Starting the week on a high-note ;-)
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Starting the week on a high-note
As there's elections in Danmark there's candidates campaigning at the train station. Passing by them with toddler & cookies I figured I'd exchange cookies for pamphlets.
We offered cookies to three of the four. Danish Democrats* can buy their own damn cookie.
One of the others noticed, laughed and asked "no cookie for [name]?"
We ended up having a nice talk about whether to exclude fascists from society!
*xenophobic populists led by a convicted criminal
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Starting the week on a high-note
As there's elections in Danmark there's candidates campaigning at the train station. Passing by them with toddler & cookies I figured I'd exchange cookies for pamphlets.
We offered cookies to three of the four. Danish Democrats* can buy their own damn cookie.
One of the others noticed, laughed and asked "no cookie for [name]?"
We ended up having a nice talk about whether to exclude fascists from society!
*xenophobic populists led by a convicted criminal
We have a local candidate for DD who does a lot of great work for my area, which is ignored by almost all politicians since it's just where they go to Bilka to shop. But he's legitimately doing everything he can to make things better - public transport, money for local schools.
Never even mentioned immigration until his boss - the convicted criminal - told everyone to go out and say something nasty about muslims last week. It's interesting that he is actively working to make an area with a 50+% immigrant population better every day and yet he choses to be a member of DD. Might have voted for him if he'd been in almost any other party.
I mean probably not, but at least I would have considered him a pretty stand up guy.
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We have a local candidate for DD who does a lot of great work for my area, which is ignored by almost all politicians since it's just where they go to Bilka to shop. But he's legitimately doing everything he can to make things better - public transport, money for local schools.
Never even mentioned immigration until his boss - the convicted criminal - told everyone to go out and say something nasty about muslims last week. It's interesting that he is actively working to make an area with a 50+% immigrant population better every day and yet he choses to be a member of DD. Might have voted for him if he'd been in almost any other party.
I mean probably not, but at least I would have considered him a pretty stand up guy.
@EvilCartyen @Pepijn That's the thing, even if he's a nice guy doing good things, he is still representing a vile party. By choice. And that's disqualifying on it's own.
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@EvilCartyen @Pepijn That's the thing, even if he's a nice guy doing good things, he is still representing a vile party. By choice. And that's disqualifying on it's own.
I mean, yes. But what if you've got a choice between people representing "good parties" who are only interested in bettering the lives of people close to where they live - which is downtown - and "bad parties" actively working to make your neighbourhood a better place. Which, incidentally, includes the lives of a lot of people who they're meant to be "against".
Most parties in Aarhus care only about Aarhus C and their own view (literally) of the harbour.
I'm just saying - local politics is different from national politics. I think it's a lot harder to make an informed choice at local elections because I care about actions more than ideology.
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We have a local candidate for DD who does a lot of great work for my area, which is ignored by almost all politicians since it's just where they go to Bilka to shop. But he's legitimately doing everything he can to make things better - public transport, money for local schools.
Never even mentioned immigration until his boss - the convicted criminal - told everyone to go out and say something nasty about muslims last week. It's interesting that he is actively working to make an area with a 50+% immigrant population better every day and yet he choses to be a member of DD. Might have voted for him if he'd been in almost any other party.
I mean probably not, but at least I would have considered him a pretty stand up guy.
@EvilCartyen @Pepijn The first choice he made as a politician is to align himself with a party explicitly rejecting others. I know that local politics is very different from national politics, but my assumption for any local candidate of a national party is that they agree with the broad lines of the national platform.
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I mean, yes. But what if you've got a choice between people representing "good parties" who are only interested in bettering the lives of people close to where they live - which is downtown - and "bad parties" actively working to make your neighbourhood a better place. Which, incidentally, includes the lives of a lot of people who they're meant to be "against".
Most parties in Aarhus care only about Aarhus C and their own view (literally) of the harbour.
I'm just saying - local politics is different from national politics. I think it's a lot harder to make an informed choice at local elections because I care about actions more than ideology.
@EvilCartyen @Pepijn If the ideology is racist, xenophobic, then I don't believe the actions can outweigh that. To me it's just a non-starter.
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@EvilCartyen @Pepijn The first choice he made as a politician is to align himself with a party explicitly rejecting others. I know that local politics is very different from national politics, but my assumption for any local candidate of a national party is that they agree with the broad lines of the national platform.
That's true, but if he's in charge of buslines I am note sure how much I should care about his views on e.g. foreign policy.
That said, as I've said I could never vote DD - as @Gjoel said it's a non-starter. It's just a pity that almost all other local politicians around here seem to treat the area where I live as a place to move all the cars they want to remove from the city.
15.000 people live here, and we might not want our area turned into a huge parking space, y'know.
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That's true, but if he's in charge of buslines I am note sure how much I should care about his views on e.g. foreign policy.
That said, as I've said I could never vote DD - as @Gjoel said it's a non-starter. It's just a pity that almost all other local politicians around here seem to treat the area where I live as a place to move all the cars they want to remove from the city.
15.000 people live here, and we might not want our area turned into a huge parking space, y'know.
@EvilCartyen @Pepijn @Gjoel yes, the pain of feeling like an afterthought is real...
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@EvilCartyen @Pepijn @Gjoel yes, the pain of feeling like an afterthought is real...
I have some friends who are from way out west where everyone now votes DD.
Specifically because they are super frustrated about feeling like they're left behind and no one else cares about their communities. Shops and schools are closing, jobs are disappearing, etc.
Now, I am not going to pretend to understand how it's apparently the immigrants' fault that capitalism as a system is failing them, but this is a problem we need to tackle in Europe in a broad sense to avoid sliding into fascism.
We have to find a way to not let the rural population feel left behind and cast out. But we're currently looking at everything through a lens which tells us that it's not economical to have these communities thrive and live, so we close down busses and schools and shops and and and.
It's a huge problem.
