• Zarajevo@feddit.org
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    4 hours ago

    Don’t bother with the propaganda, Europe is the best place to live in, we are happiest and healthiest population. US is nothing but a European colony in Native American land with hybris. We had fascism here 100 years ago, US is just now starting to explore it. Democracy can be simple populism if the population is uneducated, thats what Europeans concluded 2000 years ago in Greece.

    • mathemachristian[he]@lemmy.ml
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      3 hours ago

      Are you saying that we aren’t completely vassalized and beholden to the yankee empire?? Who rebuilt west europe after WW2? Do you think they just did that and handed the reigns back to the europeans? Do you really think that Europe is equal to and independent from the US? Because this is how they talk about us:

      https://x.com/acyn/status/1860153637382815921

      and we just take it. Any project of ours trying to distance ourselves from yankee dependence like e.g. Nord Stream 2, they bomb it. And we just take it. Hate the yankee, but remember they’re our master and hate them more.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      3 hours ago

      Europe is only a decent place to live because it’s reliant on imperialism, and until now has been able to rely on the US Empire propping up NATO to lower Europe’s millitary spending. Now that imperialism is drying up and the US Empire no longer wants to be the only one paying for NATO, European countries are enforcing austerity and sliding to the far-right.

      • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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        2 hours ago

        To be fair, far-right ideologies have been ramping up worldwide since a decade or two.

        The current political context just embolden the far right actors to go mask off.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          But why? What is the material cause of this? I’d say it’s the gradual decline in imperialism breeding right-wing populism as the smaller capitalists are pressed downward toward the working classes, and the necessity of austerity to cover for losses in gains from imperialism.

  • teagrrl@lemmy.ml
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    16 hours ago

    The Jedi were neoliberal losers that allowed fascists come to power and cared not for the extreme poverty going on beneath their feet of Coruscant, so yeah putting the blue lightsaber in Europe’s hands is accurate.

  • Formfiller@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    Since Epstein was very clearly Mossad and the United States politicians are being blackmailed and bribed by Israeli intelligence I kinda feel like this should be included in the enemy lineup. Although Is china really an enemy of Europe?

  • Juice@midwest.social
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    15 hours ago

    China isn’t a threat to the EU lol. Russia is more complicated. but Putin is mostly playing the cards he is dealt. If you got rid of NATO and ended severe sanctions , maybe didn’t blow up their NG pipelines, Russia would grow beyond Putin.

    You could put any country on the left and the US flag on the right and it would be accurate. You could even put the US flag on both sides and it would be accurate

    • bob_lemon@feddit.org
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      7 hours ago

      Russia is the fucking dealer of their own cards. The sanctions and blowing up of pipelines are both direct responses to their fucking invasion of Ukraine.

      They don’t get to play the victim.

      • Juice@midwest.social
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        7 hours ago

        Listen I do not condone the Russian invasion. But they were all but forced to invade. The western neoliberal hegemon wanted to draw Russia into a war of attrition, the west did a color counter - revolution after Euromaidan. Yanukovitch was forced out after asking for aid from Russia rather than the World Bank. The US funded extreme right-wing militants in Ukraine, and then, after Putin said they would invade if NATO expanded into Ukraine, the US and the EU pushed to make Ukraine a member state. Guess what happened next.

        And the Ukrainian people have lost so much. The country has been brutally exploited for the last 100 years. The war is a proving ground for drone warfare, which is being turned on the people of the West. I won’t say Russia had no options but invasion, I won’t defend Putin, but he’s the guy. The West can’t admit that their bellicose attitude toward Russia keeps him in power. And the war in Ukraine is a prime example. Staying in power has its own horrible logic. The actions of.Putin are reprehensible, and I probably was too easy on him in the above comment. But it is much more complicated than “bad man invade.” The Ukraine war was the result of a decade of meddling by the west.

        Perhaps a similar argument can be made of the US, that large powers have to ruthlessly defend their interests, as Mearsheimer argues. But the war in Ukraine wasnt the beginning, The war in Ukraine was the result.

  • StinkySocialist@lemmy.ml
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    17 hours ago

    Ah Europe famous for colonization, slave trade, racism, the literal nazis being the good guys?

    Y’all I’m an American and fuck my country and fuck the current Russian state but fuck Europe even more tbh.

    Also what are you hating on China for? Guess that’s European racism again.

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
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      33 minutes ago

      Look, you need to accept that every country has skeletons in the closet. The international landscape has no good guys, only interests.

    • Darkness343@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      The only thing Europe did wrong was causing the fall of Rome. Everything that came after that was just a consequence.

      Rise again, Italy, and claim what is yours. The world.

    • Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone
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      16 hours ago

      Yeah can’t let go of the past, im still mad about the bacteria that killed my ancestor before we evolved out of the ocean

      • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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        A bunch of African countries just threw off French colonial control like, three years ago, and are still being vilified for it. This shit is extremely current and you’re acting like a smug prick

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        16 hours ago

        Europe still practices neocolonialism and imperialism. Hell, Australia and other European settler-colonies still exist.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            14 hours ago

            Read up on local decolonial movements, and listen to what they have to say and are advocating for. Read up on settler-colonialism, Fanon is an excellent writer.

      • StinkySocialist@lemmy.ml
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        16 hours ago

        What a brain dead and privileged take. Exactly how long are people allowed to be upset for? Would you say that shit to a holocaust survivor.

        White people smh

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          Ironic I’m not white, I’m Australian Aboriginal, every year on the 25th of January people getting shitty about the invasion of Australia.

          I think get over it my grandmother was stolen generation but I’m not beating my chest about it

          Lastly saying “White people smh” is still racist.

          Imagine someone said black people smh because of their opinions

      • orc_princess@lemmy.ml
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        16 hours ago

        Europe is profitting off child slavery and other horrible shit worldwide. This isn’t a thing of the past only, and being dismissive like this is beyond disrespectful to the many victims of capitalism.

  • Carl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    20 hours ago

    Okay Russia is understandable cuz they’re in a war, USA understandable cuz they’re saber rattling, but genuinely what is China doing besides minding their own business?

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          No no no, you don’t understand, we wanted to make money from the ports and produce the cars but they had to be the complex, oil-sucking ones because those are hard to produce and we and our partners made good profits from the oligopoly and making cheap and environment friendly cars is just cheating. It’s against the rules-based world order! Also, Uyghurs!

      • huf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        18 hours ago

        economy war is when the west voluntarily hands you all its production and then gets mad that someone somehow handed the production over. i guess.

        edit: the people actually waging economic war on you are your own god damned ruling class.

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          15 hours ago

          Between an exchange of goods and services and flooding it by subventiontioning to suppress the competition is teensy tiny difference, no?

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            15 hours ago

            This is called a “skill issue” on the hand of western imperialists that can’t compete. Stop framing doing better as being evil.

              • Carrot@lemmy.today
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                8 hours ago

                Explain how it’s evil to allow the US companies to move their production out of the US? The US corporations could have kept industry here, but they decided to fuck themselves over so that a few shareholders’ margins went up by a few percentage points. That wasn’t China being malicious, that’s the US lacking any sense of foresight while being blinded by greed.

              • Regular Water@lemmy.eco.br
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                14 hours ago

                Evil is the invisible hand of the market fisting the ass of your country, who send their production to a foreign country, and then start crying because they get better after decades of doing what guys should have being doing all along.

                • Grapho@lemmy.ml
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                  13 hours ago

                  Oh no the Chinese are sending us good quality, cheap goods and letting us pay them with our dogshit overinflated currency. If only we were forced to buy plasticky shit at extortionate prices made by the USA (USA!! USA!!).

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          18 hours ago

          Flooding foreign economies with cheap subventioned goods so the domestic can’t compete and go out of business and thus increasing dependency in you.
          Yes, I’d say this is bad.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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            3 hours ago

            China isn’t forcing anybody to buy their goods at gunpoint last I checked. The fact that western markets are unable to produce comparable goods at the same prices is entirely the problem with the way western economies are structured. The whole premise for loosely regulated markets was that they were supposed to be more efficient than state planning, turns out that was a big fat lie. So now the dumb fucks in the west are crying that their failed economic model can’t compete with China. Tough!

            • FunkyStuff@lemmy.ml
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              17 hours ago

              It is a pretty bad deal for Western workers that our economies have deindustrialized. But that’s not China’s fault, that’s our ruling classes’ fault.

                • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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                  3 hours ago

                  I would argue that it is in fact bad because it’s a threat to national security and sovereignty. The Europeans are now finding out that they’re unable to produce things domestically that their people need, and have become entirely reliant on US energy exports and military protection.

                • FunkyStuff@lemmy.ml
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                  17 hours ago

                  Yeah, kind of, but under a capitalist system where workers can’t reap the benefits of automation and much labor is still performed in the imperial periphery it is negative.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            18 hours ago

            This is just cope, though. China has better industrial capacity, and can produce high quality goods for lower prices because of this. It isn’t because of evil, it’s because China as a socialist economy is surpassing capitalist economies.

          • FunkyStuff@lemmy.ml
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            18 hours ago

            The goods produced in China are cheap because Western economies made a bet that they’d come out ahead by moving their capital out of their own economies and into China. China won the bet instead of them and now has more productive capacity than the West. Why is it China’s fault that the West had poor foresight and deindustrialized itself in exchange for short term profits? Should Chinese workers have remained poor forever instead of benefiting from Western investments?

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        20 hours ago

        They aren’t? Not only is the idea of mass Uyghur slave labor atrocity propaganda akin to claiming that there’s “white genocide” in South Africa, Christian genocide in Nigeria, or that Hamas sexually assaulted babies in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, but the PRC is an incredibly industrialized country and as such doesn’t have a need for slavery. Slavery in general is a horribly inefficient system fir anything other than agrarian production, which is why the Statesian North liberated the slaves in the south, for more wage-laboring industrial workers.

        In the case of Xinjiang, the area is crucial in the Belt and Road Initiative, so the west backed sepratist groups in order to destabilize the region. China responded with vocational programs and de-radicalization efforts, which the west then twisted into claims of “genocide.” Nevermind that the west responds to seperatism with mass violence, and thus re-education programs focused on rehabilitation are far more humane, the tool was used both for outright violence by the west into a useful narrative to feed its own citizens.

        The best and most comprehensive resource I have seen so far is Qiao Collective’s Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation. Qiao Collective is explicitly pro-PRC, but this is an extremely comprehensive write-up of the entire background of the events, the timeline of reports, and real and fake claims.

        I also recommend reading the UN report and China’s response to it. These are the most relevant accusations and responses without delving into straight up fantasy like Adrian Zenz, professional propagandist for the Victims of Communism Foundation, does.

        Tourists do go to Xinjiang all the time as well. You can watch videos like this one on YouTube, though it obviously isn’t going to be a comprehensive view of a complex situation like this.

  • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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    22 hours ago

    I love the memes about how China is threatening Europe so much. The last time China did anything threatening to Europe it was when they had a war to kick the British out of China, and Europe will never forgive them for it

    • Mubelotix@jlai.lu
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      20 hours ago

      China threatens European allies like Japan and Taiwan daily. The republic must be restored

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        The republic must be restored

        “We need to bring back the colonial government”

        You guys are not beating the psychotically racist allegations. This is like saying we need to restore the British Raj in India

      • Riverside@reddthat.com
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        18 hours ago

        Europe: collaborates in the genocide of Palestinians

        Europeans: “China is so evil and militaristic, look at all those hypothetical things they could hypothetically do to Taiwan!”

      • LowResBeer@lemmy.ml
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        18 hours ago

        I want you to google the last time that china and taiwan had a military hostile interaction.

        Please do.

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        20 hours ago

        Japan hasn’t even given a symbolic apology for their massive list of war crimes against China and all over Asia, Taiwan is part of China under international law, and the nationalist forces you defend were murdering communists while under attack by Japan. You fascist sympathizers…

      • iByteABit@lemmy.ml
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        Try to think why these supposed “threats” are such a big deal for an alliance of countries so far away from the region to be affected, and you might stumble upon the real reason why they hate China so much.

        Spoiler alert, it’s because they can no longer take advantage of China like they did when it was under the boot of the British. They hate that it’s a sovereign country that works for its own benefit, and that their footholds in the region are unable to reverse the course of history as they’d like.

  • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    23 hours ago

    How is China exactly threatening Europe? By offering affordable electric cars and cheap solar panels and batteries that EU doesn’t manufacture anyway?

    • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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      19 hours ago

      i thought i was the only one who noticed the marvel characters and i still don’t fully understand what it means. lol

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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    Except the EU can’t compete industrially or millitarily with any of those 3. The EU needs to correctly identify who to partner with for its own survival, and it’s clear that the PRC is the best option, Russia being a second choice. The US Empire is dying, and the EU imperialists are either going to fall down with it or be forced into cooperation with those it has convinced itself are existential enemies.

    • iByteABit@lemmy.ml
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      23 hours ago

      Maybe there’d be some hope for that to happen if everyone in the EU hadn’t been conditioned to be racist as fuck against anyone to the east or south for centuries

    • Freakazoid! @feddit.org
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      The EU has a much larger GDP and a significantly higher defense budget than Russia (about 457 billion USD vs. 146 billion USD in 2024). While its industry is more fragmented, it can be rapidly scaled up when needed as demonstrated in Ukraine. and the comparison to russia also lacks because the EU doesn’t consider the current situation as active war. However, compared to the US and China, the EU still lags behind their global projections. Although Russia has increased its arms production in recent years, it is suffering from sanctions and material losses in the Ukraine conflict, which limits its military capabilities. Overall, the EU is economically and industrially stronger than Russia, but still trails the US and China in a global comparison. Since there is a noticable shift of power in the world the EU started to focus more on China and India as trading partners and leave the US who traditionally were European allies.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        23 hours ago

        The EU has a much larger GDP and a significantly higher defense budget than Russia (about 457 billion USD vs. 146 billion USD in 2024)

        The EU is far more financialized, in terms of gross industrial output the EU is behind the Russian Federation. This is a holdover from their soviet legacy. In terms of real production, Russia succeeds, despite lower GDP, because money stretches much farther in Russia. 1 million USD worth of Russian goods gets you a lot more than 1 million USD in European goods, to make things simple.

        Europe could make up the gap, but it is so dominated by finance capital and energy dependency that this makes it incredibly difficult without adopting socialism.

        Overall, the EU is economically and industrially stronger than Russia

        This is false. The EU is financially stronger than Russia, largely thanks to modern neoimperialism in Africa, but industrially is far behind.

        Since there is a noticable shift of power in the world the EU started to focus more on China and India as trading partners and leave the US who traditionally were European allies.

        Correct, the EU is being demoted from imperial vassal to periphery, and since it would take devastating losses in open conflict with a major power without US backing it has to seek other allies.

        • Rugnjr@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 hours ago

          The Netherlands colonized half the world despite being smaller than Mongolia - Venice was able to stand up to countries like the ottoman empire despite being only a single city.

          Financialization isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing either.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            Imperialism is characterized by the following:

            -The presence of monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.

            -The merging of bank capital with industrial capital into finance capital controlled by a financial oligarchy.

            -The export of capital as distinguished from the simple export of commodities.

            -The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations (cartels) and multinational corporations.

            -The domination and exploitation of other countries by militaristic imperialist powers, now through neocolonialism.

            -The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers.

            The global north, Europe included, uses this export of capital to super-exploit foreign labor for super-profits. It also engages in unequal exchange, where the global south is prevented from moving up the value chain in production, allowing the global north to charge monopoly prices for commodities produced in the same labor hours.

            The point I am making isn’t simply about land conquering, but an ongoing process of shifting surplus value and resources from the imperialized to the core. Finance capital is the primary mechanism by which this functions.

        • Catpain Typo@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

          Ridiculous Russia have zero people, they’ve lost 2m in manpower. They have a lot of land but in every measure they are less powerful than the EU. They are economically the size of Spain. The EU contains Spain and it’s not even the largest economy. Russian propaganda much?

          • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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            16 hours ago

            How many times has Russia supposedly been about to collapse? You’d think after the dozenth, people would learn

              • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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                15 hours ago

                “In history” lol ok, now how many times has the Russian Federation been predicted to collapse in Ukraine, and how many times has it.

                Their

                Who is they? Everyone in Russia? Who are you talking about, you weird nationalist?

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            21 hours ago

            You’re confusing finances with raw industrial power. An 8 USD big mac in Switzerland isn’t 3 times better than a 2.54 USD big mac in Indonesia.

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        23 hours ago

        What the EU doesn’t have, at least in the short/medium term, is energy. That industrial base needs (a lot of) energy. Russia was able to supply this cheaply, while the US is charging an arm and a leg. Of course in the long run, renewables can help keep that energy production local, but that means developing closer ties with China. And right now the US is trying to throw up walls to prevent other countries from accessing China’s renewable energy products.

        The EU does indeed have a significantly larger potential industrial base than Russia. But that also requires coordination, intentional action, and long-term planning. So far the EU hasn’t seemed capable of doing these things but who knows, maybe Trump has been the wake-up call Europeans need.

        I also hope Trump has shown Europeans that the US is the bigger threat to European sovereignty than Russia. And this will be true after Trump is gone, it’s not a one-time thing (Biden did things hostile to European sovereignty but that goes under the radar because he was more supportive of Ukraine). But yeah, if the EU makes some coordinated effort to build military defenses, they shouldn’t have a problem protecting their sovereignty against Russia. And that assumes Russia wants to try and military conquer parts of Europe, which I do not believe but even if I did, a more robust, domestic EU military would be enough to prevent an attack even if that was Russia’s intention.

        The US is Europe’s fake friend - with or without Trump - and it frustrates me to no end that Europeans can’t see it.

        • linule@lemmy.world
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          What’s deeply ironic about this situation is that one of the main reasons the EU has remained distant to Russia is the US. Cold war was between US and Russia. More recently US opposed Nord Stream 2. Now US suddenly is friendly to Russia and EU are running around like headless chicken because they made it their own identity to be hostile to Russia. There haven been people suggesting that while indeed Russia is antidemocratic etc. one can still try to carefully cooperate, because it happens to be a neighbor and it makes sense strategically. Who knows, maybe in the process one could positively influence Russia, it doesn’t have to be always the other way. But these people are instantly called Russian assets and demonized. And it’s not like this kind of reasoning was the real issue anyway, as in the meantime you see western democracies happily collaborating e.g. with Turkey or Saudi Arabia. The Ukraine war complicates things though. Aside of the humanitarian and economic tragedy, it’s a diplomatic disaster, as it makes Russia look quite hostile to Europe, whether they actually „want to continue“ beyond Ukraine or not.

        • ManaYoodSushai@feddit.org
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          19 hours ago

          Only major industries Russia has are weapons (we sell those, they are a competitor) and fossil fules (we are in the process of not using them)

          • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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            18 hours ago

            we are in the process of not using them

            not anywhere close to fast nor soon enough to help the situation.

            • ManaYoodSushai@feddit.org
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              18 hours ago

              I disagree. Renewables have been growing exponentially for years. Its already making an impact in some countries, sadly way less in others.

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                6 hours ago

                Instead of taking the opportunity to vastly expand renewables and make a green transition Europe is buying LNG from the US for a way higher price than Russia offered. The green transition has been watered down on European level as well (I wouldn’t call it exponential growth)

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            19 hours ago

            Russia has quite a bit more than just those areas, but importantly, the EU still needs fossil fuels. It could sidestep this by purchasing large amounts of solar from China, or making or buying nuclear reactors, but it can’t do so overnight. Moreover, the EU is heavily financialized, and industry is hurting. Much of what the EU consumes is made overseas, or comes from overseas resource extraction, especially from European neocolonies in Africa. Imperialism is decaying, so this puts the EU in an even tighter spot, hence political instability and a strong rightward shift.

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              making or buying nuclear reactors

              The country that export most of nuclear build capacity, is by far Russia, with over 20 reactors in construction abroad. So while EU countries does have know-how to build them too, i bet it’s nowhere near the required scale (also China builds like 30 reactors, but in China)

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                Definitely, that’s what I was implying with that but I probably should have spelled it out, rather than expecting them to realize nuclear depends likely on Russia.

            • ManaYoodSushai@feddit.org
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              18 hours ago

              I’m not sure what you are trying to say. Russia has way less industrial output than the EU. Russia is more imperialist than the EU. EU is shifting right, but is still wayyy to the left of Russia. Saying we should align with Russia is like saying we should align with turkey. Or Saudi Arabia.

              • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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                16 hours ago

                Russia is more imperialist than the EU

                Tell that to roughly a quarter of the entire continent of Africa that lived or still lives under French imperial control

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                18 hours ago

                Russia is the 4th largest economy by GDP, adjusted to PPP, and isn’t as heavily reliant on finance capital as the EU is. Moreover, Russia has no colonies nor neocolonies, and doesn’t run their economy based on export of capital and plundering the surplus value of the global south, like the US and EU do.

                Imperialism is characterized by the following:

                -The presence of monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.

                -The merging of bank capital with industrial capital into finance capital controlled by a financial oligarchy.

                -The export of capital as distinguished from the simple export of commodities.

                -The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations (cartels) and multinational corporations.

                -The domination and exploitation of other countries by militaristic imperialist powers, now through neocolonialism.

                -The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers.

                The global north, Europe included, uses this export of capital to super-exploit foreign labor for super-profits. It also engages in unequal exchange, where the global south is prevented from moving up the value chain in production, allowing the global north to charge monopoly prices for commodities produced in the same labor hours. Russia does not do this, it has a paltry sum of the world’s finance capital, and this is proven by just how low their nominal GDP is compared to it’s GDP adjusted to PPP.

                The Russian Federation and the EU are both right-wing, but the EU is actively imperialist. The fact that progressive nationalist movements like the Alliance of Sahel States are kicking out European plunderers, and the PRC is presenting as an alternative to western domination, is exactly why conditions within the imperialist west are declining and causing a shift to the far-right. Austerity politics are enforced due to capitalist decay.

                • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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                  14 hours ago

                  I think long term a post-Putin Russia should really just join the EU (along with Ukraine). Russia has always been European. The cold war fuelled by the US is over. There’s no reason to divide Europe ethnographically when with open borders, free trade and unified economic policies everyone can do what they want.

                  The only thing the EU should realize faster is unified wages across regions and some sort of control over private property/housing, else western capitalists will keep buying land and homes creating serfdom.

                • ManaYoodSushai@feddit.org
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                  15 hours ago

                  Russia is part of the global north. Most of Russia’s territory is made up of colonies. You can not be pro Russia and anti imperialist at the same time.