My first impression:

Funny how 15 years ago there wasn’t €800 billion to help common citizens in the face of global recession. Instead we all had to go on an austerity course that allowed everything that helped the average citizen to decay, if it wasn’t outright cut. And now all these mainstream parties are running terrified of the far-right that seized on the fertile ground they left with these actions. But when it comes time to dump more money into massive industries, then there’s always more to be found.

Even in Germany the Holy Grail of politics that has kneecapped any effort to widen social services or address climate breakdown can finally be done away with. In order to dump money into the armaments industry, which (speaking non-ideologically and purely from a practical perspective) at least in the German case is massively putting the cart before the horse. The Bundeswehr is a joke, and has been for at least 15 years. They’ve been trying to reform it, which it needs before anyone throws money at it.

As far as wanting to feel safer, well I would contest the idea that dumping money into weapons actually makes people safer. We have seen such periods of military spending before in history, and they usually don’t make the world safer. Rather they make politicians feel more confident that, since they have a thousand hammers, everything must be a nail.

I hate that calls for peace have become hijacked by far-right parties that are only interested in either business with a kleptocratic irredentist authorianism in Russia or want to mirror that polis in their own countries. We need to work out a new perspective that doesn’t fall into blind militarism while also avoiding becoming targets for neo-imperialist forces. I don’t know what such a movement would look like practically, but perhaps we can take inspiration from anti-imperial movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Babylon 5 or the Expanse. I suppose it depends on how close I am to a main character…

And people mocked me for my human-tyrannosaur slashfic on ao3. Well, who’s laughing now?

Dude, they literally invite some of the biggest names in modern Eurofascism to be on their shows. The English-language portion on ServusTV’s politics is just a short introduction. Switch to the German-language one for greater depth.

I’ve watched them in the past myself for their mountaineering programs, but after learning about their far-right connections, I’m unlikely to do so again. Because, even in that sense, the mountaineering connection becomes quite suspect given the historical ties between fascist ideology, aesthetics and the mountains of southern Germany/Austria. Susan Sontag outlined it better than I can.

You know how a bunch of villains are Dr. So-and-So? I bet it’s dealing with morons talking about your area of expertise that leads to one’s villain era.

Are you suggesting statues of liberty migrate?

Sadly, probably not. That would require some political courage instead of craven avarice and an obsessive aversion to change.

I would like to visit your cafe

The word and the place is a fun bit of trivia!

I mean, I’m going to guess that if this administration wants to do something, then international laws about place of origin don’t matter anymore either.

reddit never had a problem with any of the right-wing subs calling for violence or engaging in harassment, so their bullshit claims of not allowing violence are absolutely hypocritical.

Yeah, the existence of billionaires requires violence be perpetrated upon entire groups of people.

Thank you for your service

🇨🇿 Jiri Weil

🇬🇧 Terry Pratchett

🇬🇧 Charles Williams

🇩🇪 Walter Moers

There might be some interesting ones in this link