Donald Trump’s administration is planning to spend $4 million to bolster right-wing media in Europe, part of a package of at least $25 million for civil society groups working on conservative causes in the region, according to four people familiar with the funding.
The grants risk deepening tensions between the Trump administration and European governments, some of which have already accused Washington of interfering in their domestic politics.
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) says the funding is meant to strengthen transatlantic ties and promote free speech. It comes as European countries prepare for elections over the next couple of years, and as the Trump administration openly backs Europe’s populist right-wing and far-right parties.
This is an attack on Europe.
Well SOMEBODY’s gotta use state funding to push facisim in Europe now that Orban’s out of office. /s
Now if only people with 1/2 a brain cell could tell the difference between right wing propaganda and actual news; we’d be living in a way better world.
$4M is nothing. That’s like 50 bloggers in western Europe, or one regional rag with no readers. Or a Twitter troll farm in Hungary with 100 totally real humans and their handlers getting rich siphoning most of it off for themselves. A literal drop in the bucket.
The US has been funding foreign media for a century at least, steering narratives. It was part of their soft power strategy. This isn’t surprising. Where people are freaking out is due to the shift in alignment.
So they’re funding the right-wing…
Just in time to compensate for Germany‘s closing of the Russian House and Consulate.
First amendment violation. I’d be surprisrd if this wasn’t struck down
where ya been lately? this scRotus majority, ruling objectively and on facts?
I’m sure they’re just joking.
…right?
This is how those with the power have done it for ages and want it to remain. Scapegoat minorities and immigrants for all issues, make people angry, offer only hope of fix is to double down and be more harsh, austerity, sacrifice for country, etc, which gets more people fearful and go against what actually works better for healthy humanity, and for the dictatorship. Look at other current countries and in the past, and how maga has caused regression on human health and democracy measures. It’s a pattern visible if you’re awake.
Which is definitely why there should be laws in place that are enforced and respected to prevent this obviously depraved behavior.
Isn’t this the shit they accuse Soros of?
And Russia
You don’t understand. They say Soros uses his own money. Trump is using ours.
I don’t know why that’s better, but it seems to be.
I made a meme echoing the hypocrisy and double standards of the right. They’re asleep when billionaires fund apocalypse-accelerating movements but roar when it’s billionaires funding progressives.
We ought to come down hard on this and deal with it with the seriousness it deserves. They can keep their swamp on their side, even though we’ve been dealing with the spill off of their shit for too long.
Sorry to tell you but the swamp is emerging everywhere (in the first world anyway) all at once. Trump and co. definitely aren’t helping, but European far-right politics are definitely not an American import.
They might have already been there, but American oligarchs like Elon, and now the US government pouring money into them is certainly enabling them. They may not be an American import, but they’re being American grown.
Yes but not by that much, they are already swimming in money rganks to Russia and some right extreme European oligarchs. 4mio from the US regime are pocket money for them.
These people are all working together, organized and well funded.
There have always been dormant racists waiting to hatch but the concerted efforts and the real emergence happened around the Brexit/Trump first presidency time. It’s a combination of events that allowed them to feel comfortable being misanthropes and come out of their shell. We’ve been going downhill ever since.
We certainly have had our own share of problematic groups but our society isn’t yet rotten to the core in order to allow what’s happening in the US right now with so little resistance. We are being affected though. And it’s terrifying.
There have always been dormant racists waiting to hatch but the concerted efforts and the real emergence happened around the Brexit/Trump first presidency time.
Not quite; the key event seems to have been the 2015 refugee crisis. The cleanest interpretation of the available evidence would be that Europeans just didn’t have enough clear outsiders to trigger the near-hysterical reaction we’re seeing now before that (the Roma being a clear example of how European societies treated clear outsiders even before Trump).
We certainly have had our own share of problematic groups but our society isn’t yet rotten to the core in order to allow what’s happening in the US right now with so little resistance.
I mean, Europeans are even more anti-immigration than Americans. For the most part it seems to be that European countries/societies are exporting their dirty work to the Mediterranean instead. Besides, I mean, FrontEx isn’t exactly a bastion of human rights, and neither are national forces. The rot you describe has been in Europe from the start; it just wasn’t visible unless you paid attention.
Edit: See also: https://fedia.io/m/leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com/t/2583036/Good-imperialism-and-bad-imperialism
The situation of Roma and relative groups in Europe differs quite a lot from country to country, not so much because some societies are so much more racist than others but because of size and history and local circumstances. Austrian Roma are largely integrated in the larger society and while there has been racusm and even terrorism against them in the past they are pretty much not much talked about, not even by the FPÖ. Romanian Roma are, but primarily due to their organised begging business.
While there is truth in what you’re saying, and while the European immigration strategy has been to close eyes and it will go away, there is no comparison of what is happening in the US at the state level with how things are in the last decade in the EU, even at our worst.
Britain seems to be going downhill fast. If you’re trans, America is straight up a better deal at this point. Part of the problem is the coalitions you get in parliaments happen within our two major parties. So rather than a cogent far right base that has to compromise with moderates, they were able to hijack half our political structure with one win. Even so, until parties like AfD and its equivalents are banned, I wouldn’t act smug. Looking at how political winds are blowing on both sides, we might soon be in a position where we’re already rebuilding while you’re in the thick of it.
Agreed, but I prefer his position. What can we do? We have strength in our numbers, but we have to fight the misinformation. How can we steal from them the control of information? How can we fight the bots they control? Federated networks help to some degree, but it’s clear they are within us. Could we build an AI network to fight this? We can’t throw the towel, we have to fight them!
The problem isn’t information; it’s actual things happening in real life. The far-right is as strong as it is because its lies contain a grain of truth: It offers (cruel and ineffective) solutions to people’s very real problems. This means the only realistic solution here is to deny them that grain of truth by offering effective solutions to those problems. Now some effort is being made here—it’s no coincidence that the left is rising as if in response to the far-right—but more of that needs to happen and fast. The focus on misinformation misses the fundamental reasons that misinformation works as well as it does (after all it’s not like lying was invented in 2016).
That’s a REALLY good point. We basically need a lot more Mamdanis.
While other lefties are arguing symantic nuances of political theory and purity testing and excommunicating themselves, this guy is fixing potholes and makes the busses run on time and gets workers paid. People SEE that stuff, they FEEL that stuff.
If the side of empathy and compassion moves in swiftly and shows how good life can be under them, people will see that abundance is possible.
'Pubbies and their fascist friends get followers because they pretend we’re forever on a deserted island, and their first move is
"We gotta make the ‘hard decisions’ and cull the people we personally conveniently don’t like and take all your resources…for survival." And it riles up everybody’s fear-monkey-brain into thinking they must know what they’re talking about.
Lord of the Flies was bullshit about fundamental human nature, but it got so lauded because the fashies get to tell us that’s what they’re “protecting us from.”
When we aren’t even on a desert island at all, and people actually enjoy helping each other get along. They need to condition us to cockfight for them.
Yes, high-control systems are like that, they demand obedience to the dogma even when data shows other way is better. Low-control systems encourage curiosity, discovery, update knowledge with latest for human benefit. For some it’s easier to do what told, don’t think much, and appeals at times of scarcity, some of which is controlled by the wealthy, to keep people worried and seek a “strong hero”, fall for the propaganda and vote right-wing. Please see through it, the pattern is clear, regression for the majority like Russia, Argentina and with maga policies.
Could we build an AI network to fight this?
There’s a reason why some very bright people in tech with decades of experience aren’t dismissing AI whole cloth.
The dangers are vast. The social harm is a real effect. The brain atrophy is an actual pitfall to be avoided, even at the cost of tying yourself to the metaphorical ship mast.
But the possibilities are also real, else they wouldn’t be using them against us.
The hatred is fine and all, but I really really wish the kind of people who frequent the Fediverse and spouted all of the encouraging anti-establishment stances…also minded their basic Sun Tzu:
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
You can’t stop it, not without a populist alternative, and you don’t have that.
and this is how the centrists wind up enabling the right wing. They spend more effort destroying the populist left, supposedly because that will stop them from effectively opposing the right, that they have nothing except “we’re not the right” and the same policies that benefit bilionaires that are slightly watered down.
So the only one without an effective opposition is the right, who coasts in by default. Because the centrists refuse to let go of their failed ideology.
You get it. It’s so obvious, yet most of the left doesn’t seem to get it. But maybe it’s influence operations making us think we are a minority.
There’s always direct action.
Why are tax dollars being spent for this? This is bullshit.
This is only what we know about, he CIA will be neck deep in trying to help their fascists over the top.
Phones will be compromised with pegasus level spying I strongly presume, and information used to help the fascists for instance. Idc about scandals, but I wouldn’t put anything past them at this point. I could see them manufacturing scandals against the opponents of their tool politicians they and russia are pushing.
Airing Sesame Street in the Middle East was one of the most effective western propaganda tactics of all time and this chucklefuck shredded it.
And replaced it with this.
Too many bad things happen when you teach women and children they don’t need to be sex slaves, I guess.
If Europe made a similar statement about bolstering left wing media in the US he’d go nuts accusing them of election interference.
That is actually a stroke of brilliance.
4 million is a lot of money, but it is also a pathetically low amount if you’re trying to make a dent in European politics
In fact, there are so many leftists in Europe -who would jump at the chance of publicly humiliating Trump- that I honestly believe you could raise 4 million just by starting some sort of kickstarter.
They literally did this with a Canadian commercial airing a Raegan area
terrortariff statement and tried to blame us for interfering.Their kettle is charred.
Edit- Corrected spelling
Europe wouldn’t do that to begin with, as Europe is right-wing.
Calling both the US and EU right wing definitely misses a metric fuckton of nuance though.
I wouldn’t say a “fuckton.” Both are imperialists, it’s just that the US is the imperial hegemon while Europe is secondary to it. Both have consolidated finance capital and expropriate vast amounts of wealth created by the global south, and are dependent on this.
You’re talking about imperialism, which isnt synonymous with right wing; I was talking about domestic political orientation. Europe can participate in an imperial economic system while still being, on average, considerably further left than the US on welfare, labour rights, healthcare and regulation.
It may have moved right, and imo absolutely has, but that doesnt leave them at the same spot on the scale.
Imperialism as a stage in capitalist development is definitely right wing. Not only that, but fascist parties across Europe are rising. The fact that Europe uses imperialism to subsidize welfare while retaining capitalism, rather than pivoting to socialism, does not make them more “left.”
It feels like you’re confusing ‘more left’ with ‘left’. What makes Europe more left is the greater redistribution of wealth, stronger welfare states, universal healthcare, stronger unions and labour rights, larger public sectors and greater regulation of capital. You can argue those things don’t constitute socialism, but “left-wing” and “socialist” aren’t actually synonyms either.
Conversely, the US is further right through lower taxation and redistribution, a weaker welfare state, predominantly market-based healthcare, weaker unions and labour protections, less generous statutory benefits, greater reliance on private provision, and generally fewer constraints on capital. Again, none of that makes Europe socialist. It makes Europe relatively further left than the US on the conventional political spectrum.
I cannot consider rights that are explicitly built on the backs of the global south as “left.” Welfare under imperialist states is not the welfare created by a given society and redistributed, it’s built on the backs of the global south. Imperialist states aren’t regulating capital in the interest of their workers either, it’s done to protect capital. It’s also why safety nets are weakening across Europe, workers do not actually have power there.
Trying to argue that Europe is “more left” is more of a semantic argument. Both Europe and the US are built on imperialism and capitalism, and both are sliding further into fascism because of this.
They’re going to use that to grow lemmy.
So they shut down independent news like Voice of America, and are replacing it with state propaganda.
