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Let me know how it goes, but I doubt you'll get more than a bewildered look. European libs see themselves as entirely opposed to American culture, even as they make their way to a BLM march in a > 99% white country.
But BLM itself kind of sees itself as going against "that kind of" America. When European libs are opposed to "America" they are against the bald-headed-eagle, flag waving, monster truck and pickup truck riding gun obsessed fat rednecks who eat cheap burgers all the time and shop at walmart in a mobility scooter. BLM in Europe is seen as a revolt against that racist America. There is no contradiction.
There isn't really a good kind of American to European libs, and BLM and all forms of wokeness was originally seen as weird and alien. There was even a common "it's just a couple of crazy kids on college campuses"-esque cope, that wokeness is just an American thing, and will never be relevant in Europe.
If they did believe that there's good Americans as well as bad, than the question would make some sense. They would recognize the parts of culture he's talking about as American, and as being imported, and they could justify it, but I'm pretty sure they ,think it's homegrown by now.
Nope, the criticism was also applied to European cultures, often in ways that make absolutely no sense. For example they apply anti-collonialist critique to Ireland, or try to claim that the descendants of Eastern European peasants, who just barely got out of communism, somehow inherited "white privilege".
Are you from the US? I think Americans often have a distorted view of how Europeans view them, especially if they base this mostly on online stuff like Reddit. The recent animus towards the US is to a large extent about Trump, and there is certainly some longer term undercurrent even during Obama etc that the US is a bit cheap, overly capitalistic, materialistic, everything for sale, everything measured in money, lot of displays of religion, whatnot, but Europeans still follow and consume American cultural products overwhelmingly, often more than domestic ones. European universities are eager to copy the American academic fads (coastal, blue tribe). They might grumble about some aspects, but those are pretty much the same aspects that American blue tribers grumble about.
Yes, but this is the "we're all living in America", fish in water thing. They just see this stuff being the current thing in Hollywood, Oscars, etc. You may underestimate how much Europeans live in an American-defined media environment.
Nope, European through and through.
I agree with this, I think this is the mechanism for what I'm describing, but in my experience Europeans don't tend to admit there are American cultural trends that are worth following. It just happens, precisely because of the "fish in water" thing.
Because of this, I believe that if Tretiak asked "why are you adopting the worst parts of American culture" he'd just be met with bewildered denial that any part of American culture is being adopted.
There are probably some who don't consume it directly, but through local intermediaries who make TikToks in their local language etc. It becomes a discussion topic and the third and fourth degree viewers are not aware of the origin (for BLM it's more concrete, but other woke topics it can seem blurry if it's organic European post-WW2 equality and justice development vs import from America). But even those that are, they just see it as global universal culture, not specifically American.
It's like asking European Taylor Swift fans why they are obsessing over an American celebrity. It's just a bewildering question. It's not like they predecided to obsess over an American. They just consume media, and they liked this celebrity and it's just very organic and obvious and just happens. Like the way in movies aliens always land near LA but certainly somewhere in the US. People are just used to international trendsetting happening in the US. I guess we are in agreement, I'm just elaborating. BLM was just put in front of people at a time when everyone was on their phones during covid. They didn't wake up one day saying "let's follow some American trends, I wonder what trends are going on there and which ones are worth following and which ones aren't". It's just shown to them and they have an emotional reaction to it that this is wrong and has to change and they can feel part of a movement of a morally right cause etc. American or not didn't factor into that chain of reasoning/emotion.
The other thing is that they may even deny there is a trend. It's not a trend. It's just being a decent human being. There is no such thing as woke, etc. etc.
I disagree with this part. It's perfectly normal to bring up a question like that, and it's likely to produce ponderous murmurs about how we should invest more in our own, and not rely on Americans so much. It's not even limited to pop culture, you do this with literally anything, including industry and online platforms.
And this as well. There was nothing organic about the spread of wokeness. Not in America, not in Europe. It relied on the suppression of opposing views on one hand, and it's own imposition through government institutions on the other, as well as entryism into critical private institutions.
I'm just trying to describe what a regular normie who scrolls social media and just gossips about these things and tries to keep up, tries to not be cringe and left behind. They don't feel like they seek out American influences. They just talk about what's in front of them, what's in the media etc. And even if they read the local news portal with local editors in the local language, journalists are social media addicts and look up to the prestigious NYT, NPR etc. across the pond, and want to be cool like them, and they are also lazy and it's easy to write about what's up with the celebrities and the latest culture war controversies etc. Similarly they just listen to Taylor Swift because it's popular on Spotify, it's popular with peers, it's on the radio etc. Not because she is American. It never entered their deliberation.
You can't simply forcefully spread just anything. It has to fit into the framework of what the current generation was taught as children and young adults. Wokeness was laundered / whitewashed as just being a decent human being, and basically just 90s race blindness as the foot in the door, and once you pluck all the DEI/representation fruits from that framing, they introduce well actually it's equity and not equality, and the rest of it. They don't start with struggle sessions and Evergreen State's "get in the canoe" spiels. If you start with extreme stuff, people call bullshit and you can't really suppress dissent that way. But if it starts innocuous, and just like what you were taught as kids about not being racist, giving everyone a fair chance, not relying on snap judgments, looking beyond surface things and judging people on their character etc, then all the initial things are obvious. It's the same way that Scientology doesn't immediately start with Xenu but with practical psychological life coaching advice.
Or for homosexuality/trans it starts as live and let live, adults should be able to have the kind of sex they want without stigma, not overtly discriminating, etc and then it becomes about presenting it as an equal footing, teaching kindergarteners that two dad and two mums are just as normal as one dad and one mum, and that it's brave to change from your "assigned" gender and that gender is a spectrum with Barbie and GI Joe on the ends of it and everyone else a form of inbetween etc.
What I'm trying to say is that it's a distributed system, the useful pawns on the ground who do the first stages are not even necessarily aware of all the subversive critical theory behind all this, and they will deny they are motivated by that at all. But when you go up the chain you do see that they have seminar like this, and all those meetings with "point of personal privilege" cards and whatnot.
The more conscious ones are probably Western European university administrators who copy stuff like diversity seminars, Pride Month, anti-sexual harassment workshops, female preferential hiring and promotion (if illegal, then going as far as they can plausibly deniably, but everyone knowing it informally), renaming buildings and lecture halls with "problematic" namesakes etc. They do look at American prestigious world-class universities and adopt everything, the aesthetics, the web design, the social media strategy, etc. etc., even starting to adopt the junior professor and tenure track structure these days as opposed to the classical European professorship paths. But I don't think they would deny this, American academia is looked up to, it's not part of the "America" that intelligent, cultured Europeans are supposed to look down on. That's the uneducated Trump-voting, gas guzzler driving pollution-unconscious, climate denier racist America.
But they won't deny or be bewildered by someone pointing out they are influenced by American culture. They'll nod along and probably say we should invest into local stuff so we're not relying on Americans so much. I've had exactly this conversation countless times.
You'd be surprised how much you can get away with. Whatever you're pushing through, most people won't hear about. Of the ones that do, the majority won't care. Of the ones that care, the majority will be afraid to say anything, because saying something will make them sound like AfD/Orban/Farage/Trump, and the ones that do say something can simply be fired and ostracized to serve as a warning for others.
Even if we go with "race blindness was a pre-requisite for DEI", that just shows that these things have to be spread gradually, not that they can't be spread top-down.
This the part I'm denying. It's not. It's all spread top-down by governments, corporations, and NGOs, who regularly get together and discuss hiw to get around local popular pushback.
Like I said, European leftists believe wokeness will never became a thing in Europe, precisely because they were applying the kind of analysis you're doing here. They assumed spread is organic, and so no organic resonance anywhere around them, so they concluded it will not arrive in Europe anytime soon.
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