Oh, they’re 10 or 20 years ahead of the rest of Europe: over a decade ago the local equivalent of MAGA whilst taking over their rightmost main party ended up causing Brexit and in government with an absolute parliamentary majority (and, remember, Britain is not a presidential system).

In most of Europe the Far-Right is not in power, much less fucking their country up with something as bad as Brexit.

They’re so Racist that during the whole Brexit shitshow racism towards other Europeans became pretty overt at all levels.

Also having lived in Britain and with friends which unlike me didn’t look like the locals, I heard lots of stories from them about being discriminated against in Britain and even have one myself (you could tell I was not a local if I spoke, since my accent wasn’t any of the local ones).

Whilst Britain is good at image management, what’s under that carefully cultivated image is quite a lot darker.

Having lived in Britain during the time of the Referendum and seen all of that shitshow first hand, I would say that Brexit is the product of British Politics having been taken over by the local version of MAGA (so, less loud and obnoxious, more posh sleaze).

This was to the point that they even had a Trump lookalike called Boris Johnson.

You seem to somehow have missed the whole Brexit shitshow, including the Tory party becoming openly Anti-Immigrant, Racist and ultra-nationalist with massive national delusions of grandeur (made oh so painfully obvious when the pranced into the EU exit negotiation loudly proclaiming they held all the cards, ultimatilly showing that they did not and not getting the things they wanted the most).

(And lets not forget Britain’s very own version of Trump: Boris Johnson)

You also seem to have missed the insane Civil Society Surveillance levels as disclosed in the Snowden Revelations and the recent legislation forcing Britons to ID themselves on the Internet, which is now being further tightenned with proposed restrictions to VPN use.

And lets not forget the anti-Demonstration legislation of the last decade as well as the anti-Terrorism legislation and how it was recently used to arrest anti-Genocide demonstrators as “Terrorism Supporters”.

This is not normal in Democracy.

I’ve lived in multiple countries in Europe, including Britain, and in my view the UK is the most Fascist country in Europe after Belarous and Russia, it’s just that British politicians don’t play the loud and obnoxious strongman role like Trump or Orban, they play the posh vaguelly aristocratic type who rather than fight the Justice System subverts it to make it a tool to punish those of the riff-raff who are a bit more uppity, hence things like using anti-Terrorism legislation to crack down on those who demonstrate against His Majesty’s Government’s active support of Genocide.

Granted, given how far the Overtoon Window is to the Right in Britain, I can understand that whilst those outside see the present day Tories as a Far-Right party, for those inside that kind of politics is now so normalized that it’s hard for most to recognize just how Far-Right the present day Tories are both in broader European terms and even in historical British terms, so they only see the even-more-Far-Right insane nutters of Reform as Far-Right.

Mind you in my experience the shift to and normalization of the Far-Right is one of the things Britain is ahead of the rest of Europe in: I’m seing happening were I am now the kind of thing I saw happen in Britain over a decade ago.

Having lived there, I agree that Britain is the most Fascist nation in Europe after Belarous and Russia, though theirs is the Posh Aristocratic version, so it’s not as loud and obvious as “strongman” Fascism.

Or gets the ones who do speak at least one foreign language, which aren’t going to be the close-minded kind that thinks everything that matters starts and stops with America, so that’s also good.

Sounds like the police in Britain has automated arresting people for the “crime” of walking on the street whilst not looking white enough.

Reference material

It’s not only misogyny.

Social media absolutely removes the inhibitions of just about all kinds of assholes, builds pat-each-other-on-the-back support groups for them by putting them together with like minded assholes and then algorithmically shovels all that shit on everybody else because anything that elicits strong emotions means more clicks and anger from being offended is one such emotion.

By the way, this also applies to unhealthy gender expectations on males (including misandry), though this being The Guardian I expect this is about the UK, which IMHO (having lived there and also elsewhere in Europe) is a country with serious problems when it comes to gender expectations around women and insidious “benevolent” sexism (“benevolent” not because it’s good but because it follows the whole “women are fragile creatures” and subsequent subtle disemplowering of women “to protect them” or because “they’re emotional creatures”) which far too often taints the articles in The Guardian because they’re very much from the British upper-middle class Acceptable Feminism, which tends to underestimate the strength of women and favor “protection” “solutions” over empowerment and agency.

So whilst I absolutely believe in all of this and in misogyny online being very bad, especially in certain countries, the choice of focusing on misogyny rather than as a whole in the problem of social media’s Profit Driven amplification of societal dysfunctions in general, is very much a typical privileged British Upper Middle Class “Third Wave Feminist” perspective and choice.

It still makes no difference: in the bully pattern of behaviour early concessions just increase the likelihood and intensity of latter violence, since they’re read by the bully as proof of weakness hence the victim is seen as less likely to be able to violently reciprocate.

Note how the whole Greenland Invasion thing, which came after the whole strong-arming and concessions on Trade interaction, was only walked back after several large European nations started deploying trigger forces to Greenland and planning for a military confrontation with the US.

The EU leadership originally displayed the same kind of reaction to Russian aggression at a point were Russia was back to following a logic of “Might makes right” in Crimea and with Georgia (same mindset as the US under Trump) and that led to the recent invasion and attempt at full conquest of Ukraine, so how long does it takes for those crooks to learn the lesson that certain kinds of leaders in very nationalist countries only ever respond to actual pain and proof of Might (not necessarilly purelly of the Military kind) and see attempts at finding a common ground as weakness.

I mean, any half way competent leadership of a large nation of trade block should have had Psychological Profiles made on at least the leaders of major nations.

It’s not by chance that they’ve been talking about a “final solution for the Palestinian problem” for years.

LOL!

Absolutelly!

With the US the EU should ACT, not talk - there is no point in talking to actors which are neither honorable nor reasonable: even if they agree with you it means nothing at all because their actions and their words don’t match.

Removing itself from any treaties with the US that allow recognition of American Copyrights and Patents in the EU would be a wonderful start, and a proper crackdown on the many crimes of American tech companies operating in the European Free Trade area would also be wonderful.

Sure, a proper trade war with the US would also hurt the EU, but better a short sharp pain as that rotten tooth is pulled than leaving it there as the rot spreads out from it (which it already has and we in the EU are getting a lot of needless problems from things like damage to European innovation due to accepting US-style IP like Business Patents, anti-circunvention laws and ridiculously long Copyrights and the nasty societal effects of the practices of US tech companies like Meta, Google and even Palantir).

The US has turned into an anchor you don’t want to be tied to so that it won’t pull you down as it quickly sinks.

Oh, look, dealing with a bully by negotiating with him hasn’t worked.

What! A! Surprise!

Nowadays I’m fully convinced that the politicians in the EU Commission are either profoundly incompetent, rotten as fuck, or both.

Yeah, anybody with eyes and a working brain back during the Leave Referendum saw this coming.

I lived in Britain as an EU immigrant until the actual Brexit and saw the whole shitshow from the inside.

I say NO to EU membership for Britain - we don’t need another Fascist country in the EU with voting and even veto rights on things that affect all 470 million of non-Britons in it, especially when 1/3 of the population there were very clear about how much they detest the rest of Europeans (the Racism against other Europeans became very overt there when the Leave Referendum started).

Britain should never have the rights of an EU member until that country has a serious cultural, political and social revolution.

Britain becoming a member of the European Free Trade Area in some way might be alright (though they’re highly likely to try and abuse such a position, as they already did abuse free trade access as EU members, for example by de facto being an uncontrolled gateway for importing non-compliant products into the EU market).

British elites having a saying on how the EU is run by using their country’s votes and veto would not be alright, especially in light of all the authoritarian shit coming out over there - from insane civil society surveillance, mandatory online ID and even treating those implementing end-to-end encryption as anti-state actors to anti-Demonstration legislation and imprisonment of people demonstrating against the Gaza Genocide as “Terrorist Supporters” - which manages to beat even Hungary.

It’s bad enough to have EU countries turning Fascist, but bringing into the EU the country in Europe which after Russia and Belarus is the most de facto authoritarian and most similar to present day MAGA America (though their Fascism is painted in “posh” rather than in “strongman”) would be insane.

• How do you know when Trump is lying?
• His mouth is open.

Democrats: Hard Neoliberalism at home, Fascism abroad.

Republicans: Fascism everywhere.

In case you haven’t notice the kinds of shit the Techbros are loudly pushing, the US most definitelly does things at the behest of its own fatcats first and foremost.

Granted, their interestest seem to be aligned in the most with mainly Israel and also partly Russia.

In the UK there’s quite the tradition of using the Justice System to merelly whitewash the crimes of the Aristocracy, so better wait until the trial is over before one starts celebrating this.

They’re not going after him for Pedophilia.

Apparently as per the rationale of some very pro-Royal British newspapers, the police doesn’t have the resources to properly investigate and prosecute him for Pedophilia, even though according to the news just the other day they arrest 1000 people a year for that very crime.