These numbers of unemployment say nothing about the potential to act.Bartek wrote:This number miss unemployment rates, poverty rates within EU. But yes, here's much much, muchos better than in Syria, Lybia, Afghanistan and Iraq.eotunun wrote:The European Union used to be half a billion of ecconomicaly strong, well educated citizens. Europe could handle evacuating all of Syria for good with ease!
If Europeans chose to, if they elected politics that work in favour of the Union and in favour of more advanced ethics than hand-to-mouth thinking, we Europeans could make the difference.
So what? 20 years ago, russians were the enemy, and noeadays, half my neighbours are from the former Soviet Union with the spoken German morphing towards slavic grammar, Polish, Hungarians, Bulgarians all over the places here.To explain (at some level): part of this comes from fear, stupid and blind nationalisms and chauvinismus, which has it source in a fact that, like in other post-soviet-block countires, there's not much of national minorities, people here see people speaking other languages, from other cultures since last 10 years (or so), yet most of that people are here as tourists, students of expats. They are fear because they didn't have much chance to meet people form that (muslim, arabic) culture, apart from holiday destinations (Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey), but that's a bit different type (i know it sounds bad) of people - they have to be much more open to tourists.
The majority of Germans get this sorted out and understand why they can be happy about it. Funnily enough, you see russian flags at right winger's demos. The NPD, furthest right party of Germany's political spectrum, has a considerable fraction of former Yugoslavian and Russian folks as members.
I find a common denominator, which is, that I think the "communist" countries never were left wing oriented in the first place. That train of thought runs in the following tracks:
Left wing politics work in favour of progressive, democratic, liberalist societies while right wingers favour authoritarian systems with "A strong leader", a king, and rigid, static society. Looking at what the societies in the eastern block actually worked like, I find they actually were pretty darn right wingerish, with fake elections producing leaders who would aggressively oppress oppositions and basically freeze the state of affairs in the societies of their countries. There may have been econonical reasons for that, the lack of means to change the state of affairs. Nevertheless, things were the way they were, and two or three generations of those countries experienced static societies. As humans do, people adapted themselves. Some more, others less. The better one fit in, the better one's life was. At the top of the pile, life was pretty darn comfy there.
Add to this an anti western propaganda that mainly consisted of conspiracy theories, the core of which you find in today's right wing memes and the right winger's collective paranoia and myths of self promoting elitarism against the evidenvce daily life gave, and you end up with a mindset that's pretty close to contemporary right winger's metaphors.
I guess that is why eastern Europe is quite as receptive to right wing ideas, it surely is a pattern that screams at you when you look at what drives eastern Germany's right wingers.
Left wing ideals basically define the very core of democracies. Liberal societies right wingers aim to conquer for their own interests.
…just mys personal take on things.
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