this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 53 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

People here keep saying it's never going to happen but I'm telling you the European move towards independence from the US is very real. It's going to take a couple decades, maybe more, but they're sincerely pursuing it.

[–] MattEagle@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That doesn't really seem to line up with the reality of their new US energy dependence and consolidation of the EU apparatus. I suspect any notion of a break within the imperial bloc is political theatre to placate the citizenry.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Energy dependence was not Europe's choice.

[–] darkcalling@hexbear.net 12 points 1 month ago (34 children)

Yet it is their reality. And it sort of is.

Nothing but lack of sovereignty is stopping them from dropping support for Ukraine tomorrow, making up with Russia and starting up the cheap energy flows from the east via tanker ships while working on building some new pipe-lines with US military proximity detection alarms on them.

They are constrained by their liberalism and the limits of its imagination. Liberalism which is largely filtered through Atlantacist, UK, or US lens via media, press, etc.

So I think I'm also quite skeptical of this being anything but an attempt to act up, gain leverage and better terms from master America.

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[–] InexplicableLunchFiend@hexbear.net 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yes Europe chose it when they chose belligerence and war, they chose to sit idly by as Trump invaded Venezuela, attacked Iran and started a proxy war they knew was fully preventable with Russia. They let the US blow up Nordstream and helped cover it up. They are cravens and they chose their bed, and they will sleep in it. They could have stopped the rampaging USA with a concerted effort if they wanted to, but they didn't. They liked what it was doing.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Europe's issue is that it is not a particularly unified group, it's a mash of different countries with wildly different cultures that have been carefully kept together so far. The issue is that they are torn between holding together the EU and the abusive relationship with the US, this is how they approach things so weakly, because they must confer and get consensus lasting so long on fast moving issues that the US ends up steamrolling over them. If like you say some european countries took as strong a stance as you want them to, others would not, and it would ultimately threaten the whole union. The US would seize on the split and aim to break it entirely.

There are many contradictions interwoven together driving what's happening.

[–] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 7 points 1 month ago

Then I don't see how a move towards European sovereignty is a thing. I think certain European countries like France are trying to decouple, but for every France, there is a Lithuania and a Kosovo and a Germany that are completely invested in the Burgerlander imperialist project at the expense of Europeans, both worker and capitalist. To really challenge the US, the EU has to still exist. France doing its own thing and Spain refusing to fully cooperate genociding Palestinians while the former Dutch prime minister sucks up to Trump by calling him daddy just weakens EU unity. Ideally, the US wants the entirety of Europe as a vassal, but it could live with a fractured Europe with enough vassals to make sure that Europe can never reunite. At bare minimum, they can count on Germany, the UK, the Baltics, and Kosovo as loyal vassals and can probably rely on the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Poland as well. That's already a huge chunk of Europe.

[–] jack@hexbear.net 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

People get real undialectical on here sometimes

[–] Enjoyer_of_Games@hexbear.net 35 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Euros have done this several times before and backtracked. I think it will stick this time but I can't fault anyone for being skeptical.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It could even fail. There's no guarantee that the attempt to pursue it will succeed. My general point is that they are sincerely pursuing it, there is a real contradiction within the imperial core between these two sides and pulling on the two threads to help it unravel is better than denying its existence.

[–] Enjoyer_of_Games@hexbear.net 7 points 1 month ago

It is a real force but the governments are complex systems with a lot of internal contradictions. Just as a kingdom can fall for want of a horseshoe nail a push for digital sovereignty can fail for want to read a .doc file. Most people, especially anyone who has used floss inside of an organization using microsoft, have personal experience with these many micro contradictions and none with the geopolitical macroscale ones so the "can never happen" attitude is unsurprising even if unimaginative.

[–] InexplicableLunchFiend@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Who else will EU buy weapons and energy from? There is nowhere else to go, they are still deluding themselves that they can be a little autarky and the energy crisis will disappear and the USA will stop destroying all of its competitors. USA has them in a vice grip because they will never go to Russia and China, they are too invested in the US relationship and too deep in white supremacist ideology due to their hundreds of years of being colonizers, which they still have never paid any sort of reparations on. The whole point is that Europe is on the "winning team" the "garden", they will never join the "jungle" because they are the poor, the undeveloped, etc. You have to account for this material reality and ideology in the European elite and masses.

Dialectical is when we believe the hyperbolic statements of Bourgeois Liberal states at face value? How many times have these feckless and powerless liars said they would do this and reject Trump and all that? A thousand. Remember Greenland? They were all rattling their sabers against the USA it was so cute. Meanwhile they assist in genocide in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Venezuela. They can simply fuck off with their lies, they are fully locked in with the imperialist interests. They are part of the imperialist blob. They will not 'go their own way' until the Empire is destroyed and there's no plunder to be gained from the global south any longer. As long as USA is the guy with the big stick going around mugging people, they are on that team, until the that guy with the big stick loses. Only then will they abandon the sinking ship.

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[–] UmbraVivi@hexbear.net 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Friedrich Merz is such a pathetic, servile worm that he would rather kill himself than defy the US. Maybe the next German government (probably not tho)

[–] woodenghost@hexbear.net 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Before that, he would rather indirectly kill millions of Germans by privatizing health care more and more and getting rid of social security. The German social Democrats and the Greens would do the same or worse, if they win the next elections. Neither a popular front nor a national front (hypothetically) is currently possible in Germany, because the burgoise powers are not actually convinced, that fascism (German or US) is a bad thing. The way forward is to build actual working class power.

[–] InexplicableLunchFiend@hexbear.net 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

by the time they are done 'moving away' from the USA it will be too late, they'll be drained dry and made into a tourism spot for Americans. Energy seals the deal, they have none and everyone they tried to get it from got blown up by American wars so America is the only provider left, and this advantage will be pressed. Copper is coming out of the walls to pay for US backed wars, and then the dry husks will be tossed aside and used as tax havens and tourism spots. France is probably the one nation in the entire EU with a chance of partially mitigating this due to nuclear energy, but they would need to triple down on that immediately.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 7 points 1 month ago

Yeah possibly. I don't disagree that they may fail. My only point is that they clearly see what is happening and are making a sincere attempt to resolve it. They may not be able to under the conditions though.

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[–] CyborgMarx@hexbear.net 16 points 1 month ago

Nah, the sentiment will bounce violently back in the other direction the minute Trump is out of office, even if the new Democratic or not-Trump Republican president continues or even intensifies the US plunder of Europe

Europeans suffer from what I call racism-induced mass economic amnesia

[–] 30_to_50_Feral_PAWGs@hexbear.net 34 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] microfiche@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago

Omelette du fromage

[–] LaughingLion@hexbear.net 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Okay but which distro and why is it the wrong one?

[–] Kefla@hexbear.net 15 points 1 month ago

They're gonna be using Red Star OS, which is the wrong choice only because everyone's gonna have to learn Korean

[–] supafuzz@hexbear.net 16 points 1 month ago

L'année du bureau Linux, mais vraiment

[–] inari@piefed.zip 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] SuperZutsuki@hexbear.net 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I am now referring to people ditching windows as defenestration

[–] inari@piefed.zip 6 points 1 month ago

Richard Stallman said it best:

Now of course people who want freedom shouldn't use Windows at all, you've got to defenestrate your computer, which means either you throw Windows out of the computer, or you throw the computer out the window.

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

If this doesn't translate to billions (yes I mean billions) in funding for KDE/GNOME and bridging the desktop gap then I'm not biting (especially KDE, they've been doing amazing work given even just a tiny fraction of the revenue they deserve)

I hope they don't act like tourists and never realize that they have an obligation to contribute back.

[–] SuperZutsuki@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Ok fun fact I learned not long ago: napoleonic France (and other European countries, mostly those invaded by napoleon) used to have a form of property tax that charged by the amount of street-facing windows a building had. Now there's a bunch of old buildings with bricked-up windows or just walls painted to look like windows because people didn't want to pay as much tax.

All I'm saying is, people paying through the nose for windows has a longer history than you might think.

[–] Sam@hexbear.net 5 points 1 month ago

Same thing with chimneys. As with the window tax the rich took it to the other extreme and put in as many windows or hearths as they could to show off.

[–] 9to5@hexbear.net 7 points 1 month ago

must be dark in France

[–] RedWizard@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago

That's a lot of PCs.

[–] SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago

Isn't it a drop in the sea compared to China? India has been slower in its adoption but already has a comparable number of stations.

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