Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

I think we (Americans and Europeans alike) wholly underestimate how Americanised European culture is becoming.

This is an observation rather than a criticism as I don't know whether this is 'good' or 'bad' but it is noticeable phenomena manifest through language, and probably an unintended consequence of the dependency of Europe on US communication technology, leading to the import of US communication styles, political priorities and cultural values.

France have always been conscious of this, no doubt as a result of their centuries old conflict with England, but it is interesting now to see Italian nationalists responding similarly. It's futile of course, as neither Italians, French nor any combination of European countries can or will make an internet independent of the US

Yeah, it was shocking here in Stockholm when there were BLM protests in 2020.

It's like people are more involved in US politics than their national politics.

Racism is at least as prevalent - and far more out-in-the-open - in Europe than in the US. There should be BLM or equivalent protests all over Europe, frankly. It's shocking how openly racist Europeans are (whether eg Italians about Africans, Germans about anyone, or Europeans routinely about gypsies).

Ever gone on Reddit and looked at what Swedes say about refugees and immigrants (post ~2014 or so; in 2015 they were burning refugee camps)? The racist, anti-non-Swede, nationalism type is only going to get a lot worse there. The integration of refugees into Swedish society has been a complete failure, which you can see in the crime and employment outcomes. If it were the US, the blame would be squarely placed on racist behavior / dominant culture preventing the refugees from thriving.

I live in Sweden, but I think Europe is much less race-oriented (although classism is still a massive issue).

Like in the UK the Prime Minister, Home Secretary, and Scottish First Minister are all from immigrant family backgrounds.

As for the refugees, it's not so much racism as just a very difficult situation - a nation can't accept literally millions of young men with no language skills or qualifications and expect things to work out well.

The real question is why Europe has to deal with it when it was the USA which started the wars.

> I live in Sweden, but I think Europe is much less race-oriented (although classism is still a massive issue).

Europe is not less racist than the US. However, Europeans are much less used to reflecting on and taking about racism in their own countries than Americans are.

That reluctance to talk about race is exacerbated by the fact that, in many European counties (Sweden being one of them), it is either difficult or impossible to legally collect meaningful data about race, making it impossible to actually report on objective racial disparities and issues.

> The real question is why Europe has to deal with it when it was the USA which started the wars.

I see Europeans express sentiments like this quite often, and it's quite amusing. Racism isn't something foreign to Europe - Europe is literally the birthplace of white supremacist ideology, and racism has been ingrained in European society for centuries. It's quite ludicrous to pretend that it somehow evaporated overnight without cause, and even more absurd to make that assertion when there's copious evidence of direct and overt racism in across Europe literally every day.

While this might be true to some extent, a huge difference between the US and Europe is that in the EU the concept of identity revolves more around nationality than ethnicity/race.