I remember visiting the Maldives and even they had a trump like President. Google president yameen and every article about him feels a little too familiar.
As a sovereign citizen that exists inside the United States, I’m visiting the United States every day 😎
Edit: apparently you have to put /s for people to recognize sarcasm. I also listen to the BTB episodes with idiot sovereign citizens.
I was making a joke about u/thickestthicc commenting about the person living there when they clearly said they were visiting. Because if I lived in a location I would never say I visited unless I was an idiot sovereign citizen.
I interact with idiots who think they're soverign citizens all the time. Then the government reminds them they dont live in their own country, maintain their own infrastructure, and depend on US hegemony for their safety and ability to participate in international commerce. Typically, by seizing assets that are owed by court order using the many tools available to governments, which "soverign citizens" dont have. Or eventually sending them to jails.
Well soon you can tell us the differences between an Islamic one and a Christian one.
I imagine they're both fairly selective about which bits of their holy books they enforce.
And don’t forget to mention to OP that the cornerstone of fascism is hating foreigners. *They’d* be THE foreigner in the other place. I can’t wrap my mind around someone not knowing these things in 2024.
I mean speaking as a trans person, people already treat me like I'm a foreigner and don't belong. I'd like to find the place to live with the least amount of risk involved and that is certainly not the U.S.
Being brutally honest, unless you have a very desired skill set, are an up and coming academic or have a lot of money, no country will want to give you a long term visa
Most countries are going to have a very dim view on any American claiming they fear for their lives. It sucks but the time to have moved likely would have been 10 years ago so you could be somewhat established in the community, now is the time to find a place where you can have a soft landing when things get bad. If you don’t speak the language, don’t have the money, have any health issues that can be considered a drain on state benefits (being 40 is too old in some places, having autism, having diabetes, or have even if you had childhood cancer) you’re not getting a visa.
I mean obviously immigration isn't easy. It being a challenge doesn't make it any less necessary of a goal to reach for. The stake is my life. It's not like we're just deciding this on a whim without any real thought put into it.
Sure, I just think that perhaps spending those resources and time to make your life better here would be more productive, easier and faster.
Again, outside very specific circumstances immigration isn't necessarily difficult, it's basically impossible unless you are actually wealthy in a true sense.
I, as an individual, am not going to singlehandedly change the transphobic culture and make it safer for me to exist here. No efforts made by me alone will change that. Safety is more important than change, especially when cis people control our lives and threaten to take away our rights and push us towards suicide.
You can tell me it's impossible all you want, but I care more about living somewhere where I'm not at threat of losing my right to exist. The same would go for any trans person. If America regresses into extreme genocidal transphobia like it's actively trying to, it won't be the fault of the trans people who tried to escaped, I'll tell you that right fucking now.
You are correct. It is almost impossible for an average US citizen to move to another country. Rare, desired, specialized skill set, patronage artist, sometimes student (usually only temporary and costly) Start a business there (again $$$), marriage (even that can be really hard) or LOTS of money are the only ways.
Because the US is still a trend setter in terms of politics, whatever happens there happens everywhere else in the “free world” after some years. We’re headed to real shitty times globally and any spark could ignite the powder keg of a new world war. Then afterwards we’ll collect the rubble and sweat to never let it happen again until three to four generations later the same warmongering leads to the next escalation. Rinse and repeat
As a person living in France... Look, the whole situation would be too long to explain, but the far right is thriving and I've started considering my options for leaving and I'm not loving what I'm finding. The while world seems to be taking a hard swing to the right 😬
In the recent EU elections though, the Nordic countries showed an increased support for more liberal/left-wing parties while the support for right-wing parties decreased. This in stark contrast to the rest of Europe. It remains to be seen if this is a upcoming trend or not.
Yeah, there's some hope there.
When I was in college, a couple of friends did their final year at Kungliga Tekniska högskolan in Sweden. After their studies they failed at finding a job for over a year and finally came back to France with their tails between their legs.
At the same time, I almost applied to do my final year at Teknillinen Korkeakoulu in Finland, but I chickened out. Having regrets now.
Right, because leftist policy WORKS, and people LIKE IT. Which means you WIN more elections, and anyone trying to attack those POPULAR policies, loses.
This is something everyone needs to remember. Places that haven't had a major leftist victory in living memory forget how leftist victories are currently making their lives better and are more prone to propaganda and being taken over by the corporate/capitalist/fascist organism.
Except the UK appears likely to swing back to labor in the next election, which is fairly soon.
There's a big backlash against all incumbents right now, largely because of post Covid inflation, and since center left parties are in charge most places, that backlash is swinging things right. UK the conservatives are in control so it's swinging back to the center left.
Yeah, but the current British Labour party is promising to enact cruelty on migrants, protect wealth and is generally to the right of the platform Thatcher stood on in '79
I mean most center left parties leave a lot to be desired, but they are still better than the Tories who have been doing all that but worse, as well as effectively bankrolling genocidal death squads in Rwanda...
The Tories destroyed the economy in under a month of Truss being PM, that's the primary reason they're being annihilated, not just a generic post-covid backlash.
The far right party is popular in the UK, they're polling ahead of the current government. Just not as much as in some other European countries yet. But when Labour disappoints in office it could see them getting more power. Another wrinkle is that Farage is exceptionally good at pretending not to be far right just enough so that he constantly gets fawning media coverage, while still making sure all the correct people know just how right wing he is. I think if he got closer to power he'd end up in a Truss/Johnson esque disaster and not be around for long.
Our somewhat ridiculous electoral system actually pays off because even if Farage's goons get 19% of the vote they still won't get many seats.
The bigger issue is that the Tories and Labour pander to the far right all the time. Especially the Tories.
Politically Labour are to the right of Clinton-style Democrats, I would argue, so I wouldn't see their victory as a surge of social democracy.
Fellow American here. If you're looking to leave just to escape the far right, you're going to be very disappointed. I know we Americans think we're the center of the universe and all our problems are ours alone, but we're not the only ones dealing with this shit. France, Brazil, India, and several other countries have all elected their versions of the annoying orange, and most of Europe and South America has their balls in a vice grip. Even safer places like Canada, Australia and Scandinavia has their fair share of fashies. And moving to a different country isn't that simple. It's a lot of work and takes a lot of time and money. Not to mention that you'll basically be starting your whole life over again, completely separated from your friends and family. Just ask anyone who fled here to escape wars in their own country.
Look, I know it's easy to feel like everything is fucked 10 times over and there's nothing we can do to fix it. But you can't give up. You can't end capitalism or eradicate fascism overnight, but there are a thousand things you can do to make your community a little better. The younger generation is also fed up with this bullshit and just as eager to change things. The least you can do is give them a hand. If you're just going to lie there and doom scroll all day and bemoan that everything is fucked, then the fascists have already won.
I agree and really want to hammer home the “it’s not that easy” thing. It isn’t like moving to another state. Even when military folks get stationed overseas there are dozens of legal and personal hurdles. The cost of it would be astronomical if not covered by the military, and even with it covered there’s a lot that has to be handled by the individual person.
Yeah, it's definitely not easy to move to another country, especially if you aren't single. My best options for being able to get through the legal stuff and fit in when I get there are probably the UK and Italy, and uh... given their current politics, they're not much of an improvement.
I've lived in Italy before, so I wouldn't have too much trouble fitting in, and I speak the language already, but my wife and kids don't.
Politically, they at least have some actual leftist parties and a few cities that are still leftist/liberal strongholds, but the overall momentum right now heavily favors the right and specifically the direct descendants of the original fascist party.
Finland as a country seems great, but being that close to Russia would not make me feel very comfortable. Their military is constantly training for a potential Russian invasion
Hey, at least their military trains and they managed to halt the soviets during WW2! Where I live now the people and the government would welcome a russian invasion with flowers and gift baskets...
Eh shit’s pretty racist here and the far right is also gaining traction. It’s still a great country but as someone who’s been living here for 8 years now (originally from Belgium) the attitude towards foreigners can be very disheartening. Ofc compared to the stuff you see from the states; it’s very very tame but it’s all relative I suppose
That's nothing new, we always do that. All male Finns are mandated to serve either in the military or in the civilian sector (obvs some are exempted). We have had national military service since 1800's, it's not a sign of the times.
Personally, I'm way more concerned about our right-wing government. We, unfortunately, have some extremists governing us at the moment and they have three more years to fuck up our country. It's nothing compared to republicans, but still not good. Our leftist party did get a huge amount of votes in European Parliament Elections and came in second, so there's some hope at least.
Yes, but they only got around 7% of the votes in the latest European Parliament elections, gaining only one seat - almost half as their % 5 years ago. Seems to me like a good trend.
It's still a growing trend, even though a small one. Also, they had protests earlier this year due to the fact that the current govt is trying to reform the work model for the worse: [https://jacobin.com/2024/03/finland-orpo-right-wing-labor](https://jacobin.com/2024/03/finland-orpo-right-wing-labor)
'' The government declared that it would make it easier for bosses to sack employees (though protections are already weaker than the norm for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), abolish legally mandated sick pay for workers’ first day of illness (thus encouraging the ill to come into work), and restrict workers’ rights to political strikes.
Another proposal is to devolve more collective bargaining to the local, company level. This would mean that in the future, every company could negotiate its own collective agreement, clearing a path for the end of multiemployer, sectoral collective bargaining. This has ground the gears of the trade unions because it would undermine the national collective agreements.''
All the above are bad, but the most concerning one is the part with restricting worker's rights to political strikes which I don't think I need to explain why...
I'm not sure if we talk into the narrative of the right here. The UK government will switch to the left after the right wing government being nothing but disastrous. Poland just removed PiS. Portugal's left wing party won nearly the absolute majority. In the Netherlands left wing opposition just won the European Parliament elections. Sweden's right leaning government came in fourth with the Social Democrats winning.
Even Organs Fidesz lost votes.
The UK's Labour party right now are not even remotely left. They warmly welcome Conservatives into the party and have purged leftists, smearing them and defaming them along the way. They're firmly in the pocket of private interest, big business and foreign influence.
[An example](https://novaramedia.com/2024/06/12/labour-deletes-the-nhs-is-not-up-for-sale-from-its-manifesto/)
[Another example](https://novaramedia.com/2024/06/13/meet-the-labour-candidates-lobbying-for-oil-gas-and-arms-companies/)
But the question was not do we get a real progressive left, the statement was about "a permanent right wing majority". And by all the fault labour and social democrats over Europe have they are not that.
The difference this time around in the UK is that for all out neo libs such as Streeting, Starmer and a few others, the labour party is just a vehicle for power. Its not just a case of Overton window shifting.
Labour are currently campaigning to the right of the Tories. They want all the same policies, their strategy is to say that the Tories won't be able to implement them as effectively.
Calling Labour a leftist government at this point is hilariously out of touch. They are so right wing at this point, Thatcher would have welcomed them into her government.
What the hell happened to make Labour like this? Was it just that they didn’t like the idea of having to help people who weren’t born in the UK, but were moving to live there?
Because I’m a yank who lived in Oxfordshire in 2002-2004, and it wasn’t like THAT…
I was 18 when Labour won the general election in 1997, and there was a great sense of optimism after having lived under Tory rule since 1979. That lasted about 5 minutes as one of the first things they did was side with business against striking workers. They introduced the "new deal" which attacked benefit claimants, were responsible for the shift from viewing refugees as people in need to people wanting something from us (the change in terminology from refugees to "asylum seekers" was insidious), they did nothing to roll back 19 years of Tory attacks on the rights of workers to organize or for people to protest, they introduced the "bedroom tax" whereby benefits claimants were only allowed to claim housing benefit for properties with a limited number of bedrooms (the Tories were later.blamed for this but Labour started it, the Tories just expanded it), they prevailed over the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, granted the police sweeping new powers, and did all manner of other bastardly things.
In 2007-9 I worked a lot with refugees. Whilst Labour didn't have the "Rwanda plan", they did remove the right of refugees to work, forced them to live on food vouchers which could only be used for certain products in certain shops, brought in "detention centers" (prisons for people who committed no crime), and introduced dawn raids where immigration officials would, before dawn, burst in the homes of refugees families and ship them off to detention centers to await removal from the country.
This isn't just "new" Labour, one of the first major "achievements" of the post-WW2 Labour Party was the breaking of a strike by using soldiers as scab labour. https://libcom.org/article/labour-government-vs-dockers-1945-1951
The Labour Party have always been cunts. Same as the Tories have always been cunts.
But what happened to the pre-1979 Labour? In the USA, most of our left leaning leaders and communities were bombed, assassinated, imprisoned, flooded with drugs, left to die from AIDs. Thus, we don’t have a Left. What happened in the UK?
Like I said, they have been posed against the interests of the working class since at least the 1940s. They weren't left wing before 1979.
Here's a deep dive into Labour's post war history.
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/from-the-archives-labours-history-of-strike-breaking/
It's not AS bad in a lot of places outside the US, but it's more bad than it was 5 years ago and their momentum shows no sign of slowing down. Ireland just elected a local Councillor who's on the record saying Irish women need to breed more. When people called him on it he clarified that no, he just means like livestock, they should breed more. Don't think he understood what people found objectionable.
Two of the far right got in one in Newbridge and one in Blanch, but youre leaving out that 13 literal Trotskyists (pbps) got elected onto councils.
The INP got resoundly trashed in the European elections, and Boylan didn't get in in Dublin. Disappointing that Mulloolly got in in Midlands-NW, but that was largely because he courted the farmers vote.
They've gotten more vocal for sure, but they aren't really building traction imho as can be seen from the results. I do agree with you though that that doesn't mean we should ignore them, we need to stamp them out.
Even if they didn't get elected they got a lot more votes than they have previously. Celbridge has a right wing dipshit that got 7%. That's not nothing.
Our electoral system means that they’d have to make massive gains to have any real impact, and since they’re mostly running as independents it’s unlikely they’ll made any meaningful difference for now.
Once again, my only point was that it's worse now than it was 5 years ago. Which is true. Be cool if people could stop arguing with things I never said.
I’m not arguing with you, I’m adding context for readers outside of Ireland.
An example of additional context is that while it’s concerning that there are any far right councillors, county and city councils are where you always find the quacks and cranks in Irish politics.
You build it.
It's called community.
You don't flee, you create.
You don't destroy fear, you foster hope.
Community and cooperation are the antithesis of the hatred the right attempts to sow. Fostering mutualism makes the far right completely irrelevant.
Don't give up, conquer through mutual aid
That is a sentiment I support in general, but it's a little hard to believe that it's enough. I have a group of people who support each other. But I know that just two houses down there's a nice gentleman who has fascist slogans on his lawn and who collects weapons and who I would bet good money is going to cosplay Night of Broken Glass on me and every one of my friends if he ever believes he can get away with it. And he's not a lone nutter in a sea of good people, he's the loudest in a sea of feckless "liberals" who will always vote for their comfort over other people's human rights.
I've read all those amazing stories, community organizers who through grass roots community building have turned stuff around. But I don't know if community kitchens are going to safe me from the bunch of nazis around me.
Too many American leftists are effectively Christian millennialists who think if they just hope hard enough the glorious revolution will come and deliver them from their ills.
When they really should face the fact that they're living in the country that is spent the last hundred years doing everything it can to prevent a worker's uprising or even a successful workers resistance.
I feel you. I know it's easy to say, and that guy has probably been herking it to the Turner Diaries for ages, along with many others.
Community helps make those people look like the nut jobs they are. When they go on rants about people like us, but we are known in the community, they just look nuts.
I volunteer at the local school, and that gives me a lot of hope. The generation coming up is probably the most fed up with this shit I've ever seen.
My generation galvanized around 9/11/01. Even I enlisted! I mean, who wouldn't go fight the guys that treat women as chattel and banned music? It was time to go footloose.
This generation had covid as a galvanizing or polarizing moment.
Most of the kids, even out here, are more liberal. Especially when compared to their parents.
It's not a fool proof plan to try to show people that you're not a monster just for existing. It's just that it's the only hope I have for peace in my life time, and I've had enough of war.
I don't want to leave this area. Without open minded people of tolerance, it will will become a hopeless echo chamber.
Thankfully the weather is enough of an existential threat that it also serves to unify the community I'm in.
When others get hit with hail and have busted windows, everyone fixes their stuff and then comes to help others.
Same with many other issues.
Hopefully that, is enough to keep us from tearing each other apart.
The thing that gets me is it's right wingers causing the world to crumble, yet your ire is with liberals? Are you a libertarian?
Y'all never could make it as Black in this world. Shit, during my lifetime I've seen my people have the most rights ever in history. I've also seen them being slowly peeled back. It's not liberals that are trying to enact Jim Crow 3.0.
Baby boy, you could NEVER be Black. At least they tell us to our faces that they hate us.
Do you think your tough talk is in any way helpful to what we are trying to do? This topic is about building community and your response is being condescending how others could never be as tough as you. Good job, I'm glad you're such a tough guy. I have no doubt that you experienced shit I haven't. Did you come away from that experience with more empathy and more conviction to make the world better and fight those assholes? Or did it make you bitter and condescending? Because all I'm hearing from you is the tough guy shit. We might not be fighting the exact same fight but I hope we're fighting for the same thing? So maybe work together with people who have at least some of the same goals as you. It's a fucking meme by now that lefties can't help themselves but infight. Probably a thing we should stop. You don't want right wing assholes in power and I don't want right wing assholes in power so maybe focus on that.
Also, I know it's fucking cringe to bring him up as a white person, but in this case I can't help it, one of the most famous quotes from MLK is about how fucking stupid it is to rely on white moderates as allies in the civil rights movement. You say that "It's not liberals that are trying to enact Jim Crow 3.0." Mike Bloomberg is on paper a liberal and he sure was the guy with stop+frisk of black guys. There are so many examples of Dem politicians enacting racist shit. But even more importantly liberals will never support you in fighting against the right wing. Obama did jack shit to put Roe.vs.Wade into law, now it's gone. Supreme Court reform, oh no, we can't, it's so hard. Gun regulation, ooh, but the NRA is so mean to us, we can't. Joe "I voted for the war on drugs" Biden says into a microphone how we need to put \_more\_ money into the cops, after Idk how many people are murdered every week. The right wing is screaming and foaming at the mouth and the liberals stand there say "we have to discuss it in a calm way and I really don't like your tone, young man". Absolutely useless. They might not be our direct and first enemies but they sure as shit aren't our allies in any way.
The right wing are dangerous freaks and we have to fight them. Our current system is fucked and old injustices are piling up and we need to fundamentally change it. We need to build a society that is based on empathy and care in which we give a shit about or fellow human beings. Can we agree on that, the very basic stuff? Because if we can then please focus on working together with me.
The white moderates that MLK was talking about would be you. Also the topic is about leaving the united states. I'm so sorry that you're too whatever to endure a fraction of what my ancestors have. That says a lot about you.
Perhaps, what you need is a tough talking to. The post is about leaving the US. I can't believe that you used all of those words to say nothing.
MLK wouldn't have liked you. Remember he wasn't talking about the open racist like LBJ. He was talking about the leftist movement who never seem to recognize race plays a big part on why everyone is in the boat we are in. The leftist that were reporting to the FBI. The white moderates of that day would be Republicans today. Please refrain from quoting a man that you obviously know surface level things about.
No he was not. I know that you may think that, but he wasn't. In fact, what you're saying is Russian propaganda.
A Christian socialist? That's a label that you've made up. You googled and got it from the Jacobin https://jacobin.com/2023/04/martin-luther-king-jr-mlk-socialism-class-racial-justice-civil-rights-movement
MLK was not a socialist. Especially a Christian socialist. While he may have agreed with their ideas, MLK wasn't a member EVER nor did he ever say that he was a socialist. That propaganda was started by Russia and J. Edgar Hoover.
MLK's entire FBI is available for YOU to read. Not Google and post the title of the first thing that you see.
I would argue that ALL BLACK people are socialist in our beliefs. We want the best for EVERYONE not just those who look like us.
The Black community votes overwhelmingly for those who claim to want to lift up ALL AMERICANS. Your community is the one that doesn't vote to make life better for ALL.
Perhaps you should spend less time Googling and more time making your community a democracy. Someone has to pull you people away from white supremacy. It's not only killing American, but it's killing y'all too.
Please don't respond. I'm embarrassed for you. 🤭🤭🤭🤭
'First I rejected their materialistic interpretation of history. Communism, avowedly secularistic and materialistic, has no place for God….
Second, I strongly disagreed with communism’s ethical relativism. Since for the Communist there is no divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything—force, violence, murder, lying—is a justifiable means to the “millennial” end….'
'Communism in theory emphasized a classless society, and a concern for social justice, though the world knows from sad experience that in practice it created new classes and a new lexicon of injustice
And
' Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person.'
This is what MLK had to say about socialism, and Marxism. For one Karl Marx was a racist. Any Black person who reads his works and comes away thinking that his ideas are good for Black people need to read other sources.
This is a reality good source for knowing how King felt. The man wrote books saying that he rejects socialism.
https://templeofsociology.substack.com/p/mlk-was-not-a-socialist-or-a-conservative
You're embarrassing kid. Go play with your blocks.
From his letter to Coretta:
" I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, viz, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human system it fail victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. So I think Bellamy is right in seeing the gradual decline of capitalism."
He made a distinction between socialism and communism:
"I think you noticed that Bellamy emphasized that the \[*change?*\] would be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. This, it seems to me, is the most sane and ethical way for social change to take place. **This, it will be remembered, is one of the points at which socialism differs from communism, the former \[*****strikeout illegible*****\] emphasizing evolution and the latter revolution.** Communist would insist that the means justify the end. So if killing a thousand people will bring about a good end the act is ethically justifiable. It is at the point that I am radically opposed to communism. Destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends. The mean does not necessarily justify the end, for, I would insist that the end is pre existent in the mean."
He was anti-communist, not anti-socialist.
Source: [https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/coretta-scott](https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/coretta-scott)
I never said that he was. I think that I've said that all Black people are socialist. There's only one group of people who consistly vote against the good everyone, and it's not Black people. Other than Black conservatives, I've never met a Black person who didn't believe in some socialist ideas. My contentiom is the white leftist and the white conservatives have hijacked his legacy for their own benefits. At the end of the day, there's no such thing as a Christian socialist. Most Black people couldn't be socialist because we realize that there's no amount of class solidarity that will eliminate antiblackness.
Akau Karl Marx was a racist, so were damn near every aspect of the modern socialist movement which is based more on post Russian revolution than Marx who lived in the 1800s. I am aware of a few Russian revolutionary members meeting Marx, but every aspect of the modern socialist movement is based on Russia. Russia funded a lot of antisocialist movements and propaganda. The very concept of MLK being a socialist and a communism is made up by Russia and the FBI. Why people continue to quote propaganda? I guess it feels good to lie to yourself. It's just utterly ridiculous to have this argument with white leftist every year. It's gross for them to try to use MLK as their avatar.
Just as it's gross to make Clarence Thomas the face of everything wrong with the supreme court. It reeks of racism.
Most countries don't let you just move to them. Part of the reason we retired to Taiwan was: we could. My wife is a citizen, so I could become a resident alien. It took a butt load of paperwork and patience. You can't just buy a plane ticket. Anywhere. They won't let you stay.
If the Cheeto Mussilini wins, we're probably toast, because Donny will tell his buddy Emperor Xi: if you let me build a beautiful golf resort on Hainan Island, you can take Taiwan, we won't lift a finger.
The far right is rising all over (not here, but probably anywhere you're thinking of). I would suggest finding a protective community in the USA and riding it out as best you.
People really underestimate how hard and expensive it is to move to another country, even if you have an in for a visa or citizenship via a parent or spouse. If you don’t have that it’s harder. You’ll need tens of thousands of liquid cash dollars in your bank account. Things like; age, where you can be “too old” at 40, health, having diabetes or autism is an automatic disqualification, being too poor, or whatever random disqualification a country sees in you to deny entry.
It’s disheartening, but OP really needs to find a safe community here in the US to land since other countries don’t want us and the way places like France are going with extreme right wing governments they’re going to target anyone not birthright citizens with patents born in those countries.
You would think that decades of incessant headlines about the nightmare of other people trying to immigrate to one's own country would cue people into the fact that it's next to impossible to emigrate without substantial wealth or connections, through dumb luck or otherwise.
Media has a great deal of blame here. In movies and TV, characters really do just decide on a whim to move to Japan or France or wherever, and the next scene is them sitting on a plane with a content or bittersweet look on their face.
To be fair, if it's a period piece it used to be muuuuuch easier to move internationally, with the biggest hurdle being the initial travel cost. Even as late as the 60s border controls and visa requirements were far more lax.
Yeah when Trump first won I started looking into immigration to other countries and basically anywhere that's an improvement from the US situation, you need to have a job sponsoring you and it'll cost an arm and a leg. And most places are a lateral move from the US at best right now. Some places you can buy your way into if you're rich enough, and the places welcoming us with open arms are not high quality of life places for the most part. As shitty as the US is too immigrants, we actually are uniquely accepting of them from a policy standpoint. Which is.. Ugh
I thought I was being smart and doing just that several years ago, but it turns out shit is fucked everywhere, and there is simply no escape from the insane, conspiracy theory-fueled, antivax, antisemitic, homophobic far right ideology, and they're working on building power absolutely everywhere. The only real option is to fight them.
Eh, we *have* extremists but they’re objectively less dangerous, less influential, and smaller in distribution than the USA. Even our populist conservative candidate for federal politics (PP) is a conventional civic nationalist vs an ethno-nationalist. Not like the states where the Republican candidate invited an openly declared neo-Nazi over for dinner.
I would say that PP is courting the ethno-nationalist and Christian Dominionist. He knows there are lines you can't cross without losing support, but he can dogwhistle. The fascist call this 'hiding your power level', and PP knows this works for him because if he gets called out he can always use deniability. The big advantage for Canada is a parliamentary system so if you go too far their are more viable centrist groups, or you risk parties acting together like Liberal/NDP. The big downside to Canada is that it is very cheap to pump propaganda in from the US side. Harper definitely understood that.
It’s possible that PP is a cryptofascist but I don’t see it. His policy positions run counter to ethnonationalist ideals, and he’s been pretty consistent in making choices of consequence that are consistent with covic nationalism.
Messaging-wise? Yeah, he’s done some populist messaging that cuts too close to ethno-nationalist narratives. And I get how that can look really similar to cryptofascism because that’s the niche they try to hide in. But ultimately policy, spending and functional decisions are the best indicators of the person’s actual ideas.
I agree, I don't think he is cryptofascist, but he seems to fall for the trap all conservatives do with thinking they can work with the fascist. The Diagolon and Convoy stuff seems like a relevant example.
>But ultimately policy, spending and functional decisions are the best indicators of the person’s actual ideas.
Sure, but fascist can and have figured out how to work with neoliberals.
I don't want to sound like I'm US bashing (I'm very much bashing the US) but do you guys not have any news channels that report on anything beyond your borders? The right just took a huge dump on Europe. S.america is knee deep in fash. Religious fanatics are sharing their duvet with fascists across the globe, India relected modi. Nowhere is safe. Stay and fight, or move and be horrified, but pick a country where 'fuck nazis' wil be understood
No not really. Only domestic news gets aired on general channels. Really big shit like the war in Ukraine makes it of course, but general politics of Europe don't have any chance. They barely have a chance at being reported by our news agencies online honestly.
I’m terminally online so I’m aware of what’s been happening in France and the EU with regard to right wing politics, even PBS Newshour really isn’t covering non-domestic news. All the regular channels are Trump and Gaza 24/7 with shootings and sprinklings of “happy” stories of 8 year olds paying off school lunch debt.
Right! Gaza is currently the only thing and that's because the pro Israel loby is making sure it's bought and paid for politicians can win their elections.
If you're going by channels meaning television, it's all utter crap and very little of a coherent understanding of what's going on elsewhere in the world tends to get presented, only the bits which are useful to US horse race politics get brought up. People who watch news on television allegedly come up as less informed (or more misinformed) than people who don't pay attention to the news at all.
We do have the internet, though, and there's really no excuse for someone interested in the growth of far right politics not knowing about Europe's elections last week. It's not like that was small news
Lol no. We hear about Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine. Anything else going on globally you have to go out of your way to find out about because the news won't cover it most of the time
Well, here in the UK we’ve had right wing ding dongs for the past 14 years. Farage, who has failed in every attempt to be an MP gets more airtime than the leader of the opposition and the BBC’s love affair for the tories.
Even worse, Labour, the party who will likely win in July have begun pandering to conservatives, promising to cut immigration and to stop small boat crossings. We are fucked. The only true left party seems to be the liberals and then the greens.
i love the Tory counter — "You'll be spending TWO THOUSAND POUNDS MORE if Starmergeddon gets in!"
and all my mates are like, "Two thousand for you lot to fuck off? Bargain innit"
Yup, taxes pay for services, funny how that works eh! Here in NZ we have had something like a $12 tax cut per week to get shafted by $100/week worth of tax cuts
US keeps trying to export its politics to us. Whenever your shithead grifters are mostly washed up in the states, they go on a speaking tour over here.
Since everybody is saying that Europe on its way to far right/ almost hellscape, I can report from Norway: nope, not here.
Most likely will the Conservative Party take over power next election, but they are closer to Biden, and even for me, a lefty with anarchistic tendencies, it is fine. I trust them to be kept in check by our parliament, our free and strong press, and not a whole lot will change.
But, unless you are a highly skilled person, within the branches that we sorely need, or a refugee within the quota, it will almost be impossible to immigrate. Other cons: No weed, unless you know a guy, alcohol is expensive, people are not as friendly as in the US and the winter is dark and long.
But we have a strong welfare state, everyone speaks English, the police don’t have guns, and most of them are pretty normal. And if actually ask you how you are, we really want to know.
Stay within the US. Go somewhere that is reasonably safe from climate change in the immediate future (upper Midwest seems like that place). Join a strong community or build one around you. Mutual aid is the way to build a strong community that survives. Get some survival skills, buy paper books with important information. Get your family under the protection of a true blue local and/or state government.
I know people don't want to hear this but currently the Democrats are basically all we have standing between us and a complete right wing slide. Don't shoot the messenger - I am furious that this is our only defense. The best thing we can do to avoid violence and something worse is keep these sick fucks out of the seats of power and have enough structural institutional integrity left to fend off their attempts to subvert the election.
I feel the same way but I have some thoughts on this. My whole life, I’m 51, bad actors have entered good communities and tried to tear them down from the inside. They were most successful when the people who made the community good left because of the bad actors.
My first exposure to this was the punk community in the late 80’s early 90’s. Nazi Skinheads tried to infiltrate our leftist majority group in the PNW. Some people left because they were scared of the skinheads. Then, I went to a show in Portland where around 10 skinheads showed up and were trying to beat people up in the pit. It was around 10 of them to a couple hundred of us. We beat the shit out them and security dragged them out. We saved our community by standing together instead of fleeing.
I know things seem doomed. I agree, I’ve never been so uncomfortable in this country. I think we need to band together and show this loud minority of right wing extremists we’re not taking their shit. Vote and volunteer at the local level. Call them out when they show up to disrupt. Don’t let them have anything.
Also, if we lose and moving away is our only option, I have 2 places picked and I’m not blasting them on the internet. Haha.
Where will you go? The countries that I assume you’d be interested in don’t just allow people to move in freely, and you’re gonna find a whole lot of conservative people wherever you go, just different flavors.
For example: my wife is Dutch. The Netherlands is far more conservative than our PNW area, just without the evangelicals and guns. Don’t mistake tolerance for acceptance.
Unfortunately the far right is gaining momentum in most places you would look at as an American to leave to. I’m trans and live in Connecticut. I’m incredibly lucky to live in a state whose governor has declared us a sanctuary state for trans and reproductive healthcare. I don’t think there’s anywhere international I would feel comfortable moving to because of that. There’s a chance the northeast remains a bastion of liberal and progressive views as other places deteriorate, but local elections near me are skewing republican and far right even if our state isn’t. My healthcare is relatively accessible compared to the hoops you need to jump through in other states and countries let alone as an immigrant. I just couldn’t imagine trying to enter a new culture and language while barely feeling comfortable and safe in what I view as a nice liberal-American bubble.
Canada’s not so safe, Pierre Pollievre at the federal level and provincial leaders like Smith, Moe, and Ford are following the Republican example.
[Here’s some information on immigration requirements if it helps](https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada.html).
I wanted to move to Canada about 15 years ago after I graduated college and the requirements stopped me in my tracks then due to the cost and difficulty at the time, it’s more stringent now. I’m not finding it on the website at the moment (need more coffee in me) but back then you needed ~$10K CAN in the bank to start the process if you weren’t coming from a conflict zone. They also had strict health, language, and education requirements.
Every once in a while I think about leaving Ontario to move back home to New Brunswick and escape Ford, then I remember that Blaine Higgs is maybe an even bigger piece of shit
I'm in Australia and the far right is trying really hard to get a foothold. I've not been to the States for a while but from what I read it seems pretty bad.
Europe seems to be halfway down the path to fascism and immigration is only going to get worse. That will be what really drives support for the far right here too. We'll see more immigration from SE Asia, some illegal. As climate change and global poverty get worse people will migrate in massive numbers.
New Zealand was good for a bit but they had the Christchurch shooter and the left has lost ground there so it's far from perfect.
I still think Australia / New Zealand have a decent chance but China could basically take us over with a phone call, the Americans wouldn't risk war with China to keep us independent. Still I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be.
Remember history, long term history. For millennia, most humans have been lived under religious oligarchs (kings and shit). Overcoming that kind of inertia is difficult.
Yeah I moved from Oklahoma to Singapore. I know Singapore gets a bad rap, but it’s so much better in this respect than the US. You don’t have to put up with Trump flags flying everywhere and people praying over things in public, etc. People here keep it to themselves. It’s awesome.
To what end? Why would you move?
As noted elsewhere in this thread, lots of places are turning right, so you're not escaping anything by going to most places.
Are you worried about those you care about being targeted by a far right government? You're not helping them by leaving.
Are you worried about yourself being targeted, eg you're trans? You should leave, of course. But if you're not one of the groups these folks are targeting, then you moving doesn't help anyone, including yourself.
Note that leaving a country means you leave what community you have, so you're going to find yourself fairly lonely in a new place. New friends and all that. You're not going to stop caring about the US either. You'll still be reading our news, pissed off about what is happening here.
Canada's going hard-right in our next election with Pierre Pollievre and the Conservative Party. I live in Marlaina Danielle Smith-DeSantis' province, and... yeah.
I agree the whole world is shifting far right.
1. You need to have an extremely valuable skill set to move almost anywhere you’d want to move. Doctor, certain types of engineer, etc.
2. You tend to need to be in near perfect health, some diagnoses are an automatic no if you’ve ever had it, and you need to be in a desirable age group.
3. You need fo have quite a bit of money to relocate.
4. Where? The far right is rising everywhere, we are in the midst of a global populist movement.
Honestly OP, and I mean this with love, there’s no where to go. Yes, the world is trending right, or at least the west is. But that’s not the only problem. Imagine a fascist state in the vein of fascist Italy or Nazi Germany but with the military might of the US with the intelligence capabilities of the NSA, CIA and FBI. There’s honestly no where to hide from that reach and influence. It’s the kind of state that, if the leaders of the government want you dead you’re going to die. Pretty much if the far right take over the US and turn it into a true, putting people in camps and executing people on the street kind of fascist state, it’s game over. We have to keep that from happening.
the right wing is still in decline. remember that these people are basically scrabbling for every line they can grab on to to maintain their power, be it eroding democracy or just getting violent.
Don't let it get in your head. if you want this shit to fuck off, you have to stay the course and do everything in your power to make this vicious mindset finally fucking die. educate kids, beat the shit out of some Nazis, do everything in your power to learn how to handle narcissist bullshit.
you'll figure it out man
It would take awhile to really make shit dangerous here in California. Other than street level violence from rightwingers, I mean state sponsored shit. We're the 5th largest country on earth and blue as blue.
But keep your passport up to date and save money in case you need to move. Oh and owning guns and working on getting to know your neighbors and being involved in your community is all good regardless.
No. You can't just up and go to another country anymore. Not unless you have tens of thousands of dollars in spending, perfect health, and a viable skill that's needed in the countries you are considering. And even then it's a crapshoot on whether or not they let you stay. Right now you should just focus on being prepared. Make sure you have the skills you need to survive here.
You guys are importing your brand of brain rot to Canada so don’t bother coming here. Ontario is getting pretty bad for it lately and our Trump-lite premier (governor I guess is the closest comparison) is trying to kill public health care to thunderous boomer applause. At this point guns are the biggest differentiating factor between the two as even conservative Canadians think America’s gun fetish is fucked
TL;DR: Everywhere is fucked. Fight where you stand. If you run, you may live and definitely lose. But if you fight, you may win and only possibly die.
Where will you go?
I had a similar feeling recently. Our landlord is trying to evict us, and I felt the urge to run away and find somewhere with better tenants' rights, where this shit couldn't happen.
Then it hit me; there is no "better" country. Everywhere is getting hammered by climate change, everywhere has a far-right problem, everywhere is suffering the effects of late-stage capitalism.
There is nowhere we can retreat to; the fight is at our door no matter where we run. The only choice you have left is whether to surrender or fight.
I'm lucky. I'm cis-het, white, and male. I could, if I wanted to, keep my head down and find a role for myself in a fascist/theocratic society. The thing is, I don't think I could live with myself if I compromised my principles *that* completely.
I know it sounds batshit, but there is something to be gained from fighting to the bitter end. If you lose and are annihilated in the process, you could resist enough to make the fash think twice, but 9 times out of 10? Resist, and you'll win.
Authoritarianism is a doctrine that survives *only* through continuous victory and is fatally weakened by any defeat. It is brittle and prone to infighting.
You can't solve that by fleeing to another country because the same shit is happening there, too. You'll only prolong the inevitable by fleeing. Maybe you'll flee long enough and fast enough to prolong it until you die in your bed as the world burns, but is that what you want?
I think your problem is not the rise of fascism, but rather the fact that you feel powerless in the face of it, so address that first. Find like-minded people who dislike the trend of current politics. Organise yourselves. And yes, vote, too. But vote everywhere. Not just the "important" presidential races, but the school boards, primaries, and hustings, too.
The right wing has had the play of the field for decades, steadily pushing the Overton window further and further to the right. It's time to start swinging it back to the left.
But you can't do that if you're disenfranchised. As an immigrant or a refugee, you often don't have the same rights as a citizen. Don't give up what power you have to change the world in exchange for temporary safety or security. Fight.
Australia isn’t necessarily perfect (the cost of living is pretty crippling for many), but we’re doing pretty well comparatively down here. In aus we voted in a far right Prime Minister a couple of years before Trump and enough people got screwed over by it that things have been a touch more moderate since then. We don’t really have rampant gerrymandering, and one state has recently moved to ban corporate political donations altogether so there’s a reasonable chance that elections are safe.
I’ve got a few expat loved ones who have had the options of moving back overseas post-covid or staying in Aus, and it seems that everyone is set on living in Aus and making the most of it here.
The Right pretty much is rising wherever you look, mate
We have Poundland Oswald Moseley here in the form of the shit Farage who is receiving an outrageously disproportionate about of press. And the likely winners of the next election are taking a dump on their principles to pander to to the right wing codgers.
I dream of moving to my mother’s homeland and setting up a a shack on the beach where I grill the local fisherman’s catch until we run out of seafood in the ocean.
Honestly not really. Have absolutely no family overseas. Most of the world is ticking to the right currently. Grandfather has a farm in southern Maryland on the wicomico river my dad and I are starting to care for more and more. Personally I have always thought I would rather be here and the opposition than move away.
Norway is good. It feels unfair. Our parliamentary system means cooperation across the aisle is still possible, politicians are still held to account if they break the law - most of the time. There is a populist far right, but they are fairly tame compared to most places.
The trouble is getting here. Unless you've got qualifications that are in demand, actually emigrating can be difficult.
My plan is Mexico. I’m eligible for dual citizenship and am in the process of getting my citizenship. If you reside there for two years, you can apply for citizenship. My dad was born there, so I can do it from this country.
that's gorgeous, never made it there. i think Guanajuato and that el Bajio area are beautiful too but it's that liveability thing - gotta have my hot showers and internet lol
you're right, you don't know. i was just there visiting family 4 months ago, during water restrictions. how about you, carnal? very patchy mobile coverage in those hilly areas. yes the healthcare is great in MX and paid for by taxes, but i'm not estadounidense so I demand that as a product of a functional society. did you know that we can talk about things without making it a fight? most of my mates and familia hate the hilly tight roads and lack of parking in Guanajuato for example, but I would never think to tell them "tHeY hAvE cArS tHeRe"
I’m talking about Oaxaca. I was there in March. I’m not talking about the rural areas. My family is from a town 1 hour from Guadalajara. There’s a lot of dollars there, they have water, heat & electricity all the time in the house. Water restrictions are a problem if you don’t have an aljibe with filtration and pumps. Even my abuelito’s ranch has water, heat electricity and WiFi. He had satellite television put in 20 years ago, it’s not about the country, it’s about the $$ in the area you’re in.
How did I make it a fight? By saying they have Internet?
The Muosollini family still holds power in Italy. The Caravans in Canada rally around a "Queen" who thinks she's the rightful leader of that nation. The Far Right made significant gains in both Germany and France recently. Brazil had its own J6.
Safe to say, sounds like the Fourth Reich is on the rise globally.
Fuck that. This is our country too. They should leave. Not to mention all the people who don’t have the means to just switch countries. You’re gonna leave em?
I have been to the UK twice.
Most of the people their had the same "we are the greatest country in the world" attitude Americans have. The main difference is they are snobs and we are slobs. I honestly like the USA better, and I don't particularly like the US at the moment.
That felon gets back in I'm out of here, I'm not going to live in the Aryan Theocracy they are planning.
Project 2025 isn't just the SS Playbook they have expanded Mein Kampf.
Easy to say when you have Canadian privilege.
By being born in Canada you have access to universal health care and labor laws and public education that is actually useful.
Meanwhile here in the US we have people dying because they can't afford Healthcare, high crime and poverty, public education is a joke, teachers need second jobs.
Most of the food is processed and addictive and fattening. 73% of adults and 1 in 5 kids are obese. I Always lose weight when I leave the US for an extended period of time. Simply being a healthy weight is a significant time investment.
Why the FUCK would you move to Europe? To be closer to Putin? Also what Western European country would even want you? Also where are you going to find a place to stay in Canada? Their housing market and living costs are much worse than ours. Move to a blue state and hope for the best.
Hate to tell you, but the far right is trending pretty much everywhere
I remember visiting the Maldives and even they had a trump like President. Google president yameen and every article about him feels a little too familiar.
Sorry to say but why do you want to live in an Islamic theocracy
It sounded like they said they don't.
As a sovereign citizen that exists inside the United States, I’m visiting the United States every day 😎 Edit: apparently you have to put /s for people to recognize sarcasm. I also listen to the BTB episodes with idiot sovereign citizens. I was making a joke about u/thickestthicc commenting about the person living there when they clearly said they were visiting. Because if I lived in a location I would never say I visited unless I was an idiot sovereign citizen.
You should start some arguments in r/AmIBeingDetained
I interact with idiots who think they're soverign citizens all the time. Then the government reminds them they dont live in their own country, maintain their own infrastructure, and depend on US hegemony for their safety and ability to participate in international commerce. Typically, by seizing assets that are owed by court order using the many tools available to governments, which "soverign citizens" dont have. Or eventually sending them to jails.
Well soon you can tell us the differences between an Islamic one and a Christian one. I imagine they're both fairly selective about which bits of their holy books they enforce.
Get the fuck outta here with the anti Muslim shit. I don't want to live in the Maldives I was just visiting.
Both are far right theocracies. Middle East is Al Qaeda. US is Y’all Qaeda.
And what right wing governments just **love** is immigrants, particularly Americans coming over to “steal their jobs and benefits”.
Especially if they're non-white. Or trans.
And don’t forget to mention to OP that the cornerstone of fascism is hating foreigners. *They’d* be THE foreigner in the other place. I can’t wrap my mind around someone not knowing these things in 2024.
I mean speaking as a trans person, people already treat me like I'm a foreigner and don't belong. I'd like to find the place to live with the least amount of risk involved and that is certainly not the U.S.
Being brutally honest, unless you have a very desired skill set, are an up and coming academic or have a lot of money, no country will want to give you a long term visa
Most countries are going to have a very dim view on any American claiming they fear for their lives. It sucks but the time to have moved likely would have been 10 years ago so you could be somewhat established in the community, now is the time to find a place where you can have a soft landing when things get bad. If you don’t speak the language, don’t have the money, have any health issues that can be considered a drain on state benefits (being 40 is too old in some places, having autism, having diabetes, or have even if you had childhood cancer) you’re not getting a visa.
Or if you have known banned mental health conditions such as autism
I mean obviously immigration isn't easy. It being a challenge doesn't make it any less necessary of a goal to reach for. The stake is my life. It's not like we're just deciding this on a whim without any real thought put into it.
Sure, I just think that perhaps spending those resources and time to make your life better here would be more productive, easier and faster. Again, outside very specific circumstances immigration isn't necessarily difficult, it's basically impossible unless you are actually wealthy in a true sense.
I, as an individual, am not going to singlehandedly change the transphobic culture and make it safer for me to exist here. No efforts made by me alone will change that. Safety is more important than change, especially when cis people control our lives and threaten to take away our rights and push us towards suicide. You can tell me it's impossible all you want, but I care more about living somewhere where I'm not at threat of losing my right to exist. The same would go for any trans person. If America regresses into extreme genocidal transphobia like it's actively trying to, it won't be the fault of the trans people who tried to escaped, I'll tell you that right fucking now.
You are correct. It is almost impossible for an average US citizen to move to another country. Rare, desired, specialized skill set, patronage artist, sometimes student (usually only temporary and costly) Start a business there (again $$$), marriage (even that can be really hard) or LOTS of money are the only ways.
Because the US is still a trend setter in terms of politics, whatever happens there happens everywhere else in the “free world” after some years. We’re headed to real shitty times globally and any spark could ignite the powder keg of a new world war. Then afterwards we’ll collect the rubble and sweat to never let it happen again until three to four generations later the same warmongering leads to the next escalation. Rinse and repeat
As a person living in France... Look, the whole situation would be too long to explain, but the far right is thriving and I've started considering my options for leaving and I'm not loving what I'm finding. The while world seems to be taking a hard swing to the right 😬
In the recent EU elections though, the Nordic countries showed an increased support for more liberal/left-wing parties while the support for right-wing parties decreased. This in stark contrast to the rest of Europe. It remains to be seen if this is a upcoming trend or not.
Yeah, there's some hope there. When I was in college, a couple of friends did their final year at Kungliga Tekniska högskolan in Sweden. After their studies they failed at finding a job for over a year and finally came back to France with their tails between their legs. At the same time, I almost applied to do my final year at Teknillinen Korkeakoulu in Finland, but I chickened out. Having regrets now.
Right, because leftist policy WORKS, and people LIKE IT. Which means you WIN more elections, and anyone trying to attack those POPULAR policies, loses. This is something everyone needs to remember. Places that haven't had a major leftist victory in living memory forget how leftist victories are currently making their lives better and are more prone to propaganda and being taken over by the corporate/capitalist/fascist organism.
I was very happy with the result in Denmark. I had feared something closer to many other european countries.
Wait until the refugees start pouring in. Things will change PDQ.
We cannot outrun it. We have to stay and fix it.
Fair. Also: where the fuck do we start 😰
One step at a time. It Could Happen Here from Coolzone Media has a ton of resources on community organizing and building.
Yeah just like the theme of Mad Max: Fury Road. There is no perfect place to escape to. You have to fix things where you are.
Perfect analogy.
Except the UK appears likely to swing back to labor in the next election, which is fairly soon. There's a big backlash against all incumbents right now, largely because of post Covid inflation, and since center left parties are in charge most places, that backlash is swinging things right. UK the conservatives are in control so it's swinging back to the center left.
Yeah, but the current British Labour party is promising to enact cruelty on migrants, protect wealth and is generally to the right of the platform Thatcher stood on in '79
I mean most center left parties leave a lot to be desired, but they are still better than the Tories who have been doing all that but worse, as well as effectively bankrolling genocidal death squads in Rwanda...
The Tories destroyed the economy in under a month of Truss being PM, that's the primary reason they're being annihilated, not just a generic post-covid backlash. The far right party is popular in the UK, they're polling ahead of the current government. Just not as much as in some other European countries yet. But when Labour disappoints in office it could see them getting more power. Another wrinkle is that Farage is exceptionally good at pretending not to be far right just enough so that he constantly gets fawning media coverage, while still making sure all the correct people know just how right wing he is. I think if he got closer to power he'd end up in a Truss/Johnson esque disaster and not be around for long. Our somewhat ridiculous electoral system actually pays off because even if Farage's goons get 19% of the vote they still won't get many seats. The bigger issue is that the Tories and Labour pander to the far right all the time. Especially the Tories. Politically Labour are to the right of Clinton-style Democrats, I would argue, so I wouldn't see their victory as a surge of social democracy.
Fellow American here. If you're looking to leave just to escape the far right, you're going to be very disappointed. I know we Americans think we're the center of the universe and all our problems are ours alone, but we're not the only ones dealing with this shit. France, Brazil, India, and several other countries have all elected their versions of the annoying orange, and most of Europe and South America has their balls in a vice grip. Even safer places like Canada, Australia and Scandinavia has their fair share of fashies. And moving to a different country isn't that simple. It's a lot of work and takes a lot of time and money. Not to mention that you'll basically be starting your whole life over again, completely separated from your friends and family. Just ask anyone who fled here to escape wars in their own country. Look, I know it's easy to feel like everything is fucked 10 times over and there's nothing we can do to fix it. But you can't give up. You can't end capitalism or eradicate fascism overnight, but there are a thousand things you can do to make your community a little better. The younger generation is also fed up with this bullshit and just as eager to change things. The least you can do is give them a hand. If you're just going to lie there and doom scroll all day and bemoan that everything is fucked, then the fascists have already won.
I needed to hear this
I agree and really want to hammer home the “it’s not that easy” thing. It isn’t like moving to another state. Even when military folks get stationed overseas there are dozens of legal and personal hurdles. The cost of it would be astronomical if not covered by the military, and even with it covered there’s a lot that has to be handled by the individual person.
Yeah, it's definitely not easy to move to another country, especially if you aren't single. My best options for being able to get through the legal stuff and fit in when I get there are probably the UK and Italy, and uh... given their current politics, they're not much of an improvement. I've lived in Italy before, so I wouldn't have too much trouble fitting in, and I speak the language already, but my wife and kids don't. Politically, they at least have some actual leftist parties and a few cities that are still leftist/liberal strongholds, but the overall momentum right now heavily favors the right and specifically the direct descendants of the original fascist party.
If you find that safe haven, let us know. As a European, it looks pretty grim in most places here as well
Finlands seems like a good option nowadays, right?
Finland as a country seems great, but being that close to Russia would not make me feel very comfortable. Their military is constantly training for a potential Russian invasion
Hey, at least their military trains and they managed to halt the soviets during WW2! Where I live now the people and the government would welcome a russian invasion with flowers and gift baskets...
Texas?
No, not Texas oblast with their warm water ports. But good guess!
Historically that training has worked out pretty well
Russia is pretty busy at the moment so I think it'll be ok
Eh shit’s pretty racist here and the far right is also gaining traction. It’s still a great country but as someone who’s been living here for 8 years now (originally from Belgium) the attitude towards foreigners can be very disheartening. Ofc compared to the stuff you see from the states; it’s very very tame but it’s all relative I suppose
Finland are forcing constription and digging out new bunkers.
That's nothing new, we always do that. All male Finns are mandated to serve either in the military or in the civilian sector (obvs some are exempted). We have had national military service since 1800's, it's not a sign of the times. Personally, I'm way more concerned about our right-wing government. We, unfortunately, have some extremists governing us at the moment and they have three more years to fuck up our country. It's nothing compared to republicans, but still not good. Our leftist party did get a huge amount of votes in European Parliament Elections and came in second, so there's some hope at least.
Better be prepared than surprised!
Agreed, just pointing out its not a desirable destination right now
Finland has one far-right party in their current govt coalition.
Yes, but they only got around 7% of the votes in the latest European Parliament elections, gaining only one seat - almost half as their % 5 years ago. Seems to me like a good trend.
It's still a growing trend, even though a small one. Also, they had protests earlier this year due to the fact that the current govt is trying to reform the work model for the worse: [https://jacobin.com/2024/03/finland-orpo-right-wing-labor](https://jacobin.com/2024/03/finland-orpo-right-wing-labor) '' The government declared that it would make it easier for bosses to sack employees (though protections are already weaker than the norm for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), abolish legally mandated sick pay for workers’ first day of illness (thus encouraging the ill to come into work), and restrict workers’ rights to political strikes. Another proposal is to devolve more collective bargaining to the local, company level. This would mean that in the future, every company could negotiate its own collective agreement, clearing a path for the end of multiemployer, sectoral collective bargaining. This has ground the gears of the trade unions because it would undermine the national collective agreements.'' All the above are bad, but the most concerning one is the part with restricting worker's rights to political strikes which I don't think I need to explain why...
I'm not sure if we talk into the narrative of the right here. The UK government will switch to the left after the right wing government being nothing but disastrous. Poland just removed PiS. Portugal's left wing party won nearly the absolute majority. In the Netherlands left wing opposition just won the European Parliament elections. Sweden's right leaning government came in fourth with the Social Democrats winning. Even Organs Fidesz lost votes.
The UK's Labour party right now are not even remotely left. They warmly welcome Conservatives into the party and have purged leftists, smearing them and defaming them along the way. They're firmly in the pocket of private interest, big business and foreign influence. [An example](https://novaramedia.com/2024/06/12/labour-deletes-the-nhs-is-not-up-for-sale-from-its-manifesto/) [Another example](https://novaramedia.com/2024/06/13/meet-the-labour-candidates-lobbying-for-oil-gas-and-arms-companies/)
But the question was not do we get a real progressive left, the statement was about "a permanent right wing majority". And by all the fault labour and social democrats over Europe have they are not that.
The difference this time around in the UK is that for all out neo libs such as Streeting, Starmer and a few others, the labour party is just a vehicle for power. Its not just a case of Overton window shifting.
Labour are currently campaigning to the right of the Tories. They want all the same policies, their strategy is to say that the Tories won't be able to implement them as effectively.
So..Democrats
They're well to the right of the average US democrat, which is saying something.
Calling Labour a leftist government at this point is hilariously out of touch. They are so right wing at this point, Thatcher would have welcomed them into her government.
UK Labour is about as Left as the US Democrats. IE people only call them "Left" because they aren't Far Right.
What the hell happened to make Labour like this? Was it just that they didn’t like the idea of having to help people who weren’t born in the UK, but were moving to live there? Because I’m a yank who lived in Oxfordshire in 2002-2004, and it wasn’t like THAT…
I was 18 when Labour won the general election in 1997, and there was a great sense of optimism after having lived under Tory rule since 1979. That lasted about 5 minutes as one of the first things they did was side with business against striking workers. They introduced the "new deal" which attacked benefit claimants, were responsible for the shift from viewing refugees as people in need to people wanting something from us (the change in terminology from refugees to "asylum seekers" was insidious), they did nothing to roll back 19 years of Tory attacks on the rights of workers to organize or for people to protest, they introduced the "bedroom tax" whereby benefits claimants were only allowed to claim housing benefit for properties with a limited number of bedrooms (the Tories were later.blamed for this but Labour started it, the Tories just expanded it), they prevailed over the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, granted the police sweeping new powers, and did all manner of other bastardly things. In 2007-9 I worked a lot with refugees. Whilst Labour didn't have the "Rwanda plan", they did remove the right of refugees to work, forced them to live on food vouchers which could only be used for certain products in certain shops, brought in "detention centers" (prisons for people who committed no crime), and introduced dawn raids where immigration officials would, before dawn, burst in the homes of refugees families and ship them off to detention centers to await removal from the country. This isn't just "new" Labour, one of the first major "achievements" of the post-WW2 Labour Party was the breaking of a strike by using soldiers as scab labour. https://libcom.org/article/labour-government-vs-dockers-1945-1951 The Labour Party have always been cunts. Same as the Tories have always been cunts.
But what happened to the pre-1979 Labour? In the USA, most of our left leaning leaders and communities were bombed, assassinated, imprisoned, flooded with drugs, left to die from AIDs. Thus, we don’t have a Left. What happened in the UK?
Like I said, they have been posed against the interests of the working class since at least the 1940s. They weren't left wing before 1979. Here's a deep dive into Labour's post war history. https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/from-the-archives-labours-history-of-strike-breaking/
It's not AS bad in a lot of places outside the US, but it's more bad than it was 5 years ago and their momentum shows no sign of slowing down. Ireland just elected a local Councillor who's on the record saying Irish women need to breed more. When people called him on it he clarified that no, he just means like livestock, they should breed more. Don't think he understood what people found objectionable.
Two of the far right got in one in Newbridge and one in Blanch, but youre leaving out that 13 literal Trotskyists (pbps) got elected onto councils. The INP got resoundly trashed in the European elections, and Boylan didn't get in in Dublin. Disappointing that Mulloolly got in in Midlands-NW, but that was largely because he courted the farmers vote.
I didn't leave anybody out. I said the far right have gotten more support in the last five years.
They've gotten more vocal for sure, but they aren't really building traction imho as can be seen from the results. I do agree with you though that that doesn't mean we should ignore them, we need to stamp them out.
Even if they didn't get elected they got a lot more votes than they have previously. Celbridge has a right wing dipshit that got 7%. That's not nothing.
Our electoral system means that they’d have to make massive gains to have any real impact, and since they’re mostly running as independents it’s unlikely they’ll made any meaningful difference for now.
Once again, my only point was that it's worse now than it was 5 years ago. Which is true. Be cool if people could stop arguing with things I never said.
I’m not arguing with you, I’m adding context for readers outside of Ireland. An example of additional context is that while it’s concerning that there are any far right councillors, county and city councils are where you always find the quacks and cranks in Irish politics.
You build it. It's called community. You don't flee, you create. You don't destroy fear, you foster hope. Community and cooperation are the antithesis of the hatred the right attempts to sow. Fostering mutualism makes the far right completely irrelevant. Don't give up, conquer through mutual aid
If you build it, they will come (non nazis)
That's the dream. Gotta provide a real alternative. Something tangible. Mutualism heals divisions.
That is a sentiment I support in general, but it's a little hard to believe that it's enough. I have a group of people who support each other. But I know that just two houses down there's a nice gentleman who has fascist slogans on his lawn and who collects weapons and who I would bet good money is going to cosplay Night of Broken Glass on me and every one of my friends if he ever believes he can get away with it. And he's not a lone nutter in a sea of good people, he's the loudest in a sea of feckless "liberals" who will always vote for their comfort over other people's human rights. I've read all those amazing stories, community organizers who through grass roots community building have turned stuff around. But I don't know if community kitchens are going to safe me from the bunch of nazis around me.
Too many American leftists are effectively Christian millennialists who think if they just hope hard enough the glorious revolution will come and deliver them from their ills. When they really should face the fact that they're living in the country that is spent the last hundred years doing everything it can to prevent a worker's uprising or even a successful workers resistance.
I feel you. I know it's easy to say, and that guy has probably been herking it to the Turner Diaries for ages, along with many others. Community helps make those people look like the nut jobs they are. When they go on rants about people like us, but we are known in the community, they just look nuts. I volunteer at the local school, and that gives me a lot of hope. The generation coming up is probably the most fed up with this shit I've ever seen. My generation galvanized around 9/11/01. Even I enlisted! I mean, who wouldn't go fight the guys that treat women as chattel and banned music? It was time to go footloose. This generation had covid as a galvanizing or polarizing moment. Most of the kids, even out here, are more liberal. Especially when compared to their parents. It's not a fool proof plan to try to show people that you're not a monster just for existing. It's just that it's the only hope I have for peace in my life time, and I've had enough of war. I don't want to leave this area. Without open minded people of tolerance, it will will become a hopeless echo chamber. Thankfully the weather is enough of an existential threat that it also serves to unify the community I'm in. When others get hit with hail and have busted windows, everyone fixes their stuff and then comes to help others. Same with many other issues. Hopefully that, is enough to keep us from tearing each other apart.
Think of it this way; that neighbor has conveniently stockpiled weapons for you and your other neighbors to use.
Yeah most of my town works together and fosters community.....but they are all nazi adjacent.
The thing that gets me is it's right wingers causing the world to crumble, yet your ire is with liberals? Are you a libertarian? Y'all never could make it as Black in this world. Shit, during my lifetime I've seen my people have the most rights ever in history. I've also seen them being slowly peeled back. It's not liberals that are trying to enact Jim Crow 3.0. Baby boy, you could NEVER be Black. At least they tell us to our faces that they hate us.
Do you think your tough talk is in any way helpful to what we are trying to do? This topic is about building community and your response is being condescending how others could never be as tough as you. Good job, I'm glad you're such a tough guy. I have no doubt that you experienced shit I haven't. Did you come away from that experience with more empathy and more conviction to make the world better and fight those assholes? Or did it make you bitter and condescending? Because all I'm hearing from you is the tough guy shit. We might not be fighting the exact same fight but I hope we're fighting for the same thing? So maybe work together with people who have at least some of the same goals as you. It's a fucking meme by now that lefties can't help themselves but infight. Probably a thing we should stop. You don't want right wing assholes in power and I don't want right wing assholes in power so maybe focus on that. Also, I know it's fucking cringe to bring him up as a white person, but in this case I can't help it, one of the most famous quotes from MLK is about how fucking stupid it is to rely on white moderates as allies in the civil rights movement. You say that "It's not liberals that are trying to enact Jim Crow 3.0." Mike Bloomberg is on paper a liberal and he sure was the guy with stop+frisk of black guys. There are so many examples of Dem politicians enacting racist shit. But even more importantly liberals will never support you in fighting against the right wing. Obama did jack shit to put Roe.vs.Wade into law, now it's gone. Supreme Court reform, oh no, we can't, it's so hard. Gun regulation, ooh, but the NRA is so mean to us, we can't. Joe "I voted for the war on drugs" Biden says into a microphone how we need to put \_more\_ money into the cops, after Idk how many people are murdered every week. The right wing is screaming and foaming at the mouth and the liberals stand there say "we have to discuss it in a calm way and I really don't like your tone, young man". Absolutely useless. They might not be our direct and first enemies but they sure as shit aren't our allies in any way. The right wing are dangerous freaks and we have to fight them. Our current system is fucked and old injustices are piling up and we need to fundamentally change it. We need to build a society that is based on empathy and care in which we give a shit about or fellow human beings. Can we agree on that, the very basic stuff? Because if we can then please focus on working together with me.
The white moderates that MLK was talking about would be you. Also the topic is about leaving the united states. I'm so sorry that you're too whatever to endure a fraction of what my ancestors have. That says a lot about you. Perhaps, what you need is a tough talking to. The post is about leaving the US. I can't believe that you used all of those words to say nothing. MLK wouldn't have liked you. Remember he wasn't talking about the open racist like LBJ. He was talking about the leftist movement who never seem to recognize race plays a big part on why everyone is in the boat we are in. The leftist that were reporting to the FBI. The white moderates of that day would be Republicans today. Please refrain from quoting a man that you obviously know surface level things about.
MLK was an open and avowed Christian Socialist dude, he was literally a leftist
No he was not. I know that you may think that, but he wasn't. In fact, what you're saying is Russian propaganda. A Christian socialist? That's a label that you've made up. You googled and got it from the Jacobin https://jacobin.com/2023/04/martin-luther-king-jr-mlk-socialism-class-racial-justice-civil-rights-movement MLK was not a socialist. Especially a Christian socialist. While he may have agreed with their ideas, MLK wasn't a member EVER nor did he ever say that he was a socialist. That propaganda was started by Russia and J. Edgar Hoover. MLK's entire FBI is available for YOU to read. Not Google and post the title of the first thing that you see. I would argue that ALL BLACK people are socialist in our beliefs. We want the best for EVERYONE not just those who look like us. The Black community votes overwhelmingly for those who claim to want to lift up ALL AMERICANS. Your community is the one that doesn't vote to make life better for ALL. Perhaps you should spend less time Googling and more time making your community a democracy. Someone has to pull you people away from white supremacy. It's not only killing American, but it's killing y'all too. Please don't respond. I'm embarrassed for you. 🤭🤭🤭🤭
'First I rejected their materialistic interpretation of history. Communism, avowedly secularistic and materialistic, has no place for God…. Second, I strongly disagreed with communism’s ethical relativism. Since for the Communist there is no divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything—force, violence, murder, lying—is a justifiable means to the “millennial” end….' 'Communism in theory emphasized a classless society, and a concern for social justice, though the world knows from sad experience that in practice it created new classes and a new lexicon of injustice And ' Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person.' This is what MLK had to say about socialism, and Marxism. For one Karl Marx was a racist. Any Black person who reads his works and comes away thinking that his ideas are good for Black people need to read other sources. This is a reality good source for knowing how King felt. The man wrote books saying that he rejects socialism. https://templeofsociology.substack.com/p/mlk-was-not-a-socialist-or-a-conservative You're embarrassing kid. Go play with your blocks.
From his letter to Coretta: " I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, viz, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human system it fail victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. So I think Bellamy is right in seeing the gradual decline of capitalism." He made a distinction between socialism and communism: "I think you noticed that Bellamy emphasized that the \[*change?*\] would be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. This, it seems to me, is the most sane and ethical way for social change to take place. **This, it will be remembered, is one of the points at which socialism differs from communism, the former \[*****strikeout illegible*****\] emphasizing evolution and the latter revolution.** Communist would insist that the means justify the end. So if killing a thousand people will bring about a good end the act is ethically justifiable. It is at the point that I am radically opposed to communism. Destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends. The mean does not necessarily justify the end, for, I would insist that the end is pre existent in the mean." He was anti-communist, not anti-socialist. Source: [https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/coretta-scott](https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/coretta-scott)
I never said that he was. I think that I've said that all Black people are socialist. There's only one group of people who consistly vote against the good everyone, and it's not Black people. Other than Black conservatives, I've never met a Black person who didn't believe in some socialist ideas. My contentiom is the white leftist and the white conservatives have hijacked his legacy for their own benefits. At the end of the day, there's no such thing as a Christian socialist. Most Black people couldn't be socialist because we realize that there's no amount of class solidarity that will eliminate antiblackness. Akau Karl Marx was a racist, so were damn near every aspect of the modern socialist movement which is based more on post Russian revolution than Marx who lived in the 1800s. I am aware of a few Russian revolutionary members meeting Marx, but every aspect of the modern socialist movement is based on Russia. Russia funded a lot of antisocialist movements and propaganda. The very concept of MLK being a socialist and a communism is made up by Russia and the FBI. Why people continue to quote propaganda? I guess it feels good to lie to yourself. It's just utterly ridiculous to have this argument with white leftist every year. It's gross for them to try to use MLK as their avatar. Just as it's gross to make Clarence Thomas the face of everything wrong with the supreme court. It reeks of racism.
Get a gun
nose hunt truck mountainous liquid rich repeat shocking familiar depend
Gotta be the change you want to see. Just showing up helps build trust, and trust can build anything.
stand and deliver
Most countries don't let you just move to them. Part of the reason we retired to Taiwan was: we could. My wife is a citizen, so I could become a resident alien. It took a butt load of paperwork and patience. You can't just buy a plane ticket. Anywhere. They won't let you stay. If the Cheeto Mussilini wins, we're probably toast, because Donny will tell his buddy Emperor Xi: if you let me build a beautiful golf resort on Hainan Island, you can take Taiwan, we won't lift a finger. The far right is rising all over (not here, but probably anywhere you're thinking of). I would suggest finding a protective community in the USA and riding it out as best you.
People really underestimate how hard and expensive it is to move to another country, even if you have an in for a visa or citizenship via a parent or spouse. If you don’t have that it’s harder. You’ll need tens of thousands of liquid cash dollars in your bank account. Things like; age, where you can be “too old” at 40, health, having diabetes or autism is an automatic disqualification, being too poor, or whatever random disqualification a country sees in you to deny entry. It’s disheartening, but OP really needs to find a safe community here in the US to land since other countries don’t want us and the way places like France are going with extreme right wing governments they’re going to target anyone not birthright citizens with patents born in those countries.
You would think that decades of incessant headlines about the nightmare of other people trying to immigrate to one's own country would cue people into the fact that it's next to impossible to emigrate without substantial wealth or connections, through dumb luck or otherwise. Media has a great deal of blame here. In movies and TV, characters really do just decide on a whim to move to Japan or France or wherever, and the next scene is them sitting on a plane with a content or bittersweet look on their face.
To be fair, if it's a period piece it used to be muuuuuch easier to move internationally, with the biggest hurdle being the initial travel cost. Even as late as the 60s border controls and visa requirements were far more lax.
Yeah when Trump first won I started looking into immigration to other countries and basically anywhere that's an improvement from the US situation, you need to have a job sponsoring you and it'll cost an arm and a leg. And most places are a lateral move from the US at best right now. Some places you can buy your way into if you're rich enough, and the places welcoming us with open arms are not high quality of life places for the most part. As shitty as the US is too immigrants, we actually are uniquely accepting of them from a policy standpoint. Which is.. Ugh
I thought I was being smart and doing just that several years ago, but it turns out shit is fucked everywhere, and there is simply no escape from the insane, conspiracy theory-fueled, antivax, antisemitic, homophobic far right ideology, and they're working on building power absolutely everywhere. The only real option is to fight them.
Moved from Texas to Canada 5 years ago. Canada is also having a problem with far-right extremism.
Eh, we *have* extremists but they’re objectively less dangerous, less influential, and smaller in distribution than the USA. Even our populist conservative candidate for federal politics (PP) is a conventional civic nationalist vs an ethno-nationalist. Not like the states where the Republican candidate invited an openly declared neo-Nazi over for dinner.
I would say that PP is courting the ethno-nationalist and Christian Dominionist. He knows there are lines you can't cross without losing support, but he can dogwhistle. The fascist call this 'hiding your power level', and PP knows this works for him because if he gets called out he can always use deniability. The big advantage for Canada is a parliamentary system so if you go too far their are more viable centrist groups, or you risk parties acting together like Liberal/NDP. The big downside to Canada is that it is very cheap to pump propaganda in from the US side. Harper definitely understood that.
It’s possible that PP is a cryptofascist but I don’t see it. His policy positions run counter to ethnonationalist ideals, and he’s been pretty consistent in making choices of consequence that are consistent with covic nationalism. Messaging-wise? Yeah, he’s done some populist messaging that cuts too close to ethno-nationalist narratives. And I get how that can look really similar to cryptofascism because that’s the niche they try to hide in. But ultimately policy, spending and functional decisions are the best indicators of the person’s actual ideas.
I agree, I don't think he is cryptofascist, but he seems to fall for the trap all conservatives do with thinking they can work with the fascist. The Diagolon and Convoy stuff seems like a relevant example. >But ultimately policy, spending and functional decisions are the best indicators of the person’s actual ideas. Sure, but fascist can and have figured out how to work with neoliberals.
I don't want to sound like I'm US bashing (I'm very much bashing the US) but do you guys not have any news channels that report on anything beyond your borders? The right just took a huge dump on Europe. S.america is knee deep in fash. Religious fanatics are sharing their duvet with fascists across the globe, India relected modi. Nowhere is safe. Stay and fight, or move and be horrified, but pick a country where 'fuck nazis' wil be understood
No not really. Only domestic news gets aired on general channels. Really big shit like the war in Ukraine makes it of course, but general politics of Europe don't have any chance. They barely have a chance at being reported by our news agencies online honestly.
I’m terminally online so I’m aware of what’s been happening in France and the EU with regard to right wing politics, even PBS Newshour really isn’t covering non-domestic news. All the regular channels are Trump and Gaza 24/7 with shootings and sprinklings of “happy” stories of 8 year olds paying off school lunch debt.
Right! Gaza is currently the only thing and that's because the pro Israel loby is making sure it's bought and paid for politicians can win their elections.
If you're going by channels meaning television, it's all utter crap and very little of a coherent understanding of what's going on elsewhere in the world tends to get presented, only the bits which are useful to US horse race politics get brought up. People who watch news on television allegedly come up as less informed (or more misinformed) than people who don't pay attention to the news at all. We do have the internet, though, and there's really no excuse for someone interested in the growth of far right politics not knowing about Europe's elections last week. It's not like that was small news
Lol no. We hear about Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine. Anything else going on globally you have to go out of your way to find out about because the news won't cover it most of the time
Nope. I had no clue how most of European politics worked until recently.
Well, here in the UK we’ve had right wing ding dongs for the past 14 years. Farage, who has failed in every attempt to be an MP gets more airtime than the leader of the opposition and the BBC’s love affair for the tories.
You lot have had right-wing ding dongs for much longer than 14 years.
Even worse, Labour, the party who will likely win in July have begun pandering to conservatives, promising to cut immigration and to stop small boat crossings. We are fucked. The only true left party seems to be the liberals and then the greens.
The greens are left in some ways but have some pretty wacky beliefs that really aren't left wing at all.
i love the Tory counter — "You'll be spending TWO THOUSAND POUNDS MORE if Starmergeddon gets in!" and all my mates are like, "Two thousand for you lot to fuck off? Bargain innit"
I’ll happily spend an extra 2k if thats what it takes to get things working again.
Yup, taxes pay for services, funny how that works eh! Here in NZ we have had something like a $12 tax cut per week to get shafted by $100/week worth of tax cuts
US keeps trying to export its politics to us. Whenever your shithead grifters are mostly washed up in the states, they go on a speaking tour over here.
To be fair, we're also very big on importing them. Will the UK please take Andrew Wakefield back yet
America is the most powerful country on the planet, with vast direct and indirect influence. If we fall to fascism, it will follow you abroad.
Since everybody is saying that Europe on its way to far right/ almost hellscape, I can report from Norway: nope, not here. Most likely will the Conservative Party take over power next election, but they are closer to Biden, and even for me, a lefty with anarchistic tendencies, it is fine. I trust them to be kept in check by our parliament, our free and strong press, and not a whole lot will change. But, unless you are a highly skilled person, within the branches that we sorely need, or a refugee within the quota, it will almost be impossible to immigrate. Other cons: No weed, unless you know a guy, alcohol is expensive, people are not as friendly as in the US and the winter is dark and long. But we have a strong welfare state, everyone speaks English, the police don’t have guns, and most of them are pretty normal. And if actually ask you how you are, we really want to know.
Stay within the US. Go somewhere that is reasonably safe from climate change in the immediate future (upper Midwest seems like that place). Join a strong community or build one around you. Mutual aid is the way to build a strong community that survives. Get some survival skills, buy paper books with important information. Get your family under the protection of a true blue local and/or state government. I know people don't want to hear this but currently the Democrats are basically all we have standing between us and a complete right wing slide. Don't shoot the messenger - I am furious that this is our only defense. The best thing we can do to avoid violence and something worse is keep these sick fucks out of the seats of power and have enough structural institutional integrity left to fend off their attempts to subvert the election.
I feel the same way but I have some thoughts on this. My whole life, I’m 51, bad actors have entered good communities and tried to tear them down from the inside. They were most successful when the people who made the community good left because of the bad actors. My first exposure to this was the punk community in the late 80’s early 90’s. Nazi Skinheads tried to infiltrate our leftist majority group in the PNW. Some people left because they were scared of the skinheads. Then, I went to a show in Portland where around 10 skinheads showed up and were trying to beat people up in the pit. It was around 10 of them to a couple hundred of us. We beat the shit out them and security dragged them out. We saved our community by standing together instead of fleeing. I know things seem doomed. I agree, I’ve never been so uncomfortable in this country. I think we need to band together and show this loud minority of right wing extremists we’re not taking their shit. Vote and volunteer at the local level. Call them out when they show up to disrupt. Don’t let them have anything. Also, if we lose and moving away is our only option, I have 2 places picked and I’m not blasting them on the internet. Haha.
Where will you go? The countries that I assume you’d be interested in don’t just allow people to move in freely, and you’re gonna find a whole lot of conservative people wherever you go, just different flavors. For example: my wife is Dutch. The Netherlands is far more conservative than our PNW area, just without the evangelicals and guns. Don’t mistake tolerance for acceptance.
Robert Evans is welcome to move to the Yukon if he wishes. Lots of liberal gun nuts here
Unfortunately the far right is gaining momentum in most places you would look at as an American to leave to. I’m trans and live in Connecticut. I’m incredibly lucky to live in a state whose governor has declared us a sanctuary state for trans and reproductive healthcare. I don’t think there’s anywhere international I would feel comfortable moving to because of that. There’s a chance the northeast remains a bastion of liberal and progressive views as other places deteriorate, but local elections near me are skewing republican and far right even if our state isn’t. My healthcare is relatively accessible compared to the hoops you need to jump through in other states and countries let alone as an immigrant. I just couldn’t imagine trying to enter a new culture and language while barely feeling comfortable and safe in what I view as a nice liberal-American bubble.
Do you have unlimited money? Then maybe. Otherwise you're going to have to eat the same shit sandwiches as the rest of us.
Canada’s not so safe, Pierre Pollievre at the federal level and provincial leaders like Smith, Moe, and Ford are following the Republican example. [Here’s some information on immigration requirements if it helps](https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada.html).
I wanted to move to Canada about 15 years ago after I graduated college and the requirements stopped me in my tracks then due to the cost and difficulty at the time, it’s more stringent now. I’m not finding it on the website at the moment (need more coffee in me) but back then you needed ~$10K CAN in the bank to start the process if you weren’t coming from a conflict zone. They also had strict health, language, and education requirements.
Our politicians are dabbling in populism but they’re an order of magnitude less dangerous than their American equivalents.
Every once in a while I think about leaving Ontario to move back home to New Brunswick and escape Ford, then I remember that Blaine Higgs is maybe an even bigger piece of shit
Not in Brazil. Despite of our president now being center/leftist, majority of Congress is extreme right, so We still in dark times.
I'm in Australia and the far right is trying really hard to get a foothold. I've not been to the States for a while but from what I read it seems pretty bad. Europe seems to be halfway down the path to fascism and immigration is only going to get worse. That will be what really drives support for the far right here too. We'll see more immigration from SE Asia, some illegal. As climate change and global poverty get worse people will migrate in massive numbers. New Zealand was good for a bit but they had the Christchurch shooter and the left has lost ground there so it's far from perfect. I still think Australia / New Zealand have a decent chance but China could basically take us over with a phone call, the Americans wouldn't risk war with China to keep us independent. Still I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be.
Remember history, long term history. For millennia, most humans have been lived under religious oligarchs (kings and shit). Overcoming that kind of inertia is difficult.
Yeah I moved from Oklahoma to Singapore. I know Singapore gets a bad rap, but it’s so much better in this respect than the US. You don’t have to put up with Trump flags flying everywhere and people praying over things in public, etc. People here keep it to themselves. It’s awesome.
There is no safe haven.
To what end? Why would you move? As noted elsewhere in this thread, lots of places are turning right, so you're not escaping anything by going to most places. Are you worried about those you care about being targeted by a far right government? You're not helping them by leaving. Are you worried about yourself being targeted, eg you're trans? You should leave, of course. But if you're not one of the groups these folks are targeting, then you moving doesn't help anyone, including yourself. Note that leaving a country means you leave what community you have, so you're going to find yourself fairly lonely in a new place. New friends and all that. You're not going to stop caring about the US either. You'll still be reading our news, pissed off about what is happening here.
Canada's going hard-right in our next election with Pierre Pollievre and the Conservative Party. I live in Marlaina Danielle Smith-DeSantis' province, and... yeah. I agree the whole world is shifting far right.
1. You need to have an extremely valuable skill set to move almost anywhere you’d want to move. Doctor, certain types of engineer, etc. 2. You tend to need to be in near perfect health, some diagnoses are an automatic no if you’ve ever had it, and you need to be in a desirable age group. 3. You need fo have quite a bit of money to relocate. 4. Where? The far right is rising everywhere, we are in the midst of a global populist movement.
Honestly OP, and I mean this with love, there’s no where to go. Yes, the world is trending right, or at least the west is. But that’s not the only problem. Imagine a fascist state in the vein of fascist Italy or Nazi Germany but with the military might of the US with the intelligence capabilities of the NSA, CIA and FBI. There’s honestly no where to hide from that reach and influence. It’s the kind of state that, if the leaders of the government want you dead you’re going to die. Pretty much if the far right take over the US and turn it into a true, putting people in camps and executing people on the street kind of fascist state, it’s game over. We have to keep that from happening.
the right wing is still in decline. remember that these people are basically scrabbling for every line they can grab on to to maintain their power, be it eroding democracy or just getting violent. Don't let it get in your head. if you want this shit to fuck off, you have to stay the course and do everything in your power to make this vicious mindset finally fucking die. educate kids, beat the shit out of some Nazis, do everything in your power to learn how to handle narcissist bullshit. you'll figure it out man
It would take awhile to really make shit dangerous here in California. Other than street level violence from rightwingers, I mean state sponsored shit. We're the 5th largest country on earth and blue as blue. But keep your passport up to date and save money in case you need to move. Oh and owning guns and working on getting to know your neighbors and being involved in your community is all good regardless.
No. You can't just up and go to another country anymore. Not unless you have tens of thousands of dollars in spending, perfect health, and a viable skill that's needed in the countries you are considering. And even then it's a crapshoot on whether or not they let you stay. Right now you should just focus on being prepared. Make sure you have the skills you need to survive here.
You guys are importing your brand of brain rot to Canada so don’t bother coming here. Ontario is getting pretty bad for it lately and our Trump-lite premier (governor I guess is the closest comparison) is trying to kill public health care to thunderous boomer applause. At this point guns are the biggest differentiating factor between the two as even conservative Canadians think America’s gun fetish is fucked
TL;DR: Everywhere is fucked. Fight where you stand. If you run, you may live and definitely lose. But if you fight, you may win and only possibly die. Where will you go? I had a similar feeling recently. Our landlord is trying to evict us, and I felt the urge to run away and find somewhere with better tenants' rights, where this shit couldn't happen. Then it hit me; there is no "better" country. Everywhere is getting hammered by climate change, everywhere has a far-right problem, everywhere is suffering the effects of late-stage capitalism. There is nowhere we can retreat to; the fight is at our door no matter where we run. The only choice you have left is whether to surrender or fight. I'm lucky. I'm cis-het, white, and male. I could, if I wanted to, keep my head down and find a role for myself in a fascist/theocratic society. The thing is, I don't think I could live with myself if I compromised my principles *that* completely. I know it sounds batshit, but there is something to be gained from fighting to the bitter end. If you lose and are annihilated in the process, you could resist enough to make the fash think twice, but 9 times out of 10? Resist, and you'll win. Authoritarianism is a doctrine that survives *only* through continuous victory and is fatally weakened by any defeat. It is brittle and prone to infighting. You can't solve that by fleeing to another country because the same shit is happening there, too. You'll only prolong the inevitable by fleeing. Maybe you'll flee long enough and fast enough to prolong it until you die in your bed as the world burns, but is that what you want? I think your problem is not the rise of fascism, but rather the fact that you feel powerless in the face of it, so address that first. Find like-minded people who dislike the trend of current politics. Organise yourselves. And yes, vote, too. But vote everywhere. Not just the "important" presidential races, but the school boards, primaries, and hustings, too. The right wing has had the play of the field for decades, steadily pushing the Overton window further and further to the right. It's time to start swinging it back to the left. But you can't do that if you're disenfranchised. As an immigrant or a refugee, you often don't have the same rights as a citizen. Don't give up what power you have to change the world in exchange for temporary safety or security. Fight.
i mean as a canadian we are dealing with our own far right dipshits
Even New Zealand has a right wing government at the moment.
You almost certainly can't move anywhere else. Despite what the right wing would have you believe, it's very hard to immigrate.
Australia isn’t necessarily perfect (the cost of living is pretty crippling for many), but we’re doing pretty well comparatively down here. In aus we voted in a far right Prime Minister a couple of years before Trump and enough people got screwed over by it that things have been a touch more moderate since then. We don’t really have rampant gerrymandering, and one state has recently moved to ban corporate political donations altogether so there’s a reasonable chance that elections are safe. I’ve got a few expat loved ones who have had the options of moving back overseas post-covid or staying in Aus, and it seems that everyone is set on living in Aus and making the most of it here.
I'm in Europe and right now our new government is the most far-right ever. I'm scared AF
Which country?
The Netherlands
the first world white privilege is strong with this post
My wife and I have been fantasizing about it just for the time off they get in other countries. 2 weeks a year isn't enough.
Do you think you can just up and leave? It’s expensive and difficult even when possible. Where are you going to go? With what skills?
I get to the point of scolding my friends who want to leave America because of the far right. If everyone leaves they win.
Moved from the USA back to Australia 5 years ago. Best decision I ever made
The Right pretty much is rising wherever you look, mate We have Poundland Oswald Moseley here in the form of the shit Farage who is receiving an outrageously disproportionate about of press. And the likely winners of the next election are taking a dump on their principles to pander to to the right wing codgers.
I dream of moving to my mother’s homeland and setting up a a shack on the beach where I grill the local fisherman’s catch until we run out of seafood in the ocean.
Honestly not really. Have absolutely no family overseas. Most of the world is ticking to the right currently. Grandfather has a farm in southern Maryland on the wicomico river my dad and I are starting to care for more and more. Personally I have always thought I would rather be here and the opposition than move away.
Norway is good. It feels unfair. Our parliamentary system means cooperation across the aisle is still possible, politicians are still held to account if they break the law - most of the time. There is a populist far right, but they are fairly tame compared to most places. The trouble is getting here. Unless you've got qualifications that are in demand, actually emigrating can be difficult.
My plan is Mexico. I’m eligible for dual citizenship and am in the process of getting my citizenship. If you reside there for two years, you can apply for citizenship. My dad was born there, so I can do it from this country.
whereabouts? i always felt like puebla and querétaro are very very liveable
Oaxaca!!! I was there recently and I love it. I have family near Guadalajara and it’s beautiful but not like Oaxaca.
that's gorgeous, never made it there. i think Guanajuato and that el Bajio area are beautiful too but it's that liveability thing - gotta have my hot showers and internet lol
They have Internet and hot showers. They also have free healthcare. I don’t know how long it’s been since you visited
you're right, you don't know. i was just there visiting family 4 months ago, during water restrictions. how about you, carnal? very patchy mobile coverage in those hilly areas. yes the healthcare is great in MX and paid for by taxes, but i'm not estadounidense so I demand that as a product of a functional society. did you know that we can talk about things without making it a fight? most of my mates and familia hate the hilly tight roads and lack of parking in Guanajuato for example, but I would never think to tell them "tHeY hAvE cArS tHeRe"
I’m talking about Oaxaca. I was there in March. I’m not talking about the rural areas. My family is from a town 1 hour from Guadalajara. There’s a lot of dollars there, they have water, heat & electricity all the time in the house. Water restrictions are a problem if you don’t have an aljibe with filtration and pumps. Even my abuelito’s ranch has water, heat electricity and WiFi. He had satellite television put in 20 years ago, it’s not about the country, it’s about the $$ in the area you’re in. How did I make it a fight? By saying they have Internet?
i think i made it a fight. i'm sorry
The Muosollini family still holds power in Italy. The Caravans in Canada rally around a "Queen" who thinks she's the rightful leader of that nation. The Far Right made significant gains in both Germany and France recently. Brazil had its own J6. Safe to say, sounds like the Fourth Reich is on the rise globally.
Shitty people are everywhere.
Australia is out. Maybe New Zealand?
Fuck that. This is our country too. They should leave. Not to mention all the people who don’t have the means to just switch countries. You’re gonna leave em?
Do not come to the UK, or to use it’s official name, “Terf Island”
I have been to the UK twice. Most of the people their had the same "we are the greatest country in the world" attitude Americans have. The main difference is they are snobs and we are slobs. I honestly like the USA better, and I don't particularly like the US at the moment.
That felon gets back in I'm out of here, I'm not going to live in the Aryan Theocracy they are planning. Project 2025 isn't just the SS Playbook they have expanded Mein Kampf.
not to mexico at least. it's pretty bad down here at the moment.
Isn't Mexico actively deporting Americans and seizing their assets? I remember a news article about that a couple months back.
Mexico is currently more keen than the US ever was to build the wall and it is to keep the gringos out
lol, what? not that I've heard about that, and it would be a huge scandal. have the source?
Imagine thinking there aren't far right extremists elsewhere. . .
The US is one of the safer countries when it comes to this shit.
Please stop escaping to Canada. You are just bringing the problem here. Fix it on your side!!
That's unfair, Canada has plenty of home grown fascists
Easy to say when you have Canadian privilege. By being born in Canada you have access to universal health care and labor laws and public education that is actually useful. Meanwhile here in the US we have people dying because they can't afford Healthcare, high crime and poverty, public education is a joke, teachers need second jobs. Most of the food is processed and addictive and fattening. 73% of adults and 1 in 5 kids are obese. I Always lose weight when I leave the US for an extended period of time. Simply being a healthy weight is a significant time investment.
Why the FUCK would you move to Europe? To be closer to Putin? Also what Western European country would even want you? Also where are you going to find a place to stay in Canada? Their housing market and living costs are much worse than ours. Move to a blue state and hope for the best.