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Aerial photo of a large crowd of people protesting as far as the eye can see
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[–] 59 points 9 months ago (84 children)

"But why don't Americans protest? All they do is sit back and take it up the ass!" I hear every European crying as they ignore this right alongside all the other protests.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    That's not the electorate we have. We need good candidates to beat bad candidates. Second worst isn't good enough to win. Scream at voters all you want and it won't change a thing. We need better candidates.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago*

    We will never get better candidates under a party defined by Citizens United. (So that goes for both DNC and GOP.)

    You are expecting legalized corruption to produce viable candidates to serve the people. That's not how corruption works.

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  • [–] 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (8 children)

    I mean, on the flipside Americans (edit: and russian trolls especially)constantly mock European politicians with the "they're gonna send a strongly worded letter" which is the single most retarded thing I have heard and keep hearing from that camp. Personally, I have respect for the Americans who go protest, while I have a lot less respect for the politicians in America who do have the power to push back against trump, yet all they seem to do is nothing while blaming Europe for trump acting like a toddler. Meanwhile we here in Europe do what every adult with self respect does to a screaming child at the store - we tell them no. Calmly and without escalation. If we start behaving like trump, there is no adults left to help calm things down. In america, however, it seems that every politician is either enabling trump or acting like him: attacking the wrong people because it is easier to slap around your friends than standing up to your true enemy. Gavin Newsom. I see you, bitch.

    But yeah, I have respect for the common folk who are protesting in america. I have had respect for the tons of protests they have done since january of last year. It is historical but it kinda drowns in the piles of shit trump poops out daily to keep all of us disoriented and angry at all kinds of different things.

    He is destroying America from the inside and he's destroying America's relationship with their allies from the outside. I genuinely feel so fucking bad for you guys, because you and your children and your childrens children will be the ones to pay the ultimate price of trumps second presidency. Whatever allies you'll have left when his time is over will be significantly less than what they used to be and meanwhile your country will be in massive economic trouble which will only get worse once the effect of de-americanization in Europe starts to be felt in your country.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

    I'm confused by this. The only people I've read complaining about the "strongly worded letter" tendencies have been criticising the us democratic party for its dereliction of duty and utterly feckless disregard of their constitutional oaths in the face of this fascist xenocidal administration. Where are you seeing the imprecations against Europe?

    EDIT: You know what, I just read the rest of the thread OP's comments, and I rescind my point. They spew enough anti-european angst to fill a couple of comment sections.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    It comforts me to know people in entirely different countries also think Gavin Newsom is a little bitch.

    Thanks, from California (* not a Republican)

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

    I have heard Americans talk about him in very negative terms before, but never really new the details as I usually try to stay as far away from news and politics as possible.

    However, with his recent Trumpish tactic of calling Europe pathetic and the laughing stock of the world and accusing us of giving Trump the Nobel Peace Prize (I didn't know Venezuela was a European country, nor that Machado was part of the Nobel Peace Prize committee), it really cemented to me that he was that kind of cunt and not just unpopular among some voters for his politics.

    I could 100% agree with all of his politics and still think he's a cunt for using those kinds of tactics instead of being a fucking adult and treating his voters, his state and his position as politician and governor like a joke. I will never respect him, he will always be a joke to me and the Democrats will be a joke if they elect him to represent him during the next presidential election. I'm a much bigger fan of AOC. Everytime she opens her mouth, as far as I'm aware, she's been spitting facts. America needs someone with the dignity, intelligence and warmth she has displayed towards the American people. That's what I think, but take it with a grain of salt as I genuinely try to stay out of politics as much as possible and am ignorant to most things.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    Gavin Newsom vetoed legal psychedelics (in other words he wants people in prison for possessing plants and doing what they want with their own bodies / minds), vetoed unemployment pay for striking workers, repeatedly disregarded COVID mandates that he himself put into place, and took photo ops throwing away the only worldly possessions of homeless people.

    Basically what's happened to the Democratic Party in the United States is that their base has moved left, for example, increasingly having a favorable view of socialism, increasingly supporting universal healthcare, and holding an increasingly unfavorable (to put it mildly) view of Israel. But the oligarch donors (by way of Citizens United, and the more recent Supreme Court decision which basically legalized bribery) who define the DNC's allowed rhetoric and actions won't allow Democrats to move left, because that would be contrary to capitalism, which is of course the top priority for the oligarchs in question. So, aware of their rapidly diminishing base, the Democrats are instead moving in the only permitted direction where they see any potential to pick up voters: more to the right. This is why Kamala Harris promised "the most lethal military in the world", campaigned with Liz Cheney (daughter or maybe granddaughter of Dick Cheney, war criminal architect of the illegitimate Iraq War), and talked about being tough on crime and immigration. Gavin Newsom is doing the same thing.

    The thing is - in my opinion, and I think as evidenced by the 2024 election - rightwing people will just vote for the real deal, and leftwing people won't vote for you at all. So Democrats, barred by their owners from serving as an actual opposition party, are guaranteeing their own irrelevancy and the dominance of Republicans in the short-term. Unless people are so fed up with Republicans they just vote for Democrats despite not actually really liking any of their policies, which is a possibility... but then people will just vote a Republican in again after Democrats inevitably live up to Biden's famous promise, "Nothing will fundamentally change."

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago

    The problem is that protests are to promote awareness. That does nothing, Trump thrives on bad PR as long as it can serve as misdirection for the latest tragedy. The general strike did start to do something. The biggest problem is that the Supreme Court is fully corrupt, the Executive Branch and all federal agencies are now fully corrupt, and congress is the weakest branch of government that works slow and will get hampered by the Supreme Court even if you manage to have fair elections for midterms.

    Gavin Newsom is about the only state leader that is doing something effective, and Tim Walz should have been there with him during the World Economic Forum. The fact is, your federal government is corrupt down right to the core and it got this bad when things were way better. The people controlling the media, controlling the social networks that influence people, now have more say and wealth to hinder and twist the barebones democratic elements that the US had, to put dissenters like you into ineffective bubbles while they radicalize, enable, and pardon the vitriol that serves them.

    The problem is that keeping you country together prevented slavery, but never defeated the confederates turned "MAGA" neoconfederates that run your federal government today, and a country that was founded and dissolved several times until it became the United States has now been indoctrinated that there are no circumstances where seeking independence is valid, even when the federal government that rules the states isn't following its own constitution. You cannot have a democracy without a shared reality, and you cannot have a shared reality where for some the constitution is a legal foundation for the country and for others it is simply just another bible from which to read excerpts off while ignoring the rest of it.

    Europe shouldn't tell you what to do, but why would we ever deal the same way we have before with a country that proven itself to be psychotically bipolar? Do you realize that our governments cannot orbit around yours because we have our own politicians to deal with? That's not the case with a number of states in the US, yet they are forced to now submit to a dictatorship even though they are the economic motors for the country that other states' politicians basically live off of. Anyway, you guys do you, the US as it is now has lost a lot of standing in the world - except with dictatorships, where standing is basically just optics anyway. I understand people are doing what they can, it would (and likely will) be difficult to do the same thing here, there's too much money going into manipulating governments and corruption could not have denied oversight at a worse time.

    The core problem is one where billionaires have gone Cambridge Analytica and have destroyed and attacked our share reality - the reason why they are also ardent AI proponents, and they are operating everywhere. Honestly, I don't have a solution, just observations. But understand that from our point of view, was it better to deal with the USSR, or was it better to deal with each of its members like Ukraine and Russia individually?

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  • [–] 21 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    Because just standing outside is not how a protest achieves anything. True protests must be disruptive and last. The Yellow jackets burned down the avenue des champs Elysées every Saturday for multiple months. The protests following Nahel's murder (very similar to that of Renee good in some aspects) burned down multiple police stations.

    Standing protests like this a regular occurrence in France, but those are not the ones you hear about. Their only role is so build momentum and make people feel united.

    Real change happens only through either much stronger protests or through actions like the whistles and following ice around making them feel unwelcome 24/7.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    Otherwise fascism was perfectly acceptable, as long as it didn’t affect you - the white Americans.

    This is the crux of the entire liberal "if Holocaust Harris won, we'd be out to brunch!" crowd of privileged liberals. You're totally correct.

    And there are a ton of them on Lemmy surprisingly, so your downvote ratio on this comment is no surprise. They'll never offer a coherent response except, "Well if we had voted for genocide, at least things would be moderately less bad for us... yeah terrible about all those Palestinian children, but like, I have to show up for city-approved protests all the time now..."

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago (7 children)

    The protests last year were some of the largest in US history, up there with and possibly larger than during the Vietnam War and Civil Rights Movement.

    But go ahead and ignore those. Keep proving my original post right.

    It took a decade for the Civil Rights protests to get any real change to happen, and that was only after the murder of MLK caused the black community to burn down entire city districts and cause billions of dollars worth of property damage. Your average person - even in Europe - won't go that far unless pushed.

    Europeans were perfectly fine with Nazi fascism right up until it was knocking down their door. They've been perfectly fine with allowing their right-wing parties to fall further and further into fascism right alongside the US. Italy had fascist gangs roaming the streets attacking people a few years back. You've been perfectly content to watch as European politicians target people like me almost as badly as Republicans have. Where are your protests in support of trans people? I guess it doesn't affect you, so you don't care.

    So go ahead and keep acting like you're so much better than Americans. All of you are just proving my point and showing the exact reason that I've had enough of Europe and Canada. Pot, meet kettle.

    I've been in full support of anything Europe and Canada are doing to hurt America and fix their own issues, but the constant vitriol against the people who actually want to fight the fight has made me sick of the armchair generals all over Lemmy.

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  • [+] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)
  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago* (2 children)

    As recently as September 2025, Nepalese people overthrew their corrupt government in just 48 hours.

    Pretending that Nepalese youth didn't spend years organizing which culminated in that 48-hour successful revolution diminishes the otherwise-valid points you're making here.

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  • [+] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Well we had a decent start going until COINTELPRO.

    But anyway that's not really my point. Americans should be doing more, I agree with you there. My point is that it's disingenuous to present the Nepalese revolution as just suddenly happening within 48 hours because people got fed up.

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  • [–] 21 points 9 months ago (12 children)

    Sorry if we'd like some firmer response to your country attacking our economy and threatening invasion

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  • [–] 11 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    Sorry if I’d like ANY response to the attacks on trans people across Europe, the UK, Canada, and plenty of other places.

    Italy's current governing party is declaredly fascist. It still hasn't done anything as bad as the US government had been doing before Trump, never mind after. Nonetheless, there's been multiple general strikes during their mandate, protests, and so on. Our ports were blocked in protest of the Gaza war, something we have WAY less influence on than you guys do, and those protests in my city drew the biggest crowd I'd ever seen at such an event.

    Are we perfect? No. Should we do more? Yes. But please don't put us on the same level. All I hear from Americans is "oh no, I'll lose my job and starve on the street", but I live in a country where the average salary is half that of the US, with electricity two times as expensive and fuel almost three times as expensive compared to the US, so well, sorry if I don't fully empathise.

    If you’re not proactive, you’ll be in the same boat as us. Italy had fascist gangs attacking people in the streets a few years back.

    Italy INVENTED fascism, we've been fighting it for a century, it was born out of opposition to communism, and it wasn't eradicated at the end of WWII because our new overlords, the US, were just as afraid of communism as our previous ones, so yeah, we know, we're working on it, we've been for a long time.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (3 children)
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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    I get it. But also we are occupied by ice right now. We are spending a majority of our time resisting at the community level. Helping our neighbors from being abducted, monitoring ice, protesting.

    Apologies that it's not meeting your standards.

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  • [–] 23 points 9 months ago (16 children)

    TBF, news outlets have been utterly ignoring þe country-wide protests which have been consistently happening practically since Trump took office. Almost none of þe enormous 50502 protests have been covered. If we're not seeing it on American media, even fewer international people are going to see it.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago

    Sadly, I have seen news coverage, but it seems reliably right-wing and describes the events as things like "a mob" or "instigators" and other charged language.

    Covering the story is one thing, but who does it and how they spin it can really change the perception.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago (12 children)

    other than on the fediverse it absolutely does. but a lot of us aren't taking our phones to protests because the NSA/FBI uses the data of crowds pinging off cell towers to break our movements. plus they've been deploying mobile cell towers to exactly pinpoint our locations and apply force to us.

    in otherwords:

    no. social media is not an option. we're less interested in you seeing us do this work than we are in making sure the work gets done. we know this lets the right wing skew the messaging their way, but it's better than not being out at all because you're scared to go out and be beaten, or because you're spending 9+ months in a detention center.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    i've been at this for 21 years. most people i talk to strongly recommend against bringing phones to protests, and recommend not posting any photographs taken with a basic camera if you can see anyone in the picture's face.

    if you have good techniques for defeating NSA/FBI tactics that would let us get our imagery in front of more people, i'd love to know them. for now i'm gonna keep not bringing my phone and keep any photos i take off the internet because they put people at risk of intensive harm from our oppressive police state

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    They currently have law enforcement tucking tail and making a tactical retreat.

    https://www.youtube.com/live/ASr1zVuQlX4

    They're charging headlong into teargas and lobbing it back. They're stubbornly taking whatever opening they can get a foothold in and erecting barricades.

    I'd say this is pretty damn opposite of "apathetic." Maybe it'll give you some hope. In the meanwhile, please support the helpers.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    My recommendation: let it go. Too many people on lemmy demand The People here do things differently. More and more I'm finding that people are more interested in the entertainment of watching protests somewhere else from them than in getting involved in their local communities. I have no interest in performing for the internet the role of protestor, and am much more interested in being involved where I am in making changes. If lemmy wants to be a cesspit of obnoxious keyboard warriors telling eachother to do something and prove they're doing something, that's fine, it doesn't need us. If it's just going to be an energy sink, it's going to exist in a place of making us less, not more, effective as mobilized participants in social good.

    @ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net is frequently posting good comments like this one about how to get active.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    That's SUPER helpful. Thank you!!

    I agree with your advice. It's sad to me that a lot of people are simply venting as a weird means of "enjoying" the spectacle of it all.

    Thanks for sharing those resources. The "full spectrum resistance" book they link seems particularly interesting! I very much appreciate you taking the time.

    But you're exactly right: the people who are actually making a difference aren't doing it for show.

    Stay safe out there. <3

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  • [–] 17 points 9 months ago* (2 children)

    You seem to be hating on Europeans. I would practice some self enquiry.

    Being this soft to literal fascism and fascists is not a good look. They are literally kidnapping children. Killing people. Blinding people. They are waging wars. Calling them literal nazis is appropriate. They are removing your healthcare or making it prohibitively expensive. They are stealing from you. Not only your health but also your money. Pump and dump schemes, etc. Last, but definitely not least, they are protecting each other. Each one of them is evil beyond comprehension and they are all playing together, protecting eachother. Your president is a pedophile. He is not only part but also probably one of the main people, of a ring of pedophiles.

    Your hate towards Europeans is misplaced. All we want is justice and a good society.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

    What pressure has this put on Trump's administration to stop? This wasn't a strike because no demands were made for a return to work. Everybody is back to work today. ICE will be back at it again today too.

    The protesters were herded into an arena to listen to some campaigning. Then everyone went home.

    When's the next demonstration? In four months?

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (8 children)

    If you think protests are enough to fix this you're dreaming.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    They literally didn't say that. Stop making things up to get mad at.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago* (5 children)

    Not my country. Im just stating a fact.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    It's a non sequitur response and rude for no reason. That's the only fact I see here.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    "But why don't Americans protest? All they do is sit back and take it up the ass!" I hear every European crying as they ignore this right alongside all the other protests.

    Direct quote. How is me saying protests wont work a non-sequitor exactly. Please do explain.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 child)

    Solid deflection.

    Let me be crystal clear here.

    People from around the world from countries who have gone through this exact kind of thing, some of whom have personally experinced them firsthand, are telling you peaceful protests are not enough. This is coming from experience, not idle talk.

    And instead of listening, you're getting mad and calling people big meanies.

    I dont know if its because Americans are so used to people tiptoing around them or stroking their egos or whatever. But if you dont get your collective heads out of your asses you are going to end up a victim of history and your country will be unrecognizable.

    You need to grow up and listen, not lash out when people levy criticism.

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