this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
177 points (100.0% liked)

chapotraphouse

13530 readers
166 users here now

Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.

No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer

Gossip posts go in c/gossip. Don't post low-hanging fruit here after it gets removed from c/gossip

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3680700

Austria accuses this couple of a terrorist crime just for expressing solidarity for Palestinians

all 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 70 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

As a European, there is no doubt that Europe is genuinely descending into fascism. Every country puts in new, worse laws every year, the internet gets censored even heavier, more forms of protest get outlawed and control of media (TV/News/Social) is in ever fewer hands. We are quite literally at the point of punishing anybody who dares to suggest improving society somewhat improve-society

[–] [email protected] 48 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But remember it’s China that’s a police state

[–] [email protected] 54 points 9 months ago (1 children)

OUR sensible and proportionate limitations on free speech.

THEIR totalitarian censorship laws.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not being allowed to kill my wife is 1984

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago

Facing trial for my crimes is CEE CEE PEE TOTALITARIAN WINNIE THE POOH AUTHORITARIAN TIANANANANAMAN SQUARE FASCISM

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My analysis is that everything is already in place so that the bourgeoisie can use features of fascism when they need without taking the risk of giving total power to a bunch of anti-intellectual tinfoil hat nutjobs.

WW2 taught capital one lesson. You better posture as democratic and free like the US while committing the worse atrocities for money, rather than trying to combine revolutionary aesthetics and reactionary ideology.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The fascists in the 20s and 30s had to try and co-opt revolutionary aesthetics because everyone at the time wanted revolution. Communists and communism in Italy and Germany were gaining ground every year that went by. The communists in Italy were within a hair of taking power in the 20s. That’s why the capitalist west loved Mussolini - he put an end to a surging leftist movement. As the left grew in power, capital turned to fascism to counter it.

Today, the situation is entirely different. Fascism is just as much of a threat of course, but it’s going to look different from 20th c. fascism.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Totally agree. I have this horrible hypothesis that the new fascism is going to adopt the NGO style righteous consciousness of the new left. We already had a tiny bit of this in France, when a prominent far right group used an enormous budget to make a "defend Europe" demonstration where they went to the mountains to supposedly prevent immigrants from coming. The video they made had all the tropes of this mix between corporate coolness and NGO wholesomeness.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (6 children)

What I don't understand is why governments seem so willing to take action against expressions of solidarity with Palestinians. They routinely ignore activism and do whatever they want, and it works well. Activism has been a dead end for decades, why suddenly get weird about it? Are they worried that people will care this time around? Or that they know they're wrong and feel the need to double-down? It seems extreme and potentially counter to their own interests to draw so much attention to the issue when it feels like they could just go back to the standard playbook of putting out strong statements and doing nothing until the problem goes away.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

That's because this is the first thing in decades that moved westerners into the good direction instead of their usual state of either choking on boot or being political amoebas. And the govts are fucking scared that it will lead, with combination of political and economical decline, to something way more serious. So the govts who didn't had to deal with any dissent for as long, reflexively revert to the first thought of all bourgeois dictatorship: police repression.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (2 children)

So is this kind of like the George Floyd protests for Europe? The pro-Palestinian protests in Europe seem more intense than anywhere else outside the Middle East

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Yeah, something like that i think.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I literally am hearing hardly protests going in in Europe, outside of the UKKK. Those that do, fr don't show up in my feed until like 2 days later

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago

Activism in solidarity is dangerous because it promotes internationalism, which is the only thing that can actually threaten the liberal state.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago
  1. Depending on the country, there is a large Arab and Muslim population (or Palestinian diaspora in already Islamic countries). They're vocal about the violence imposed on them, their families, and their people.
  2. Israel's lobbying industry is very strong. They pour a lot of money into various countries and the politicians and businessmen risk losing their income if they don't squash dissent
  3. The US will punish you. Zionism is non negotiable
  4. In the US and elsewhere, it may be election season and having thousands of people calling your candidate a supporter of genocide is not a good look. Even if they successfully arrest you and whatever, people are recording, the message spreads, and your name becomes associated with genocide. The average person may not fully believe it, but because of number 1, they may be hesitant let their own names be tainted because of someone they support
[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago

There's a decent number of large state actors (most of the non-western world and even some western states) who actually agree with the activists this time.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (4 children)

I don't know if this is true for Austria, but I've heard that for West Germany, they tried to atone for their guilt in the Holocaust by fully supporting Israel, and any criticism of this policy is looked at as antisemitism.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It's an artificial guilt especially in West Germany. If they had any guilt then they would not be cheerleading another genocide.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Exactly. Germany supports this genocide precisely because they learnt nothing from the Holocaust apart from how to run an 80 year PR campaign and assuage their own cultural guilt instead of addressing the root causes.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

It's the liberal way of accommodating fascism

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Germans have learned that the Holocaust was a 'dirty' thing and they are ashamed to have dirtied themselves and their home by committing it on european soil.
Now they focus on deportations, weapons exports and training foreign militants. The barbarians have joined the empire and become 'civilized'.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Honestly I think it has much less to do with their guilt from the holocaust, and way more to do with keeping fascism, white supremacy, and western settler-colonialism alive and well into the 21st century.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The absolutely most charitable view is basically that, yes, but they've done so while never, ever truly addressing the underlying and material issues (basically every German institution has been riddled with unpunished Nazis allowed to hold onto their beliefs). But even if one takes that view, it's a strategy that has been pretty disastrous and counter-productive. This excellent article about how supposed Holocaust guilt as a national identity has become a twisted, toxic, and essentially racist tool of exclusion and whiteness is worth a read.

Personally I'm more cynical. I don't see most of Germany's supposed guilt and public awareness raising about the horrors of the Holocaust as much more than an 80 year PR campaign designed to reintegrate themselves with the white powers that were on the other side of the war and avoid being a pariah state. I think that the majority of Germans simply wanted to turn away from the horrors that they shared at least some small blame for and as a result turned a blind eye to the fact that German business, public institutions, and government was still riddled with unpunished, unrepentant fascists. And that those very fascists, with the defacto support of useful liberals as always, worked hard to disguise or rebrand white supremecy for the rest of the 20th century.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The Germans that did the Holocaust didn’t regret anything other than losing the war. The “culture of atonement” is a modern day invention. It’s revisionist history.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Hard agree.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

A minor point of clarification: the former FRG allowed Nazis into every institution and basically let former Nazis be full participants in society. The former GDR was much, much more thorough in dealing with Nazis and did not let them anywhere near institutional power and influence.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Oh completely. One of the many reasons the wrong Germany won. I meant the FRG and German state since the wall came down.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago

AFAIK the Austrian way of dealing with the Holocaust is to tell themselves a story about how they were simply victims of the big bad Germans as well.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

I struggle to think of any other issue that the public opinion is so out of step with the position of the people in power.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 9 months ago (1 children)

We really are seeing what the limit of freeze-peach that exists in the west.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Freeze peach

[–] [email protected] 40 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, the austrian trots actually have solid and good positions. They have been hard at work since 07.10 to educate people on Palestine, and have been solid in their solidarity the whole time. I disagree on other matters with thwm, but rn, they are doing good work in my opinion.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

was just about to say, i clown on trots a lot, but most of them that are serious, especially these folks, are still infinitely better than a bernie demsucc. facing state violence just for expressing solidarity with palestine is both an insane reality and also importantly consistent work.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They are part of the IMT, which is the only Trot party that I read. Their internationalist line is pretty solid, since they consider the USA to be the biggest, most dangerous Imperialist power.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

my only beef is that they take every opportunity to demonise the USSR and suck off Trotsky, and I think it's really funny in the UK that it took them over 30 years and several additional succdem purges to get them to give up entryism like their former comrades in the CWI

I still subscribe to the paper though cause you gotta support whatever Left media there is

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

They are at least very well read, you can talk about the USSR with trots and have a productive and respectful discussion. Other groups that actually demonise the USSR(western rad libs), just insult you, and refuse to engage with any argument.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (1 children)

the more I read about shit like this the more I wonder if we ought to show them what that word really means

:anti-thatcher-action:

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

you know I actually decided to look into this, and there is an argument to be made against terrorism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQDb6DQFDvE

not sure if I 100% agree with this take but it is worth thinking about.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Hitler country does Hitler things