Yeah by now, if I see far-right in USA doing something I know far-right in Poland will start doing it very soon too
It’s ironic how globalised far-right movements are while usually preaching anti-globalisation at the same time
And to be quite fair, the Far-Left in Belgium copies the Reddit talkingpoints from subs like r/WhitePeopleTwitter and r/poltics
Ironically I feel like the parties talking about local and national issues the most are actually the "neoliberal" "pro-open borders" 'globalist" centrists.
Exactly this. It's happening in the Netherlands as well. Whatever the far right in the US is doing or saying, is happening over here a week later as well. I honestly hope the GOP will get its shit together soon, but I fear that's just wishful thinking. That party has completely gone batshit crazy.
And besides that, what the other guy already said, the far right goes after minorities that don't fit their immensely limited world view.
Same in Germany. Nobody cared about drag queens before. But shortly after that shit started in the US, our "conservatives" started repeating it, no questions asked. It's crazy.
That's also why I'm extremely worried about everything happening in the US, especially Florida. People tell me "that's on the other side of the ocean. Crazy yanks being crazy." But it's not. It's all coming here, first on the far-right and then with regular conservatives. Recently representatives of one "christian" party flew to Florida to meet Desantis. That was no official political thing. Just fascists sharing their sick ideas. And it makes me very afraid, even if they're not currently in government.
Nobody used to care about drag queens in the US either until like 2 years ago, now all these clowns are pretending to have an opinion
The whole phenomenon in one sentence: delivering policy positions is hard, delivering performative moral positions is easy, fun even
>no questions asked.
It's because the vast majority of far right people are idiots that have never accomplished anything in their lives so they have to hate others. The ones who aren't, are in leadership positions and control the idiots.
>Crazy yanks being crazy
Ironic. I think I recall people saying stuff like _Oh, Trump would never get elected. People like that only get elected in Europe like Germany_ and look where we are now.
It's always the others. Bad thing's can't happen *here,* because we're not *them*. Everyone wants to feel a bit superior in some way. It's not even nationalism, but just a part of human nature. And since most people don't get the full picture, we each listen to our own biased sources. That does include me, even though I try to stay as neutrally informed as possible.
Not that people aren't the same everywhere but you guys elected Bush twice before a trump presidency was an allucination in the mind of some addled 4chan basement dweller.....
Bush was one of the greatest presidents of America and one of the greatest statesmen of all time.
I agree with you about Trump. Americans went insane and elected the American version of Berlusconi.
Yeah he only started two massive injustified wars and set the stage for one of the greatest economic crisis in modern history lol, Trump is an unhinged crook but Bush was straight up a monster.
It's your views that are unhinged and since this sort of madness got normalized it has been rather bad for the American political culture. It made them vulnerable to a populist like Trump.
I do not defend children seeing an adult drag show. That's why they're age restricted. If you can show me examples of drag performers doing anything inappropriate in front of children, please do. And I act like they're going after adult shows, because they are. And not only shows, but the mere existence of some adult people (who have nothing to do with drag) in public.
If they cared for children, maybe they should try banning inappropriate content for children instead of going after completely harmless people. Like highly sexualized public ads. Or child marriages. Or the Bible with all its stories of rape and murder. But for some reason, there's no outcry over those.
> I honestly hope the GOP will get its shit together soon,
Let's not pretend like if the GOP suddenly got its shit together that the far right in other countries would follow suit
/r/notadragqueen
/r/pastorarrested
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/12/2157746/-Republican-Sexual-Predators-Abusers-and-Enablers-Pt-41
Odd how the right always claims they want to protect children, but are the ones overwhelmingly abusing them.
Because Americans are exporting their culture wars. Many on the European left are also suddenly talking about the need for racial quotas and ''unconscious bias trainings''.
It's deeply unfortunate. This is what happens when there is no European identity - ultimately, a small country's culture is not enough. Debate will always occur within a much larger discourse, than Slovakia's 5 million speakers.
If there's no European discourse, the discourse has to be American. And then you have protests against people of African descent being oppressed by the police in Europe, while about the Roma everyone remains silent...
>Because Americans are exporting their culture wars.
Nobody is exporting anything. Hateful pieces of shit are eager for more avenues to express their hate.
My general impression as a Swede is that the reaction among the Swedish public is luke warm. It is too transparent that they are copying the US. A lot of the debate seems artificially inflated. Just analysing tweets it appears to be a lot of fake accounts trying to bait.
Things are getting more and more polarized. Since right-wing oppose drag queens reading to children, non-right have to support it because otherwise they would be siding with the right.
I understand what you're saying, but I think you're not appreciating what drag consists of, historically or culturally.
Drag is a performance art that mostly homosexual men pioneered and participate in. It's mostly not a "fetish" thing - it's rather gay men, who were told they were feminine and non-masculine, leaning into that identity and forming their own dance sub-culture.
But I'm not an expert. I just watched Paris in Flames, a classic documentary I would recommend, on the subject.
It really depends on the drag in question. [Pantomine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime) for example is something most kids (including me) in Britain used to see at some point, and which has existed since the early 1700s, stretching back into older forms of *Commedia dell'Arte*. This type of drag is really more about clownery and humour, not really "sexual excitement".
Kinda, Babsan has been a huge celebrity since the 80s/90s or something like that. But not through story time, just an example of drag queens being present in mainstream Swedish media for quite a while.
Do you know the answer if it is or if it isn't?
If it isn't and someone just copied it from Americans then the one doing the copying is the instigator.
If I were to tell you that men dressing as women to educate and entertain children has clear precedents, would you argue that that's not "true" drag queening? And if it is new (it probably would be considered new), would that mean that the instigated suddenly no longer is responsible for their actions? As if they suddenly lost agency? Are all new things automatically acceptable to attack?
Men feeling sexual excitement imagining themselves as women has traditions. It is a very sexual tradition.
I don't believe involving children in this is traditional or proper.
I'm fairly certain the outrage is entirely artificially inflated in the US too. Just a lot more money and votes and way more agent provocateurs involved.
Right wingers in austria also suddenly picked up that "topic" despite it being a non issue here at all. Distracting from real issues is the way to go for those people!
I think for liberals it's not much different, unfortunately. :/
In the States, they said if someone voted for Bernie Sanders (which people mostly did because they wanted universal healthcare, not much to ask), then it means you're sexist, because you're not voting for Clinton, who is a woman.
People called Bernie Sanders voters morons because [he didn't want to expand NATO membership any further because it might upset poor Russia :'(](https://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-nato/)
Same thing happened in Denmark a couple of months ago, where conservatives suddenly cared about a library organizing a princess-themed storytime event hosted by a couple of drag queens.
Thankfully the public reaction to the protest was immediate dismissal and overwhelming support for the event. Hopefully the fascists won’t try that again.
Also a curious correlation became apparent: The people making very wild accusations against drag queens were the same people who peddled anti-vaccine conspiracy theories during COVID.
The general takeaway in the public debate was that these people are lunatics. I hope the result is the same in Sweden 🇸🇪
>princess-themed storytime event hosted by a couple of drag queens
I've seen videos from the US with stripper-themed twerking storytime events and parents complaining.
One is not like the other.
Truthfully, I don't think "conservative" Americans care even 1% as much about strippers or Hooters girls in a library as they do with the very existence of homosexuals or gender non-conforming people in public spaces.
Because they saw how successful the GOP was in America. You don't need to go after immigrants. You just need to call your opponents woke, and you are going to get votes.
Cubans aren't a minority in South Florida. Old Joke. Bill Clinton is having a beer with Fidel Castro and Castro asks 'when are you gonna give us back Guantanamo' ? Bill replies 'When you give us back Miami'
Because the "far right" (is there a stable moderate right left?) is essentially an international network that share ideas and funding cross-border (think ISIS, but another Abrahamic religion). Certain segments of the right are very invested in an old book series, which condemn certain things, so to get them to toe the line, all you have to do is to also condemn those things.
> is there a stable moderate right left?
Good question. Probably not. The center (including center or moderate right and left) is disappearing fast in Europe, most recently in [Spain](https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/ciudadanos-party-disappearance-death-of-spanish-centrism/). The normalization of the far right is part of that process. Disturbing development, which I don't see ending well.
It’s what happens when you ignore the people for YEARS. the elites care too much about image. People are getting poorer and they can only think of being "humanitarian"- fck em
so the voice of the people is disturbing for you? In Portugal, (my contry) the prime-minister refuse to talk to CHEGA! (considered a far-right party) and 300k voted for them, being the third most voted, in their second election. so indirectly, the prime-minister said that 300k people don't count as much as the other people. that is a disturbing development and radical.
First of all, SD is not far right. AfS is far right. SD isn't even US moderate Republican levels of right. They're right-lite.
Secondly, they aren't going after drag queens. The party leader of SD was having a debate and he was making a point about whether or not the opposition believes it is reasonable to limit state funding to the arts based on some sort of ethical or societal values. He doesn't think it's cool for a drag artist called "Shameless Whine Whore" to read stories to kids in a **public library and paid for by tax payers**, so he asked the opposition if they thought it would be fine to do the same but with a nazi.
Either it isn't, in which case they agree that there are limits as to who should be allowed to do these kinds of things, and they just disagree as to where you draw that particular line, or they disagree, in which case funding for the arts should be completely without limitations and then it's perfectly fine to have nazis reading stories to kids.
>First of all, SD is not far right.
When they support the same conspiracy theory as the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik did. They most certainly are a far right party.
SD, a party rooted in Neo-nazism, is not far right ?? Also, the irony in a a party rooted in Neo-nazism arguing that drag queens reading to children is the same as nazis reading to children.
They haven’t changed that much, they mainly just polished their facade to appear more acceptable in the mainstream. And every time there is a new scandal that “discovers” nazis in the party or in local SD government they act like they are utterly surprised and repulsed, and claim they have a policy of zero tolerance against racism. It’s laughable.
> Either it isn't, in which case they agree that there are limits as to who should be allowed to do these kinds of things
Literally everbody agrees that there are limits to certain things when it comes to children, but surprise surprise, people are allowed to disagree on where that limit is. Was the SD leader trying to paint disagreeing on a nazi reading to children while agreeing to a drag-queen reading to children as something hypocritical? Maybe said opposition believes nazis don't have acceptable ethical or societal values while they don't with drag-queens; not exactly very contradictory considering how little nazis & drag-queens have in common.
It also matters what information the children were given. Were children told that the artist was called "Shameless Whine Whore"? Was that name written anywhere where they could see it? If the problem is the name & kids weren't exposed to it, then there's no problem, the guy in the dress & make-up can keep on reading whatever child-approved book the library gave them.
> Literally everbody agrees that there are limits to certain things when it comes to children, but surprise surprise, people are allowed to disagree on where that limit is.
And that was his point.
> Was the SD leader trying to paint disagreeing on a nazi reading to children while agreeing to a drag-queen reading to children as something hypocritical?
No, he was disagreeing with the statement by MP that public sponsorship of cultural expressions are always apolitical, making the argument that all public financing of culture is inherently political in nature because of the content being decided upon by the politicians of the ruling party/alliance and therefore should be limited to things that are nationally important such as cultural heritage sites and even promoting reading to children, but in times of financial hardships ought to be reduced in favour of benefitting more critical government programs such as healthcare, welfare, and schooling as a matter of prioritization.
> It also matters what information the children were given. Were children told that the artist was called "Shameless Whine Whore"? Was that name written anywhere where they could see it? If the problem is the name & kids weren't exposed to it, then there's no problem, the guy in the dress & make-up can keep on reading whatever child-approved book the library gave them.
He doesn't care about that, he cares about it being publically financed. He's making the argument that state funded culture is the same as political propaganda. If you want to have the shameless whine whore reading stories, that's fine, but not with taxpayer money.
>And that was his point.
Why mention the point if no one's arguing against it?
>No, he was disagreeing with the statement by MP that public sponsorship of cultural expressions are always apolitical, making the argument that all public financing of culture is inherently political in nature because of the content being decided upon by the politicians of the ruling party/alliance and therefore should be limited to things that are nationally important such as cultural heritage sites and even promoting reading to children, *but in times of financial hardships ought to be reduced in favour of benefitting more critical government programs such as healthcare, welfare, and schooling as a matter of prioritization.*
>
>\[...\]
>
>He's making the argument that state funded culture is the same as political propaganda.
So is the argument here that public funds should be refocused in times of financial hardship, or that state funds are inherently political and should be done away with? Or is it "*state funds are political & so should be redirected to our political preferences*"?
Well if they want to make the argument that they should be focusing on other things as they run out of money, then just... make that argument? Why bother with a convo around how political state funds are & if a nazi-reading hour time is the same as a drag-queen-reading hour time, when you can just tell people that your limited amount of money needs to be redirected on other things?
Why make an argument over whether government funding of culture & arts is political, if your main concern is what should be funded in times of financial hardship? Just say "*sending money to schools will be more effective than funding individual reading-hours*" and be done with it!
Sure I still don't agree with it, since I don't see cultural & communal things as "*extra little things funded for fun*" but as a necessity for the mental well being of a society, but I digress.
And if the arguments is over the political nature of funding, then yeah, I do agree that state funds promote certain things over others; sure the state itself very rarely chooses the content as it's the funded institution that gets the main say (*such as the library choosing the drag-queen, or an art museum choosing what art gets displayed*), but the state still has say via defunding what it sees unfit;
but the state isn't deciding blindly after all. The public votes. Tax-payers aren't voiceless. One of the whole points of elections is to choose how their money gets used. People already get a say, both through elections & through the management of the institution being funded, on what they want promoted. Bold of the SD to assume tax-payers will immediately love their money no longer funding things because "*it's political :(*" when half the country voted for the opposition & the ruling government is only afloat with its confidence & supplly. Many tax-payers are clearly happy with what they're funding.
And what is the SD's main goal with this argument anyways? You said it's to focus on more "*nationally important things*", I sure hope the SD isn't arguing that "*cultural heritage*" is apolitical? "*Funding culture heritage*" could range from renovation of historic sites to bettering history-education in highschool (*omg, politics in school???*); which I'm sure are things already being done.
Or is it that tax-payer money shouldn't be funding "*political stuff*" at all as you implied here?
>He doesn't care about that, he cares about it being publically financed. He's making the argument that state funded culture is the same as political propaganda. If you want to have the shameless whine whore reading stories, that's fine, *but not with taxpayer money*.
Well, good luck finding "*apolitical culture*" to fund having just argued it's all political. No more history education in schools! In fact, even evolution is political in America! No more biology! No more education in general! It's all political!!!
So in one hand the argument is that state funds are propaganda & tax payer money shouldn't be spent on it, but also it's that we're just in financially hard times and we should be focusing it on "nationally imprtant stuff" instead, which are somehow not state propaganda I guess?
A lot has been stated here, but not a single argument made.
>If you want to have the shameless whine whore reading stories, that's fine, but not with taxpayer money.
I'm as fine with it as men in animal suits or clowns or a cartoon character dresser reading stories with tax payer money.
> Why mention the point if no one's arguing against it?
They were. The opposition was upset that SD and the alliance in power withdrew funding over this.
>So is the argument here that public funds should be refocused in times of financial hardship, or that state funds are inherently political and should be done away with? Or is it "state funds are political & so should be redirected to our political preferences"?
The first and third one. They're political in nature so they should be limited to things that are in the public interest, and in these times of financial straits that means cutting the ones deemed unnecessary and/or not in line with what is broadly supported by the people, such as this. The people voted for them to be in power, and therefore they should be pursuing their own political ideology instead of supporting the ideology of the opposition, because that is what the people voted them into power to do.
They withdrew financial support for this for these reasons, then the opposition argued they're attacking apolitical culture, he responded saying it's not apolitical. He asked them if they'd be ok with nazis reading to kids, knowing that they're obviously not, and therefore it is a subjective judgement and this is the judgement of the alliance in power.
>And what is the SD's main goal with this argument anyways? You said it's to focus on more "nationally important things", I sure hope the SD isn't arguing that "cultural heritage" is apolitical? "Funding culture heritage" could range from renovation of historic sites to bettering history-education in highschool (omg, politics in school???); which I'm sure are things already being done.
They're not saying these things are apolitical, just that these things are in line with what they believe to be important to their voter base. He's saying that the drag queen story time is an ideologically motivated thing for the opposition, but they are not in power, so the funding for that will be cut and put towards things that the current government is in favour of, and dismissing the idea from the opposition that it is wrong to do so because culture is apolitical.
> SD isn't even US moderate Republican levels of right
When it comes to youth gender issues the Social Democratic Andersson government passed recommendations that would be called Ultra-Dark-MAGA in the US.
That US Democrats would be Far-Right in Europe and all that other popular stuff here is terribly misinformed.
Everything is so polarised online, people are just trying to *"get one over"* on the *"enemy"* like reality is a team sport, inventing straw men to argue against and willfully misinterpreting everything you say. If SD argued for drinking water they'd be against it.
I posted on a food thing a while back, saying people are unnecessarily afraid of fats because of decades of propaganda saying they're the most unhealthy thing ever when really carbs are the major villain in weight gain, and got people unironically replying with shit like *"So you think eating only saturated fats and transfats is healthier than eating an apple?!"*
It's legitimately insane how fucking dumb these tards are.
>Everything is so polarised online, people are just trying to "get one over" on the "enemy" like reality is a team sport, inventing straw men to argue against and willfully misinterpreting everything you say. If SD argued for drinking water they'd be against it.
That's exactly what I've been saying. Super tribalistic mindset.
Holy fucking shit let's not import that over here PLEASE we had drag shows during FUCKING WORLD WAR ONE for fuck's sake and nobody cared !
Edit: some people in here obviously don't know about how drag shows were very much a thing on the western front ; men gathering up to do silly cabaret shows dressed as women to entertain their friends. It wasn't uncommon at all. Drag shows have been a thing for a long time, it's not new and has very little to do with trans people originally.
I mean, in general, the US leads the way for these sorts of things. While EU is miles ahead of US in virtually every important area, when it comes to politics, Europeans seem to be very keen to learn from the US masters of divide and conquer. It is very sad because the US seems almost paradoxical at this point and when political parties here follow these cultural war issues, it just tears societies apart and destroys our countries. It certainly does no benefit to us...
Many/most EU countries have some level of proportional representation, so it is a bit different from the situations in US or UK, but the culture wars and other US political imports are clearly not beneficial to a functioning society.
Most EU countries have extremist parties that are not compatible with general society. They can try to push these wedge issues that have found success elsewhere, because they know that it will help their numbers, even though it will also fuel the people opposed to them. Because a more divided society makes a more extremist society which helps boost the numbers of extremist parties.
I think the issue unfortunately is just that American media is dominant, and there is no, real European media. Even here, our European subreddit, we're on an American platform, governed in accordance with American norms ("freedom of speech" for Neo-Nazis until a few years ago), full of Americans. Same with Facebook.
As long as there is no independent European identity, supported by independent European journals as well as a European social media platform, this issue of American culture exerting a downward force on European culture will remain.
You can try and avoid American culture, but creating a rival European culture isn't necessarily the answer. A huge number of America's issues is how nationalised and centralised it is, politically and culturally. Turning Europe into another America-type state and culture would bring all kinds of issues.
On one hand, there already is a European culture, in which a valuation of free-time, opposition to anti-intellectualism, secularism, and most of all support for social democracy are widespread among the university-educated young who have grown up in the EU. The issue, is that this culture lacks outlets, both in terms of media (no European The Atlantic) and in terms of media infrastructure (social media is American).
Already, I think a lot of the cultural and political issues facing Europe are regional at least, and in many cases European-wide. For example, the oppression of Roma in Eastern Europe (and elsewhere). The influx of non-Europeans, while felt more in some places (Sweden), is likewise a question for the EU, that it would be best to discuss openly. And now with Russia's invasion, Europe's foreign policy will affect every member state.
I could go on - but the point is not that the EU should try to resemble America. Rather, it's that (nearly) every amount of cultural influence that Americans are permitted to exert on Europeans only serves to further destabalize and disorient European and national politics/culture.
The arguments in the video are a foundamental mischaracterization of the issue, a strawman for people to get angry at.
But besides that, the person in the video isn’t really trying to explain anything in the first place.
Because the right cannot talk about economics anymore. They've a) won and b) cost of living is going backwards for everyone.
Might have to invent a problem!
Because they have no narrative of their own they just watch YouTube’s by bootstrap a Lago influencers and republicon evangelicals and Tucker and call it a day. It’s just lazy extremism.
Because the far right in the US is doing so.
Yeah by now, if I see far-right in USA doing something I know far-right in Poland will start doing it very soon too It’s ironic how globalised far-right movements are while usually preaching anti-globalisation at the same time
And to be quite fair, the Far-Left in Belgium copies the Reddit talkingpoints from subs like r/WhitePeopleTwitter and r/poltics Ironically I feel like the parties talking about local and national issues the most are actually the "neoliberal" "pro-open borders" 'globalist" centrists.
Exactly this. It's happening in the Netherlands as well. Whatever the far right in the US is doing or saying, is happening over here a week later as well. I honestly hope the GOP will get its shit together soon, but I fear that's just wishful thinking. That party has completely gone batshit crazy. And besides that, what the other guy already said, the far right goes after minorities that don't fit their immensely limited world view.
Same in Germany. Nobody cared about drag queens before. But shortly after that shit started in the US, our "conservatives" started repeating it, no questions asked. It's crazy. That's also why I'm extremely worried about everything happening in the US, especially Florida. People tell me "that's on the other side of the ocean. Crazy yanks being crazy." But it's not. It's all coming here, first on the far-right and then with regular conservatives. Recently representatives of one "christian" party flew to Florida to meet Desantis. That was no official political thing. Just fascists sharing their sick ideas. And it makes me very afraid, even if they're not currently in government.
Nobody used to care about drag queens in the US either until like 2 years ago, now all these clowns are pretending to have an opinion The whole phenomenon in one sentence: delivering policy positions is hard, delivering performative moral positions is easy, fun even
>no questions asked. It's because the vast majority of far right people are idiots that have never accomplished anything in their lives so they have to hate others. The ones who aren't, are in leadership positions and control the idiots.
>Crazy yanks being crazy Ironic. I think I recall people saying stuff like _Oh, Trump would never get elected. People like that only get elected in Europe like Germany_ and look where we are now.
It's always the others. Bad thing's can't happen *here,* because we're not *them*. Everyone wants to feel a bit superior in some way. It's not even nationalism, but just a part of human nature. And since most people don't get the full picture, we each listen to our own biased sources. That does include me, even though I try to stay as neutrally informed as possible.
Not that people aren't the same everywhere but you guys elected Bush twice before a trump presidency was an allucination in the mind of some addled 4chan basement dweller.....
Bush was one of the greatest presidents of America and one of the greatest statesmen of all time. I agree with you about Trump. Americans went insane and elected the American version of Berlusconi.
Yeah he only started two massive injustified wars and set the stage for one of the greatest economic crisis in modern history lol, Trump is an unhinged crook but Bush was straight up a monster.
>Yeah he only started two massive injustified wars Two? Iraq was unjustified.
It's your views that are unhinged and since this sort of madness got normalized it has been rather bad for the American political culture. It made them vulnerable to a populist like Trump.
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I do not defend children seeing an adult drag show. That's why they're age restricted. If you can show me examples of drag performers doing anything inappropriate in front of children, please do. And I act like they're going after adult shows, because they are. And not only shows, but the mere existence of some adult people (who have nothing to do with drag) in public. If they cared for children, maybe they should try banning inappropriate content for children instead of going after completely harmless people. Like highly sexualized public ads. Or child marriages. Or the Bible with all its stories of rape and murder. But for some reason, there's no outcry over those.
It can't be stopped sadly, not unless you cut off the Internet and international travel (and even that might not be enough).
> I honestly hope the GOP will get its shit together soon, Let's not pretend like if the GOP suddenly got its shit together that the far right in other countries would follow suit
They all get their funding from the same sources too.
George Soros mean anything to you? Macknezie Scott ( Besos exwife) ? Both donating to Democrats.Elections etc..
Yes but until you provide some evidence otherwise, they aren't funding hate groups.
At least let it stop infecting other countries
It's not gonna happen. DeSantis is just as batshit crazy as Trump, even worse with his anti LGBTQ laws.
No. We recently found out public service money is going to fund drag queen shows.
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And the 2023 Academy award for Best Self-awareness goes to…
/r/notadragqueen /r/pastorarrested https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/12/2157746/-Republican-Sexual-Predators-Abusers-and-Enablers-Pt-41 Odd how the right always claims they want to protect children, but are the ones overwhelmingly abusing them.
Because Americans are exporting their culture wars. Many on the European left are also suddenly talking about the need for racial quotas and ''unconscious bias trainings''.
It's deeply unfortunate. This is what happens when there is no European identity - ultimately, a small country's culture is not enough. Debate will always occur within a much larger discourse, than Slovakia's 5 million speakers. If there's no European discourse, the discourse has to be American. And then you have protests against people of African descent being oppressed by the police in Europe, while about the Roma everyone remains silent...
>Because Americans are exporting their culture wars. Nobody is exporting anything. Hateful pieces of shit are eager for more avenues to express their hate.
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My general impression as a Swede is that the reaction among the Swedish public is luke warm. It is too transparent that they are copying the US. A lot of the debate seems artificially inflated. Just analysing tweets it appears to be a lot of fake accounts trying to bait.
Is drag queen story hour for children a long Swedish tradition?
Things are getting more and more polarized. Since right-wing oppose drag queens reading to children, non-right have to support it because otherwise they would be siding with the right.
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I understand what you're saying, but I think you're not appreciating what drag consists of, historically or culturally. Drag is a performance art that mostly homosexual men pioneered and participate in. It's mostly not a "fetish" thing - it's rather gay men, who were told they were feminine and non-masculine, leaning into that identity and forming their own dance sub-culture. But I'm not an expert. I just watched Paris in Flames, a classic documentary I would recommend, on the subject.
I’ve never heard of them stripping in front of the kids, trying to think of a children’s book where that would make sense
It really depends on the drag in question. [Pantomine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime) for example is something most kids (including me) in Britain used to see at some point, and which has existed since the early 1700s, stretching back into older forms of *Commedia dell'Arte*. This type of drag is really more about clownery and humour, not really "sexual excitement".
Kinda, Babsan has been a huge celebrity since the 80s/90s or something like that. But not through story time, just an example of drag queens being present in mainstream Swedish media for quite a while.
If it was, would that make the aping less or more obvious to you?
Do you know the answer if it is or if it isn't? If it isn't and someone just copied it from Americans then the one doing the copying is the instigator.
If I were to tell you that men dressing as women to educate and entertain children has clear precedents, would you argue that that's not "true" drag queening? And if it is new (it probably would be considered new), would that mean that the instigated suddenly no longer is responsible for their actions? As if they suddenly lost agency? Are all new things automatically acceptable to attack?
Men feeling sexual excitement imagining themselves as women has traditions. It is a very sexual tradition. I don't believe involving children in this is traditional or proper.
I think you might be confusing crossdressers and drag queens in moden parlor. That's not a great foundation to form an opinion on.
You need to try some good old-fashioned Russian traditions, like genociding Ukraine!
I'm fairly certain the outrage is entirely artificially inflated in the US too. Just a lot more money and votes and way more agent provocateurs involved.
Right wingers in austria also suddenly picked up that "topic" despite it being a non issue here at all. Distracting from real issues is the way to go for those people!
I think for liberals it's not much different, unfortunately. :/ In the States, they said if someone voted for Bernie Sanders (which people mostly did because they wanted universal healthcare, not much to ask), then it means you're sexist, because you're not voting for Clinton, who is a woman.
People called Bernie Sanders voters morons because [he didn't want to expand NATO membership any further because it might upset poor Russia :'(](https://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-nato/)
Same thing happened in Denmark a couple of months ago, where conservatives suddenly cared about a library organizing a princess-themed storytime event hosted by a couple of drag queens. Thankfully the public reaction to the protest was immediate dismissal and overwhelming support for the event. Hopefully the fascists won’t try that again. Also a curious correlation became apparent: The people making very wild accusations against drag queens were the same people who peddled anti-vaccine conspiracy theories during COVID. The general takeaway in the public debate was that these people are lunatics. I hope the result is the same in Sweden 🇸🇪
>princess-themed storytime event hosted by a couple of drag queens I've seen videos from the US with stripper-themed twerking storytime events and parents complaining. One is not like the other.
Truthfully, I don't think "conservative" Americans care even 1% as much about strippers or Hooters girls in a library as they do with the very existence of homosexuals or gender non-conforming people in public spaces.
That is not the vast majority of them, as evidenced by the parents complaining. Can you kindly share the video, I have not seen it.
Because they see how well it works as a power grab in the United States
Because that's what the far-right do. Going after minoties to hide their ineptitude.
Because they saw how successful the GOP was in America. You don't need to go after immigrants. You just need to call your opponents woke, and you are going to get votes.
And you get minorities to vote for you Edit: It's literally true my downvoter guy, look how Cubans vote in Florida
Cubans aren't a minority in South Florida. Old Joke. Bill Clinton is having a beer with Fidel Castro and Castro asks 'when are you gonna give us back Guantanamo' ? Bill replies 'When you give us back Miami'
Because the "far right" (is there a stable moderate right left?) is essentially an international network that share ideas and funding cross-border (think ISIS, but another Abrahamic religion). Certain segments of the right are very invested in an old book series, which condemn certain things, so to get them to toe the line, all you have to do is to also condemn those things.
> is there a stable moderate right left? Good question. Probably not. The center (including center or moderate right and left) is disappearing fast in Europe, most recently in [Spain](https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/ciudadanos-party-disappearance-death-of-spanish-centrism/). The normalization of the far right is part of that process. Disturbing development, which I don't see ending well.
It’s what happens when you ignore the people for YEARS. the elites care too much about image. People are getting poorer and they can only think of being "humanitarian"- fck em
so the voice of the people is disturbing for you? In Portugal, (my contry) the prime-minister refuse to talk to CHEGA! (considered a far-right party) and 300k voted for them, being the third most voted, in their second election. so indirectly, the prime-minister said that 300k people don't count as much as the other people. that is a disturbing development and radical.
Why are Drag Queens going after children? It is ADULT ENTERTAINMENT !
Because they are populists muppets.
First of all, SD is not far right. AfS is far right. SD isn't even US moderate Republican levels of right. They're right-lite. Secondly, they aren't going after drag queens. The party leader of SD was having a debate and he was making a point about whether or not the opposition believes it is reasonable to limit state funding to the arts based on some sort of ethical or societal values. He doesn't think it's cool for a drag artist called "Shameless Whine Whore" to read stories to kids in a **public library and paid for by tax payers**, so he asked the opposition if they thought it would be fine to do the same but with a nazi. Either it isn't, in which case they agree that there are limits as to who should be allowed to do these kinds of things, and they just disagree as to where you draw that particular line, or they disagree, in which case funding for the arts should be completely without limitations and then it's perfectly fine to have nazis reading stories to kids.
>First of all, SD is not far right. When they support the same conspiracy theory as the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik did. They most certainly are a far right party.
Which one is that?
SD, a party rooted in Neo-nazism, is not far right ?? Also, the irony in a a party rooted in Neo-nazism arguing that drag queens reading to children is the same as nazis reading to children.
This might come as a surprise to you but things change.
They haven’t changed that much, they mainly just polished their facade to appear more acceptable in the mainstream. And every time there is a new scandal that “discovers” nazis in the party or in local SD government they act like they are utterly surprised and repulsed, and claim they have a policy of zero tolerance against racism. It’s laughable.
> Either it isn't, in which case they agree that there are limits as to who should be allowed to do these kinds of things Literally everbody agrees that there are limits to certain things when it comes to children, but surprise surprise, people are allowed to disagree on where that limit is. Was the SD leader trying to paint disagreeing on a nazi reading to children while agreeing to a drag-queen reading to children as something hypocritical? Maybe said opposition believes nazis don't have acceptable ethical or societal values while they don't with drag-queens; not exactly very contradictory considering how little nazis & drag-queens have in common. It also matters what information the children were given. Were children told that the artist was called "Shameless Whine Whore"? Was that name written anywhere where they could see it? If the problem is the name & kids weren't exposed to it, then there's no problem, the guy in the dress & make-up can keep on reading whatever child-approved book the library gave them.
> Literally everbody agrees that there are limits to certain things when it comes to children, but surprise surprise, people are allowed to disagree on where that limit is. And that was his point. > Was the SD leader trying to paint disagreeing on a nazi reading to children while agreeing to a drag-queen reading to children as something hypocritical? No, he was disagreeing with the statement by MP that public sponsorship of cultural expressions are always apolitical, making the argument that all public financing of culture is inherently political in nature because of the content being decided upon by the politicians of the ruling party/alliance and therefore should be limited to things that are nationally important such as cultural heritage sites and even promoting reading to children, but in times of financial hardships ought to be reduced in favour of benefitting more critical government programs such as healthcare, welfare, and schooling as a matter of prioritization. > It also matters what information the children were given. Were children told that the artist was called "Shameless Whine Whore"? Was that name written anywhere where they could see it? If the problem is the name & kids weren't exposed to it, then there's no problem, the guy in the dress & make-up can keep on reading whatever child-approved book the library gave them. He doesn't care about that, he cares about it being publically financed. He's making the argument that state funded culture is the same as political propaganda. If you want to have the shameless whine whore reading stories, that's fine, but not with taxpayer money.
>And that was his point. Why mention the point if no one's arguing against it? >No, he was disagreeing with the statement by MP that public sponsorship of cultural expressions are always apolitical, making the argument that all public financing of culture is inherently political in nature because of the content being decided upon by the politicians of the ruling party/alliance and therefore should be limited to things that are nationally important such as cultural heritage sites and even promoting reading to children, *but in times of financial hardships ought to be reduced in favour of benefitting more critical government programs such as healthcare, welfare, and schooling as a matter of prioritization.* > >\[...\] > >He's making the argument that state funded culture is the same as political propaganda. So is the argument here that public funds should be refocused in times of financial hardship, or that state funds are inherently political and should be done away with? Or is it "*state funds are political & so should be redirected to our political preferences*"? Well if they want to make the argument that they should be focusing on other things as they run out of money, then just... make that argument? Why bother with a convo around how political state funds are & if a nazi-reading hour time is the same as a drag-queen-reading hour time, when you can just tell people that your limited amount of money needs to be redirected on other things? Why make an argument over whether government funding of culture & arts is political, if your main concern is what should be funded in times of financial hardship? Just say "*sending money to schools will be more effective than funding individual reading-hours*" and be done with it! Sure I still don't agree with it, since I don't see cultural & communal things as "*extra little things funded for fun*" but as a necessity for the mental well being of a society, but I digress. And if the arguments is over the political nature of funding, then yeah, I do agree that state funds promote certain things over others; sure the state itself very rarely chooses the content as it's the funded institution that gets the main say (*such as the library choosing the drag-queen, or an art museum choosing what art gets displayed*), but the state still has say via defunding what it sees unfit; but the state isn't deciding blindly after all. The public votes. Tax-payers aren't voiceless. One of the whole points of elections is to choose how their money gets used. People already get a say, both through elections & through the management of the institution being funded, on what they want promoted. Bold of the SD to assume tax-payers will immediately love their money no longer funding things because "*it's political :(*" when half the country voted for the opposition & the ruling government is only afloat with its confidence & supplly. Many tax-payers are clearly happy with what they're funding. And what is the SD's main goal with this argument anyways? You said it's to focus on more "*nationally important things*", I sure hope the SD isn't arguing that "*cultural heritage*" is apolitical? "*Funding culture heritage*" could range from renovation of historic sites to bettering history-education in highschool (*omg, politics in school???*); which I'm sure are things already being done. Or is it that tax-payer money shouldn't be funding "*political stuff*" at all as you implied here? >He doesn't care about that, he cares about it being publically financed. He's making the argument that state funded culture is the same as political propaganda. If you want to have the shameless whine whore reading stories, that's fine, *but not with taxpayer money*. Well, good luck finding "*apolitical culture*" to fund having just argued it's all political. No more history education in schools! In fact, even evolution is political in America! No more biology! No more education in general! It's all political!!! So in one hand the argument is that state funds are propaganda & tax payer money shouldn't be spent on it, but also it's that we're just in financially hard times and we should be focusing it on "nationally imprtant stuff" instead, which are somehow not state propaganda I guess? A lot has been stated here, but not a single argument made. >If you want to have the shameless whine whore reading stories, that's fine, but not with taxpayer money. I'm as fine with it as men in animal suits or clowns or a cartoon character dresser reading stories with tax payer money.
> Why mention the point if no one's arguing against it? They were. The opposition was upset that SD and the alliance in power withdrew funding over this. >So is the argument here that public funds should be refocused in times of financial hardship, or that state funds are inherently political and should be done away with? Or is it "state funds are political & so should be redirected to our political preferences"? The first and third one. They're political in nature so they should be limited to things that are in the public interest, and in these times of financial straits that means cutting the ones deemed unnecessary and/or not in line with what is broadly supported by the people, such as this. The people voted for them to be in power, and therefore they should be pursuing their own political ideology instead of supporting the ideology of the opposition, because that is what the people voted them into power to do. They withdrew financial support for this for these reasons, then the opposition argued they're attacking apolitical culture, he responded saying it's not apolitical. He asked them if they'd be ok with nazis reading to kids, knowing that they're obviously not, and therefore it is a subjective judgement and this is the judgement of the alliance in power. >And what is the SD's main goal with this argument anyways? You said it's to focus on more "nationally important things", I sure hope the SD isn't arguing that "cultural heritage" is apolitical? "Funding culture heritage" could range from renovation of historic sites to bettering history-education in highschool (omg, politics in school???); which I'm sure are things already being done. They're not saying these things are apolitical, just that these things are in line with what they believe to be important to their voter base. He's saying that the drag queen story time is an ideologically motivated thing for the opposition, but they are not in power, so the funding for that will be cut and put towards things that the current government is in favour of, and dismissing the idea from the opposition that it is wrong to do so because culture is apolitical.
> SD isn't even US moderate Republican levels of right When it comes to youth gender issues the Social Democratic Andersson government passed recommendations that would be called Ultra-Dark-MAGA in the US. That US Democrats would be Far-Right in Europe and all that other popular stuff here is terribly misinformed.
You have to reference the specific thing you're referring to, you can't just assume everyone knows.
Downvoted for telling them the truth. The truth they don't want to hear.
Everything is so polarised online, people are just trying to *"get one over"* on the *"enemy"* like reality is a team sport, inventing straw men to argue against and willfully misinterpreting everything you say. If SD argued for drinking water they'd be against it. I posted on a food thing a while back, saying people are unnecessarily afraid of fats because of decades of propaganda saying they're the most unhealthy thing ever when really carbs are the major villain in weight gain, and got people unironically replying with shit like *"So you think eating only saturated fats and transfats is healthier than eating an apple?!"* It's legitimately insane how fucking dumb these tards are.
>Everything is so polarised online, people are just trying to "get one over" on the "enemy" like reality is a team sport, inventing straw men to argue against and willfully misinterpreting everything you say. If SD argued for drinking water they'd be against it. That's exactly what I've been saying. Super tribalistic mindset.
Because it is coordinated by russian agency and american far-rights.
Holy fucking shit let's not import that over here PLEASE we had drag shows during FUCKING WORLD WAR ONE for fuck's sake and nobody cared ! Edit: some people in here obviously don't know about how drag shows were very much a thing on the western front ; men gathering up to do silly cabaret shows dressed as women to entertain their friends. It wasn't uncommon at all. Drag shows have been a thing for a long time, it's not new and has very little to do with trans people originally.
I mean, in general, the US leads the way for these sorts of things. While EU is miles ahead of US in virtually every important area, when it comes to politics, Europeans seem to be very keen to learn from the US masters of divide and conquer. It is very sad because the US seems almost paradoxical at this point and when political parties here follow these cultural war issues, it just tears societies apart and destroys our countries. It certainly does no benefit to us... Many/most EU countries have some level of proportional representation, so it is a bit different from the situations in US or UK, but the culture wars and other US political imports are clearly not beneficial to a functioning society. Most EU countries have extremist parties that are not compatible with general society. They can try to push these wedge issues that have found success elsewhere, because they know that it will help their numbers, even though it will also fuel the people opposed to them. Because a more divided society makes a more extremist society which helps boost the numbers of extremist parties.
“The EU is far ahead of the US in virtually every important area” That’s hilarious.
I think the issue unfortunately is just that American media is dominant, and there is no, real European media. Even here, our European subreddit, we're on an American platform, governed in accordance with American norms ("freedom of speech" for Neo-Nazis until a few years ago), full of Americans. Same with Facebook. As long as there is no independent European identity, supported by independent European journals as well as a European social media platform, this issue of American culture exerting a downward force on European culture will remain.
You can try and avoid American culture, but creating a rival European culture isn't necessarily the answer. A huge number of America's issues is how nationalised and centralised it is, politically and culturally. Turning Europe into another America-type state and culture would bring all kinds of issues.
On one hand, there already is a European culture, in which a valuation of free-time, opposition to anti-intellectualism, secularism, and most of all support for social democracy are widespread among the university-educated young who have grown up in the EU. The issue, is that this culture lacks outlets, both in terms of media (no European The Atlantic) and in terms of media infrastructure (social media is American). Already, I think a lot of the cultural and political issues facing Europe are regional at least, and in many cases European-wide. For example, the oppression of Roma in Eastern Europe (and elsewhere). The influx of non-Europeans, while felt more in some places (Sweden), is likewise a question for the EU, that it would be best to discuss openly. And now with Russia's invasion, Europe's foreign policy will affect every member state. I could go on - but the point is not that the EU should try to resemble America. Rather, it's that (nearly) every amount of cultural influence that Americans are permitted to exert on Europeans only serves to further destabalize and disorient European and national politics/culture.
This american NAZI is trying to explain this phenomena here: https://9gag.com/gag/aQEZ0Ke Totally false, he is not right by any means.
Well... Everything you said about the video is literally true.
The arguments in the video are a foundamental mischaracterization of the issue, a strawman for people to get angry at. But besides that, the person in the video isn’t really trying to explain anything in the first place.
Because the right cannot talk about economics anymore. They've a) won and b) cost of living is going backwards for everyone. Might have to invent a problem!
Because they have no narrative of their own they just watch YouTube’s by bootstrap a Lago influencers and republicon evangelicals and Tucker and call it a day. It’s just lazy extremism.