Musk tells Europeans “fight back or die”

[zazen]

23 hours ago, Elliott said:

Because we have a two party dynamic. MAGA is fringe, I live in a red state, I spend holidays with Republicans. Trump has record low approval.

No one gives a fuck about trans stuff, just loud mouthed morons. Many republicans support abortion rights, it is not a party line issue.

Touch grass, seriously.

No one gives a fuck about trans - exactly! Most people wonder why its part of the discourse to the degree it is, and corporately fed and paraded to such an extent.

Yeah it's a two party system with a binary choice - the question is: why does the anti-establishment option get voted in despite that particular candidate being seen as a agent of chaos with divisive rhetoric and low approval? I'm pointing to the larger current and trend that's driving this politics - it's bigger than just one man or crude manifestation ie MAGA.

Obama also ran on hope and change as a outsider - a change to the status quo that isn't working for enough people. When Obama's "change" turned out to be more of the same (wall street bailouts, endless wars, corporate friendly policies) people looked for the next vessel to channel their grievances to. Trump inherited that current from Obama's unfulfilled promises. Many didn't switch because they were were die-hard MAGA fans. The larger point is that there's systemic reasons that have been simmering over many years to explain the general shift more center-right/right wing towards outsider/anti-establishment politics across the West - not simply that its fringe.

It's a mistake to conflate MAGA or Trump with that larger current and dismiss it. The candidate or ''movement'' ie MAGA may be fringe, but the discontent and shared disillusionment from the status quo driving it aren't. It shouldn't simply be seen as some Frankenstein accident of American politics alone - that doesn't explain why a similar populist surge is happening across the West. Maybe you need to cross the pond and touch European grass to realise that.

5 hours ago, PurpleTree said:

That’s horseshit. Look at Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany etc. Mostly issues with MENA immigration.

Then in some places there are other issues with more „rich“ immigration and gentrification.

First hand experience - agreed. There's a reason European politics started moving right before Trump. Europe got hit the hardest from migration crisis (proximity to war torn regions with land bridge etc)

 

Edited Wednesday at 03:04 PM by zazen

[Joshe]

4 hours ago, zazen said:

It's a mistake to conflate MAGA or Trump with that larger current and dismiss it. The candidate or ''movement'' ie MAGA may be fringe, but the discontent and shared disillusionment from the status quo driving it aren't. It shouldn't simply be seen as some Frankenstein accident of American politics alone - that doesn't explain why a similar populist surge is happening across the West.

Calling the arsonist secondary because there was a drought is backwards. The arsonist is the primary cause of the fire we actually got.

"Well, look at all this dry brush bro!" This isn't how we do causal analysis. The drought didn't make the fire inevitable, the arsonist did. To focus exclusively on the conditions and to ignore the primary causal factors is part of the interesting phenomenon I was talking about. It comes across like a right-leaning centrist cope. 

I’ve been very close with conservatives my entire life. They were always the same. They never cared much about politics until Trump started entertaining and polarizing them in 2016. 

A very bad influence took up the position of most powerful man on the planet and stirred shit up, polarized people and hardened tribes, and showed other leaders how to sow division for their own personal gain. Without acceptance and embrace of this degenerate as the leader of the free world, reality would be fucking night and day different. 

Consider you have a brother who is a decent guy and one day he befriends a known criminal and conman with a very despicable character and they become best friends for 10 years. They hang out several times per week.

What is the likelihood that your brother’s life would descend into chaos and be unrecognizable after those 10 years? 

You see, if you do the above thought experiment in earnest, you should then be able to accept the reality. At the very least, shift the majority of the causal weight to Trump, because that’s accurate. 

AI analysis:

Edited Wednesday at 05:48 PM by Joshe

[kray]

On 9/15/2025 at 0:00 AM, Joshe said:

Sound familiar? He basically said the same thing in our 2024 election. 

Anyone have any good insight as to what in the actual fuck is going on with this guy? 

In all honesty, as crack pot as these movements are, it’s not completely illogical for a population to prefer their own, to keep the cultural heritage of their country. Muslim migrants didn’t build France, Germany, the UK, etc. It was the franks, the Germans, the Anglo Saxons and celts that built their own countries. So in a way yeah, these local populations do have the right to not want migrants, especially stage red and blue migrants from completely different cultures. 

[Joshe]

5 hours ago, kray said:

In all honesty, as crack pot as these movements are, it’s not completely illogical for a population to prefer their own, to keep the cultural heritage of their country. Muslim migrants didn’t build France, Germany, the UK, etc. It was the franks, the Germans, the Anglo Saxons and celts that built their own countries. So in a way yeah, these local populations do have the right to not want migrants, especially stage red and blue migrants from completely different cultures. 

That position is completely understandable and nothing to necessarily denigrate. But there are other ways to solve these issues than allowing billionaires to bullhorn extremely divisive and violence-inciting rhetoric. The people are being used as pawns by powerful billionaires seeking power and influence. That is the issue here, and it should be clear it's a much more pressing issue than immigration. 

Humanity is being split like never before. This is much more dangerous than any immigration issues. 

Edited Wednesday at 10:06 PM by Joshe

[zazen]

6 hours ago, Joshe said:

Calling the arsonist secondary because there was a drought is backwards. The arsonist is the primary cause of the fire we actually got.

"Well, look at all this dry brush bro!" This isn't how we do causal analysis. The drought didn't make the fire inevitable, the arsonist did. To focus exclusively on the conditions and to ignore the primary causal factors is part of the interesting phenomenon I was talking about. It comes across like a right-leaning centrist cope. 

I’ve been very close with conservatives my entire life. They were always the same. They never cared much about politics until Trump started entertaining and polarizing them in 2016. 

A very bad influence took up the position of most powerful man on the planet and stirred shit up, polarized people and hardened tribes, and showed other leaders how to sow division for their own personal gain. Without acceptance and embrace of this degenerate as the leader of the free world, reality would be fucking night and day different. 

Consider you have a brother who is a decent guy and one day he befriends a known criminal and conman with a very despicable character and they become best friends for 10 years. They hang out several times per week.

What is the likelihood that your brother’s life would descend into chaos and be unrecognizable after those 10 years? 

You see, if you do the above thought experiment in earnest, you should then be able to accept the reality. At the very least, shift the majority of the causal weight to Trump, because that’s accurate. 

AI analysis:

I agree - no doubt Trump has been a bad influence. Maybe we’re circling on the same thing just splitting hairs. I think one distinction that seems subtle but is meaningful is separating what’s a cause vs catalyst. Like you highlight in the AI analysis - the crude discourse and behaviour accelerated. Trump caused / normalised the crudeness of politics - but didn’t cause populism itself, he only accelerated it by his rhetoric and behaviour.

Trump, Farage etc have been catalysts tapping into grievances and distorting them - latent energy of discontent waiting to be exploited. They’re framing those grievances in a toxic way and then offering solutions that cause more problems than they solve. The cause though has been structural - economic struggles + cultural uprootedness. In simpler terms: bread and belonging.

If we remove Trump, the structural trends causing masses of people to feel betrayed still remains - as shown in Europe via Brexit, La Pen etc before Trump came in.

The tricky thing with populism is they take half truths then shit on a bunch of false truths in how they frame those “facts”. They say “facts over feelings” but are literally steering people to feel a certain way about certain facts.

Also agree with your response on the previous page which was well put. I think regardless of which side is more evolved or less (or what we think of them) - both sides think the other need to evolve to their level - which seems to be causing the polarization and deadlock.

[BlueOak]

13 hours ago, kray said:

In all honesty, as crack pot as these movements are, it’s not completely illogical for a population to prefer their own, to keep the cultural heritage of their country. Muslim migrants didn’t build France, Germany, the UK, etc. It was the franks, the Germans, the Anglo Saxons and celts that built their own countries. So in a way yeah, these local populations do have the right to not want migrants, especially stage red and blue migrants from completely different cultures. 

Yes they do. We should be at about 50,000 net migrants, as is historically sustainable, not 500,000 net. This is a position that can easily be argued on its merits and is largely accepted by much of the population. What needs to be defeated is the average, and the average in the UK says.

I have no problem with migrants as long as they come to work. - That's what needs to be addressed for migration change in the UK. The working class UK acceptance of hard working people, needs to be considered below the amount of migrants coming in.

Musk telling far right lunatics to go commit violence isn't the way to solve this. He should tell them to go picket parliament for the next year, or better yet, put all their funding into moderate migration candidates, who have far more chance of success than people trying to ban it outright.

Because the fringes don't decide anything. Fringe positions are cumbersome to change anything. Always, always address the average, because that moves the vote.

Edited yesterday at 06:12 AM by BlueOak

[PurpleTree]

Wasn‘t brexit also because of immigrants?