Haha yeah you guys sure did a good job at standing up to those brexit blokes!
EU vs USA
Submitted 1 day ago by Beep@lemmus.org to [deleted]
https://i.redd.it/gebmcbtgryrg1.jpeg
Comments
Rooskie91@discuss.online 4 hours ago
Nalivai@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
throwing soup at paintings
That was Just Stop Oil, also a UK group. Their goal was to make people talk about them and what they stand for. Here we are, 4 years later, talking about it, so I guess that was a success.
Not only you missed the mark, but you named two countries that are quite known for people successfully standing up to the government in recent decades, Germany through unions and strikes, and France through throwing bricks at rich people’s buildings and setting some stuff on fire. Both seem to be something yanks need to actually learn.Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
That was great britain. Fuckers don’t even wanna be european it seems. Their little island location sure has rotted their brains into thinking they’re something special.
Theoriginalthon@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Just to let you know the approx stats of the population: 1/4 voted leave, 1/4 votes remain, 1/4 didn’t bother turning up to vote, 1/4 weren’t registered/too young to vote
jeffep@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Divide and conquer
greenMeanHoppinMachine@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Exactly.
I hate posts like this. If people on the left could unite against capitalist billionaires we would stand a chance.
Instead, we attack each other while they laugh all the way to the bank.
arschfidel@discuss.tchncs.de 7 hours ago
As a German, I often find the French protests inspiring. They seem enthusiastic and convinced that they can make a difference, whereas in Germany many people use their perceived insignificance as an excuse for why it’s pointless to even try.
horse@feddit.org 56 minutes ago
Can confirm. Germans are the most pathetic, docile people. Love nothing more than moaning and complaining about everything, but don’t you dare break any rules or norms to do something about it!
(Source: am German)
Prior_Industry@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
The American farmers seem to grumble for a handout and if it doesn’t come go bust. The french farmers on the other hand, engage honey badger mode!
Arcadeep@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
To be more specific, American farmers vote against handouts and vote for things that ruin the economy, then beg for handouts, then go bust and blame leftists for it
standarduser@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 hours ago
Minnesota farmers seem to be closest to the European
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Hungarian here, all we get is chronic alcoholism, then after enough cognitive decline, they become Fidesz supporters.
BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
I think people in America are at just the right amount of comfortable to want to protest but afraid of losing the life they have to oppression they may face for participating in the protest. Most people who aren’t minorities are not directly facing the governments oppression until recently when they started shooting white people, so they can limit themselves to posting hashtags and strongly worded comments online, but active disobedience could cost them their job and thus access to semi affordable healthcare and the ability to pay their bills and debts. Aka its the system working as designed to keep the masses complacent, it will take actual starvation and deprivation to happen to the majority for them to fully participate in fighting the system
xav@programming.dev 1 hour ago
That has a name. “Cowardice”.
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 5 hours ago
It’s not even like they don’t protest (eg No Kings just now) & don’t have truly inspiring figures, but damn they have to fight for every little bit of anything with way more fronts than they could ever keep up.
And as anywhere, protesting where it hurts (ie financial/power results) gets violent immediately.
Maybe that’s the issue, they respect (rich people’s) private property too much, and it’s too well protected in various ways.
orioler25@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Getting really tired of Eurotrash acting like they didn’t depend on US imperialism to have their standard of living today, and pretending that they’ve never heard of the Black Panthers. Did COVID rot your brains? You forget Minneapolis?
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
What the US doesn’t do enough compared to Europe are General Strikes, rather than protesting.
Protests don’t really hit the Owner classe were it hurts them the most and can easilly be portrayed as a violent rabble or simply not talked about (both things which in countries were the entirety of the Press is captured, are the norm in terms of news coverage).
For all the feeling of release of righteous rage they give to protestors, Protests by themselves are just people walking and shouting (with at most small shops rather than big companies suffering) and thus are easy for the powerful to ignore.
General Strikes, on the other hand, have a way bigger impact on the money making of the people who have a disproportionate amount of power and there are even more impactfull options when the HQs of certain companies or the homes of very rich people are targetted.
Unless they’re properly inconveniences the powerful only pay attention to Protests when they’re a signal that there is insatisfaction amongst the general population which, if not addressed, will lead to things much worse than Protests, and in countries were things don’t actually go further than protesting like the US, the powerful can easilly not care about protests.
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
We have some monstrously large hurdles to clear in this regard. What’s working against a general strike:
- No social safety net for housing or medical until you’re below the poverty line for a tax year
- Bankruptcy, poor credit, limits future employment options (e.g. background checks)
- Most industries are not unionized, so your job can easily be filled in your absence
- Really high unemployment right now for skilled sectors like IT
- A lot of people are paycheck-to-paycheck thanks to a host of factors like high rent
To say nothing of all the illegal shit government and private business will do to end and/or prevent a strike.
It’s not impossible, but it does mean that any reasonable person would like to know that millions upon millions of others will be striking alongside them. Support networks for unemployed strikers along with strategies to deal with scabs would be a good start, too.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 hours ago
Absolutelly: the system in the US is designed to remove choice from the “riff-raff”.
Then again to a large extent in the past it was also so in those EU countries talked about here (and, as an EU resident, let me tell that there’s a lot of effort going on around here slowly reverting things back to those days)
Further, people too have make it so in the US, for example by not joining Unions or by parroting propaganda about how Free a country America is (which is pretty close the opposite of true: real Freedom in America is something only the rich have).
Whilst I dislike the near-religious take on the “Founding Fathers” of America (who at best were “progressive” for slave owners) the “American Constitution” (a prototype for Democracy which is riddled with problems, hence the current situation), many things from that time including some said by American Founding Fathers are eternal truths, such as the one about “eternal vigilance”, and the one about the tree of freedom needing to be periodically refreshed with the blood of patriots.
butwhyishischinabook@piefed.social 2 hours ago
looks at Hungary
Riiiiiiiight 🙄
bokherif@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Maybe it’s because the law enforcement shoots you dead and shoot you again if you act up.
GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Maybe it’s because they know you don’t have the gutito shoot back.
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 5 hours ago
Where are the flock cameras and local PD with tanks in the top picture?
mrnobody@reddthat.com 1 day ago
I think too many people are too self conscious to join a protest. I think they’re (protests) belittled too much to feel impactful, and a lot of that lies in the division falsely created by the media.
rozodru@piefed.world 1 day ago
all by design. Notice how the No Kings protests happen on a Saturday? you know…when the majority of people have time off work. that’s the problem. When employment is tied to healthcare and the fact you can’t take time off from it to, like, take back your country combined with many states being at will employment states….yeah it’s all by design to prevent the mass populace from rebelling.
For these protests to REALLY be effective they need to jam up downtown cores at 8am on a weekday and last throughout the day. but they never will. and if they did the turn out would be minimal. My point is you CAN peacefully protest but when it’s on a weekend then no one cares. you’re not hindering anything.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
That right there is a big fucking part of why I feel such a deep sense of ennui about the likely outcome of any protests, and any impact it might have on our political system. So much money and effort and time has been exerted to convert the American economic system into a neofeudal serfdom that it’s going to take a genuine catastrophe for anything to change meaningfully - and by change meaningfully, I mean “reverse wealth disparity and rampant corporatism”.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 21 hours ago
Part of the reason why the protests in 2020 were so big and lasted so long was because if quarantine. A lot of people got laid off. They didn’t have jobs to go to, so there was nothing stopping them from protesting.
When the AI bubble bursts and the recession/depression goes full swing with mass layoffs, I think we’ll see more protests that last weeks or months at a time…
SeeMarkFly@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
…yet.
KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 1 day ago
This is a weird statement coming less than 24 hours after the largest protest in the history of the country.
Arcadeep@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
As much as I am glad No Kings had so many people attend it, and I am glad for the small good it does, it barely counts as a protest.
There are no goals, no demands, no threats. It didn’t inconvenience anyone (especially not the people in charge of the country) or cause commotion in the least. It was on a saturday with predefined start and end times.
In other words, it accomplished very little other than potentially being a networking event for like minded people. If everyone who showed up to a No Kings event actually protested, things would be changing the next fucking day
gmtom@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Cool. Now tell me what did that protest achieve?
Hell, can you even tell me what the actual aim of the protest was? What were the demands? What was the threat if they didn’t get their demands?
Because otherwise it was just a fan meetup for people that don’t like Trump to show each other their quippy signs.
MapleFawn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I feel like the point is less about size and more about the methods. I think it aims at the issue highlighted by an other comment that this protest while good doesn’t really disrupt the system.
mrnobody@reddthat.com 1 day ago
What protest? Apparently I live under a rock, didn’t see anything about it.
ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 1 day ago
I honestly barely heard a peep about it.
yermaw@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
Starts feeling pride
Remembers UK isnt EU
le shameface
basxto@discuss.tchncs.de 7 hours ago
It doesn’t say EU anywhere
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Post title. But it can mean European Union or just be short for Europe.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s an inflammatory comment but it’s one worth repeating: a protest with a permission slip is a parade.
There is one obvious permission structure and one non obvious permission structure at play here. The first and most obvious permission structure at play here is the state, and what the state is willing to accept in the form of protest. The other, less obvious permission structure, is what we as a collective society are willing to accept and consider valid as a form of protest.
We often focus on the first without acknowledging the latter. There are some absolutely legitimate criticisms to be made of protests which seek permission from the state.
What we don’t often talk about is that protest, for it to be effective, also needs to make the other members of society around you uncomfortable. the discomfort _is_the point, and modern protests in the US are done in a way to reduce discomfort and inconvenience for all, both the government and the protesters, but also society. And if the discomfort created isn’t so bad, protest can and will be readily ignored.
The elephant in the room is that while peaceful protest worked, it was effective in a time where it was fairly novel and society didn’t have great ways of compartmentalizing it. The state and society adapted tools to be able to manage the inconveniences created from protest in such a way that protest is basically 100% ineffective in the US.
If a protest is safe, it can be safely ignored. If a protest doesn’t inconvenience people in a manner that causes them to change behavior, it has no teeth.
Imaginary_Stand4909@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 hours ago
Oh so BLM didn’t happen huh?
In some cities people literally set fucking buildings on fire, and guess what? It didn’t change shit. Mindless fires, looting, and destruction of property doesn’t mean you’ll magically get the government to care. It gets all the local mom-and-pops to close and the grocery stores to leave, giving you mothing but a food desert.
I’m so fucking tired of all the EU people on Lemmy making fun of people for at least getting out there and showing others we should care. Senless violence will not solve all of our issues. Someone could shoot Trump tomorrow and sure, maybe we’d get Civil War (so fun am I right!), but that doesn’t mean his chain of succession won’t exist. Are we going to kill the entire fucking cabinet then?
Also isn’t the UK struggling with Isreal protest arrest right now? Where’s their mass violence and fires? Why don’t we care about them?
I’m getting fucking tired of coming onto this site to see endless outsiders eagerly jeering at us to risk our lives in a random blaze of glory that will lead nowhere without a true guide and rebellion. The gun fetishsts are not the ones who hate Trump. They fucking love him. Us normal people hate the idea of touching them. The only people willing to do a suicide mission are those who have nothing to lose, and most people aren’t there. Go be Luigi, and watch how you either die or get stuck in jail limbo for decades. What did shooting the CEO change? Absolutely nothing. Our healthcare system still sucks, because this isn’t a violence problem, it’s a legislation issue.
Should we make fun of HK protesters for being peacful? Iran got a dictator blown to bits and is still going to be in hell.
I genuinely will be curious to see how all of these armchair rebels react if there’s ever a case of mass government corruption in their country in a decade or so. I don’t want for anyone to be in a situation like this, but we’ll see if you keep that same attitude up when it’s your lives on the line.
roserose56@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
We see how do you solve your problems which lead to nothing. Did you also asks us if we want to come in this website, and see endless posts about how you can’t solve your problem? And tell me to block them, which I did.
I guess you guys gonna wait for elections or something, and people around here will get more spam about USA and a war that no one wanted.
snoons@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
IMO peaceful protests do have an impact; however, there is a point where those stop working and more direct action needs to be taken.
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Unfortunately our lives need to become shit enough that being beat or shot is no longer a deterrent.
BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Luthens plan in Andor to create more conflict and oppression in the galaxy to get the people to rise up in rebellion against the empire makes more and more sense with each passing day.
gizmonicus@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Yep, but if it does reach that tipping point, it’s going to get very ugly.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
MLK’s strategy only worked because the powers that be understood that Malcom X was the alternative.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 day ago
MLKs strategies were effective because they were novel and the state hadn’t built up the tools to deal with them. They had been caught off guard.
The state long ago developed strategies to deal with protest including the use of media for narrative management, and the long term the socialization of “peaceful protest as the only acceptable form of protest” among left wing populations.
The state adapted and evolved to be able to safely ignore peaceful protest, and also ran a long term propaganda campaign that “peaceful protest” is the only form of protest acceptable, and even further, has propagandized to convince people it’s the only form of protest even possible or effective.
MLK was effective because the state hadn’t dealt with those strategies before. They adapted to deal with those strategies, then built funnels for grievances to focus exclusively on the tactics they had adapted to be able to ignore.
mech@feddit.org 1 day ago
looking around at things in 2026
Did it really work?
FosterMolasses@leminal.space 1 day ago
Problem is people don’t want to out of fear of the police
Is this not the point of the whole thing lol
That’s like saying in 1939 “I would resist harder if not for the Nazi officers… guess I’ll comply a few more years.”
snoons@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Exactly. It’s the crux of the issue. Peaceful protests should work, and sometimes do; however, there is always the ability of the authorities to just… ignore because they have various police forces to maintain the status quo (maintain order).
Then what? What is the next course of action? Voting didn’t work, peaceful protests didn’t work… what next? If reforming the current system hasn’t worked for the last century and more, what is the alternative?
CIA_chatbot@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Peaceful protests only make an impact when they turn violent. And usually only when the Govt. initiates the violence. Right now the Govt. WANTS the violence because then they can declare martial law and stop the midterm elections.
boopickle1310@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Women got the right to vote through non-violence. This is completely untrue that nonviolence has done nothing. If the numbers get big enough, the government will begin to be afraid of us, again. The billionaires might be afraid again if we show up in the millions to their front door.
Battle_Masker@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
not so much police, but the fact that leaked documents that are all but official government documents showed that they’re activiely planning for protests to turn violent so they can go full Stalin and start shooting, arresting, and executing people on the grounds of “fuck you that’s why”
chunes@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Have people already forgotten the summers of 2016 and 2018? I can promise you Americans can riot with the best of them.
The difference is they have the capability to completely censor riots now.
fantasyocean@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 hours ago
[deleted]Lumisal@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Sure, the OP for some weird reason didn’t use a modern picture, but he’s a video from 2 years ago:
agent_nycto@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I see the propaganda is working, soon no one will remember Blair mountain or any labor history!
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m just positive the blair mountain signs were some real zingers
CircaV@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Totally. US citizens are armed to the teeth and the best they can do is knit hats.
Ryanmiller70@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Too many people in the US keep pushing the idea that “violence never solves anything” when the opposite is absolutely true. If you want positive long lasting change, then you’re gonna have to get your hands dirty with more than just glue and paint.
Nagrom@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I laughed out loud because it’s true.
LesserAbe@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Protests aren’t the only thing that activists in the US are doing. It’s not an either or situation.
SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 1 day ago
They still don’t have color photography in Europe?
Lumisal@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
We only don’t have it during protests because people keep burning the colors away with trash fires or Molotov cocktails. Unfortunately the Molotov - proof camera never materialized after Nokia went bankrupt long ago.
Gates9@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
It took a depression to get people’s asses in gear last time
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Well then it appears we’re in luck!
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world 1 day ago
They’re doing more than you! What have you done?! ReeeEEEEEE
agent_nycto@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Ah yes, any successful act of violence on the system will definitely be told to me by the system, which is owned by like, 4 people. Sometime about the revolution and television