US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/09/watchlist-decline-civic-freedoms-civicusOpen linkView original on lemmy.ca1180
Comments74https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/09/watchlist-decline-civic-freedoms-civicusOpen linkView original on lemmy.ca
Look, ma! We’re on TV!
The U.S. is always on TV and it's depressing af. I have a co-worker here in Australia parroting American neonazi talking points.
You need to be quarantined.
Can I get out first? I don’t care to see if they decide to imprison me for being trans or put me on a work farm for taking psychiatric medication.
LPTs for anyone considering:
So fucked up, hey? Move now. I can recommend Australia if Canada doesn't work.
Also from Australia and I concour as long as idiots don't elect dutton in our coming federal election
Fuck that guy.
first you gotta find a country that will let you in and stay in.
and then, you gotta pay the US government to rescind your citizenship.
Its even worse living next door to them.
They really do. For the good of the world.
You ever heard The Clash's "I'm so Bored with the U.S.A."?
That's how most of us even here in the US feel
I think it's moved on to "Fuck the U.S.A." by The Exploited by now.
I’d recommend Anti-Flag if Justin Sane wasn't such a douchebag.
just now?
I'm imagining they don't do a full audit too often
Is there an EarthNoodle and a FireNoodle? Do they combine to form PastaTron?
No, I am not an elemental noodle.
There might be a TerrestrialNoodle if we give it enough time.
Right? Remember Habeas corpus? Nobody does because Dubya signed it away to do some shit.
It's only been what, 6 weeks? Feels like an eternity.
More like 24 years... or longer. I was initially thinking of Bush II in addition to the influences of The Capital G, but We didn't start the fire was the anthem of the younger baby-boomers and older Gen-xers so...
Tangentially, I'm confident that The Patriot Act was only aloud to expire because the mechanisms it used were replaced by new technological, and societal developments that were equally harmful to civil rights.
Gotta take the power back.Make the billionaires scared to show their faces
Yep, fascists taking over will do that to a country 😬
“Land of the free”, they said. Freedom of speech, and all that.
Free to pay.
Money is speech, after all.
Land of the free, whoever told you that is your enemy
The use never was free, other countries consistently had actual freedoms that the US never had
The one major freedom that the US just only had the freedom to have guns, no matter how stupid it was. You're a 5 year old? Here, shoot a gun!
They tell themselves that lie every morning.
I blame Francis Scott Key.
What a fall from grace. Il Duce would've been glad.
Fall from grace my ass. People are just now noticing that everything America has ever been is a cardboard set piece used to hide the piles of garbage in the background. This country has never been anything more than a lie.
Are you denying that it's getting exponentially worse by the day?
insert SpongeBob meme.jpg
America is becoming one of those Third World shit holes Trump talked about way back when.
I'm so glad I'm Canadian. I'll just watch the flames from across the border.
Italy?
Uhhhhhhh Meloni is also a medium-far right semi-crazy. She's not sig heiling but she's in the same league as AfD.
Melōni and Her crew attended the same far right neo fascist meetings as Polish neo fascists so I was afraid about her but since she took office even Donald Tusk said that she is a reliable partner so I get the impression that at least in Brussels couloirs she baheves reasonably. How does she look from within Italy? Did she take a turn to reason or is it just a theatre for outsiders?
Ever heard of the Mafia? Ever looked into the Meloni family?
The only Meloni family I know
Don't forget about Chris
little something called Belusconi also ring a bell?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Silvio_Berlusconi
bunga bunga parties.
belusconi is too busy with his bunga bunga parties.
Rapid decline in civic freedoms? More like a freefall into dystopia with no parachute in sight.
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
Just watched a part of Clinton's speech in post-war Slovenia (after separated from Yugoslavia) where he says that democracy and freedom must prevail around the world. Oh Billy...
He passed NAFTA which was the stake in the heart of the US union movement guaranteeing corporate fascism would ascend unchallenged. Citizens United only a few years later and it was over.
Reagan signed the original NAFTA agreement in 1988 (between Canada and America), then Bush worked on it a bit, then Clinton ratified the final agreement between America, Mexico and Canada 1994.
Cheaper Mexican labor was the end of the US middle class for most and broader social stability. As Canada is more expensive than Mexico, the impact of the original was nothing compared to the latter.
Your jerbs!
Two decades of mostly uninterrupted neoliberal rule.
Well, that's concerning. Wonder what made them take notice?
Why did it take so long
So, what paths are still available for us to preserve and restore those civic freedoms?
Not much that won't land us in prison or dead
There isnt a path. We have been checkmated by the neolibs and fascists. Even as they wage class war on us we support them and pat ourselves on the back for being "pragmatic". Its over. Time to leave, if any place will allow us in.
Countries can and have come back from this. Chile, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Brazil. I hope you guys can pull back from the precipice before you end up like any of those though, because we are all at least somewhat familiar with the hell each of them went through before they came out the other side. Not to mention that some of those descents sparked global conflict.
Only recently, South Korea had a bit of a scare. Luckily, their institutions were solid and able to mount a robust defence. I don't know if I am as confident with regard to US institutions.
What's funny is, they keep calling themselves the 'leader of the free world', but in 2024, according to the Cato Human Freedom Index, which measures personal, civil, and economic freedoms, the US ranked 17th. Canada? 11th. And this was not taking into account Trump's second term. Most of the countries in the top 10 were all European, the countries that the US likes to call 'socialist welfare states'.
Facism: Not even once baby.
So do country that don't have programs like US aid for other countries or who have tariffs on imports all have a low freedom ranking?
It seems rather absurd.
Perhaps it's more about the rollback of rights for anyone who isn't a straight white man.
See that makes a lot of sense on something like abortion, it really muddys the water and makes it seem more like a fake hit piece when you include things like US aid.
No no, it's all countries that have a capital that starts with 'W', that's why the US made it on the list.
It just took them long to notice, it's all.
Trump has failed so many times I can’t count them all. I have yet to see America succeed at anything under his “leadership”
It's always funny to hear stuff about "leftists" ruining things when "rightists" 100% tried to overthrow our government - like physically broke in to the Capitol and tried to kill our leaders (while injuring dozens of police officers. "Back the blue" right? "Thin blue line!" Right?).
If the RIGHT can't have it their way, they'll literally try to overthrow a fair election. A bunch of spoiled brats trying to kill people because their (now felon - 34 counts!) president wasn't re-elected. (EDIT: the original post was removed, and this paragraph was using their words. They called left leaning people spoiled brats, so I was just reframing that here.)
Oh no, am I mentioning January 6? You bet I am. The right has lost all credibility after that event. No amount of people throwing dog turds on teslas will be worse than that. (Also, why would anyone be defending the Nazi car guy?)
What's really going to be funny is seeing the right blame the democrats in a few months (maybe a year) for how shitty everything is after this idiotic trump admin has gutted all public services. Somehow that'll be the democrats' fault to them.
Additionally, the guy who blew up the Tesla at the trump hotel was a trump supporter, via Wikipedia:
The alt right has big abuser energy. Projection party.
You make the extremely faulty assumption that Trump both wants to and is able to help America succeed when he's incapable and couldn't care less.
Well, I'm for animal rights too.
You are so wildly disconnected from reality. Please start getting news from unbiased sources like AP or Reuters instead of your conservative echo chamber. Look at a media bias chart and see where your sources are at, then move to less bias and more factual ones.
Here is a recent one for reference: https://adfontesmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Media-Bias-Chart-13.0_Jan-2025-Licensed-Unprotected.pdf
Go back to bed grandpa and listen to dennis prager complain about the left from a blow hole
I'd check for worms if I were you. Thoughts and prayers
Name one thing that travesty of administration is doing right, I'm genuinely curious!
This says "Removed by mod" but that's exactly along the lines of what I was going to say. Censorship has been going on for a long time. Lefties don't like civic freedoms anymore than the nazi right psycho's do. We just have multiple echo chambers where you either fit in or get silenced.
The idea that the left and right both have echo chambers in various places - sure.
The idea that they are to the same extreme, as well as all the other stuff you piled on regarding censorship and civic freedoms? lol No.
This is some gourmet stupid bullshit right here, well done.
How so?