The problem I see with the West addressing this is that for that to happen, we have to stop viewing the West as a single unitary thing, both in terms of nations and of social class. You can’t blame the whole collective West while expecting them to join your side of the neocolonialism debate.

And the flip side is that the whoel subject cannot really be talked about without looking at geopolitics as a whole. Neocolnialism is practiced by all major and some minor powers today, and it is the exact same dynamic playing out in Ukraine that is playing out in Palestine, with the small difference that Ukrainians had a headstart of a mostly functional country in the first place so they can defend themselves from their aggressor more effectively.

Calling for the US to stop backing genocide only makes your argument anti-colonialist if you oppose other attempts of colonialism, like Russia trying to retain its colony Ukraine. Russia has been propped up just as much by its colonies as the US, except they never really made it to prosperity. TBH the current best hope for a great power that is independent enough not to be another colony to emerge, that does not directly need its colonies to even survive, is if Ukraine joins the EU. In that case, I think there may be a future when the French get out of Africa like how the British got out of much of their colonies.

My point here is that the statement that “the US-led West is the biggest exploiter and beneficiary of neocolonialism” might have been true between like 1990 and 2010, but before that the USSR was just as big a contender, and today’s China and Russia are also trying to either set up their new colonial empire, or trying to reclaim some semblance of their old.

Not to mention that the “US-led West” has died with the re-election of Donald Trump.

It would, but Orbán isn’t Hungary. You can’t blackmail Orbán with Hungary, he doesn’t care for it beyond using it as a vehicle of power. Hungary is also in a lot of hardship already, so I doubt some more layoffs would be the breaking point.

The factories wouldn’t close immediately, they are huge. Also, China is also building up in Hungary, and it would continue being an important transit and manufacturing hub between China and the EU, even if it was not part of the EU. It’s still on the shortest path between the Belt and Road connections and Germany, and there is no point in either going the Croatia route over the mountains or through Ukraine and Poland, again through mountains and presently, war. It is also chock full of Chinese battery plants that would continue to sell to the EU, because even without being in the trade union, Hungary has the advantage of not giving a shit about environmental regulations for building such plants.

To be honest, this is why every sane Hungarian wants Ukraine to succeed in defending itself, as if we had a Russian border in Transcarpathia, that’s when shit would get real and Orbán would go full Belarus.

Yeah it was not against you, only against WP, even if I was harsh with language. I should have made that clear.

Sorry and thanks for posting.

German car manufacturing. VW’s biggest engine factory is in Gyõr, Hungary. BMW is building in Debrecen, then there is also Mercedes. Hungary is also a major battery manufacturer since recently.

Couple that with some other industry, like the only non-Danish Lego factory in the EU for example, or others.

Cutting Hungary out from the customs union would cost a lot of people with a lot of power in the EU a lot of money.

Yeah, a huge amount of countries and people were colonized by Europeans. Some of those are still colonies. There could be endless arguments about what exactly the people in the Republic of France owe people who have been colonized by the Emperor of France.

The end goal for that should be a relationship like the one the UK has with Canada, which turned from a colony to an equal ally.

For that, there should be a transfer of technology and knowledge, so giving them free access to higher education in eg. France, or gifting them patents, or funding infrastructure - not like China or the IMF though, I mean without an ulterior motive.

On the very stats you sent me it says the top 3 are Afganistan, Syria and Ukraine. Afghanistan is its own mess, and I think the narrative I accept is that Europe’s part in it was that we went there to preserve NATO - much good that did, see Trump - but we’re still part of the problem, and we should take in Afghanis because of that even for long term resettlement, and so should the US.

But the point is, the amount of displaced people from Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine are nearly equal. The latter two are Russian “near abroad” colonies fighting what is essentially a war of independence, and together they far outnumber Afghanis, especially near Europe. And that is an asylum problem rather than a “we owe them” problem IMO.

And that actually shines a light on another issue, the differences between parts of the EU. That is because you are describing the EU as an union of colonizers, it couldn’t be farther from the truth for countries like Finland, Latvia or Hungary, which have been colonies rather than colonizers for most of their existence. In fact, Hungary has mostly been behaving as a German colony for the past 20-30 years.

The way I see it, while the EU has member states with heavy colonial pasts, a lot - IDK even most? - of the others are in a tough spot because of this, as their societies are even less used to the multiculturalism that being a colonial power brings, and they are right IMO in saying “we did not fuck this up, it’s not on us to fix it”.

Finally, again the problem is that while reparations for colonial wrongdoings should happen, the priority should be stopping current neocolonialism. We can’t heal old wounds while inflicting new ones.

On the one hand, the current refugees are not coming to Europe from old European colonies, but from Russian ones. In fact, most of them come because of Russia bombing many of them as a last ditch attempt of a failing colonial power to maintain its exploitative hold on them. That is true of Syria or Ukraine.

I think it’s two separate issues, with migration being the shared aspect. Economic migration I think should be considered in the context of what you said, like people from ex-colonies should be helped by opening up the education system or the job market - in very regulated ways, mostly prescribing a very high minimum wage - for them, while people from eg. Syria should be helped by giving out asylum, but the two systems should be entirely separate. If anything, I think the costs associated by housing Ukrainian or Syrian asylees should be taken from frozen Russian assets, as part of the cost of rebuilding those countries.

Trying to “fix” ex-colonies, or completely opening up the country to economic migration creates neo-colonialistic dynamics IMO.

People on Linux are used to things just working I guess.

This is such a hard issue. If documented rights abuses and limited protections are a reason for extending asylum, we could have most of the world in here as refugees, including the whole populations of the US, China and India.

On the other hand, it is a fundamental contradiction of European values to push people back into places where they are abused.

Then again, Russia has weaponized masses of asylum seekers with great effect.

I hope it’s not going to be Germany, the policies of their current conservative leadership is why we’re dealing with a lot of these fires.

They are responsible for making the EU reliant enough on Russia that they thought we would stand by and let Ukraine fall. They are responsible for the absolute state of Hungary. The migrant crisis. Bankrupting Greece in the name of austerity. I’m sure the list goes on.

In the NL there is only private health insurance, so it’s technically private sector. I pay my 120 EUR premium, and this was included so I never needed to pay at the time of care.

Yeah that’s for the wrong sorts of people. Don’t worry, it’s only selectively enforced, and the cops know you’re one of the good ones. /s

That’s what Meloni wants to be but Trump seemingly prefers to speak to Macron. It must be Trump doesn’t give a fuck about ideology and only understands power.

That said, I don’t care what US oligarch cumrag Washington Post says about Europe.

I wonder if those protect from the Israeli spyware Hungary has been buying.

These are French people, countries exist outside the US.

That’s the neat part, you don’t.

Welcome to the third world guys.

You can keep digging the trenches if you want. Why do you want to alienate people for the sake of it?

I just want to butt in that while the meme is stupid, most women are not awful either.

That is right, but put yourself in the shoes of that other man, and ask yourself how he would feel on seeing this meme. Contrast it with memes about “only those Black people, not the good ones”.

Exactly my point, the meme insinuates that the only way men become lonely is that they hate women, which is not true and is a harmful generalisation.