Europe
Europe community on dbzer0. Intended to be a place to discuss European news, politics, or just general topics from a European perspective. Since this is on dbzer0 expect the community to lean more leftist-anarchist but a wide range of views are accepted here (within reason).
Rules:
1. No Bigotry or Hate Speech
Any forms of Homophobia, Transphobia, Queerphobia, Racism, or Ableism will be met with swift and harsh action and will not be tolerated here whatsoever. Bigots will be banned immediately on-sight. This includes apologia of it.
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Any forms of Zionism or Zionist rhetoric will not be tolerated here, this includes Zionist apologia, accusations of antisemitism towards anti-Zionists, or blatant denial or downplaying of the genocide towards Palestinians. Any attempt to uphold or prop up the IHRA definition of antisemitism, will be treated as Zionism.
Anyone engaging in Pro-Zionist sentiment or apologia will be actioned in accordance with its severity. Claiming well proven or personally admitted actions by Zionists are "antisemitic conspiracy theories" may get you banned with content removal without warning.
Apologizing for Germany's compelled speech laws in any way here is also considered a violation as these laws uphold the IHRA definition of antisemitism. You will be banned if you apologize for Germany's speech laws. No questions asked.
Note: Trying to find loopholes or whataboutery to see what is or isn't genocide denial or Zionism will be treated as a violation of this rule. Don't test us.
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Please maintain civil discourse in the community. Do not engage in arguments with others, name-calling, or insults. Note that calling out bigotry or Zionism is not considered an insult. In heated arguments users are encouraged to or even required to disengage failure to do so will result in mod action.
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Spreading of misinformation intentionally in this community is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Spreading misinformation hurts the credibility of the community and can mislead people sometimes in dangerous ways. Users who intentionally post misinformation as articles, comment answers, or in attempt to win arguments will be actioned swiftly.
Note: This includes Russian and Chinese propaganda. Users with a history of such posting will be banned on sight.
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Please do not post articles or content primarily created using generative AI. Generative AI content may contain misinformation or be lower quality and thus is discouraged. Posts and comments featuring it will be removed. However this community does not allow or tolerate Anti-AI trolling or hostility and users who engage in such behavior will be actioned for it, additionally Anti-AI trolling violates Rule 3 and often Rule 4 so it is generally unacceptable already.
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Harassment towards any moderators or attempts to incite attacks against mods will forfeit your right to appeals.
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I’m not sure why France gets such a bad rap about being pussies. These seems pretty fucking metal to me. A buncha pure badasses. Oh and fuck these douchebag cops.
It's only the Americans. Not sure why either. Historically and always, the French go hard.
It's especially weird because the French going hard is how the colonists got carried to US independence.
I think it's a relatively more recent thing where US conservative anti-France propoganda was very successful when they refused to support one of the US wars in the middle east. Can't remember which but it's where terms like "freedom fries" started popping up and then I think some people retconned France getting their shit pushed in early in WWII as somehow meaning they surrender easily even though in reality they were bearing the brunt of the Nazi invasion. But yeah without the French there would be no USA.
The Iraq war. And 20 years later JD Vance said that if Europe were real friends, they wouldn't have let the US drive drunk and go into Iraq.
WW2 raised a generation of poor young farmers out of that life and into one where they went and liberated a country they probably didn't know anything about.
They didn't know/care that France actually has a pretty impressive military track record.
So, they come home telling everyone that the French sure don't know how to put up much of a fight, are helped to become successful in life (unless they were black), and their dumb kids all assume they can kick France's ass, because they're weak.
Americans saw the French as surrending cowards due to WWII, long before the while Iraq thing. I have no idea why there are two people in these comments pushing this claim that it's due to the Iraq war.
The jokes were always ignorant, but they've been around since WWII.
Because that's when the tone shifted from friendly ribbing (well it wasn't that friendly, but "nah, nah, we saved you in that war") to more of an enraged "if you aren't with us, you're against us", even though France was far from the only ones that refused to join the invasion of Iraq.
And Trump took that tone change and applied it to pretty much everyone else.
Those are completely separate things. American right wingers were pouring out wine and throwing cheese away as a "fuck you" to the French who dared not support GWB. These were the days when I regularly read "if you don't support our President, you're not a real American."
It had nothing to do with France's history. If Germany refused to back us, right wingers would have been selling or crushing their BMWs and Mercedes in a performative fashion.
This is just how the right wing behaves. If they don't get what they want, they demonize whoever didn't support them. It's the same way that Trump runs everything: like a petulant mob boss.
Germany not only refused to back you but joined France in opposition to the invasion. Belgium also opposed. Canada didn't back you either, though we didn't oppose it, just sat it out entirely. But I only recall France getting shit on for it.
Thank you for proving my point.
By contradicting it? You said if Germany didn't back them, they'd have done the same with German cars. Germany didn't them and I don't recall any ramp up of the anti-German car rhetoric, which remained quips about BMW drivers failing to use signals and German cars in general being expensive to maintain.
We were given a goddamn national mascot statue and this is the thanks they get
US propaganda. The Italians used to be the stereotypical cowards until France refused to join the invasion of Iraq.
"Cheese-eating surrender monkeys" long predates the Iraq war. It comes from their surrender in WWII. Yes, the jokes ignore their resistance movement and the fact that they basically lost an entire generation of young men to WWI. It also ignores that Britain failed to help France.
I have never in my life heard of Italians being stereotypical cowards.
Well the complaint always wants that when the French surrendered in World War two they neither scuttled nor transferred their navel fleet. So then a pointless and dangerous bombing run that to be undertaken to destroy the French naval vessels before the Nazis captured them, that could have been avoided had the French simply transferred the existing navy to Britain which had been requested but then just not acted on for some reason.
Then there was the whole rainbow warrior thing many decades later which didn't help.
Intelligence sharing and participating in "defensive" NATO operations that France did is still considered being involved and participating in the war
Have some...
Spoiler
Freedomfries
French politicians are the cowards. The people have always been hard as nails.
Plus they are the gold standard for protests. Both in method and motivation.
By whom? Uneducated americans? That's your answer
This message sponsored by the British government?
We will NEVER forget the history!
It's just the short history of WWII. Even then, the people were still fighting. In the long history, IIRC, they are the nation with the highest percentage of victories in war, or at least of European nations. I do think it has a lot with the US trying to replace them as the top world power though, so they pushed the story that they surrendered really hard.
Its reverse psychology, works wonders
Because if this was America, people would be dead.
Seriously, I respect the French here... But this is why. Police and even many citizens are brutal in the US. I'm guessing other places that say these things about the French are the same.
Maybe the police don't kill in France because they know they'd get killed too if they crossed that line. Just a speculation. I'm not sure how many protesters have ever been killed in France.
Here's one which is not directly the police but it's kinda because it's who the police really works for:
Now, even if the rich in France were being totally hypocrites in their "demands" and knew the politicians they owned would not actually do it (which was what happened), why would at least some of the rich in France feel the need to very loudly and publicly ask to be taxed MORE even whilst in next door Britain the rich very openly wanted to be made even richer?!
Methinks it's to do with the invention of monsieur Guillot and with the French tradition of the common people taking it to the streets and breaking shit up (and, on occasion, said shit being actual rich people) unlike both the UK and US (both countries which even by comparison with the wider Europe beyon France, have very meek and compliant populations).
That said IMHO, Macron's winning against the Gillet Jaunes has seriously reduced the fear the French elites have of public reactions to their abuses.