2023: “Things change, and they don’t change back.”

Well, people have been choosing their own religion for a while now, and we have trans-gender already, so I don’t really see why trans-racial is somehow different? Maybe “lifestyle” was a poor word choice. Happy to retract that if it’s contentious.

Thank you, this was the kind of clarifying distinction I was after, as I have seen both side of it called “hate”.

1 Like

Hmm… this could be my “wrong anglo-saxon” title talking, but I thought the dutch were largely atheist? Why would non-christian be such a strong consideration?

“Hate parties” are usually not openly hateful, in order to avoid court prosecution. In France, the main extreme-right party is Rassemblement National (RN) whose representative at the 2022 presidential election Marine Le Pen got 23%, while another candidate who is even more extreme, Eric Zemmour, got 7%. According to Wikipedia, “Zemmour has been convicted once in France for provoking racial discrimination in 2011, and once for hatred against Muslims in 2018 as well as once for inciting racial hatred for 2022”.
Marine Le Pen is more careful to avoid hate speech, however many members of RN are racists, including candidates for local elections: Antisémitisme, racisme, islamophobie... des candidats RN toujours bas du front

5 Likes

Yes, I feel there is a clear distinction between a party that objects to what they consider promotion of a “woke” agenda and a party that wants to deport legit refugees when they are not white and/or Christian.

I don’t know the latest numbers, but my guess would be that 60% is non-affiliated/agnostic/atheist. That still means there are quite a few religious people, or people who may not be Christian but still want to “protect” our historically Christian culture against Islamic influence, or “protect” our “European heritage” from getting mixed with “African heritage”.

3 Likes

FWIW I agree with this statement 100%

Thank you for the updated details, this is much more balanced than was my impression. I confess I know very little about pretty much anything European, and have only a few notions which I do not even know where they came from, so I enjoy these opportunities to touch base with people “on the ground”.

2 Likes

An additional note: those 40% religious people are not all conservatives (neither are all non-religious people progressives).

A significant proportion of Christians here may be considered progressive, strongly upholding “love thy neighbour like yourself” (regardless of their skin color, religion or sexual orientation), taking care of victims of poverty or persecution and strongly believing that humankind has a high responsibility to take care of our planet (combating climate change, pollution and loss of biodiversity).
Many of those “progressive Christians” here will probably vote for the CU (Christian Union) party.

2 Likes

Yes, I suspect that may be universal :thinking: there is likely some correlation between social/economical/political/religious progressiveness/conservativeness. But hardly could you use one to directly imply all (any?) of the others. These are also all broad categories, where many would have certain beliefs from both sides of all of them.

2 Likes

Second part

3 Likes

I skimmed out of pure curiosity and, I’ll be honest, I got the “who is the Greek?” wrong :rofl:

It is “obviously” the top left dude with the microphone, come on! :stuck_out_tongue:
Turns out that it was not … however that was the most realistic answer.

The lake? The european …lake?? :no_mouth:

Also the photos
:rofl:

1 Like

Let’s not pretend that right now the actual meaning of the “Medi-terranean” isn’t equally funny. :wink:

By the way, there is a documentary called “Mediterranean - The Greek Lake” which is obviously about the ancient times and the period of the maritime expansion and the generation of all those outpost cities everywhere. So,calling it a lake is not really outlandish. Engineers have actually seriously pondered practically turning it into one, after all:

1 Like

I protest :stuck_out_tongue:
The point of the Mediterrannean is that it has outlets to the “wilderness” and it’s not a lame lake.

Also it would wreak havoc to all the interconnected ecosystems.

2 Likes

Engineers and innovators dream, plan and design what they envision and think of the consequenses to other things later :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes


Yesterday Sumo tournament.

2 Likes

Lucky, it seems I’ll still have a chance to serve my country. The bill can entirely die though (or get worse), submitting a bill is a good way to test grounds, gauge response from people and institutions.

6 Likes

I wonder how that works when much of the opposition is in exile, in jail or dead. Or are there still people with sufficient power and courage to seriously challenge such bills?

2 Likes

Yeah, regular people’s view probably doesn’t matter as much. Although during covid I think government figured somehow that restrictions aren’t popular and it’s better not to push the issue. So there’s some consideration of people’s will. But institutions within the system certainly have a voice, they give reviews to the bills, suggest changes, fight for good bits and push out bad bits from their territory. Bills die regularly.

3 Likes

I find it somewhat surprising that Youtube still isn’t blocked in Russia. Considering what you say here, is Youtube just too popular in Russia for the government to dare take that step?

2 Likes