Comment by s_dev
4 days ago
>How comfortable are you guys with the fact that EU countries allow prosecutors and sometimes even police officers to issue their own search warrants without meaningful judicial review?
This is a hilarious 'just asking questions' concern that doesn't address the complete 180 in direction the US is taking and descending in to authoritarianism while moving against the world order it primarily helped build post WWII while threatening other liberal democracies like Canada and Denmark with invasions.
It's a complete false equivalence. ICE agents have straight up murdered two US citizens in broad daylight without consequence and you're querying the nature of some search warrants in the EU.
His comment did not even mention the US. Only critiquing the authoritarianism going on in the EU. One of the issues with modern politics is everyone wants to deflect.
I need to host my emails somewhere. This means that you can't reject the EU in isolation, you have to compare it to the alternatives. And the most prevalent alternative is the US
Now of course if somebody has a better alternative that's neither in the EU nor US (nor Russia, or China) that'd be interesting to hear about
Switzerland, maybe? I've been a happy migadu.com customer for years already.
8 replies →
Anywhere you can rent a VPS or dedicated server, install exim or mox or mailcow. Configure dns correctly and you're good to go
10 replies →
The post is about moving stuff from US to EU, so it's not like the US is brought up out of nowhere.
The comment does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a thread where the topic is, eminently, migrating away from US services to EU ones.
>The comment does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a thread where the topic is, eminently, migrating away from US services to EU ones.
Even then, there's no interesting conversation to be had unless we pretend it does.
2 replies →
> critiquing the authoritarianism going on in the EU
What?
It's happening in the EU too, just not at such a fast pace than in other regions. And it's still far away from authoritarianism.
Currently it's just smaller pieces and no bigger agenda is visible (or even exiting). But there are constantly new regulations that would make an authoritarian coup (like currently in the US) easier.
There's a ton of disinformation in right-wing media in the USA that the EU is either already an authoritarian police state, or rapidly becoming one.
For example: https://www.heritage.org/europe/commentary/europe-wants-be-t...
> the complete 180 in direction the US is taking and descending in to authoritarianism while moving against the world order
The EU is just one AfD win away from doing the same thing. It's not immune to this issue either, you have the same problem happening right under your noses.
Not really.
Most European countries have parliamentary democracies.
It's not a winner-takes-all system ala presidential and semi-presidential republics where effectively individuals:
1. rule without opposition. There's no opposition it's not represented in that branch.
2. rule without even needing support of their own parties. The Italian prime minister or the German chancellor have to fight every day in parliament to have support of their parties and the other parties coalitions.
3. a single individual can claim popular mandate. In parliamentary systems you vote for parties/coalitions, not individuals
There's a reason why this authoritarian trend goes from the Philippines, Nicaragua, to Belarus, to Turkey, to Russia, to most African countries and now US. They are all presidential republics.
The last parliamentary democracy to turn authoritarian has been...Sri Lanka. Almost 50 years ago. Presidential ones? It's basically every year.
Systems with winner-takes-all mechanics do not represent voters, and power is too concentrated.
Parliamentary democracies might be labeled as less efficient, that I can agree, but they have strong antibodies to such people.
See Austria or the Netherlands as examples where strong far right authoritarian-wannabes individuals became prime ministers...and then nothing happened and their governments didn't last.
I agree that presidential systems in particular are problematic, and the EU is lucky that Germany and France use parliamentary systems. But the nasty thing about populism is that it happens in waves and it does overtake parliaments. We need only look at what happened to the UK with Brexit for a recent example. It's not hard to imagine that a wave of far-right populism could one day overtake Germany, or send France's RN, Austria's FPO or Poland's PIS to a majority position.
We can cross our fingers and hope that nobody would work with them (I know that Germany's parties all have a pinky promise not to work with AfD), but it was only 10 years ago that everyone in the US was laughing at the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency – and now here we are, much sobered. These things happen, and AfD, or RN, or whoever, could wreak havoc to the EU from within the EU if they took power and started working with Hungary to block EU legislation, veto sanctions, defund programs and more.
1 reply →
Europeans are so blind to how they are essentially on the same path as the US, the US just got there first.
While there is a trend toward the right in many (not all) EU countries, it's a far cry from the shit show on the other side of the Atlantic.
Most European countries have functioning legal and electoral systems, and more than two parties. On top of that, constitutional courts aren't political appointments.
So it would be incredibly hard for a political entity like AfD or RN to gain full and absolute power like the orange has achieved. Even in the worst cases, those parties usually only have ~30% popular support at most, which usually translates to at most ~30-40% of seats in parliament. Which means they cannot even get parliamentary majority, and probably can't get head of state either.
Americans just like to pretend things aren't that bad and they aren't the only ones falling into the abyss.
5 replies →
Not every European country, but unfortunately many countries are at risk. Someone like Orban is so deeply and openly corrupt, you have to wonder why anyone besides his cronies vote for him. But as an autocrat, you apparently only have to chase lgbti people and immigrants to cheer people up. Going to CPAC with all your kinky friends doing the Sieg Heils on stage (yes, that happened, even if someone doesn't want to hear that). Conservatism is a depressing view of the world.
And then you have all kinds of charlatans that are basically Orban doubles. You hear the same stupid talking points and bullshit, the same cozying up with Putin. And to top it off, the USA has openly vowed to fuel and fund that fire of self destruction, so the billionaires can eat the corpse. Because that is where the term conservatism came from, to conserve the power of the king and the ruling elites, as a god given construct (the only original moral aspect of conservatism).
Lol what does ICE have to do with a local police officer being able to bully a tech worker into providing your private communications?
what example are you talking about? assuming it's non-UK would like to read about it.
> the complete 180 in direction the US is taking and descending in to authoritarianism
A similar (though currently a little bit less marked) trend can also be observed for the EU and EU countries.
AFAIK there's no murdering of citizens going on in any EU member country by the same countries government at the moment.
[flagged]
4 replies →
>(though currently a little bit less marked)
Again this is a false equivalence, 'a little less marked' isn't close to imparting the true state of things and to be honest a little disingenuous.
The EU is not in full motion to dismantle democracy across her 27 states. The US should it not turn this around in the midterms is finished as a liberal democracy.
So 'ah yes but Hungary' doesn't persuade me even though I'll concede it's a problem for the EU. If Tisza is elected in April, Hungary will be on course to turn things around. So you're comparing 1 out of 27 to 50 out of 50 states.
[flagged]
11 replies →
> The US should it not turn this around in the midterms is finished as a liberal democracy.
I wish there was an easy way for me to bet against the imminent fall of the United States as predicted by so many internet commenters. I don’t like what the current administration is doing, either, but I would readily bet against all of these “the end is just around the corner” or “the empire is dying” takes in a heartbeat.
2 replies →
Trends are various. You had Poland remove rightwing goverment 2 years ago (yes and elect righwing president few months ago). Romania electing a European centric president.
We can go on. EU is not a single country, not a single community of people.
I'm not advertising the US here or trying to troll. I'm an European pointing out things about the European system that many here will not have thought about.
>It's a complete false equivalence. ICE agents have straight up murdered two US citizens in broad daylight without consequence and you're querying the nature of some search warrants in the EU.
Maybe keep your US nonsense to yourself?
I’m in the US and generally pretty level-headed. Nothing makes me become a red-blooded patriot nationalist temporarily faster than seeing Europeans completely ignore the similarities in our political ills. It always boils down to, “but it’s the good kind of authoritarianism we have that preserves social order!!!” as if that has never failed to produce desired results. Thanks for being much more rational. We have a concerning political trend here in the US, it can’t be denied, but the EU is following in step.
Yeah, it's really bizarre how this has to be turned into a competition. We have stupid problems in the EU that don't exist in the US and vice-versa.
The way this particular part of our system works is downright horrifying, but it's exotic enough that very few people (even lawyers) will be familiar with it.
Exactly.
What the EU fails to realize is that rights have always been dennied due to the "great good". Nazi Germany did it. The USSR did it. China does it today.
So by claiming "there are good reasons" creates no distinction between them an authoritarians. They need to have a better reason.
Sorry what? While there are right wing idiots in various governments in the EU, the Trump admin is on a completely different level. Also the bosses of big tech are clamouring over each other to s** him off.
I’m not particularly patriotic or bothered about nations in general, but the yanks can go take a hike.
1 reply →
Just saying, the vast majority of services people are moving from would be US based given it is where all of big tech comes from. So comparing it to the US is relevant?
If you're trying to say the eu isn't a saint either, sure.
>If you're trying to say the eu isn't a saint either, sure.
I'm not trying to say anything about anyone else besides the EU. Therefore I'm certainly not trying to compare EU to anyone else.
I am an European pointing out issues with the local system, issues that many commenters here clearly aren't aware of given how many replies seem to think that they'll be just fine as long as they don't host in Hungary.
[dead]
[flagged]
What part of this are you disputing?
Is the commenter the "delusionally stupid" one or did you mean something else?
[flagged]
What a disingenuous comparison. The wiki article you've linked ("List of killings by law enforcement officers in Germany") sums to 552 people over the last 100 years. In contrast, the corresponding wiki article on the US ("Lists of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States" [1]) estimates more than 900 deaths per year. Indeed, the number of slayings is so great that the article does not tabulate the sum in a single table (as the German article does) but instead links to separate wiki articles with tabulated results by month.
---
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor...
>The wiki article you've linked ("List of killings by law enforcement officers in Germany") sums to 552 people over the last 100 years
I think we can probably agree that this number is not very accurate.
1 reply →
Per capita vs absolute numbers seems particularly relevant here.
There are four times as many people in the US.
Germany has four cities with around a million people.
The U.S. has at least 15.
Also, absolute numbers don't reflect justified shootings, which is an entirely different and much more nuanced conversation.
No part of this should be taken to mean that I don't think there's a problem in the US, I just object to complex issues being overly simplified.
1 reply →
> 552 people over the last 100 years
What a disingenuous comment. Do we really think that is the case?
You ignored my other link. Imagine the outrage EU would have had if US seized immigrants jewelry. Yet, Denmark gleefully does that.
Funnily, I had friends from Europe participate in the No Kings protest here, while coming from countries that have literal kings.
5 replies →