On social media, the upcoming generation is expressing more European solidarity than the continent has seen in decades.
A futuristic EU soldier stands guard, laser blaster at the ready. European fighter jets zoom through the sky over thumping Eurodance beats. An imaginary map shows a vastly enlarged EU, swallowing everything from Greenland to the Caucasus.
Welcome to the wild world of pro-Europe online propaganda, where the EU isn’t a fractious club of 27 countries but a juiced-up superpower on par with China or the United States, only wiser and more cultured.
This type of content, which re-imagines the EU as a pan-European empire, a European Federation or the United States of Europe — take your pick — has flooded social media platforms over the past two years, garnering billions of views collectively on X, TikTok and Instagram as the EU has reeled from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a U.S.-EU trade deal decried as “humiliation” for Brussels in many parts of Europe.
Don’t have to get very far to get to the part where it’s far right douches trying to slow walk people to racism…
Indeed, federalists are far from being a politically homogenous group. Several meme warriors told me that there is an ideological battle ongoing in the dank recesses of federalist Reddit subgroups and chatrooms between broadly centrist people who believe in boosting the power of existing Brussels institutions, and far-right people who hate Brussels but nonetheless want Europe to assert itself on the world stage. The big divider is identity politics and migration policy: far-right groups tend to envision Europe as a culturally and ethnically homogenous “empire” — read, white and Christian, preferably Catholic — that keeps foreigners out.
Saying “only white Christians are European, and everyone else shouldn’t be here” is not, and has never been, just “identity politics”.
It sounds like neoliberals and racists are both fighting over who gets to be called “center right”…
Preferably Catholic? Are those Europeans not aware that Europe has been cut in 3 between Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodox Christianity since hundreds of years?
It’s because it’s centralized with an absolute authority.
They might not control the pope now, but if they do they control all Catholic priests.
It’s full circle back to “a centralized system is the most easily corrupted”. Just like this “new EU”. Even if the far right doesn’t control it from day 1, they want it centralized because that makes it easier to take over eventually.
needs more post-scarcity, Star Trek Federation style, Socialist United Europe content.
How the fuck are we gonna get to post scarcity when a couple thousand individuals are hoarding all the wealth?
We could live in a post scarcity society right now, hell, we could be decades deep in it by now.
But regardless of when we get there, before we do we’ll have to claw all the wealth from the gluttonous human personifications of dragons first.
It’s not just gonna happen some day, because all the wealthiest humans are fighting against it. So we need to actually fight for it
Let’s just look at the piles of loot that the Dragons are sleeping on as bank accounts. One day, we will decide to access those bank accounts, and put them to good use.
I dunno if you’re referencing The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant or if you just happened to have a similar train of thought as it’s author.
The ultra wealthy don’t have billions just sitting in their bank accounts. That much wealth is largely tied up in the unrealized gains of non-liquid assets (stocks, real estate, etc.).
So it’s basically imaginary wealth, but unfortunately banks will loan them money based on the imaginary wealth.
Then they shouldn’t mind if we take their “non-existent” money, and redistribute it to their victims.
We wouldn’t even need to do that…
Money is an abstract concept that would fundamentally change in a post scarcity world.
If enough people said money doesn’t matter, the number tied to bank accounts stop mattering.
Musk could have 50 trillion dollars, but those dollars are only worth what we agree they are. We could just say their worth zero and Musk doesn’t have rights to anything he “owns”. It’s literally that easy.
The wealthy don’t abide by the social contract, yet you’re so stuck on it you don’t understand the only thing binding us to the parts the wealthy exploit, is ourselves and we can just fucking stop.
Hmm, shall we look to history to see past efforts and the results of centralising power in Europe?
I really don’t get why we’d want to emulate any of the large federations. Russia? China? USA? Nope nope nope
A cell structure of independent states is inherently a better structure than a blob where you only have to get one bad leader for the whole thing to be fucked.
a blob where you only have to get one bad leader for the whole thing to be fucked
Like Viktor Orbán?
I find it bizarre that the EU has no way to expel members.
It doesn’t really need to. It just closes the money tap and waits for the fad to pass.
So that’s what the right wing will do if they get control of the Commission then?
Yep, centralization isn’t a good thing.
If you read the article long enough, they go mask off and eventually admit the movement has two major factions: “centrists” and outright racists who want a white Christian empire.
Seems everyone supporting this wants it as a vehicle to move the EU to the right, which is why they want it centralized. It’s easier to buy off one leader than 27 different ones at the same time.
I think centralization has merit…IF there are deliberate regional blocs, with the national figurehead elected by popular vote or if the heads of the other blocs agreed on that representative. Of course, the regional heads themselves are voted by popular election. As with the US Constitution, the concept is to divide up power - but in this case, the branches are multiplied by the number of blocs.
A national judiciary and parliament refines and creates national laws for all regional blocs, but only after representatives of each bloc or their constitutes have agreed for those laws. This creates a backbone of common law and policy, but also prevents any one region from dictating what should be.
Examples of hypothetical EU Regional blocs: A Mediterranean region for all nations who share a coastline with that body, a Black Sea region of the same, a Balkans Bloc, A Baltic Sea bloc, and so forth. Those spots have commonalities in what places they deem to be important, thus they would be focused on creating frameworks that allow for effective trade and practices within their region.
Whether this sort of division would work is the big question. Unfortunately, we will be exposed to political upheavals of what does…and more importantly, DOESN’T, work.
I personally believe that the US will become an social experiment of great and terrible proportions, that all other powers will pay close attention to.
The best part is this was intended from the start. The very first proposed name for the European Union was literally United States of Europe.
Then there were several plans to move to a more federal system, but all of them failed, usually due to American interference.
Brah, no one wants that for anywhere.
That’s just marketing taking hopes and sucking the life from them.
Why can’t any of the worlds top nations just be sane? Instead of like… The creep from blue Velvet.
“wiser and more cultured” aaaand there goes my coffee out of my nose.
Looking at the united states and China I’d say it’s a reasonable statement
Looking at a lot of places I’d say; the world is descending into fascism, supidity and debauchery!
I’m just gonna leave this gem here: United States Of Europe [Gibraltar to Spitsbergen, Cayenne to Crimea] | NEO MAGAZIN ROYALE - ZDFneo
Any time white nationalists demand an all white country, I just think back to the last 2500 years and ask myself, you had that and still fucked it up.
Understood. The only solution is a social media ban for minors.
That requires EVERYBODY to register their full identification with the government. Y’know, for the kids. You want to protect the kids, don’t you?
Realistically, we have the technology to have universal translators on the shelves by next Christmas.
Old joke.
The Mafia gets ripped off by a professional thief. When they catch him they realize he only speaks French. They find a French speaking hooker and tell her to translate.
The thief says “You got me. The diamonds are in the hotel safe under the name ‘Charles DeGaulle’ You can have the jewels and my family will pay them a $5million ransom if they let me go.”
The hooker tells the Mafia, “He says you’re bunch of monkeys and he’ll never say where the diamonds are.”
