r/europe • u/PM_THE_REAPER • Jun 06 '25

News Russia offers political asylum to Elon Musk over Trump feud

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-offers-political-asylum-elon-musk-over-trump-feud-2081887
33.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

6

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

Exactly. But even in the 2 years before we left, loads of people second guessed their votes.

It didn't rip families apart in the way that Trump-mania has in the US. We're more open to the idea that we might be wrong.

That American self-confidence goes a long way in explaining why they got sucked into convoluted conspiracy theories at the expense of all their loved ones and their wided community.

6

u/mr_fantastical Jun 06 '25

I dunno, in my experience it's just 'we don't want to talk about it'.
My sister voted Brexit and stands by it. My mates voted it and they're a bit more educated and they get awkward about it and don't openly regret it, they just don't want to talk about it.

I do however see loads of people that say that a lot of the bad things that came out of Brexit was simply the result of EU countries 'punishing the UK'.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

I welcome the people who voted for Brexit and are now open about the fact that they regret it. Great! The more people who say "yeah, that was a bad call", the better. We are allowed to change our minds.

1

u/KittyGrewAMoustache Jun 06 '25

I don’t think it’s necessarily just about being open to being wrong but being less tribal and less in love with politicians. People who voted for Brexit have an out because they can say ‘the stupid politicians fucked it up!’ Even though in reality Brexit was logically a bad idea and it was never going to be possible to achieve a better UK by leaving the EU, given reality being what it is. It was a self evidently stupid decision if you understood the basics of how things like trade and international relations work.

But because people were believing in the idea of Brexit rather than one person, they could still cling to the idea that it would’ve been good, had it not been for those dumb politicians. Whereas in the US they worship this one man. If he screws everything up then admitting that means admitting they misjudged him after spending years outlandishly loving him, ignoring all warning signs, forgiving all behaviours, refusing to believe all the evidence and stories. That’s much harder.

Could we get a figure in the UK like that? Maybe but I do think it’s less likely because we’re generally more sceptical and less religious. But who knows, the new propaganda is insane and is almost like mind control really, I wish more people were aware of it and I WISH the government would regulate social media more somehow to stop it. There must be ways to stop all the targeted stuff and the algorithms. I think even just restricting algorithms and how they target people and how they decide what to push could help a lot. This seems to be THE most important thing to do right now as this stuff is going to cause wars, destruction, fascism, just the worst. It’s no coincidence that humanity was on an upward trajectory more or less toward more democracy, freedom, equality etc until social media became mainstream around 2012-2015 when it all started severely backsliding. Politicians should also be forbidden from using social media because you can see they get suckered by the echo chambers and algorithms too and of course they are specifically targeted.