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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   979 thread views

Transnational Thursday for September 17, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Being opposed to libertarianism doesn't make the CDU left-wing.

That is true, but it certainly makes it mis-aligned with American values. In the US, at least, freedom of expression, freedom of political participation and robust societal discussion of current political issues has been a nationwide shared value. It is not the value of the Left anymore - which is why one is tempted to associate the similar positions of CDU with the left wing - but going back to the original topic, if even the supposed "right" in Germany is hostile to the values that many in the US hold sacred - one is tempted to ask, what kind of alliance do we have? What do we have in common? Of course, US history knows many cases where we temporarily allied with countries much worse than todays Germany - such as Stalin's USSR, for example - but that was the alliance of necessity, and it was dissolved once the need passed. Is this the kind of alliance we have between US and Europe, which was necessary when USSR was alive? Is it still necessary today? In which form? To what purpose? I think these are the questions that need to be asked.

It does seem fair to point out that America created modern Germany, in pretty much its current form. If I remember rightly, a lot of the German opposition to free speech, the censorship apparatus and one-party media was put in place by America for obvious reasons, and the CIA maintained a very strong grip over German media for decades.

Oh come on. Did America also create Britain? France? Denmark? Austria? The pattern is the same all over Europe, everywhere the speech is controlled and restricted, especially the speech that is considered "offensive" or is threatening the narrative preferred by the government. The EU as a whole has a censorship law - DSA - that is actively used to suppress speech all over the EU. The Congress released a report a year ago detailing various aspects of this: https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/foreign-censorship-threat-how-european-unions-digital-services-act-compels

I mean, sure, the deep state reptilians and all the orgs they run or used to run (no real reason to single out CIA, they are at practically every three-letter agency that exists) have no problem with the censorship and state control over speech. They would support any effort to increase the control, be it in the US or anywhere. We had it with "disinformation boards" (which was successfully repelled, fortunately), we had it with control over social media (which kinda died with Covid and Musk buying Twitter), we have the next fight now with the same people trying to seize control over AI tech, and we will see it many times more in the future. But to claim they caused the censorship push in Europe and Europeans are blameless agency-free puppets is complete BS. Europeans are doing it for the same reason bureaucrats everywhere are doing it - they want power. Not for CIA or somebody else, but for themselves. Control over speech means more power, and more secure power. That's it, no need to involve CIA.

This nonsense about "all the shit that is happening on the planet, CIA caused it" got to stop. Other people are people too, they can do stupid shit without the CIA.

We were not talking about Britain, France or Denmark. We were talking about Germany, where the history is as I've said. You're welcome to look it up.

Germany is of course the most powerful and influential country in the EU, and American woke contagion has been very influential worldwide - see the spectre of 99% white Ireland searching for some black people it could have wronged - but that does not make America responsible for all Europe's stupid decisions.

A big part of those decisions is simply management culture and the kind of tribal diplomacy that you end up doing once you have a foreigner in every conversation IMO.

We were talking about Germany, where the history is as I've said.

Yes, but if you find the same pattern in a dozen places, and one of them has special history, but the pattern repeats unchanged in places that do not have the special history, then it's unlikely that the special history is causing the pattern.

that does not make America responsible for all Europe's stupid decisions.

In fact, I do not think any of the recent Europe's stupid decisions can be traced to American influence. Yes, the form of wokeness came from America, but the fertile grounds that demanded for something like wokeness to take form is local. If by some miracle wokeness in America didn't manifest, the Europe would do exactly the same stupid things, just in a different form.

I don't think that you have spent any meaningful time in Europe, have you? Like it or not, Europe was profoundly shaped by post-war American ideology aided by American money and American consultancies and American foreign policy, and you can see it wherever you go.

Europe has always been historically way to the left of the US in general (not US university campuses) on virtually every metric. So much that in the US it is common for the Left to point to Europe as an example of "civilized countries" that have "common sense policies" that supposedly work very well. Of course, Europe does not have the history of slavery and racial segregation that US has, so in that aspect - which takes a lot of space in woke mindset - the US is necessary in the lead. Canada is trying as hard as they can to whip up their own story with indigenous tribes, but the best Europe can do is colonialism, and it just doesn't have the same punch. So it's hard to see for me how the US could have pushed the Europe to the left while staying themselves to the right. It's hard to me to see how US could have forced Europe to abandon free speech (maybe Germany excluded with the Nazi stuff, but we all know it's way beyond Nazis for the long time) while keeping it as a value themselves. The mass immigration in Europe started when in the US Bernie Sanders, Clinton and Obama were pronouncing fiery speeches about how we must be tough on illegal immigration. The entrepreneurship values that are still part of the American mythos had, as far as I could see, never been really part of the European one. So I am wondering here - what exactly did the American ideology shaped in Europe to cause what is happening in Europe now? Sure, American money I can get, but so far I think the deal has been more or less "you give us money and military protection, we tell you how much better we are than you". I just fail to see any casual link that allows blaming what's happening to Europe on America. Maybe on American academia in particular, but those have been looking up to Europe for their whole history.

So it's hard to see for me how the US could have pushed the Europe to the left while staying themselves to the right.

I mean, it's fairly simple:

Europe has always been historically way to the left of the US in general (not US university campuses)

The US stayed on the right in the sense that the general population did so, but US university campuses were to the left of even Europe as per your own arguments. It is them that moved Europe to the left. Wokeness was so alien to the European left that for the longest time we had a "it's just a couple crazy kids on the internet"-esque cope saying that wokeness is an American thing that has no relevance in Europe. It was obviously wrong in retroscpect, but it's not something you could have predicted while talking to European left-wingers at the time.

The mass immigration in Europe started when in the US Bernie Sanders, Clinton and Obama were pronouncing fiery speeches about how we must be tough on illegal immigration

Sanders was the only one with reasonably strong rhetoric on the issue, it wasn't a "fiery speech" it was an interview question when he was explicitly asked about open borders, and he got called racist and sexist for his trouble, as were his followers.

what exactly did the American ideology shaped in Europe to cause what is happening in Europe now?

Black Lives Matter, Trans Women Are Women, 50-Stalins criticisms of the left like "white feminism", the idea that if you're born in a given country, that automatically makes a [insert country]-man. And honestly, even though the idea of free speech wasn't as strong here as it was in the US, cutting off your friends over politics is also something we imported from the US.

It is them that moved Europe to the left.

By which mechanism? US academia does not control anything in Europe, and certainly didn't rebuild Germany or anything like that. I could admit it if Europe's academia were constantly adoring and copying American one, but at least for the "humanities", the relationship is exactly the opposite.

Sanders was the only one with reasonably strong rhetoric on the issue,

That's not true, virtually every prominent Democrat had been pro border enforcement before they were against it. Here's Senator Obama: https://www.c-span.org/clip/news-conference/user-clip-sen-barack-obama-on-illegal-immigration/4656370 you can easily find clips from others. By today's standards, this is literally Hitler. But 2005's standards, that's a common Democrat position which is part of the mandatory program, you can not be a serious politician if you don't support it.

Black Lives Matter, Trans Women Are Women

BLM is indeed uniquely US phenomenon, but I do not think it had any influence on European politics - mass immigration already shifted the power balance by then, and Europe's pro-migration policies have very little connection with it. As for trans issues, Europe is a bit more diverse on that issue (just as the US is if we look per-state) but European ideologues have been at the foundation of it. Psychoanalysis came from Europe. Postmodernism came from Europe. Deconstruction came from Europe. Post-structuralism came from Europe. Without all of this, the theory of "socially constructed gender" would not be possible.

cutting off your friends over politics is also something we imported from the US.

Oh come on. This one is from early 1900's: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/748/804/d0e but I am sure the phenomenon existed long before that.

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