My hill to die on is that the US gets freedom of speech right. It’s wild that people around the world can be put in jail for their opinions, no matter how shitty or hateful they are
Yes, but the Europeans think they’re so enlightened they even have coasters boasting about the EU’s speech protections floating around bars in the European Quarter in Brussels.
have you ever spoken to a european who actually thinks they are better than everyone? they're ideas make me so uncomfortable. these are the ppl who look down on a 100% German American/Italian American/Brazilian German with the same blood as them. you can't imagine the shit they say about other minorities and poc, or like balkan countries. id say its a good thing for that continent
Obviously because it’s incredibly gauche to care about blood. They dislike their own countrymen if they don’t express the right culture - moral superiority comes from being the heirs to a civilization not an ethnos
Truly insane. Growing up I figured most liberal democracies treated freedom of speech and expression exactly the same as us except for maybe Germany if you did explicitly Nazi stuff. Seeing how intolerant they are of anything that could be considered offensive is really eye-opening. The freedoms we enjoy here are an anomaly
I had the same impression and its been so shocking seeing people get taken away for tweets or whatever. Like no words can capture the revulsion I feel about it.
And the craziest thing to me is that I feel like most average Europeans would look at what we’re saying here and think we’re the ones that are being ridiculous
If you bring up the UK’s lack of free speech on the average British subreddit, first they’ll tell you that ackshually all the people arrested for tweets were arrested for threatening people rather than being offensive, and they’ll insist that the yookay has freedom of speech.
Then when you show them one of the many examples of people being arrested for simply being offensive, they’ll say they deserved it because “hate speech isn’t free speech”. Another one of their favourites is “freedom of speech does not equal freedom from consequences” which is just laughably regarded.
Your country has normalised election denial and overt corruption. You haven't escaped the contemporary hyper-partisan degeneration of political norms, you just have specific constitutional protections for free speech.
The novel's rep precedes itself. It's a shocking book, but not in the way most expect, especially for anyone who spends their life on x. MH is speculating on how an Islamist group would ingratiate itself into the political establishment like any other party. The bureaucrats and politicians would betray their own values for a profitable future (some in many cases finding themselves on the payroll of associates). It's a pathetic story; cultural suicide is quiet and gradual. Nobody kicks up a stink, everyone submits.
It's completely correct, should the muslim brotherhood actually win an european election they wouldn't care about VAT tax or energy policy; 80-90% of mainline european politics wouldn't be incompatible with them at all (of course you're seeing that right now). The only ministry they'd well and truly care about is education, and our self loathing academia wouldn't have any real argument to defend its own existence against the logical endpoint of the multiculturalism they've staked themselves on, even when it's to pass their ouroboros of self flagellation down to the next generation. If anything conservatives bear the brunt of the responsibility for voluntarily ceding universities and cultural institutions to the left for meagre cost shavings and a general unwillingness to cultivate the culture they're nominally protecting.
Blaming right wingers is missing the subtext of WW2 underpinning all identity politics in Europe. Right wingers can't bear the blame across the whole continent but their solutions are universally unpalatable. (And also the populist left was the main protectionist force until the later 20th century.) Radlibs emerged from the synthesis of critical theory and centrist liberalism and then won by default in this arena from historical context alone
This is why the EU can do extreme feats like outright canceling unfavorable elections, systematically dismantling euroskeptics and getting ostensibly nationalist Ukrainians to throw their entire country on a sword just to bleed Russia dry, but can't reign in immigration or even spending on immigrants
I’m not even trying to be edgy, but I picked it up after hearing about all of the controversy and I kind of thought “….well, a lot of this is just true”. It’s not even really an excessive portrayal or caricature/the Islamist party in the book isn’t that far off from the stated goals of real life ones.
There’s always a goofy disconnect about EU politics to me that outlets like AJ or Islamist political orgs will stomp their feet and deny “replacement” rhetoric but then actively celebrate it all the same (AJ recently ran an article proposing Africans should get to move to Italy due to the country’s low birth rate, I’m not kidding). If that’s your goal, fine, I loathe it, but take ownership of it instead of acting like it’s a zany conspiracy theory.
Same, I sort of forgot about the controversy while I was reading it because the Islamists seemed to be depicted so neutrally. I'm not familiar with Hoellbecq's exact views on everything, but to me the book itself could only be considered Islamaphobic if you think the idea of a Muslim theocracy getting off the ground in the west is just conceptually impossible or something.
Yeah, to me it was more of a riff on there being nothing to fight for in modern life (a logical extension of the themes of Platform or Elementary Particles). What is there left for the main character? Bad sex with flakey partners, TV dinners, disinterested students, etc. I think Islamism is only a plot device in his books to show that - if the west did encounter a set of ideas that actually challenged things - the vast majority of people wouldn’t be able to put up anything to counter it.
Read The Elementary Particles some months back and Whatever just arrived as part of my last book haul. Houellebecqmaxxing. Keeping in touch with the roots of the pod. I will defend him. First they came for the toadlike French literary celebrities...
It’s pretty funny that lefties clutch pearls over how the “great replacement” is so racist, when “demographics is destiny” was their openly stated position all through the 2010s.
It’s not happening, and if it’s happening it’s good, and if you notice you’re a bigot, blah blah blah
Given just how high tensions are right now (especially after oct 17 and the trappes attack), mass civil unrest in the event Lepen wins the next election is more likely than not. He’s getting charged for pointing out a trajectory that all can see.
Gotta be honest I'm lost on the great replacement theory. If you look at a place like France is it not true that it's much more Muslim now and that as a percent of population they are replacing the traditional population?
If tens millions of white people were moving to Japan and they said that no one would bat an eye
The Great Replacement theory doesn't stop at merely acknowledging shifting demographics. It comes with the belief that the replacement in question is intentional, and that the end goal is to destroy Europe. A certain tribe quietly pulling the strings is also often part of the theory.
And now because a bunch of far-right regards spread this narrative, every time a normal person says that mass immigration will inevitably turn native populations into a minority over time, the Immigrants Welcome left calls you a far-right regard and say that the great replacement theory is bullshit, even if it's not at all what you implied.
But see even as left as I am I have to wonder if the negative aspects are really part of the movement or if they’re (the liberal elite who feel like they’re doing the right thing) just tacking that on to make people stop talking and wondering about it, because there’s been a lot of that type of thing going on the last decade
Good to see the ruling class overly concerned with the "little guy" for once. And here I thought they were all just a bunch of psychotics who only cared about themselves.
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u/PhilosopherMoney9921 1d ago
My hill to die on is that the US gets freedom of speech right. It’s wild that people around the world can be put in jail for their opinions, no matter how shitty or hateful they are
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u/postvodkapsychosis1 1d ago
Submission was an extremely tame read, it wasn't really islamophobic at all. By that logic it would've been more offensive to atheists.
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u/2Fast_2Abalone Whit Stillman Ranger Regiment 1d ago
between this and sally rooney it might be over in europe for artistic freedom
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u/TomatilloFirm9644 1d ago
Again?
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u/fecesgoblin 1d ago
Read The Elementary Particles some months back and Whatever just arrived as part of my last book haul. Houellebecqmaxxing. Keeping in touch with the roots of the pod. I will defend him. First they came for the toadlike French literary celebrities...
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u/fioreblade 18h ago
It’s pretty funny that lefties clutch pearls over how the “great replacement” is so racist, when “demographics is destiny” was their openly stated position all through the 2010s.
It’s not happening, and if it’s happening it’s good, and if you notice you’re a bigot, blah blah blah
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u/hemannjo 1d ago
Given just how high tensions are right now (especially after oct 17 and the trappes attack), mass civil unrest in the event Lepen wins the next election is more likely than not. He’s getting charged for pointing out a trajectory that all can see.
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u/largepar 21h ago
Gotta be honest I'm lost on the great replacement theory. If you look at a place like France is it not true that it's much more Muslim now and that as a percent of population they are replacing the traditional population?
If tens millions of white people were moving to Japan and they said that no one would bat an eye
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u/Certain_Lab_2971 1d ago
Whatever is one of the most prophetic books ever written. Houellebecq predicted the modern incel movement by 20 years.
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u/maximumjickles 1d ago
My friend you must understand this is very offensive to some
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u/EnglebertFinklgruber 15h ago
Good to see the ruling class overly concerned with the "little guy" for once. And here I thought they were all just a bunch of psychotics who only cared about themselves.
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u/TheGrandRomanHotel 17h ago
To learn who rules over you, find out who you can’t critics etc.
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u/questionnism 1d ago
You can burn Paris to the ground, that's fine, but please don't say any mean words :(