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Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

If the past few months have taught us anything, it's that Europe is so cowed and poorly-led that they'll knuckle-under and submit to whatever. In fact, if this is true, they probably won't even invest in local alternatives for fear of retaliation.

That said, the correct response would be to slowly and silently divest from US-based Big Tech, fork whatever can be forked, and invest heavily in local services and infrastructure.

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Cory Doctorow at keynote in Pycon this year said pretty much the same thing - now that tariffs had imposed the cost that US always used as a threat to get their own way, what’s to lose now?

I tend to agree but

1. We risk Balkanisation of the internet

2. Enforcing interactivity (sharing posts between instagram and X sounds lovely) but the search and discovery is still the secret sauce - and once you regulate that the only fair way is a time based feed - which will just end looking like a sped up version of the Matrix screen

3. If we do this, we don’t get our own (European) unicorns - what we get is regulated utilities (which let’s face it is the destination of search and posting text or photos).

The power of social media is the power of a phone in every frigging pocket of every adult on the planet.

So we end up with normcore social media, partly because regulation will ramp down the extreme reactions of the algorithm, and partly because LLMs will replace a lot of queries, and they are mostly normcore because they are based on every written word ever, and that is a huge anti-extremism weighting

> what’s to lose now?

The natural gas supply among other things. Europe has made itself first dependent on Russia and then on the US for the basic survival of its population.

Man, if only humans could have invented splitting of the atom, it might have made a nice energy source, especially for countries with low oil and gas reserves.

Europe is hardly dependent on the US for gas. Russia still supplies more gas than the US does, and even when the current US and Russian supplies are combined they are less than the total Russian supply in 2021.

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/where-does-t...

I understand how economics function. If you drop supply 10% for a basic necessity then prices will go up by much more than 10%. You don't need to stop something, just reduce it enough to drive prices way up to the point where people can't afford them.

Gas is stored over many months and then mostly used in the winter. So you cannot quickly impact consumer prices in the way you suggest. Supplies in general are now more diversified and flexible, so any supplier can be replaced more easily - LNG by ship is far easier to replace than gas that relies on pipelines.

You underestimate how fast Europe in crisis can reactivate direct imports from Russia. Trump pushing for peace doesn’t understand that it will also open the way for lifting sanctions on Russian energy sector. If he succeeds but alienates Europe, that will inevitably happen. We are back in the age of realpolitik.

Handing over a loaded gun pointed at your head from one dictator to another is hardly a wining strategy. You also underestimate how much Russia and the US are likely colluding.

Realpolitik would be for Europe to exploit its shale gas reserves instead of banning doing so.

Yes, we need to move away from fossil fuels but the reality is that we are still dependent on them so we may as well look at strategic independence and economic gains and produce what we can ourselves.

That is not a viable option for us if we need full replacement. Strategic independence will remain a goal, but in the meantime we need whatever works. Let Trump and Putin compete for access to European energy market.

It is a viable option. It might not cover all our needs (I don't know) but that does not mean we should not minimise imports and maximise domestic production.

Realpolitik would be for Europe to understand that geography isn't going to change. Russia will always be your next-door neighbour. USA will always be an ocean away. Also, Putin is not immortal.

So, your long game should be to forge amicable relations with your next-door neighbour, rather betting everything in your relationship with your manipulative friend on the other side of the pond. In the meantime, you should also become self-dependent.

Realpolitik would be to arm yourself and project your influence like your big brothers are doing next door and across the pond.

Russia would love to regain the European land the Soviet Union lost.

Your suggestions are far off from realpolitik. This is the recipe followed post-WW1, which brought us WW2. Europe itself is the proof that cooperation and good relationship among neighbours are the policies that bring peace and prosperity.

And Putin is not an idiot to attempt expansion to lands with no ethnic-russian population. Such thing is clearly not feasible without the power structures of the former USSR.

WW2 was brought by the humiliation and starvation of the German people by the European winners and by their own politicians, and Hitler easily capitalized on that making his rise to power a slam dunk.

People like to think that if they would have assassinated Hitler early on, WW2 wouldn't have happened, but that's wrong. That would have just left the power vacuum empty for someone else to capitalize on the German populations' grievances and start the war.

The history lesson is to make sure the masses of people are taken care of by their leaders, not to start censoring, imprisoning or assassinating political opponents who capitalize on the peoples' unhappiness.

Realpolitik would be to recognize that there is no such political actor as Europe.

And you think that Russia is a better option? I hope the EU isn't that dumb, but it's hard to underestimate them.

It is not a better option. It’s the way to have competition among suppliers.

If you think Putin and Trump will compete versus simply colluding against Europe then you're really delusional.

I see US made weapons destroying Russian assets in Ukraine every day. I see US troops facing off against Russia in Poland and the Baltics. This is a nonsense conspiracy theory.

One of those suppliers demanding you don't tax and censor their online services. The other is pointing weapons (that they buy with your money) at you. There is a time for market competition, but this ain't it. Now if you were suggesting developing domestic energy supplies, that would be a different story.

Please don’t expect me writing a full political program here elaborating all aspects of foreign and energy policy. It’s a forum. Domestic energy supplies won’t come faster than imports from existing sources. They are imperative but need time.

You don't understand. The situation in Europe is: the left has failed, and broken into pieces that are currently mostly still in a few parties, but those are ready to shatter into 100, at which point ... the extreme right has 35% of the vote, and the center parties has all but broken down.

That means the moderate right (think laissez-faire pro-immigration pro-business, the only remaining other voting bloc) and extreme right (hate based parties) control, easily, 50% of the vote. They are not currently allied but the problem is that a shattered left is not something the right (or anyone) can work with. If the left fully shatters, the right will be forced to join the extreme right.

So right now, it takes essentially EVERY small insignificant party cooperating not to hand EU countries to the extreme right (yes, in Germany there's more margin, in the Netherlands less, France is on the brink, ...)

That makes your "dumb" not dumb but a serious catch-22. Any compromise that makes ANY party that has 5% of the vote walk out is a total non-starter, because one vote of non-confidence and "hitler gets elected again" so to speak.

My "dumb" is what got you into this situation. I notice you left Denmark off that list. Wonder what's different there? Perhaps if your center-left / center-right parties realized, like anyone with a brain did well over a decade ago, that mass third world Muslim immigration into Europe is the stupidest political idea of the 21st century so far, you wouldn't be in this position. Perhaps if you realized your political foot gun is the real threat here, and not your own citizens who oppose it, you wouldn't be worrying about a "hitler gets elected again" scenario.

You're right, I guess, but ...

Mass immigration is the only thing currently saving Europe from demographic collapse in the working age population. It is the only thing keeping pension systems afloat for the moment. It is faltering, the working age population will still collapse (and immigration is not saving anything but the huge cities. In the south of Europe entire regions are essentially depopulated and those regions are growing despite mass immigration)

Yet another problem where there is no choice. Or there is a choice between "collapse now" and "collapse in 10 years".

We're seeing a repeating theme here.

And no worries: the EU governments are going to use spending cutbacks to get themselves out of this situation. Which again is the stupidest thing imaginable, because I can't even imageine a way to make that work ... but here we are.

Demographic collapse is a myth. Japan has been in it for a couple decades. Sure, their economy is stagnant, but their standard of living is still very high and it is nothing resembling a "collapse." Arguments that we must allow mass immigration or face dire consequences are nonsense.

I'd look up a few more stats and stories about the situation in Japan. Their economy has been stagnant ... well they call it a "lost decade". Despite the name, "decade", it's coming up on 36 years now. Outside of the major cities (and frankly inside, just to a lesser extent), everything has crashed - from education to grocery stores, to apartment sizes.

>The situation in Europe is: the left has failed

And why is nobody asking "WHY has the left failed" and explain it? Winning over voters to your side isn't that hard. You just have to talk to them, see what they want, and give it to them, or at least negociate a compromise. That's it.

So, have politicians on the left bothered engaging in conversation with the voters to discuss their grievances and work with them on their issues to win their votes back? Or have they ignored their citizens' issues from their ivory towers and resorted to calling everyone who disagreed with their unpopular polices "Nazis", "fascists" and "alt-right supremacists"?

Because I only saw a lot of the latter and none of the former. Isn't it wild how if you diss your electorate, they won't vote for you and cause you to loose elections? It's almost as if that's a known self regulating feedback mechanism of democracy, that the left refuses to acknowledge and seeks to blames someone else for their self inflicted failures.

The problem with the left is that they've been ideologically captured and refuse to acknowledge or even discuss the pressing issues the population wants to discuss because of the optics of those issues (like illegal migration and asylum abuse) go against the ideological purity tests of the left whose policies often are the root cause of those issues. Isn't it obvious that if run a country on optics instead of Realpolitik and common sense, shit will hit the fan eventually when the bill is due and people will vote you out with both hands?

> We risk Balkanisation of the internet

Until nations actually implement serious cybersecurity enforcement, this is a good thing.

> Enforcing interactivity (sharing posts between instagram and X sounds lovely) but the search and discovery is still the secret sauce - and once you regulate that the only fair way is a time based feed

A massive part of the modern-day propaganda machine. It's worse than awful and it's intended.

> If we do this, we don’t get our own (European) unicorns - what we get is regulated utilities

Ultimately, this is a better direction. But the regulations need to be carefully curated for freedom instead of suppression. Unfortunately, current political climate and public sentiment isn't going well for public safety.

> Ultimately, this is a better direction

Strongly disagree on this one. Utilities and heavy regulation are a necessary evil that should be used sparingly, not as the norm.

> Strongly disagree on this one. Utilities and heavy regulation are a necessary evil that should be used sparingly, not as the norm.

I mean it seems like social networks (and potentially search, but I'm less certain here) seem like a natural monopoly, so it would make sense to turn them into utilities.

I wouldn't reach for making an industry a utility just because it became a monopoly. It should probably be considered a public good as well, I'm not sure social media would fit that.

I'd look to why it became a monopoly. I'm not sold on social media being a monopoly given the number of services out there, but either way they only got so large because they were effectively given get out of jail free cards with regards to legal liability protections given to the by the government. Removing those rather than standing up all the plumbing needed to regulate them as utilities seems like a much more simply approach.

> were effectively given get out of jail free cards with regards to legal liability protections given to the by the government

You mean Section 230 and other analogous laws, right?

I'm not sure how you have comment and interaction heavy sites (like HN) without some sort of protections here. Like, YC would probably shut HN down rather than pay for enough people to moderate it 24-7.

Certainly, Facebook and Youtube would require absolute armies of moderators to comply with the law if they were treated as the publisher of user-generated content.

Maybe that's a tradeoff you'd be willing to make, but I'm pretty sure such a policy would be wildly unpopular and likely to get reversed pretty soon.

Normcore is fine. I'd rather have normcore than rage porn curated for profit.

What's not fine is US oligarchs using social media platforms to influence elections - something Musk and Zuckerberg have both done, on the record, with fines to match.

That's not fine anywhere.

The US seems to have persuaded itself it is, but the EU - rightly - has other priorities.

There used to be a very vibrant internet before "search and discovery", it was very balkanized and that was GLORIOUS. Social media is cancer anyway, if people stop using them altogether it will be a net benefit to humanity. So I see all this as a good thing.

Like any other country that relies on US, is doing so much better!

US sucks as an ally! Please do not cover it up under "big tech"!

If we would develop local alternatives, there is a good chance US will bomb them!

But then why hasn't that happened already? The US tech sector didn't develop out of any centralized plan. It's purely a creature of chaos and self interest. What makes you think an equivalent can be formed by central planning? Even if it could, the actions of the EU in regards to censorship show that such a beast would be 1000x worse than the US tech companies it intends to replace.

That's why I can guarantee you that the EU will not block or eradicate US big-tech from Europe since such a massive trade war with the US will set it back technologically, economically and politically, but it will instead enter into a silent partnership with big-tech where "we'll let you monetize the EU userbase, and in return you'll spy on EU citizens for us through your datacenters here, turning in anyone who protests against us, censor anything we tell you to under "hate speech" laws, and push our propaganda to the top of the algorithm, this way we both win: you get to make money, and we get to keep our seats in power".

Basically it will be outsourcing the traditional government censorship, oppression and propaganda work to the tech private sector because it's 1000x more efficient that the government at this, and it also helps keep the image of those in power clean since if they get caught they can throw big-tech under the bus with some fines. It's literally the perfect setup.

How do I know this? Is it because I'm clairvoyant or have a tinfoil hat on? No, it's because US big-techs like Apple literally did the same deal for the CCP in China, so now that the can of worms has been opened, all the other countries want the same deal with big-tech.

And if you think the EU leadership is somehow morally above these types of practices, boy you couldn't be more wrong. Their unscrupulous use of Israeli Pegasus spy-ware and Palantir surveilance-ware proves they're not, they're cut from the same cloth as the rest. They'll gladly copy the CCP great firewall and give it a coat of blue paint with some gold stars on it and say it's for "protecting your democracy".

> And if you think the EU leadership is somehow morally above these types of practices

There is no such thing as EU leadership, other than the governments of the 27 members. So it's kinda unlikely that the above would happen (certainly possible but I reckon it's pretty low probability).

No need to be pedantic about the "EU leadership" part, if you can and should interpret the comment by the spirit of the argument and not by the letter, you understand perfectly what I meant by that.

And yes, EU wide censorship introduced by the EU commission and forced onto EU members is definitely possible if politicians of all 27 members agree on that.

If you think your nations politicians don't have the balls to push for laws that suppress your freedoms just so they can keep their seats you're delulu.

There has been a much stronger capital supply than in a shattered group of countries.

The EU does not exist as a unit, it's 27 sovereign states cooperating. In the EU the single market is an achievement across countries, but can't compare with single large internal markets.

China as the second economy of the world managed to succeed with a centralised plan.

So I think market size and economic power is a bigger indicator than centralised vs not.

Tech companies are the least capital intensive of any industry (pre-LLM bubble). Lack of capital is not a good explanation when Meta and Google were started on investments of < $100K. China has kept out foreign competition and applied heavy censorship across its tech companies, but they arose and competed as a free market amongst themselves, not by central planning.

> Lack of capital is not a good explanation when Meta and Google were started on investments of < $100K.

It is. As you said, Meta and Google started with small investments, but now they are multi trillion dollar behemoths. Any company, even with millions of dollars in funding, can’t compete with them because they have tens of thousands of developers and infrastructure worth tens or even hundreds of billions of USD. They have penetrated the entire EU market and have enough money to burn, allowing them to survive any competition that isn’t state funded. The risk for private capital is huge, and the EU simply doesn’t have the same amount of capital that the US does.

The only alternative would have been the Chinese route, building local equivalents of Google, AWS, Amazon, Meta etc. like they did in China but it seems that ship has already sailed for the EU, given the current state of things.

> the EU simply doesn’t have the same amount of capital that the US does.

This isn't true, it's just that all of the EU excess capital gets invested in the US, so it appears true.

Of course, it is true. The EU also does not have a reserve currency and cannot print 2 trillion a year. Where do you think the majority of these 2 trillion goes?

I think capital and market access are the key factors in general startup success, the USA is number one in both atm

Relying on well developed tech from a reliable long term ally makes sense, it's hard to deploy enough resources to compete when the resulting products will likely be worse. But that calculus has completely changed, the US is no longer a reliable long term ally. The EU's reliance on US tech is an utterly massive security and economic liability. Maybe their own products would be worse, but that'd still be better than alternatives that can get sabotaged or yanked away at a moment's notice.

A decade ago I would have expected EU alternatives to be much worse but I'm less sure these days. Most US tech companies have moved past the innovator stage and spend most of their efforts on rent seeking and marketing.

All that said, I don't actually expect the EU to handle this well. They've been fumbling long term threats with regularity, and I don't they'll suddenly start doing better. They'll probably muddle along with most of their US dependencies until a massive disaster hits them in the face.

> That said, the correct response would be to slowly and silently divest from US-based Big Tech, fork whatever can be forked, and invest heavily in local services and infrastructure.

Europe at least has missed the last couple of trains on this. No one has trillions of dollars to spend and catch up with the US tech sector.

the best would be some kind of movement from the bottom that customers start to divest at least from some services. Help closest family and direct friends to:

- install Firefox/Zen as main browser

- install uBlock Origin

- switch to Brave Search / Qwant for search engine

- switch to signal for IM for communicating with your parents and loved one (still use WhatsApp elsewhere)

- help family setup passkeys using Bitwarden EU

- advocate that they don't need to buy the latest android but can get 2nd hand e.g. motorola edge+ (2023) and help setup your parents linageos

- when switching router pick one with openwrt support and setup AdGuard on the router (some asus routers already have such things build in)

So divest from American big tech to … new American startup tech? Remind me again of who came up with the phrase “don’t be evil”.

Most of those are open source. Even if not perfect this is still better than doing nothing and still better than perfect but not user friendly.

> Help closest family and direct friends to:

- buy european processors like ... (?)

- buy european motherboards like ... (?)

- buy european RAM like ... (?)

- buy european SSD/harddrives like ... (?)

- buy european graphics cards like ... (?)

Trully a road to independence. /s

So is better to do nothing because we cannot divest everything right now? You start by divesting partners that are getting complicated (this year US). Apple divest its supplies by using many different partners and stop using one if they having problem with one.

EU can for sure get a most of those you mentioned from South Korea and Japan who are also having issues with US. At least with those countries EU has stronger hands than with US.

One thing I don't know is the extent to which this stuff goes on all the time but just doesn't typically get air on news. In the past I remember hearing about stories about things hitting (I think) WTO courts. That's much higher up the escalation chain. It seems like to some extent there is an interested audience for this right now so the threshold for what is reportable has shifted. That doesn't necessarily mean anything has actually changed.

Bingo. Same stuff was happening under previous administrations but it was quiet. There is no advantage to airing your laundry. Take the Indian case, by having the deal aired, Indian politicians have had to look tough. The US could have gotten a better deal by making the threat behind closed diplomatic channels.

Amateur hour at the white house. (Or shall I say Trump hour?)

>If the past few months have taught us anything, it's that Europe is so cowed and poorly-led that they'll knuckle-under and submit to whatever.

Past few months? Just look at their response to security and Russian aggression. I lost hope years ago.

It's impossible to divest from US-based Big Tech as long as the average citizen is 100% addicted to Google and Meta products.

They're addicted to the content, not the apps themselves. If they no longer had access to Instagram tomorrow, and had to use another app which offered the same content, most users would switch without looking back.

> use another app which offered the same content

The content is not on other apps though. Maybe other apps have other content, but it's not the good content that people want.

A simple Chinese-style firewall level ban would make it quite simple, actually.

>it's that Europe is so cowed and poorly-led

If you have a 27 country bloc and are rationally limited to the actions of the most timid or compromised, it's pretty easy to manipulate the actions of the whole. We know Hungary is effectively a Russia proxy, for instance, and has massively influenced the response to Russia. Similarly a couple of EU leaders (Meloni, Orban) are Trump lickspittles/mini-mes so there again they'll deny any collective response that offends their best pal.

Hungary didn’t do anything that would make a big difference in the outcomes because the West does not have enough power to adequately sanction Russia. The real problem was that EU and USA failed to respond in the first year of war by mobilizing their economies for military production. Ukraine needed shells, tanks, air defense etc in much higher volume than allies could provide. Economic sanctions are face-saving measure for European politicians, because that war has never been seen as ours, yet some token response was necessary. Look at how much “solidarity” Ukrainian refugees receive now in Europe, where Poland started deporting people and Germany is cutting financial help. Europe isn’t cowed or poorly led. You just misunderstand its obscure priorities, which are trade, jobs for Ur-Europeans and climate change (which is a real problem here), while pretending that we care about the rest of the world, peace etc.

> You just misunderstand its obscure priorities, which are trade, jobs for Ur-Europeans and climate change

Are those obscure priorities though? Putting local employment/wellfare/environment first seems justifiable to me, no?

I would argue that EU action has been pretty aligned with their actual citizens interests during this whole conflict:

- Kept domestic consequences contained (energy price)

- Prevented escalation

- Scaled up domestic military readiness especially in border nations

- Hurt destabilizing Russian expansionism via sanctions/secondhand arms almost for free

I would much prefer a principled, strongly voiced NO to neo-imperialism in the form of massive support and intervention. But would that be in the best interest of most voters? I'd argue no.

> Are those obscure priorities though

Only in the sense that they are not in the spotlight when EU officials talk about Ukraine. They don’t say “We have more important things to do”. But you are of course right, they dominate the agenda.

From the outside it seems like there's no real "leadership" in Europe.

I fear that this slowly but surely sets up a sort of "we need our own strong man" vibe over time...

I think the correct response would be to immediately ban Facebook and Twitter, to make the worst oligarchs reconsider their support of Trump and show that Europe means it (one can always dream). I don't believe slow and silent are the correct stances to adopt when the global economy is held at the whims of this egotistical manchild.

Trump can make drastic course changes much faster than Europe can ever agree on any strategy. Trying to match Trump's approach of drastic responses is a losing strategy for Europe. All Trump has to do is put 200% tariffs on LNG exports right as winter starts or something similar. Democratic governments don't last long when their population literally starts to freeze to death.

Yes, my ban of Twitter and Facebook is pure wishful thinking, I know that. But ultimately, it's a war of attrition, and it's the US vs the World. The US economy is alreay starting to show cracks, I don't think de-escalation is the way.

Nah. If Trump does that you will see how fast the Nord Stream 1/2 can be fixed.

I like how Europe's solution to Trump is to make itself a puppet of an even worse dictator. While expecting the worse dictator to not use that leverage to take over more of Europe. Who will charge 100% tariffs as well since a weak Europe is to their advantage as well.

This is not what will happen at all. I won’t go here into much detail, but the thing is, there’s a demand in Europe that cannot be fulfilled from other sources for the time being. Europe is not going to fix America or Russia, so it has to trade with them. It is a huge market for both, that cannot be ignored, and access to that market won’t be sold cheap. If they have to compete to sell us gas, great. The lesson has been learned anyway, emission targets will be hit, alternative energy sources will make us much less dependent within next 15-20 years.

You should google Cartel. Trump and Putin won't be competing. They'll be fleecing Europe for every cent they can while keeping Europe as weak as possible. Maybe manage to get a few more Russia aligned right wing governments if enough people freeze to death and Europe doesn't block the propaganda for fear of more freezing.

I understand very well what cartel is. “Cartel” formed by Trump and Putin to manipulate prices of gas for Europe is a fantasy for many reasons. Bad strategy for Russia (and I’m sure I know Russia better than you), technically hard to implement (sanctions don’t work well in both directions), will have consequences for global markets (Europe gets Russian oil via India now - are they going to be impacted?) etc etc.

I'm in EU and maybe my opinion is controversial, but I think there's something very positive for EU citizens about Trump using tarrifs to pressure the EU politically.

Why? Because it's basically our only hope of slowing down the evolution towards a centralized totalitarian EU government. It's pretty obvious that the EU wants to ban free speech (online) ASAP and fully control the public political narrative ASAP.

I feel the US/Trump is our only hope of slowing this down as a guarantee of (future) true democracy at the EU level essentially doesn't exist for us any other way. The EU sees China as an example to follow and I feel Trump/US is the only thing trying to stop EU leadership of going there.

Given where Trump seems to be going, depending on him as a saviour of anything suggests fellow traveler status. Or, perhaps, staggering naivety.

This is not a controversial take. If people can see what their future holds by seeing examples, they can take action regardless of their role in society.

Currently we're seeing a global version of a SaaS rugpull, and this should wake people up, if they're not awaken already.

I think you see the US as a warning for how the EU could develop in an authoritarian way, and so inoculate it from making the same mistakes.

I think the person you replied to thinks that the US is a shining beacon of liberty that is going to force the EU to be less authoritarian.

You're right, I read their comment wrong. My mistake. But, from the eastern border of the EU, US looks way more authoritarian than EU at this point in time.

I like to watch this small excerpt from Frank Zappa interview time to time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fam5wRXcoQE

Shining beacon of liberty, no that's ridiculous, but in this case it is forcing the EU to be less authoritarian.

I'd rather go to the China model of authoritarianism with working infrastructure (trains, what have you) and a belief in science than to the US model of anti-science regressive authoritarianism where the one percent are the new feudal lords...

The big assumption here is that authoritarianism in Europe would get you better infrastructure.

My personal belief is that for good infrastructure you want capable local industry (to build it) AND a population that is not too wealthy (because this gives additional infrastructure more relative value, keeps the workforce for building it more affordable and thus citizens less likely to oppose the whole thing).

I don't think that having european dictators would really help either of those points, so my infrastructure expectations from neofascism are quite low.

You think the "one percent" are anti-science authoritarians? Have you met them?

The Koch brothers and there anti climate science propaganda network immediately come to mind, as does the Mercer family and their sponsoring of Breitbart.

If I had said "you can't even find 2 extreme outliers among the 3 million 1%ers in the US that are opposed to one particular type of science because of their financial interests" then this would be a reasonable argument. But I didn't say that. And even then, Koch industries is a terrible example. They employ thousands of scientists and engineers.

Trump and free speech in one sentence?! Did you see what they did against protestoors in university campuses or how many people they arrested or deported for just saying their opinion?

I want whatever you're on mate.

How exactly is the US/Trump preventing the progress of this wave of authoritarianism? They're part of it, dummy. Using all their influence and power to prop up far right parties accross the continent, normalizing insane ideas about population control and ending democracy. There's no getting out of this without a genuine regain of interest in actual liberal values (not speaking of american democrats here), and Trump embodies their exact opposite.

As Portuguese living in Germany for a few decades, I feel that first we need to sort out the local mess, otherwise the central EU is already lost anyway.

Both are true IMHO. EU has structural domestic problems it keeps ignoring for too long and now it also has external new ones on top: Russia, Trump, etc. Both need fixing.

The thing is, EU politicians have been more than asleep at the wheel for over 2 decades now coasting along, and it shows in the mess we are in today: energy polices, tech development, economic growth, unsustainable welfare state, lack of strong defense, etc.

All they do is flashy speeches and virtue signaling on the international stage while not actually fixing any problems, just cashing in their paycheques till they can reitre on their generous pensions and leve the mess for the next ones to fix or just keep kicking the can down the road.

Current elites are discredited, as is (neo)liberalism, but I don't think we will have any significant shift until a really serious crisis, because overall public still cannot face new reality, and politics is downstream of culture. So it will get worse until it can get better.

>So it will get worse until it can get better.

Sure, the issue is that whenever Europe "got worse" in a serious crisis, it never ended well. Usually millions died, and it was only better after that for a little while. So what do we do?

> evolution towards a centralized totalitarian EU government

Replacing it with a centralized totalitarian US government that we don't even get to vote on.

Trump's approach to free speech: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

Except Trump is just as authoritarian as China so what difference does it make who they adore?

> Except Trump is just as authoritarian as China so what difference does it make who they adore?

How do you figure?

Oh maybe you haven't seen the news, sorry.

The capitol storming and freeing all that participated. Having major cities being taken over by the army. Stifling free press. You know all that good old dictatorship playbook stuff.

> The capitol storming and freeing all that participated.

I don't have an opinion on that. It is the president's prerogative to pardon whoever he wants, no justification necessary.

> Having major cities being taken over by the army.

That is the National Guard. Not the same thing as the Army. The Army would be a very bad option should that happen. The cities are not taken over. The mayor/police chief of those cities have no desire to reign in crime, the federal government has to step in. Depending on your political views, this is a good thing or a bad thing. Bottom line is that people much more safer now in DC than they were 2-3 weeks ago.

> Stifling free press.

For this I have zero information. Link(s)?

> The cities are not taken over. The mayor/police chief of those cities have no desire to reign in crime, the federal government has to step in. Depending on your political views, this is a good thing or a bad thing. Bottom line is that people much more safer now in DC than they were 2-3 weeks ago.

I find that the people who make statements like this don't actually live in cities. Its like you got your talking points from Stephen Miller.

> I find that the people who make statements like this don't actually live in cities. Its like you got your talking points from Stephen Miller.

I actually leave in a big city. And I do not know who Stephen Miller is.

> Why? Because it's basically our only hope of slowing down the evolution towards a centralized totalitarian EU government. It's pretty obvious that the EU wants to ban free speech (online) ASAP and fully control the public political narrative ASAP.

The countries already want to it themselves. See the UK for an example.

>It's pretty obvious that the EU wants to ban free speech (online) ASAP and fully control the public political narrative ASAP.

What specific actions has the EU done to ban free speech and control the political narrative?

I see the US deporting legal permanent residents when they peacefully protest against US policy[1]. and I see the US searching social media accounts and forbidding private accounts[2] for visa applicants. Both of those seem like Trump is attempting to control political speech more than anything the EU has done.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil

[2] To facilitate this vetting, all applicants for F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas will be instructed to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to “public.” https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...

First, there are no EU citizens. Only citizens of countries that are EU members.

Second, no EU-wide regulation can come into being without support from Council, and Council is formed by member countries.

As always, people are complaining EU this, EU that, when EU in reality is their own country, among others. It will be your country that will do the censorship etc. If your country is small and weak it has low impact on the international state of affairs, regardless of its membership in the EU. Macron or Merz have much more to say than von der Leyen.

> If the past few months have taught us anything, it's that Europe is so cowed and poorly-led that they'll knuckle-under and submit to whatever.

This is a good thing, because a lot of European led regulation has been pretty terrible.

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