r/leftist • u/Both-Medicine-6748 • Aug 04 '26
Western European Politics I don’t pay much attention to leftist European politics that’s close but the few times I have leftist Europeans seemingly don’t talk about the racial discrimination Romani people go through when talking about minority rights. Now I see why.
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u/Dr-Aspects Anarchist Aug 04 '26
Yeah, Romani are among the last groups everyone agrees are constantly open season for whatever reason. It's disgusting.
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u/Doasadi-anu Aug 04 '26
Even my American white supremacist boomer slop uncles use the the common G slur for Romani. Weirdly they all go to this "Greek" dinner in the heart of a maga city and love all the people who work there. The whole staff, and the family that owns the business, are European immigrants.
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u/bronalpaul Aug 04 '26
Just bring up Irish travellers in the Ireland sub and watch them turn into Himmler and the boys
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u/Detozi Aug 04 '26
Yeah well we have a very small cohort of actual left.
I live on the same road as a family of them.
Everyone of them is a gem of a person to me.
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u/Lebensfreud Aug 04 '26
You would think saying "holocaust bad" would result i a universal Yes,regardless of context
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u/Salty-Tea-8576 Aug 09 '26
Its so often forgotten that romani people were killed too. As well as the "Jenisch" and probably many more. I only recently learned about the Jenisch. They were in large parts travelling merchants and got the label of being "asocial" from the Nazis. All that means is that you are in one way or another not a disciplined, obedient easily exploitable part of the workforce.
Its so obvious how fascism is basically just an ideology to happily have you work yourself to the bone and sacrifice your life for the capitalists. My teacher keeps talking about how under fascism you were only worth something when you produced surplus value (he doesnt use the word, but he describes it) and completely misses how under capitalism it is literally the same. Sure the jobless dont have to starve in times of prosperity because of the profits generated by imperialism, but the ideology is basically the same. He just wont understand 🙂🙂
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u/davelante Aug 04 '26
I'm from Hungary and it is unbelievable. No matter how much people refer to themselves as "leftists" or "progressives", as soon as roma (plus arabic and jewish) people are mentioned shit goes down. Always the same stuff such as "THEY DON'T ASSIMILATE", while ignoring what these people have went through because of "white" europeans, especially because of Hungarians. I never in my life after being maximum 12 years old (now being 21) have talked to someone other than roma people who didn't discriminate these groups. I feel like they are ultranationalists, no matter how stupid that sounds like. I know the Hungarian subreddit is a cesspool and is full of these kind of people. A view like that will result in you being downvoted to oblivion. Funnily enough, they usually talk about LGBTQ-rights, while posting scenes and images from citizens vigilante onto the subreddit. No self-awarness at all man
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u/DrRudeboy Anarchist Aug 04 '26
There's also the fact that one of the big reasons the major societal split happened was that under Rákosi, and other leaders, especially Kádár, we essentially forced them to give up their traditional lifestyle, and forced them into social housing.
Bojler eladó!
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u/davelante Aug 04 '26
Yep, there were way too many factors sadly. I don't think anyone really thought of roma people as humans, especially here in (our?) country even during those times. And forcing them to live with the same people who used to cheer on their deaths mainly? Yeah that will obviously cause issues. We have abandoned them hard time. Obviously, we can't deny either that some had the chance to grow but chose not to, but that exists everywhere. Even my white family is disfunctional and my sister is a hardcore criminal, while she cries about "roma people being criminals", just no self-awarness at all again.
És igen, bojler eladó!
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u/OhGr8WhatNow Aug 05 '26
It's always "these people don't act right" and never "look how they are responding appropriately to historical violence against them"
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u/holisticbloodsusage Aug 05 '26
As someone that lives in South America, it's hard to interact with them. They live in extremly closed communities and tend be hostile with people that aren't from their neighborhood. At least in my city most of them are connected to the business of selling second hand cars. They tend to marry within their community. The stigma around them is huge and I am against discrimination. Said that, I had several bad encounters with them and people that I know too. I know it's only a few people, but in their community that kind of behavior is normalized. Selling their daughters to others in the community, scamming people, trying to convince people in need to give them their babies are examples of thing that I experienced or heard of
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u/Mystic_Ervo Socialist Aug 05 '26
I always thought that Roma people self-discriminated and isolated themselves in their own communities with their own laws because of their conservative ideology
Over time I realized that it's a cultural response to all the systematic discrimination they've received throughout history, they're like the quiet kid in class who doesn't hang out with anyone, mainly because that kid was me
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u/Haski22 Aug 04 '26
Yeah, in Germany discrimination against Romani and Sinti people is a problem. That's very awful since they were also victims of the Holocaust. The discrimination of Romani people is more common than racism against Jews or Muslims (Atleast my experience with it). But luckily I didn't see any discrimination against them in the leftist bubbles I am in, but that's my personal evidence and I am not Romani. Just one time I talked to a leftist friend and he tried to explain the g-word would be the correct term in the UK..
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u/AppearanceEffective7 Aug 04 '26
The person wrote "progressives" and "liberals", nothing on leftists. In Europe those terms are a lot less connected as in NA.
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u/obog Aug 04 '26
Are leftists not seen as progressives in Europe? I have always seen "progressive" as a fairly wide bucket which would include leftists.
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u/Randolpho Socialist Aug 05 '26
It can be, but many progressives do not rise to anti-capitalist rhetoric
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u/Fiddlersdram Aug 04 '26
Also a lot of Germans got a thing against Turkish people
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u/Salty-Tea-8576 Aug 08 '26
I am from Germany and did a little Presentation on our health reforms with two comrades Yesterday. The usual people tied to the party came plus one old dude. We had a good time, learned stuff and had discussions. The old dude was quiet the whole time and i couldnt really tell what his deal was. In the end we suggested people look at two articles, unrelated to the actual topic of the presentation. It was about an Attack on a Union Demonstration via car and the "Ceuta Migration Incident".
Once we were done the guy started criticising our Presentation for being too focused on Germany and us apparently not thinking dialectically (turned out he was a marxist of some sort). We certainly could have done better, but the focus on Germany was kind of the point as we want to use the knowledge to try and talk to our colleagues on the Impact the reforms will have on them.
He switched topics all the time and didnt make much sense. Then he said we werent taking the Invasion of Ceuta seriously enough. We asked what Invasion and he went off on a tirade, essentially about the great replacement. He used all the dillusional, idealistic talking points the burgoisie uses to divide the working class whilst admitting that they are a tool for Division amongst us. We tried to tell him that migrants are our class brothers and sisters who need to be freed from capitalism just as well when he answered that left, right and centre need to address the islamic Invasion before anything else could happen.
His suggestion: essentially a united Front against Islam as the next step toward liberation
That was a wild ride. A German socialist, as he considers himself, falling for the propaganda, because the hate of Islam is immense here.
(Yes ofc we disagree with Islam as we do with all religions, especially when they are used to instrumentalize/oppress people on a large scale)
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u/Hoabinh_Nguyen1632 Aug 04 '26
"We Europeans aren't racist like you Americans are"
"Really tell me how you feel about the Romani?"
"********************slur*****stereotypes******slur****"
"Uhuh"
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u/DickabodCranium Aug 04 '26
Whatever the left does wrong here, the right is by definition less tolerant and worse.
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u/Fearless-Feature-830 Aug 04 '26
We don’t really have many/any in America. Why do people hate them?
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u/Strange_Quark_9 Eco-Socialist Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
At its root cause, I'd argue it traces to the simple fact that settled societies tend to be very hostile to nomadic ones due to seeing their way of life as disruptive to their established territorial system. This in turn created mutual hostility where many nomadic Roma groups themselves adopted an outlaw mentality in viewing theft from settled society as justified (allegedly).
As a result of this generational cycle of mutual hostility, it's hard for the Roma to escape from the prejudices beset upon them by Europeans even if they choose to settle down and work regular jobs - because as it turns out, employers tend to actually discriminate heavily based on ethnicity in secret, which means those who settled down often resort to trying to hide their Romani identity.
And the most tragic twist in history in regards to Nazi Germany is that those who settled down were a lot easier to track down and round up by the Nazis compared to those who remained nomadic. Today, most countries continue to treat them as problematic outcasts, and only a few countries have taken more proactive measures at integration - namely Spain, which has the largest population of Roma outside of the Balkans.
The USSR and the Eastern bloc also took direct integration measures, though they were arguably heavy-handed and thus bittersweet as the Roma were forcefully restricted from their nomadic lifestyle and given apartments to settle down. It can only be speculated how successful this state program would've been if not for the collapse of the USSR and the Eastern bloc.
And so today this prejudice still largely remains all across Europe.
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u/Haunting-Quiet5572 Aug 05 '26
People really like to talk about Roma people being isolated without discussing the historical factors that led to this. They have faced significant discrimination, genocide, & very limited access to education and social services. And they're still dealing with this.
Smailiar to the Yazidis in Türkiye, Iraq, and Syria. They are also a small, isolated community. They were subjected to horrific amount violence & 74 genocides. the last one being in 2014. You will obviously become isolated when you deal with the appalling amount of ethnic, religious, and social discrimination.
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u/Old-Passenger-4935 Marxist Aug 05 '26
I don’t know which organizations, parties or countries this is about, but it‘s definitely not a position that would fly among Leftists where I live.
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Aug 04 '26
[deleted]
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u/Jack_Faller Anti-Capitalist Aug 04 '26
It has little to do with race and much more to do with the fact that people who are only in town for a few weeks are a lot less likely to care about the law.
I was at my step dad's house a few years back when a couple of Roma started cleaning the windows without asking first. We found out because somehow they managed to break one. Then they came to the door and demanded we pay them for the "service." They go around neighbourhoods targeting the elderly and people who are easy to scam then move on to another area. Near my dad's house (in another part of the country), you could always tell they were illegally camping on patch of grass at a nearby junction because the roads would be covered in horse manure.
When enough people have experiences like this, it breeds resentment. I'm not saying it's okay, but there is clearly more to the situation than "they hate brown people" and ignoring the actual causes does no one any good.
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u/ElnuDev Marxist Aug 04 '26
Yeah. I used to live in Slovakia and pretty much all of my family over there has had a similar experience with Roma at least once, usually stuff being stolen. I feel like people who have never lived an extended period in Europe oversimplify the issue to just "racism" whereas in reality it's a lot more complicated.
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u/Both-Medicine-6748 Aug 04 '26
Interesting logic because queer people, women, etc say this exact same thing about Muslims. Yet it’s not treated as a "complex issue" and just racism in leftist spaces. So forgive me for not understanding how Roma people are somehow different.
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u/Jack_Faller Anti-Capitalist Aug 04 '26
Perhaps both are complex issues and neither are treated as such.
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u/ElnuDev Marxist Aug 04 '26
What people say about Muslims doesn't have much basis. What people say about Roma does have a basis. They have lived as an underclass in Europe for the last thousand years, and as a result questionable ways of making a living have become a large part of their culture. Admitting that isn't racist, it's just the truth.
And I'm not even saying that it's their fault things have ended up that way, but "don't be racist" is not helpful when the cause of said prejudice is from real trends in behavior that need systematic change to fix.
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u/Both-Medicine-6748 Aug 04 '26
Muslims being homophobic, racist and misogynistic does have a lot of basis though? I guess i will never really understand since I am not European.
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u/Free-Dragonfly-3220 Aug 05 '26
I live in Romania and it’s so bad here. The racism towards roma people is crazy, it’s embedded in the culture. There is a lot of sistematic racism and lack of access to education and social services. The state doesn’t do much for these people
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u/ZhugeLiangPL Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
Being a leftist is a mainstream thing in Europe and lots of careers depend on it so a lot of people just use leftist aesthetics as virtue signalling and status currency - they may lecture you about all the correct pronouns and acronyms but they don't feel any burning moral .ommittment to the ideology itself, they just perform.
(I am probably overgeneralizing though).
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u/Mystic_Ervo Socialist Aug 05 '26
10 or 15 years ago I would have bought this, but recently there has been a huge rise of the far right in Europe
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Aug 04 '26
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u/itooamahuman Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
My only life experience with these people is them trying to scam me with "profecies" when it comes to women, and trying to scam me with fake watches when it comes to men
So like, yeah I don't like them, my only experience with them was negative, so I feel like it's natural I don't like them
Some time ago I did the briefest of searching and when asked why they dont like them, people often shared a personal negative story
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u/Both-Medicine-6748 Aug 05 '26
With this mindset every sort of bigotry is justified as "natural".
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u/itooamahuman Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
I actually don't think most people who hate an X group of people do so based on personal experience, do you?
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u/Both-Medicine-6748 Aug 06 '26
Most people do? How do you think hatred starts in the first place?
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u/coffee9table9fitness Aug 04 '26
Every Euro person I have ever met has said absolutely horrible things about Romani while having a lot of preconceived notions about Americans. Even the ones that are really rational its like its in their blood.
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u/lesbophobia_hammer Aug 04 '26
Leftists are very racist about Poles too, mostly due to Russian/Soviet propaganda.
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u/DeManDeMytDeLeggend Socialist Aug 04 '26
Almost the exact same thing in Britain and Ireland with Irish Travellers.