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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • I’m all for putting some blame on the West, but the responsibility for the human rights abuses in these countries currently lies much more with their rulers than anyone else. And they are not just “right wing” by western standards, as there is also virtually no “left wing” over there that I know of by the same standards. I think that resorting to a leftie “colonialism bad” and “right wing bad” argument waves away the role of religion and local culture. It is, in essence, a very western critique I feel. Far from being an expert on this myself, just my 2c.


  • Maybe that person had trouble adjusting to SK life and was missing his country and/or people back home. Nothing to see here. It is only “surprising” because presumably they took some risk in leaving and because we only ever hear about NK in the context of its authoritarian government and it being some dystopian nightmare presumably, though if we’re being honest most of us don’t know two shits about the country and I bet to some people it’s simply home.

    Why does anyone want to go back to any country that others are desperate to leave? For reasons…


  • This is a prime example of how big business can cozy up to authoritarianism. Of course in the name of offering a service to the nation or saving something precious to all, I guess it’s “democracy” in this instance. Deep down I think it’s about asking a simple question: which regime will be most accommodating to fulfilling my ambitions, i.e. sustaining and growing my business empire with the least amount of oversight or regulation? Who is more likely to be anti-union? Who is more likely to employ migrants without granting them political rights? Who is less likely to tax the rich? Who is more likely to give me more power to influence public opinion and public policy? Elon is, in some respects, correctly betting on Trump. Of course it is a risky bet, and a marriage of convenience; one will sooner or later lose favor with the other. It would probably be wiser of Musk to stay out of the limelight and play Democrats against Republicans whenever and however it suits him. But I guess he can’t help himself. To be honest I don’t even know whether it’s possible for a major business figure to remain neutral in a country where perhaps the best predictor of a presidential candidate’s success is the amount of donations their campaign receives.



  • I think you have expressed my fear quite well. Maybe it is as I feared. I don’t know much about Sweden, but I do have the feeling that the far right everywhere gets brownie points for just naming things the left will leave untouched (with a huge amount of hyperbole, racial hatred and scapegoating to be sure). I’m not in any way trying to force an “immigrants bad” argument, just fearing that a surge in crime involving migrant populations benefits the far right disproportionately, especially if the rest of the political spectrum seem unable to effectively address the issue in a more socially productive and progressive manner.


  • So, if i got this right, you seem to be implying that immigrants, or at least non-native Swedes as some may have citizenship, don’t know, are implicated in this violence, right? But that the situation today is a result of several policy failures by different governments and it’s not necessarily something to be tied to more recent waves of immigration. It wasn’t clear from the article. I just wanted to understand whether this plays right into the far right playbook once more. Of course poverty is a common factor in crime, but (unfortunately) the topic currently dominating European politics is immigration, and a surge in crime is an almost certain win for the extreme right in this climate.



  • Ok I’m going to ask the question that the article doesn’t address and also the question that will make all the progressive people on here uncomfortable: how does immigration play into this? Does it? Sweden is known for having a high percentage of foreign-born residents, most of them from outside the EU. It is the frequent punching bag of the extreme right for that reason and for its historically progressive policies. A far right that has been making gains there, as elsewhere. Is this an issue? Has Sweden failed to integrate foreigners who are now increasingly involved in the illegal drug trade and ensuing crime or are these unrelated?


  • Ooph, there the same issue again, about what we consider “propaganda”. I have yet to meet someone with objective standards on this, who is able to hold people he agrees with politically to the same standard. Many on here also seem to hate the MBFC ratings that were added to at least create some baseline. So, at the end of the day the value judgements people make on these matters are more often biased than not. Anyway, I am actually interested in even “mouthpieces”, as I am always curious how the other side actually defends what they do, and they could be just marked as such for the avoidance of doubt.




  • Nothing is surprising about nations allying to advance common geopolitical and economic interests. Perhaps you are perturbed by the fact that these are not the US and its allies, who have indeed defined the world order in recent years, after the end of WW2 and especially after the fall of the USSR. I don’t think anyone is surprised - let alone failing to recognize - that the current world order is being challenged. Of course that does unfortunately mean a more uncertain and likely conflict-ridden future for all of us. But there are also those who look forward to a multipolar world, or at least the decline of “the West”, because it didn’t exactly serve everyone in the world equally well.