Voter turn out is extremely low in certain central and eastern Europe for EU elections. I think it was down to under 20% in some places a few years ago.

I had hoped that the UK would vote to remain and Europe would move away from a centralist, authoritarian model, but it's got worse especially since 2020. The EU is its own worst enemy.

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andsoitis 2 days ago | parent [-]

> move away from a centralist, authoritarian model,

EU is authoritarian? Why do you think that?

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nephihaha 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

It is restricting freedom of expression, and increasing public surveillance.

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jeltz 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The EU is what held back the surveillance in the UK. Post brexit they went all in on surveillance.

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nephihaha 2 days ago | parent [-]

Both the UK and the EU are rolling in censorship, surveillance and digital ID.

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disgruntledphd2 20 hours ago | parent [-]

You've literally just contradicted your own post in this thread.

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nephihaha 17 hours ago | parent [-]

No, I haven't. Both the UK and EU are doing many of the same things. You can argue that the EU is bureaucratic without supporting bureaucracy within the UK. These are not contradictory positions.

	▲	disgruntledphd2 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You claimed that the UK leaving was bad as they were more liberal, and then noted that they were also doing lots of anti privacy stuff. Seems a little contradictory to me.

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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tmnvix a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

One definition of authoritarian is "enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom".

It would seem to me that the recent spate of sanctioning individuals - e.g. for 'disseminating misinformation' without a legal definition of what that actually is would be an example of authoritarianism. A direct attack on freedom of speech and thought.

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watwut 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It insists on things like "corruption is bad", "human rights are for everyone including gays" so naturally certain conservative groups find that authoritarian.

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nephihaha 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Human rights are for everyone, not just people you agree with. If you bring in censorship, surveillance and smother protest for people you disagree with, you will find it getting used against you yourself at some point. Europe has imported this false binary from the USA, and it is not benefitting it either.

The EU has its fair share of corruption, but it is is better at hiding it than developing countries. Its current president Ursula Von Der Leyen is a fraud who appears to have cheated at university, and only got to where she did due to wealth and aristocratic family connections.

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DaSHacka 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

also things such as chat control and surveilling the entire populace, but I'm sure you must be right that the problem people have with it is that they say "corruption is bad"

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jeltz 2 days ago | parent [-]

Chat control is a Swedish proposal that has consistently lost in the Parliament. We should of course keep fighting it but at least as a Swede I know things would have been much worse without the EU.

	▲	rdm_blackhole 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Chat control is Swedish proposal. It was pushed by Sweden but also by many other countries including France (which loves to give lessons of democracy to the world by the way and is very much at the forefront of human rights or so they say) and Hungary amongst others. > has consistently lost in the Parliament. It has consistently lost so far. Secondly the reason it has lost is because people like me took the time to actually reach out to any MEP who would take my call to tell them to oppose this law. If we had waited for the EU to react and put a stop to this madness, we would still be waiting. This law should never have been proposed in the first place anyway. The fact that it was proposed and debated is a shameful action in itself. > I know things would have been much worse without the EU. How can you know for sure? You can't. Since it originated from the EU commission, it stands to reason that without the EU commission it would not have happened. You believe that the EU is good because that is your belief. The European countries existed for 100s of years before the EU. There is no reason to think that they can't go back to this state in the future.