Yeah, no, fuck all cops. And please lets not pretend like shit isn’t getting mighty fasc-y all over Europe too…
ALL cops you say?
I have many friends and family who have joined the Scottish Police and given years of their lives to serving their communities, risking their own lives and health. Should I say fuck them too?
I joined the police for six months before deciding it wasn’t the career for me and got back into charity work. Are you saying Fuck Me now or just for the six months I was in? Did my fuckery expire?
How can thousands, millions of people doing a job be reduced to such a binary sentiment.
How can thousands, millions of people doing a job be reduced to such a binary statement
The reason why most people (including myself) say ACAB is because of the system of policing, not the merits of any given police officer. Systems are inflexible and adverse to change. Individual good cops can exist, but once again, the system itself is the problem. A good cop can never fix the system, nor could a hundred, or a thousand. A million could, at best, give the illusion of a good system. People often say a rotten apple spoils the bunch, and I think that looking at policing from the perspective of individual rotten cops, or rotten cops “spoiling the bunch” is problematic when the system itself is rotten. And for participating in the system, yes, all cops are bastards.
Okay I agree with the idea of a rotten system as think that generally many legal or government institutions are rotten and self serving for the rich.
But the flaw in the argument from my perspective is that if all the decent people don’t go into the police, the ones with integrity, a moral compass who genuinely try to help people and do the right thing, then that leaves the bad apples.
So for going into a system and hoping to change it for the better, help/protect their community from criminals and the bad apples and make a real difference in lives, by that logic those people striving for better are still bastards and that just doesn’t feel right to me.
Again no hate here just a genuine conversation
Yes, in the US. The commenter above was talking about more than just one country.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
if all the decent people don’t go into the police, the ones with integrity… that leaves the bad apples
and
[good cops that] help/protect their people from … bad apples
I think this is flawed. The policing system is built in such a way that it protects the bad apples at all costs. From police unions making it difficult to get rid of the bad cops, to the laws, legal precedent, and cultural norms which make it impossible to prosecute them. In the US, police are allowed to lie to people, but they are often trusted in court, regardless if they regularly lie. The police often form a Blue wall of silence in order to protect other cops when literally perjuring themselves in the process. Qualified immunity makes it impossible for people to seek damages from individual cops when they violate their rights. While good cops might break the blue wall of silence (and they might get punished for it) and they don’t violate other’s rights and therefore are not protected in court by qualified immunity, the participation of these good cops does nothing to address the system in the first place.
You and I both agree that there are many legal or governmental institutions that are rotten, but police fundamentally protect them and enforce their will. It is police who break strikes. It is the police that arrest protestors and activists. It is the police that hold the power to call legal protests illegal by declaring them riots. Fundamentally, the police protect the system that lets them be corrupt, and make it difficult to change it outside the impossible task of making change within electoral systems.
… protect their community from criminals …
Police are often an ineffective force at catching criminals. One of the best examples of this is sexual assault and rape. 70% of survivors do not involve the police. All the survivors I know did not call the police. They have good reason not to, 24% of them are arrested after doing so! If a person belongs to a group that is often oppressed by the police, such as gay and trans people, or a group that is criminalized, such as sex workers, there is nowhere for these people to turn in order to get justice.
In the event these people do call the police, odds are there will be no arrests. Only 5% of cases will result in arrest. Fewer will result in convictions and incarceration. (WATR Zine (this is a download link))
On a more ironic note, Policing increases crime. After NYC cops went on strike and reduced proactive policing, major crime reports fell.
So for [cops] going into a system and hoping to change it for the better … and make a real difference in lives …
While I wholeheartedly support trying to make a change for the better, and protecting and building community, I think police are a terrible way to do so. I think working outside the system is a much better way to materially help people’s lives. Organizations like Food Not Bombs helps people with food insecurity eat. Instead of joining the police which might make you destroy homeless encampments and make them worse off, you could instead volunteer at soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Joining an antifascist organization can help protect communities from fascists, but joining the police might make you side with the fascists and protect people with demonstrably harmful rhetoric, or worse, oppressive and murderous, fascist, intent
by that logic [cops] striving for better are still bastards and that just doesn’t feel right to me.
I still think it is fair to call them bastards. While it sucks to call someone with good intentions a bastard, ACAB points out that police as a whole is a flawed institution, and participating in it does not change that, it reinforces the legitimacy of it, and brings erroneous hope to people that it can be fixed from within, when in reality it needs drastic change if not total abolition.
Again no hate here just a genuine conversation
I genuinely appreciate this, ngl. I live in a very conservative area and when speaking about this, I’m used to discussion quickly devolving into meaningless argument
Even though I agree with all of this, it seems like this speaks more to an american perspective than to any other given country, and all your citations are from an american perspective as well. Though I think you could maybe make an argument on how the police are conventionally leveraged to protect private property, and private property is bad, and how if you were to take away the “protecting private property” element of their job description, you’d basically be abolishing the police. You could make that argument, along more universal lines, but that’s kind of contingent on people agreeing that both private property is bad, and that police are exclusively the protectors of private property, and nothing else.
In any case, I wouldn’t really be willing to make so certain of a statement on the police departments of other countries. I’ve never really heard anyone say anything bad about, say, finnish police, for example. British cops, they wear funny hats, they go “oy”, and shit, I’ve not really heard anything good about them, but finnish cops? Never heard bad about them. I also think a lot of what makes the police in america bastards, is because the prison system here is so fucked up and so punitive, and so particularly bad, compared to a lot of other countries.
I also kind of like, as an aside point. What do we do about park rangers? They’re technically cops, but you wouldn’t really hear anyone thinking that we shouldn’t have them, or that they should be actively abolished. I say this to mean, you know, as with the first paragraph, what do we really mean by “police”? You’ve given a pretty good description of the fact that the police suck, but not really why, or how they could be fixed.
The counter is that the system can’t be changed due to its inherent flaws and foundations in racism and elitism. The system needs to be replaced wholesale, which as big of a proposal as that is is more realistic than changing the existing system.
I’m sorry, foundations in racism? Elitism I can see, sure. Like, doing the bidding of the upper class and stuff. And a few higher ups in the police force are really arrogant. But racism? I’ve genuinely never seen or heard of any cops being racist where I live. If anything, lots of cops here are kids of immigrants.
The actual system isn’t the problem, it almost never is. If anything what’s missing in some countries are checks and balances to keep people reigned in while they’re in positions of power.
You’re missing the forest for the trees here. And, it’s worth specifying that I’m talking the US here, I should have been clear about that before.
I’m not talking about cops, I’m talking about the system itself. Every institution in America has deep roots in racist ideology. Every single one. The constitution was written in a way that allowed for slavery. Police forces established and enforced red lining, something that is having knock on effects even today. If the policing system weren’t inherently racist, we wouldn’t have the disproportionate use of deadly force against BIPOC folks. Elitism itself in America was first for the wealthy that owned slaves, and much of our policing culture still has echoes of the force used to keep slaves in line.
There are plenty of cops that are good people, I’ve known some. But they’re still bastards because they uphold and perpetuate the system that currently exists. I always think of the line in Wreck it Ralph when thinking about this, ‘just because you’re a bad guy doesn’t mean you’re a bad guy. That’s the ‘good’ cops. They might be good people but they’re still the bad guys.
I’m not gonna pick a side here as I don’t wanna fan the flames, but I will say that I have a good deal of bones to pick with police oversight systems (or lack thereof).
However, this got me thinking: would you say the same thing about restaurant servers? By becoming a server in the U.S., are you not perpetuating a tipping paradigm that has systematically denied the working class billions of dollars of wages that un-tipped employees are entitled to? It’s fairly clear that a “good server” cannot fix the system by participating in it, and given that a server makes the same amount of money as a cop—if not more—it isn’t really fair to say that one group “needs” the job while the other does not.
It’s a curious predicament.
No, I don’t think that participation in tipping culture is a good comparison to participating in the policing system.
The only accurate comparisons are: The system is harmful, a good server cannot fix it by participating in it, and servers materially benefit from it.
First, as shitty as it is to not participate in as a customer, tipping culture is, for the most part, optional. When a server indirectly asks me to tip as a customer, I could easily hit the custom tip button and enter 0.00$. That would be shitty on my part as I would be reducing the income of waitstaff who rely on tips. If I tip, I now have a few dollars less, and the waitstaff have a more livable wage. If a police officer asks me to get on the ground with my hands on the back of my head, I don’t have much of a choice. If I do, the police officer will likely arrest me, and this compliance is only coming at the threat of what happens if I don’t. If I refuse, then the police officer could shoot me (if he deems me a sufficient threat), taze me, pepper spray me, or otherwise physically force me to the ground and possibly injure me. Further, I could get in significant legal trouble for not following the orders, most often in the form of resisting arrest, or possibly getting charged with assaulting a police officer if I act in self defense, regardless if I act within the law. This problem here lies in the fact that there is hierarchic authority that a police officer has which waitstaff lack.
Second, there is something that servers can do to make the system better outside of participating in the system laid out by their boss. While not easy, and with some risks attached, waitstaff can unionize and demand better pay, such that no tips are needed. Obviously, it isn’t super likely that the union would remove tips because waitstaff like their tips, but this act will fix one part of the system, being the part that they are not paid living wages before tips. While unlikely, widespread unionization could cause people to want to tip less knowing that waitstaff are able to subsist on wages alone and therefore impact tipping culture.
Cops don’t have this ability. I’d argue that police unions are not the same as a typical labor union. Like a normal union, they provide the workers protection from being fired, and have a positive impact on wages. Unlike a police union, police officers are called to break up the strikes of labor unions. If the police union went on strike, the only theoretical way for their employer, the state, to break it up would be using another militaristic arm of the state, be it the state reserve militia, if it exists in that state, or the military in other cases. Unlike calling the police, there is significant political capital being expended when doing this.
Another point to consider with that is which cops are fired, what leads to that happening, the impact of it, and how they are protected. Often, it’s “bad cops” rather than good cops, though both is possible. The union often steps in to protect even the worst cops from being fired. The impact of a bad cop is significantly more harmful than a bad server. A bad cop is violent, often kills or maims people, and terrorizes communities. A bad server might spit in my food, let it get cold/warm, or not deliver it at all. Short of physically hitting me (which a union will not protect them for), the most harmful thing they could do is steal my credit card details. Bad cops are fully and legally able to do much worse through civil asset forfeiture.
Lastly, and most importantly, the context of the system is vastly different. I’d argue the most harmful system that is held up by a server working a job isn’t tipping culture, but wage labor (and capitalism) itself. Just like police, anyone participating in this system cannot fix it by participating in it. Unlike police, those participating in wage labor lack the power to directly reinforce it through violent action because they lack the state’s monopoly on violence that the police lovingly wield. Any harm done by a person reinforcing this system can be offset by various acts, such as creating and participating in labor unions, creating co-ops, protesting and agitating for socialism, etc.
Police, on the other hand, not only indirectly reinforce this system by being payed wages, but they also directly reinforce this system by making it difficult to combat wage labor by breaking up strikes, protecting private property, terrorizing and killing protesters, killing organizers, etc.
Worse yet, police also directly support the hierarchic structure of the state, an unjust hierarchy, and the unjust hierarchies of white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism and cisheteronormativity. Police have always been the arm of the state that has had their literal boot on the neck of black people, suffocating their communities. When the police are not the ones to harm these communities, they often don’t do that much to prevent it from happening, or prevent it from happening in the future. Let’s not forget that about 50% of those killed by cops have some sort of disability, or their historic violence against LGBTQ people, and how LGBTQ rights were only taken by clashing with the cops at Stonewall and demanding rights. While police aren’t the sole people upholding these hierarchies, they are one of the most arms of the state doing it.
I think it’s disingenuous to have a slogan that targets individuals then claim you’re just commenting on the system when questioned. If it’s about the system say the system sucks.
Think about it this way. As a cop, your job isn’t to help the community or to keep people safe or any of that happy wholesome crap. Your job is to enforce the law. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if the law is unfair or unethical, it’s your job to enforce it. Sure, maybe some people become cops without fully understanding this, but on some level, they must know.
The laws are made by politicians, and I’m certain that no matter your political beliefs, you can agree that most of them are crooked. Ergo, everyone who signs up to enforce their laws is a bastard. If somebody truly wishes to serve the community and save people, they become firefighters instead. It’s almost the same skillset and if you’re willing to become a cop, you shouldn’t be afraid of the danger either.
By that logic, all people in armed forces are bastards. Given that a lot of poor people end up in the forces because it’s their only option, I’m not prepared to say all soldiers are bastards. Similar logic applies to Police officers. Also I’m a New Zealander and our Police force is nowhere as corrupt as in the US
I elaborated a lot more on this in a different comment.
The main thing is it is about the participation in the system that makes all cops bastards. In my opinion, the good thing about this slogan is it starts discussions and debates about the system itself and how even “good cops” contribute to it when cops do something bad.
I don’t agree but I appreciate the point you’re making.
Do you want to be heard or do you want to be understood?
Shouting ACAB might give you attention but it won’t help in changing anyone’s mind. The opposite is true.
All Carsalesmen Are Bastards!
Defund the dealerships!!!
Edit: I see the bootlicking salesmen are out on Lemmy downvoting.
true fuck legal scamming
ALL cops you say?
While acab is probably too generalized a term to apply to ALL police forces in the world… Interpreting acab in absolutes is also kinda silly and needlessly pedantic.
If I were to say all Nazi are bastards… Would we be making the same arguments? Surely there were Nazi that were forced to join the party, surely there were Nazi giving years of their lives to serving their communities, risking their lives and health.
The point of ACAB is to highlight the inherent and institutional failures of policing actions native to the vast majority of western democracies. Where police are primarily utilized to protect property and institutional power, rather than protecting the most disadvantaged communities in our society.
Trouble with that theory is that I think regular people won’t hear something like ‘All Cops Are Bastards’ and immediately think ‘well they probably don’t mean all cops’. It literally says it there.
Maybe because I’m Scottish living in Scotland I’m separate from the US side of the movement/argument but knowing so many good people in the service who have probably done more for their communities than some people spray painting on walls it just sounds so blatant. If it was a different slogan then I doubt people would have an issue with it but not everyone hears all the details about what it apparently means online or whatnot, they just see the words.
No desire to be pedantic at all, just explaining why a lot of folk won’t get behind the message.
ACAISAETOSOOSBTNOTPI or All Cops Are Inherently Supporting And Enforcing The Opressive Systems Of Our Society By The Nature Of The Policing Institution doesn’t quite have the same ring to it though.
I mean I get it, “ACAB” sounds a bit like an over-reaction and I wouldn’t use that term to talk about Belgian cops, but within leftist circles like lemmy I think it’s an acceptable shorthand since 90+ percent of people already understand The Discourse™ on some level.
Haha that acronym gave me a chuckle.
Yeah I get it, I just don’t like when things are reduced to all x’s are y’s, think that kind of polarised thinking isn’t helpful when the world has a whole lot of grey in it. Equally if someone is happy to post a comment like that online I don’t think there is anything bad about chatting it through like reasonable humans.
Social meanings of words out weigh dictionary definitions, that’s just how being social works
I’m very left wing and I hate the ACAB slogan.
I’ve never heard a progressive, liberal or democrat call themselves “left wing” before
Thanks for expanding my world view!
I’m not American so labels like democrat and liberal mean nothing to me. Consequently I have no idea what you’re trying to insinuate
PEB
Policing Enables Bastards
Meanwhile, “ACAB” is obviously wrong and disrespect to anyone who signs up to get fired for being a good cop.
Don’t need to say literally wrong things that have to be re-explained, even if it is catchy. Be The Change!
AACABAL! (All ACAB’rs Are Lazy!) :)
See, that expresses that it’s a systemic issue and that consequently some cops are bastards without damning everyone who is part of a large diverse group. It’s even a simpler acronym. Brilliant
Must be the third time I’ve shared it in the past year or two… first compliment! :)
I mean how about instead of hyperbolizing, we actually find a good acronym that does less to push people away from our world-view? If the problem is the system, find an acronym about the system. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but if we don’t genuinely think every single cop is bad, we should stop saying it, no?
As a New Zealander, I feel the same way about ACAB as you. I definitely have issues with the Police and I definitely think they’re a racist institution (NZ stats back that up) but ACAB is a shitty slogan IMO
All Carsalesmen Are Bastards.
I say defund the dealerships!
Hey, all I do for a living is generate value for a group of people who harm others! I’m just feeding them and housing them! Is that so bad?
Yes, fuck them, and fuck you.
You choose to knowingly join the organisation that was literally created and exists solely to serve the rich and oppress everyone else to do it.
Cops are class traitors who can choose to leave their position at any time, the marginalised people they exist to abuse have no such luxury.
Your feeling are irrelevant.
ACAB
You’re a fucking idiot. I live in a small town up in the mountains in Europe, and some absolute fucking dimwits like you have been going round spraying ACAB on stuff
Our two policemen and two policewomen are the genuinely nicest folk you’ll ever meet and do loads and loads of good for the community. When they’re not busy they volunteer to deliver free meals to the elderly and help out at the charity shop
Tarring everyone with the same brush is something simpletons do, which is probably why they didn’t accept you into the police 😂
I don’t understand why nuance is so complicated for people.
Stupidity, blinkered world-view, inbreeding… I could go on…
B-but my uncle is a cop and he’s nice to me! /j
So what’s the alternative to police? Just getting rid of them would just lead to militias taking their place which would be much worse.
Defunding them and diverting those resources into social services that have been shown to actually give back in meaningful ways to the communities and safety/effectively deescalate tense situations without committing atrocities while perpetuating systemic hate-based violence.
There does need to be someone with a gun I can call if someone is literally breaking into my home intent on murdering my family. But outside of those extreme and fringe outlier circumstances, society would be much better served by well-funded social workers and emergency first responders who are trained to resolve conflicts while actually helping those in need of it without threat of eminent deadly violence.
Reality is and always should have been cops do cop things. Locally. Traffic shit should be department of transportation. etc. etc.
Make local cops walk local beats and only focus on the community safety and suddenly things get better. ‘Us vs Them’ is a pretty easy thing to spin when they only are a corrective force with a chip on their shoulder.
Proper training, education, and being held accountable for your actions will filter out the bad blood quickly enough.
Defund is frankly a word that was selected poorly. It implies punishment. It only amplifies the ‘Us vs Them’ narrative on both ‘sides.’
ACAB? No. Problem with corruption and a system that spits out at best tight lipped accomplices and at worst zealots brandishing ‘might makes right’ ideals? Yep.
Fix the system and the problem fixes itself.
Isn’t that basically how it is in the UK where most cops don’t have guns?
We have this many places in Europe. The police are not even allowed to wear guns in Norway (and frankly do not need them) unless there is some special intelligence or something making a reason for it. That does not absolve the need for state controlled monopoly on violence. It only means that is should be limited and wielded with the utmost care.
There does need to be someone with a gun I can call if someone is literally breaking into my home intent on murdering my family
well-funded social workers and emergency first responders who are trained to resolve conflicts while actually helping those in need of it without threat of eminent deadly violence.
If we do things properly, then no one should have a need to break in to your house (because everyone’s material needs would be met), and if you’ve given someone reason to kill you, calling someone with a gun to kill them isn’t going to solve anything. If they’re mentally unwell, calling a person with a gun is even worse.
The second option you gave is more than enough 99.99% of the time.
Some degree of community defence might be imperative, but it should never be one person with one gun who is in charge of “enforcement”, but everyone would be trained and everyone would have access, and in a time of real need (like an external and violent threat to the community) those ready and available can do what is needed, but again - killing someone isn’t it 99.99% of the time.
I do not disagree
Much worse for who? Who does the police actually benefit today? and who is it harming? do you care about those people? The police are not even legally required to protect you, and don’t in practice, why do you think they do anything to benefit society? Why are you so desperate to maintain the boot on your neck?
Thousands of people and organisations have answered your question in great depth over the years, all you have to do is be willing to set your obvious existing bias aside, and look.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_abolition_movement
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-manifesto-for-the-abolition-of-the-police
https://abolitionistfutures.com/latest-news/9m1jx98mayqvorjm7ij8x0zv9g5f85
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/rose-city-copwatch-alternatives-to-police
Much worse for who?
My point is: if police were completely abolished, conservatives and the far right would feel very unsafe and immediately form militias that enforce their values. That would be much worse for everyone who doesn’t share their values, of course.
I get that in many countries, police is badly regulated and you might say that this wouldn’t actually change much, but I’d rather seek more accountability for police, compared to a complete abolishion, leaving a power vaccum that’ll be filled by right wing militias with zero accountability.
Divesting seems good to me though, much of the police is certainly overfunded (due to law and order populism) and does useless shit (like the war on drugs), while education, social workers and programs against poverty are severely underfunded. Changing this would surely help a lot with crime reduction and other issues.
Thanks for the links by the way, I will look more into them when I have more time to see if my concerns regarding abolishion are addressed.
Excellent sources there old chap, really shows your level of intelligence lol
Not saying the concept of police is bad, but the situation here is that some cops have been such assholes that all the good cops quit. Now only the worse individuals remain, and they protect each other so they fear nothing
Robert Peele’s Nine Principles of Policing are a good start:
- To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
- To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
- To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
- To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
- To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
- To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
- To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
- To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
- To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
That might describe a good cop, but it doesn’t describe the system that makes good cops, let alone how that system might come about. All this allows us to do is sigh at every horrendously violated point.
Make everything legal. Crime only exists because there are laws to break.
Here in America, the right to join an armed militia is enshrined in the constitution!
Yeah nah. This is such an American way to look at the world
I’m not American, and the article linked is by a European about Europe…
Swing and a fucking miss, clown… lmfao 🤣Pff instantly getting angry. Typical cop hater. Grow some brains lmao
You should purge all the white cells from your body. Not only are they extremely militant cops, they’re white.
I’m from germany and I’m scared about the future. The far-right is getting more and more voters. It’s not just the USA who is fckd.
Thanks for sharing our pain. I don’t understand how people pretend that Europe isn’t going thru the same stuff like we are in the US.
Inflation, migration debates, cost of living crises, rise of authoritarianism, income inequality, all of this is and has been global. Some places affected more than others depending on what you look at.
I am also from Germany. Political and cultural developments that happen in the US will in some form arrive in Europe with a delay of about 10 years, at least that is how I often felt.
Income inequality is not a huge problem in many parts of Europe. The distribution of wealth is. A fine, but important difference, because the effects of this are much worse.
Far right is hoping for civil wars, and people in the center or left of center think everything is business as usual. One side is going to go vote in greater numbers than the other.
Also Europe:
“Let’s do this obviously good thing for the sake of the whole continent.”
“No, because it would help France.”
Haha sounds about right!
Is this based on actual event or is it a general joke?
A quote I heard from a Greek minister (from memory). “If Germany had a choice between doing the right thing and hurting France, they will hurt France.”
So? Where is Your punchline?
Let’s not forget brexit. Americans aren’t alone in their dumbassarry
Or the recent wins of fascist parties in Europe.
I fear the outcome of the three “state” elections in Eastern Germany later this year.
Literally facist? I know about a few right wing ones, but none of them seem actually facist
Musolini’s grand daughter sends her regards:
I stand corrected! Didnt know they are self-proclaimed fashists… Thats a bold marketing campaign and terrifing that she got the seats she did.
Although the policies she supports are not really Musollini-like.
Giorgia Meloni is Italy’s current prime minister and also happens to be a proud founding member of the Neo-Facist party, and is the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini.
The fascist parties that want to stop immigrants on the borders? Remind me who was the previous president in US and who’s controlling the house now…
Initial comment about dumbassery not in the USA.
Reply back about additional dumbassery not in America.
You: bUt WhAt AbOuT aMeRiCa?
I’m just saying that the “fascist” parties in Europe are no more “fascist” than American right wing parties. People support right-wing parties for different reasons. Calling it dumbassery is weird.
Why so sensitive?
Do i need to make a nesting meme in this thread to show you mooks that you’re literally doing the meme right now?
Stopping immigrants at the border would actually be a horrendous policy and have devastating economic effects. Literally advocating for a terrible US policy that could be seen as inhumane and unethical.
Who’s advocating for it?
“I’m not saying we actually do it it’s the implication that we will do it”
Who’s saying that? Who’s we? I think you’re confusing mentioning something with endorsing it.
i hate these memes that group entire countries or continents into one homogeneous blob and assumes that one is inherently better than the other
It’s the best way to sow division. Put everyone into discrete groups and tell them that the other groups are bad.
Cops as a group is formalized by their own work choice.
Yep. I can remember not too long ago that French police blinded people when dealing with the yellow jacket riots. Also the president’s bodyguard being there dressed as a cop and hospitalised someone instead of protecting the president. There’s also the murder of Stephen Lawrence in the UK and every year here there’s multiple cops charged with raping women or using excessive force against a minority.
Cops are shit everywhere.
Also in Finland, on 6th day of December (2023), on our independence day, the bastards prohibited the Helsinki ilman natseja (Helsinki without nazis) protest, beating the antifascist protesters and ramming into them with fucking horses, but they welcomed the nazi parade with open hands. Interesting.
Me too. I just don’t understand why so many people think that these “ok boomer / millennials, gen x,y,z does this and that” things don’t work on the same principle tho. I think it’s just as stupidly stereotypical…and I’m not even a boomer.
France burns down annually hahaha
Not sure about you, but I’ll take workers reminding everyone who is in charge and how democracy works over cops constantly shooting the innocent - people, dogs, whatever, and generally carrying on like thugs.
For a people that keep reminding the oligarchy who is charge they sure seem to have the same wealth gap as all the other liberal nations
They’re still a capitalist country like most, but worker rights are pretty strong there and they have much better social services and consumer regulations. I’m always blown away by how much higher quality French food is despite costing less, and I mean like from the grocery store not just nice restaurants.
Lol as if all of Europe has no problems of their own.
Like, yeah, I’m American and shit is really fucked up here in some specific ways… But let’s not pretend Europe is some sort of utopia.
Certified European here, can confirm individual member states and EU as a whole as not being a utopia.
Especially us Dutch folks who have been fucked over and held hostage by a waaay to large upper middle class for years. To the point where we’ve managed to abolish the ministry of housing, open up the housing market to foreign investors, replace a functioning healthcare system with a healthcare market where insurance firms rule with an iron fist and demand more bureacracy than actual care being provided.
… and the list goes on.
It’s a worldwide symptom of economic unequality and the decrease in social skills stemming from the fact that we live our lives increasingly isolated in our own online social bubbles. We’re turning increasingly hostile towards each other because we’re no longer confronted with all people and perspectives in our surroundings, but just the ones we like.
The United States, being a large country filled with very diverse people, despite all being taught to “love America”, still deals with Nebraskan farmers having wildly different wants and needs, and way different social standards than the Californian yuppies.
You’re a large country, with 334 million people spread out over a vast amount of land. Meanwhile, we’re 18 million living on a patch of marshy land roughly 3/4th the size of West Virgina, and we’re further from being united than ever before. The fact that you’re even holding together as a country is nothing short of amazing considering the fact that your political systems probably cause way more chaos than ours do.
A lot of Europeans probably mean it when they say “How are you even a country?”. And it’s not so much an attack on the American people as a whole (though some of y’all deserve to be made fun of), but geniuine amazement at the fact that it has more or less held together since 1776.
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As another European, I do blame the US’ hegemony for a lot of this, but yeah, we’re basically all getting fucked.
I think the root cause is the deregulation/privatisation of everything that started in the 80s. It slanted the playing field towards those with capital at the cost of workers and the cash has been flowing into their pockets and out of ours ever since
It’s a global phenomenon, caused by infinite growth based economic modeling (you know, where you base your whole economy on extracting increasing amounts of value from finite resources).
This type of modeling has been proven wrong and debunked early in the previous century, but it is still practised because it works very well for those gaining most of the profits.
You’ll usually hear the politicians promoting policies that help the larger companies argue that such policies directly create jobs and thus economic value for the people. But this is more of that trickle-down economics bullshit that doesn’t apply in the real world.
Because politicians worldwide have been so fixated on financial gains as a measure of the economy, they fail to measure and correct on (mental) healthcare, housing, education and equality.
Just some context on how large our housing problems have become: There is currently a deficit of 450 000 homes, which is projected to grow past 500 000 by the end of 2024.
The time we stop running countries like we do companies is when we’ll see things improve.
All about comparisons, man.
You gotta give credit to the fact that in the time the United States has had it’s 1 republic, France has had 5 of them.
Or the fact that Europe tears itself apart like every 50 years
It’s probably because French citizens are smart enough to put their own well-being before their governing powers well-being.
Yeah we’ve been together for 200 years, but it’s not going well at all.
The French literally placed an emperor into power just shortly after a proletariat revolution. Let’s not go sucking their dicks just yet.
and Germany did that one thing…what was that again?
You talking about the time they decided to start a war with the entire world, or the time they decided to start a war with the entire world?
the one with the whole “there’s one acceptable phenotype and everyone else can be either worked to death or put to death” thing. Holly-something…
It’s probably because French citizens are smart enough to put their own well-being before their governing powers well-being.
In what way do they do this?
Chopping heads
“Everything is so bad. Yet they set nothing on fire? How do they expect to fix?” —some twitter lady’s french husband, commenting on the state of American politics
From this extremely boring Finnish perspective, you guys in America set things on fire all the time. If that happened here once, we’d give the event a name and would talk about it for decades.
fair, but we only set things on fire if the local american football team wins. or loses. or ties. or the game is cancelled. or at parades.
what’s wild is that we party like the french protest but we don’t really protest.
Whatever happens in politics, i will stay away from it – is the mentality of people. So no revolution or whatever we live the way goverment lets us
In most European countries you need a 4 year university degree in criminology to become a cop. They have the same standards for average police officers as we in North America have for Federal law enforcement. So while it’s certainly true that some European countries have shitty cops, the ones with stricter barriers to entry have slightly less shitty cops.
Here’s an interactive map although it does seem to be missing a fair bit of data for Europe. The USA has the most abysmal Police training time at just 500 hours of training between being a civilian and being a Police officer.
edit: lol whoops I never actually posted the link earlier. Here it is: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/police-training-requirements-by-country
between being a civilian and being a Police officer
Also, in Europe, police are considered to be a part of civilian society. Here, “civilian” means “not part of the military”. Police officers are civilians.
That depends, the gendarmerie in France is part of the military, but there is also regular police which isn’t. European cops aren’t perfect, but it varies a lot by division and country and overall I’d say that your typical every day police you encounter as a normal citizen is fine, they’re usually at least somewhat polite and won’t shoot you or your dog for no reason. Some of them might go on ego trips now and then with some youth or something.
Where you see more issues is with riot police which is starting to look like a RoboCop army in some countries just smashing into protesters, or some other anti-crime divisions where they act like cowboys and leads to some events where some kids get killed or something like that, but it’s much more rare than in the US.
In some countries like in the Netherlands they are next level and you basically don’t see them or when you do they’re always super nice and polite, using positive tactics and just generally doing public service work which is what all police should be.
Civilian means varied things in the US.
The police are civilians, but they’re also not, because they’re law enforcement.Legally they’re civilians, but colloquially they’re not, because there’s a vague separation of public service workers from the public.
Firefighters are the same, because they can also legally order you to do something. You just don’t think about it as much because the fire department isn’t intrinsically fucked up.That could be a part of the problem. I consider police to be a respected and trusted role that comes with certain privilegies, like carring an overwhellingly powerful weapon (a hand gun).
That’s very different from a civilian.
The point is that they are not a thing unto themselves, they are people hired by the commons to do a job. They have the same rights and responsibilities, they go in front of a civilian judge if they fuck up. Also, as a rule, non-civilians are not permitted to police civilians, at least here. Being a civilian BTW is, and should be, a higher status than not being one, not a way to say “not part of the cool in-group”.
Airline crews are also in a respected and trusted role and operate machinery that can cause the deaths of hundreds to thousands of people. They even have ranks and stuff. I’ve never heard anyone say airline crews are not civilians.
They have the same rights and responsibilities, they go in front of a civilian judge if they fuck up
Bahahahahhahahahahhahahah 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Do you live under a rock?
We don’t all live in the dystopian US.
I consider police to be a respected and trusted
I hate to assume, but you must be a white man, and if you’re not you’re really fucking lucky and should read up a little more about how the police actually conduct themselves and what obligation they have to you (hint: none).
Or … they aren’t part of racist America.
Not everywhere is the white man supreme. Far from it actually.
Yeah, i’m not from USA or even America.
Hmm. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve really heard of many cases of FBI agents or similar federal agents doing shootings like ordinary cops do.
Only ones that come to mind are Waco and Ruby Ridge but those occurred decades ago.
Better education and training would really, really help.
No, they just write death threats to people like Martin Luther King, Jr.
They find mentally unstable people and use undercover agents to convince these people to commit acts of terror, often even giving them the tools to succeed… And then they swoop in to stop the attack and yell to the media “SEE WE SAVED THE DAY AND STOPPED TERRORISM!!” Nevermind that this person would have never been in this position without the FBI’s backing. It’s a lot easier than stopping real terrorism and gets them the budgets they want.
I mean COINTELPRO, the villification of black panthers, the railroading of Bruce Ivins in the anthrax attacks…
You must be living under a rock if you think the FBI is any better.
EDIT: made links inline instead of separated.
In Quebec it’s three years in college and another half year in police school. Pretty sure that’s the highest standard in North America and it seem we have much less trouble here too…
highest standard in north America
Uh, not saying much there old chap 😅
The quality of the cop is irrelevant when their entire purpose in existing is to serve the rich owning class by oppressing everyone who gets in their way.
Stop making excuses.
In developed countries they serve the people instead of just the ruling class. Get out of your country sometime. Not everywhere is as bleak as yours.
I wonder where you think I’m from…
Either way, you’re the one who needs to expand their narrow view, not me… Here are some links I happen to have to hand, feel free to look things up for yourself in your own time (lol, as if…)
https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-you-federal-court-affirms-yet-again
Well, that’s a product of capitalism not the US. It’s more blatant in the US, but it’s how any capitalist society is organized.
It’s a structural property of capitalism, not any nations specific implementation of policing.
Guy’s, let’s put aside our minor differences and remember - fuck Russia.
Pretty bold for a region that can’t last more than a generation or two before devolving into a police state so severe that it plunges the entire globe into armed conflict.
“How the fuck have they lasted this long as a country?”
Applies to Belgium far more than the US.
We’re younger than the US though.
We got nukes first and WW2 barely touched us. That’s about it. We started the game in the easiest mode.
It was the same with the original development of the country.
The difference is apparent when compared to Canada.
In Canada the pioneers were led or joined by the police, the newly created Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Law and order arrived either before or with the new pioneers.
In the US, it was the other way around. Pioneers went west without any officials, police or law enforcement. Pioneers dealt with everything by the force of a gun. Whoever had a gun was the one with power and controlled everything … you could be a good moral person and lead a community or you could be a gang leader, decrepit, immoral and unjust, as long as you had a gun, you could do whatever you wanted.
We also had an OP start point
I don’t know, what does “we” mean here? A lot of people colonized America prior to the creation of the united states of America.
Yeah. The US is a huge area with a relatively low population density and abundant natural resources. It participated in both world wars, and was nearly the only country to not take any real damage from either of them.
There hasn’t been a war on US soil since the US civil war. There has barely even been any damage to a US state. In WWII they bombed Pearl Harbor before Hawaii was a state, invaded the Aleutian Islands before Alaska was a state, and one floatplane launched from a sub tried to set fire to the forests around Oregon and failed.
The countries that had been superpowers in 1900 were recovering from mass casualties and massive damage after 2 world wars.
It’s no surprise that in Europe one of the only countries not to participate in WWII was Switzerland, and they’re also rich today.
French cops are perfectly normal, just don’t google “ici on noie les Algériens” and why it keeps being graffitied on a specific bridge in Paris.
What, you think acab vs notallcops is a usa thing ?
It’s not a thing where I live. There’s going to be other countries where the police operate like a gang, but it’s just not the case in almost all OECD countries. In authoritarian states like Russia and Iran, sure, but in functional democracies, it’s just not the case. The USA is a big exception, it must be part of that american exceptionalism thing.
So the rise of authoritarian policies in OECD countires mean nothing and aren’t being enforced?
Sure they do, and sure they are. But most people in functioning democracies with decent to good police forces understand that they’re just the messengers and hate the politicians that came up with the policies instead.
The policies of politicians and the humanism of police are not the same thing. A new party in power will also not change the culture of the workforce of an established service overnight, such a thing takes time. Time that those politicians usually don’t get in a functioning democracy, because in far less than a generation, another coalition of parties will be in the majority.
You wish. I don’t know where you live, but go ask your local queer militants or racial minority, you may have a different answer. Also, yeah, they are here to defends the system, they’ll be nice only as long as the system isn’t too challanged. Which won’t last for much longer anymore, with climate change, rarefaction of resources and all that.
I live in Belgium. There are police officers who are racist, which is to be expected since a lot of Belgian non police officers are racist too. But they are not allowed to be openly racist on the job, because that can have consequences for them.
Are our police fed up with the inner city street youth in Brussels, who mostly have an immigrant background? Definitely, but that doesn’t mean they are any more racist than the immigrants who are also fed up with the with thay inner city street youth. The root cause of those persisting problems is also a failing judiciary, not cop culture.
But the thing is, the conditions, that make it so that “acab” is a thing with many police agencies, are not present in Belgium.
Our police does not have qualified immunity, there are no no knock raids, there is no “we investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong”, there is no systematic omerta to protect each other when crimes are committed. People aren’t even afraid of dying or getting their dog killed when they call the police.
There are isolated scandals obviously, police people are human after all and there are all kinds of humans and all kinds of circumstances.
There have been a few police scandals in recent years, but unlike with the USA police we keep reading about, those had consequences for the police officers involved. There is a very recent one of a group of police officers sharing racist memes in a private Whatsapp group and guess what, they got reported by colleagues and after an investigation, several police officers were fired.
Is the Belgian police perfect? Far from it. But are all Belgian cops bastards? Certainly not. Our cops are not a gang that stands apart from society, they are very much part of it.
