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So today there was an assassination attempt on prime minister of my country of Slovakia - Robert Fico. It happened during his tradition of government meetings across the country, in small coal town of Handlová. He went to greet his supporters when a 71 years old man shot him several times, he was then carried away and sent to hospital in critical condition, he undertook complicated surgery and his fate is still not known.
All the leaders sent their condolences from Putin to Macron, Biden and Ursula von der Leyen, all condemning the violence. The same for Slovak political leaders. Of course, Slovak reddit as a bastion of more progressive people could not hold their glee, most upvoted comments for one of the threads were of the like of "JFK from Wish" or "this is what you get from hate". I mention it just as a litmus test of how more progressive people think in Slovakia and to be frank I find it disgusting. As you can gather, Fico is viewed as a populist and Slovak Orban and pro Putin and all that, despite major differences that may take too long to explain. But he definitely is described as archenemy by the strongest opposition party literally called "Progressive Slovakia" here. You probably get the picture.
As for the assassin, to me he seems like an unhinged man that was supporting a lot of fringe movements from right-wing movements to talking against the current government as leaked by one policeman who released a video of the perpetration in custody, where the assassin ranted something about recent law regarding the state broadcasting and overall disagreement with the government.
At this point all I have to say is that I am in shock. Something like that never happened in 40 years history of my country. I see already a lot of spin including Guardian and other foreign press as well as very strong proclamations from parties in government about "political warfare". One thing is apparent, the politics in my country changed and not for the better. I think there will be some ripples also elsewhere, ranging from "stochastic terrorism" by having somebody radicalized by media to just politicians being more alerted to this kind of thing happening. There is also EU parliament elections in couple of weeks and this is something that may have more impact there.
That is all for now, I am not sure if this will be deleted as it is not probably quite a topic for some extra thread, but also not your cookie cutter idea thrown here for discussion. But it is widely relevant on so many levels even outside of Slovak politics so I think there may be some good discussion bellow. I may add some edit and I am willing to anybody else to update bellow if let's say Fico's condition changes in the upcoming hours when I am asleep.
Damn. I hope he pulls through. So far his chances are looking decent.
As for the social media response…I wouldn’t put too much credence in it. There’s no incentive for someone to be reasonable or measured. Or for such a reasonable person to share their sympathies.
Saw it with Thatcher, saw it with Scalia.
Yeah.
Hell, we saw it with Queen Elizabeth, who’s got a much better reputation in the U.S. than either of those.
I’ve got a theory that one of the signs of a…good? healthy? site is people willing to say the boring thing. Small talk. Socially acceptable responses. Stuff that real humans would say to other real humans’ faces. Those make it more like a community and less like performance art.
Sometimes we do a good job of it. I like that.
I remember a twitch streamer I watch who's admittedly very left-wing but also genuinely doesn't act or seem mean at all otherwise, but when Barbara Bush died they did a celebratory stream in response. I really don't know how common it was to dance on graves in public discourse in the past but it really bothers me that the people that do it will claim that other behavior or statements they disagree with is "gross."
Specifically about Queen Elizabeth I was in a discord server about a video game where when it happened someone immediately responded with "good, she was a racist." Though, in real life nobody does that they just never mention it at all or say something equivalent to "oh, that happened." In my real life I see this in reverse for right-leaning political people, they're more likely to be political in real life than they are online. Admittedly I have a smaller pool of right-leaning people to pull from so I can't really tell if they're more civil.
It still bugs the shit out of me that people are so absolutely uncivil and rude in public forums online and rarely does anyone do anything. But I've gotten into arguments with them before and the response was pure defense, there's nothing to be ashamed at all about for being uncivil, mean or rude to people they consider uncivil, mean or rude. Even if I agreed, I don't know how they can sustain it without a bottomless well of anger.
Had to read this twice. At first I was baffled as to how you were alive in 1603, let alone chatting on Discord
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