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Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898

The West is way to cooperative with regimes like Erdogan, Modi, the UAE or Qatar. To name a few.

But what do you expect from a government, Germany which just so happens to be mine, that sees no problem in letting others do the dirty work of repulsing migrants in the Mediterranean, to their death sometimes, not intervening when the US intern German citizens in Guantanamo for years. Most of it out of fear of the far right since the refugee crisis in Europe. With great success regarding the containment of the far right, they poll quite often on second place now. Oh, I forgot, while our police isn't holding journalists, or people threatening and harassing others for that matter, they happily use similar powers to lock up climate activists for a couple of days without trial.

Rant over. If Western democracies don't start to stand up for our proclaimmed values, we will loose what little soft power we have left.

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German citizen kidnapped by the CIA. Germany does not care:

https://www.dw.com/en/kidnapped-by-the-cia-the-case-of-khale...

Our current, well respected, head of state was foreign minister back then.

Fully agree with you. (I'm German as well, in case that matters)

We have elections on state level coming up. Hard choice, because for once a single vote really matters (before every government was more or less the same, now there is the risk of having the AfD sitting there). And those voters are voting! So, two choices, vote on principle and hopefully strengthen the oposition enough to count, or vote for the conservative government hoping to make thek strong enough to not need the far right.

Well, it actually isn't that hard a choice, but still.

As first generation out of portuguese dictatorship in the 70's, living through the whole west/east split, and spending half of my life in Germany, it isn't fun seeing that happening. Similar increase is happening in Portugal, Chega party being one of them.

It is as if the younger generations have no clue what they are voting for.

When they discoverer, it will be too late.

> It is as if the younger generations have no clue what they are voting for.

They know exactly what they are voting for.

The hard core of those voters, yes. The usual 10-15% or radicals and racists. All the others actually have no clue sometimes.

I think they understand it, they just don't give a shit, because they aren't the people being targeted.

I dont think they realize long term consequences, life and politics aint tiktok where 10 second attention span is normalized or even cool. Shit has consequences for decades, but nobody knows them.

I dont have an answer. I personally moved away from my home country (Slovakia) almost 2 decades away, thinking far right is probably the biggest long term threat with causing some civil war with our big Roma population. Oh boy was I wrong, far right is now completely managed by russian troll farms now, they literally jump as russians whistle (an expression back home), having some utterly illogical positions.

You look left, there is a guy completely interwined with 'ndrangheta who probably will win, murdering journalists, managing economy so badly that Romania took us over. Right is this above. Both love russia in fact. Nothing competent in between. People voted last time for cca new face and he turned to be some bipolar less than useless freak who just pissed off literally everybody left and right.

What about the president who’s quitting?

This is what people who court the far-right don't realise. Far-right politics are a means to an end — that end being naked power. You will get chewed up and spat out if you do something they don't like. The silver lining is that a far-right regime is never sustainable in the long run as a result, but there is a lot of collateral damage along the way.

The left isn't working for them and you could say the same thing about the left.. unchecked it becomes China or USSR. Things will swing back and forth. Too many left policies created unhappiness.. too many right policies will create unhappiness in the future. Rinse and repeat.

The mass immigration policies of the left has created a burden on some (while creating a boom for others).

Too many left policies create unhappiness? You do have a szrange definition of left. Just a hint, the USSR was rightfully called Stalinistic and the Vommunist. Ehile China is a one party totalitarian regime that only recently is curbing down capitalism. None of which are representative of left politics like pro-union, social security, health care and the like.

Left wing policies unchecked lead to communism, totalitarianism.

Plenty of unhappiness can be created from left policies. Mass immigration cause job loss and wage reduction. Increasing taxes creates unhappiness. Spending more today than you have creates unhappiness tomorrow.

Right wing policies lead more often to totalitarianism then left wing ones, historically speaking.

And if you really believe that migration, and not union busting and unchecked capitalism, lead to lower wages, well, I don't think there is anything I can say that might make think about those things more critical.

I would hardly consider Angela Merkel left-wing, but go on I guess. Of course people on the far-left can be power-hungry authoritarians too. Stalin, Malema, and Chavez immediately come to mind. But this phenomenon manifests more often on the right in the west because most of western politics is so scared of any actual far-left sentiment that they nip it in the bud as soon as it pops up. If they had this same attitude towards the right, we would not be in this situation.

> And those voters are voting!

That's why it's even more important to go vote this time, and for a party that will likely make the cut. For all intents and purposes, votes for the everybody-knows-they-will-be-<5% parties are lost votes, with the only difference to "not voting" that there's a buck or so per voter for those parties' piggy-banks.

The rumor that invalidating the ballot makes any difference makes a reappearance every few years, so for clarity: The same applies to invalid votes, which end up being just a line-item in some statistic nobody cares about.

Absolutely agree. And there are only so many above 5% parties, so the choice actually isn't really that hard.

The west hardly cares about soft power. Can you give an example of some soft power that wasn't due to a legal agreement? I came up dry just now thinking of some example that the west has set that the rest of the world has followed purely on the idea of it alone. There's always some sort of formal agreement it seems when it comes to these sorts of things, e.g. forms of government, trade, mutually passed laws like drug scheduling or extradition.

> Erdogan, Modi, the UAE or Qatar.

One of these is not like the others - India is a real democracy, even if it has issues.

The omission of the KSA in this list is distinctly disappointing. It should be the #1 example of regimes we need to stop pandering to ..

How did I forget KSA...

> The West is way to cooperative with regimes like Erdogan, Modi, the UAE or Qatar. To name a few.

I fail to understand how Modi (and likely Erdogan), who are elected representatives, are at the same level as the UAE or Qatar.

"Look at the human right violations they've done!"

Not defending them, but then would you add Bush/Obama/Trump to the list (between Guantanamo Bay/all the middle east military "interventions") Or how Assange is still being treated by the US?

I'm not trying to flame-bait, but if a leader is a democratically elected rep is conflated with autocracies that's not a sound argument. Especially when it's something more countries do than don't. (Disclaimer, am Indian)

I could throw in the likes of Nethanyahu and Orban and the Polish government, some are just further down the road to totalitarianism then others.

That is a fair point. So would it be more of a gradient than a line?

Yes, it is. That is also why this development is so insisdious and dangerous.

In america, "democracy" actually means "democracy that is beneficial to us". If we don't approve of it, it's not real democracy, and we can just send in the CIA to make it the way we want it to be. It's why "populism" is so bad yet people here still reference the popular vote when their preferred candidate got more votes overall.

When you throw all credible newspaper editors/owners and many credible opposition politicians in prison based on made-up charges, like Erdogan has done, there can't be fair & democratic elections.

>Western democracies don't start to stand up for our proclaimmed values

That ship has left the barn long, long ago. We can't provide military resources to a known fascist totalitarian-authoritarian dictatorship, so they can enact genocide, and still proclaim ourselves on the 'right' side of history.

The illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003: same. The funding and arming of ISIS. The destruction of Libya.

We lost our moral altitude long, long ago - and its not coming back. As this story demonstrates, we in the West have gotten far, far too complacent about totalitarian-authoritarianism, such that we just accept it when it happens to us, at the airport, etc.

I think it could well be argued that the "West" never even had moral values. Just look at WW2 and their failure to liberate Eastern Europe and regain lands conquered by Stalin... After that it really was more about their benefits and than any real values held.

Well, there was a reason the continuation of WW2 against the USSR was called "Operation Unthinkable". There was simply no way anybody could afford to start a land war against the USSR in 1945.

But yes, the Western values always have been over valued (no pun intended). Just how much over valued becomes clearer by the day. Still, democracy is the best available form of government, and there have been serious progress in tue last decades. I just wished tze West would wake up and start to live those proclaimed values (which aren't bad at all) and not just so lip service.

They still had other half of population with suffrage left. And wouldn't value of democracy mean that also sacrificing them would have been morally correct way to spread democracy? Just arm them and send to frontlines.

Nothing more democratic than asking for the "containment" of the side of politics that you don't like.

Sure, it is very democratic to try and contain ideas and movements that are fundentally oppossed to democratic rule.

> With great success regarding the containment of the far right, they poll quite often on second place now.

So why is this happening? Isn't it a sign that they are proposing ideas more attractive to more and more people? Or alternatively people are becoming skeptical about ideas and policies realized so far by current government over the years?

The success of the far right in Europe is driven by migration.

Huge numbers of economic migrants make their way illegally to Europe. They have little education and no useful work skills. WTF are we supposed to do with them?

The correct solution is to send illegal migrants right back to Africa. However, only the far right parties dare say that - hence, the increasing support they are getting, despite their other positions.

The latest increase in popularity of the AfD is in part due to the question of home heating devices...

> The correct solution is to send illegal migrants right back to Africa. However, only the far right parties dare say that - hence, the increasing support they are getting, despite their other positions.

In case you're unaware, the reason Europe has its current asylum standards largely because of what happened between 1933-1945. So would your proposed solution be:

1. Deny asylum to anyone and everyone, even those fleeing genocide ("Sorry that happened to you, we don't have room here!"), or

2. Implement a color chart a la Family Guy [1], so only the "right people" can come in?

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/family-guy-skin-color-chart

The idea that we should allow our countries and our way of life to be ruined because of something that happened 70 years ago is absurd.

It is also because elections seem to have little impact on policies. This is due to many reasons but you will see polling get more and more extreme because voters keep telling politicians what they want, and nothing changes.

I will add, this isn't terribly surprising in Europe. In Italy, due to flaws in their political system, you have had politicians parachuted in from the EU repeatedly to run the country...I am not sure what people expect. If you place significant limitations on democracy and then ignore public opinion, people will get annoyed.

Why? Because populist have a very easy job in times of uncertainty. And uncertainty, felt but the real kind doesn't matter, we have plenty. With a lot of frustration since Covid.

They aren't cooperative. The article explains they didn't actually do anything. But international agreements on policing essentially compel police here to act (but not necessarily charge or return people).

For some reason, it is literally the same people who say that massive limitations need to be placed on native authority by international agreements, by courts (in some countries, depending on the legal system), etc. AND they say it is shocking that our police aren't sovereign...really? We cannot have it both ways...either you trust local authority or you trust the authority of foreign governments...it cannot be neither.

> Rant over. If Western democracies don't start to stand up for our proclaimmed values, we will loose what little soft power we have left.

Don't worry, to the rest of the developing world, Western democracies are already considered to be a bunch of moralizing hypocrites, looking to impose their erstwhile colonial tendencies in other ways. Oh, and you guys are a laughing stock with the recent immigration issues, what with Lampedusa being showcased front and center of the news.

You guys ship your garbage to other poorer countries in some sort of wretched don't ask, don't tell policy, then blame those same countries for polluting the earth. Meanwhile a bunch of clowns in your countries inconvenience the rest of the populace by sticking themselves to the roads as a "sign of protest". To quote Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, the UAE foreign minister, "the next generation of terrorists will be from Europe and the West".

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-dV4m43xZmY

Get over it, you guys are already a joke, already on the decline. Get out of your city shells and walk the rural areas a bit to see how your fellow countrymen actually feel about the policies of your government. Of how the common man has been continually shafted while you preach and vacillate about human rights.

I look forward to the amount of PhD dissertations that will study the decline of Europe and the West over the post-GFC decade. Rant over.

I do agree Europe is on a decline and in my opinion it is irreversible. It’s one of the reasons why I am happy to have been migrated to South-East Asia from The Netherlands.

The reason why I believe it’s irreversible is because of the power of the media. Too many people still believe the global warming narrative and are open to mass immigration. Not to mention the fact that the USA has succeeded in convincing many Europeans that Russia is to be an enemy instead of an ally.

All of this will greatly increase the cost of living for the common man while at the same time the welfare state is being destroyed. Europeans will face much hardship the next decennia and I don’t think they’ll be able to recover.

I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but I’ll voice it here anyways :)

I also can't believe the big bad USA has turned the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, etc on Russia. It's because the media is just too weak in Russia, China, Iran, North Korea so they haven't been able to communicate their upstanding values clearly enough.

Ooo, a pro Russia climate change denier. Don't see those in polite society often.

Believe me, there are many in the liberal sphere who do not support unlimited mass migration. Open borders are not compatible with a welfare state.

As for denying the changing climate and supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I don't feel anything I can type in short order would enlighten the reader if they don't already see the injustice after a few hundred thousand dead.

>Open borders are not compatible with a welfare state

Maybe you liberals shouldn't support neoconservative conflicts that drive the migration in the first place. Hillary's State Department did such a great job in Honduras, Libya, Syria. The same is happening now in Ukraine. These conflicts are all about preserving American hegemony, nothing more.

> These conflicts are all about preserving American hegemony, nothing more.

Should tell the Russians that they seem to think the war in Ukraine is about fixing the “mistake” of Ukraines independence.

This is so delusional. The Eastern oblasts were prevented from declaring independence for years based on Russian pressure. Russia doesn't want Ukraine, they just don't want NATO setting up shop on their borders. The same way the US would never tolerate China setting up shop in Northern Mexico or Southern Canada. NATO has spent the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union breaking all of their assurances to Russia that it would not expand, literally encircling them.

> This is so delusional.

I am just quoting what the Russian media said in there accidentally posted victory article early on in the war.

But I agree it is super delusional.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20...

>> Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe of our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome

I suggest you read the article i think you’ll find the word NATO doesn’t even appear in it.

> they just don't want NATO setting up shop on their borders

Then they have already failed as the Russian border with NATO is now longer then it would be if you included Ukraine and Ukraine isn’t even in NATO.

I don’t think it was this though as Germany gave Russia assurances before the war that they would veto Ukraines NATO application.

> NATO has spent the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union breaking all of their assurances to Russia that it would not expand, literally encircling them.

There was never any formalised agreement to not expand NATO, so no promise was ever made.

Regardless of that Russia has multiple international agreements with Ukraine (that are formalised) that say they will never threaten their sovereignty.

Why doesn’t Russia have to follow those?.

Another question one might ask is why Russias neighbours want to join NATO it’s probably because Russia has invaded nearly all of them at some point in time.

Seems pretty reasonable to me to want to defend yourself from what at this point seems like a likely future invasion,

>the word NATO doesn’t even appear in it.

The word NATO appeared in every diplomatic negotiation about the Donbas preceding and subsequent to the war. Don't waste people's time with nonsense-- I can find an article in US media that also puts forward every conceivable position if I try hard enough.

>Regardless of that Russia has multiple international agreements with Ukraine (that are formalised) that say they will never threaten their sovereignty.

Why doesn’t Russia have to follow those?.

You mean like the Minsk accords that Zelensky failed to implement? The Ukrainian people put their faith in him to end the war, but he caved to the Right. Turns out actors don't make good presidents, as we know in the US as well. https://harpers.org/archive/2023/10/the-tragedy-of-volodymyr...

> Don't waste people's time with nonsense-- I can find an article in US media that also puts forward every conceivable position if I try hard enough

It’s not nonsense it’s russias own position on the war straight from there own kremlin approved propaganda outlets.

I know it’s an inconvenient article as it dispels the narrative of this war being about NATO and shows it for what it really is, russian imperialism.

> You mean like the Minsk accords that Zelensky failed to implement?

All the agreements I speak off predate the Minsk accords by years to decades.

russia didn’t follow any of them so why should we have faith they would follow anything new?.

It’s not like russia obeyed the Minsk accords either (shocking I know).

russia doesn’t appear to follow international agreements when it doesn’t benefit them.

So once again I ask why does russia get to ignore and violate all the formalised agreements it has with Ukraine.

Where as everyone else has to obey vague not in writing promises that where never formalised?.

Well I'll agree to disagree on a number of points here, but I respect your sentiment. I don't believe that the media is powerful. On the contrary, I feel that the media being weakened and focused on sensational content is the reason we're in this mess. While the European media was supposed to be one of the entities keeping government officials and Eurocrats in check, their systematic weakening has led to those failing governments to implement widely unpopular policies that only harmed the social fabric of the continent.

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