was the darkest hour, so to speak-> never again
With all the issues in the US and generally wrong direction, I can’t remember them ever arresting people for mean tweets in the way that Germany and the UK have. They all seem to be running full speed towards a surveillance state.
> With all the issues in the US and generally wrong direction, I can’t remember them ever arresting people for mean tweets in the way that Germany and the UK have.
Then you haven't been paying attention. The constitution prevents citizens from being convicted, but that doesn't stop arrests or being turned away at the border (even for permanent residents who've lived in the US for decades), and US citizens don't seem to care, so it's cold comfort for many of us.
>and US citizens don't seem to care
I think maybe you haven't been paying attention.
Most of us do care. Trump's approval rating is pretty low at 36%, and his disapproval rating is high. Just because he's still causing chaos doesn't mean the majority of us don't care about it. There's just no legal way to remove him, and his cronies simply won't do it - there's not enough votes in congress or he would have been gone after his first or second impeachment.
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/20/nx-s1-5861764/trumps-job-appr...
I understand your point, however I don’t buy „there's just no legal way to remove him“. With so low ratings where are the daily protests against such type of government? Surely, nationwide daily protests would make elected officials reconsider their positions, given an upcoming midterm election, while there still is one.
Don’t get me wrong, I know the thousands reasons why you won’t join a protest, I’m „guilty“ myself. I just want to argue against your argument that I quoted because this puts all of us in an unhelpful victim mentality.
> Surely, nationwide daily protests would make elected officials reconsider their positions, given an upcoming midterm election, while there still is one.
Hah. When was the last time a non-violent protest yielded some kind of result by itself? Certainly never in american history.
Anyway, there are daily protests. They just aren't covered by the media. Hell, the protests for palestine never stopped... the media just never wanted to cover them.
Women's suffrage was relatively nonviolent.
As was the civil rights era. The people who chose to be violent made it take longer, actually.
I don't think that's really accurate. Without the perceived threat from the militant factions, the peaceful protesters wouldn't necessarily have had political backing and support. Peaceful movements had been suppressed until that point, after all.
I think it is. Change happened because a majority of reasonable people wanted it to change.
Terrorist attacks, kidnappings, etc made that change take longer. What made MLK Jr so unique was that he carried a message of peace, not a message of war.
The militant factions never had any real power and would have never been close to powerful enough to overthrow the government, and if they’d been more successful, would have swayed the masses’ opinions in the wrong direction.
Largest protests in US history in the past year:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstra...
Although 36% is low, it's not that low. The US's two-party system means that ~40-50% are aligned with either party and approve/disapprove on GP. The real number to pay attention to is the change over time in the approval rating: https://www.cnn.com/polling/approval/trump-cnn-poll-of-polls
Trump's highest rating was ~47% when he came into office, but he was pretty stably in the low 40s until the new war. The actual drop is somewhere from ~40-42 to ~36-38 - about 10% of his base. Significant, but probably not enough to actually matter unless it drops further.
Then again, nationwide daily protests would give the Trump administration an excuse to send ICE / the army / whoever else they can send to the cities where the protests take place (I guess they would be mostly blue-leaning ones) to "restore order", and at the same time lay the groundwork for influencing the November elections.
But the turnout at the periodic nationwide "No Kings" protests has been very good, and they have fortunately stayed peaceful.
You'd think a "no oligarchs" protest would be a little more useful given that we aren't likely to revert to a monarchy any time soon.
checks notes what's this? The protests were organized by oligarchic lackeys? Hmm
This isn't about Trump. No 4th amendment rights at the border has been an issue for at least 20 years, but US citizens don't care because it doesn't affect citizens.
Yep, this was an issue long before Trump. They’ve just amped up the scale and stopped bothering with the deceit that they know doesn’t bother Americans.
A 36% approval rating is sky-high for a president that started a pointless immensely costly war after getting elected on a platform of "no more costly wars" and is in the process of negotiating an immensely unfavorable deal with Iran after getting elected on a platform of "Obama's deal with Iran was terrible, I could do much better".
By contrast, Biden at the same point in his term was hovering around 39%, for the heinous crime of... rebuilding the US economy? Including some woke riders in his infrastructure bill?
At this point, a fair assessment of US citizens is that on average, they seem to consider that being a right-wing autocrat wannabe, threatening to invade allied countries "as a negotiating tactic", being a climate change denier, starting a humiliating failed war, trying to blackmail the press into compliance, etc, are about 3% worse than being a cringe center-left bureaucrat.
"US citizens don't seem to care" is an apt hyperbole.
It doesn't help that many of those "center-left" democrats (whatever that refers to) seem to be criticizing trump for letting iran off too easy, not you know starting a stupid war nobody in their right might would want, bombing a school, wasting american lives, driving up prices, risking the global economy, throwing lebanon under the bus... nope, he let iran off too easy. Cf cory booker
When the parties are both fucking stupid when it comes to issues that matter, the entire right/left spectrum goes out the window.
NPR as your source isn't exactly a compelling argument tbh
Whenever I ask people to explain their issues with NPR it’s some cherry-picked news articles here and there that were somewhat biased. In my experience NPR often tries to be incredibly neutral, almost comically so, when criticizing any administration.
You are talking about something different (in bad faith). Please share a single instance of a US citizen being arrested for an offensive social media post.
A 30 second search found me https://www.fire.org/news/he-spent-37-days-jail-facebook-pos... . You can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride. (And you're pretty thoroughly proving my point about US citizens not caring about anyone else)
Yay you found a single instance, and more over there are legal means of recourse, unlike the the UK when you’re jailed or fined and that’s it
Don't give a sarcastic reply about finding a single instance, when the request was literally "Please share a single instance." It's just silly.
The US has arrested many people for speech, and even made charges stick many time. A famous historical example is charging Eugene Debs (and many others) with sedition for opposing WWI and the draft. There was at least one case of being arrested for political social media posts, already linked in adjacent threads. Threats of violence or even sufficiently harsh language to cause fear-for-life can be a crime. "Revenge porn" and deepfakes have had laws passed curtailing them and prosecutions made. The US is certainly less restrictive of speech than other countries, but you're nowhere near entirely free to say or post anything you want.
The posts don't even need to be offensive, just uncomfortable:
https://www.fox4news.com/news/woman-arrested-facebook-post-c...
https://youtu.be/tB3WVygAM8I
Why does it need to be a US citizen? Is mistreatment okay if they're not a citizen? That clause reads extremely chauvinist to me.
A few people being stopped to check if their residency is valid is more than fine considering the last admin flooded the country with 20mil migrants with its open border policy
[x] Doesn’t know UK not in EU [x] Thinks people inciting violence online a free speech -issue [x] Calls Germany a surveillance state when US uses Palantir - a US company - to openly spy on its citizens
X seems to work great. Inciting men in with gambling, porn, crypto, ai and other broistan staples, then feeding them far-right nonsense info points.
I can immediately tell you're not arguing in "good faith" when you resort to "mean tweets".
The numbers commonly being reporting include stalkers, criminals, etc.
You don't get arrested for being politically incorrect in the UK. You get arrested for posting something threatening, harassing, inciteful, or grossly indecent. Also, being arrested and being charged are two completely separate things.
By "mean tweets" I assume you mean death threats? How about not threatening to kill someone on social media, is that so hard to do?
They literally arrested people for quoting Charlie Kirk in tweets after his death.
Source? Or are you another "trust me bro" Redditor.
One guy spent 37 days in jail for re-posting a thing trump said ("We have to get over it" in reference to a school shooting), after Charlie Kirk was killed.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7pyjxjxrvo
So one guy, and now he’s suing which is a form of justice. No such path in the UK…. You’re fined and/or arrested and that’s all
Are you trying to say one can't sue in the UK? I'm confused by why you would think such a thing.
Yes, the US doesn't arrest people for death threats on Twitter, it's too busy actually killing those that oppose ICE.
I know of many examples from the US and none from Germany and the UK. If they're truly so plentiful, please enlighten me with a link or two of the latter.
That’s not the EU.
"The situation for free speech in Europe is even worse than I thought"
https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/the-situation-for-free-sp...
Same old tired arguments from Americans about how if you don't let fascists have free speech, it's not really free speech.
Who controls the definition of "fascist"?
In any case, practically speaking, censorship helped the rise of the Nazis: https://www.fire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/would...
You can see far-right parties surging across Europe. Speech restriction isn't just authoritarian, it's also counterproductive.
As an American I am actually quite worried about Europe's far right. Those guys are very scary, and it's creepy the way they have been able to influence the right here in the US. The MAGA movement was far more multicultural back in the 2010s, before Europe's far right was able to influence it with their ethnic cleansing and pogrom fantasies.
If you're in a hole, maybe stop digging?