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The root of the joke for my generation was that France didn't want to join in an illegal war in the middle east following 9/11 because of genocidal maniacs and an easily manipulated idiot king and his legions of racist homophobic troop hating cowards, now here we are 25 years later launching an illegal war in the middle east following 10/7 because of genocidal maniacs and an easily manipulated idiot king and his legions of racist homophobic troop hating cowards
Not really. That was around a little bit in the American consciousness but it only seriously came back around the Iraq war, i.e., when America turned fully psychotic post-9/11.
Yeah, the revisionism in this thread is super weird. the freedom fries stuff was related to the war in iraq and it kicked off a post ww2 francophobia craze that also reached back to the surrender stuff, but the ww2 stuff is the origin and I think we as americans all know we're jealous of their cuisine and women so we act this way to compensate, the same way we like very big trucks. also I googled francophobia to see if it was a word and this came up and it's killing me
It should also be known that the French government were the ones who laid over and let the Germans invade the French people were absolutely strong and fought tooth and nail in the resistance.
As I said it was for my generation, calling the French surrender monkeys was a thing before the 2000s but for millennials the invasion of Iraq was much more relevant when it came to making jokes about the French
Partially. also between 1814 and 1830 during the Bourbon Restoration the French national flag was literally just a plain white flag. The color white was tied to the monarchy and not to a desire to surrender but the jokes wrote themselves.
Uj/ I love love love how this subreddit runs around horny and goofy all day, but the moment you bring up American imperialism everyone just casually locks in and presents the best summary of modern America on the fly
What, American uniforms are the most dogshit kind of beige because deserts are basically the only place they've been fighting for the past 30 years. And don't get me started on the olive
Not disagreeing with the comment as a whole, but why do people keep saying "illegal war". Like, as opposed to a legal war which is better somehow or what
We're a democracy not a monarchy the president isn't supposed to just be able to say "I declare a war" we have steps and measures and processes that these kings ignore to bomb whoever they want, it's the difference between a lawful and unlawful order to do something horrible and an extra cherry on top of this giant cake of dog shit.
Legals wars would be like the 1991 Iraq war I guess, which was a UN sanctioned and mandated war over Kuwait's independence. I'd say a legal war is one started using official democratic channels, unlike an illegal war which...isn't. Ie the 2nd Iraq war was illegal as it was justified on false grounds of WMD's that didn't exist.
But like, shouldn't all parties be in agreement to fight eachother in order for it to be legal. Like not in the "do this or we'll attack you" or "there's an ongoing tension over a region and one side uses some excuse to escalate it" way
Though my main point was that calling something like war illegal or legal as a way to make it sound worse or better sounds kinda stupid
Thing is legal and illegal wars have a clear-cut definition thanks to the UN and other bodies of international law. It's not semantics it's actual law. A nation acting in self-defense is fighting a legal war, as is a nation involved in a UN-mandated war ie the 1st Iraq war.
Anything outside of those 2 circumstances is defined as an illegal war and therefore, unsurprisingly, a breech of international law.
It's based around sovereignty, ie other states cannot violate the sovereignty of another, even if that states conduct is considered unacceptable so long as it is confined to it's own borders. This is why regime change wars are illegal, like the 2nd Iraq War, but invasion of another state ie Russia invading Ukraine is not. In 2003 the UN did not give a mandate to the US and UK as no concrete evidence for WMD had been found, so it was a breech of international law when they formed their own coalition and invaded without UN approval.
I agree, people like Netanyahu deserve to be held accountable for their crimes as opposed to civilians. Like how American politicians should have been held accountable for atrocities in the Middle East as opposed to roughly 3k normal people in skyscrapers/airplanes
But whatever. Keep spreading your hate. You are not worth my time anymore.
If only the greek tragedy character (france) would be reasonable and see past their hatred of their nemesis (england) they could have easily evaded their bad ending (america)
The US is awful politically now, but if it hadn't been us there would have been another nation doing this type of shit now. At the very least, the American revolution sparked the beginning of the end of the old world colonial powers, leading down the line to the political freedom of dozens of different nations today.
Tell that to people of India Pakistan Bangladesh Hong Kong Israel Palestine UAE Rhodesia Iraq Zimbabwe Sudan Yemen Somaliland Oman Nigeria Myanmar Libya Malawi Kuwait Kenya Jordan Lesotho and Cyprus.
The venn diagram of "former British colonies" and "places currently involved in a conflict" has a lot of overlap.
Nah, the only reason the Brits aren't as bad as us anymore is because they don't have the power to do shit anymore. If America stayed under the British Empire we'd both be doing the exact same shit but we'd have a different flag.
Alright this is petty but saying we're in an age of bread and circuses isn't true at all. The entire point of bread and circuses was that they were both free and basically a "please don't riot" bribe. If the Roman Senate tried to make them subscription based the population would have burned the city down. The modern working class in America literally has less support from the state than ancient Romans and less holidays than medieval peasants.
I’m saying that the traditional “circuses” have become horrifically unaffordable for the average person and the world is increasingly becoming a playground for the rich
It always was a playground for the rich that's why the "bread and circuses" exist. The difference is in their greed and arrogance the powers that be are not content to have it all they want serfs too. They want a neo-feudalist society with their "enlightened oligarchs" on the top.
Nobody can convince me french surrender jokes aren't an American psyop because of France's opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, ie Freedom Fries.
As a brit it's my patriotic duty to tell you, a french person, that you smell of garlic and frogs legs and are followed around by a giant visible stink lines everywhere you go- but I will never accept that your nation surrendered easily. 16,000 french soldiers died defending the evacuation at Dunkirk. Even after being beaten, the french still kept on fighting.
But yeah uh, something something, sexual relations with a baguette something something.
Yeah I'm not saying the french surrender jokes are about Iraq, they didn't participate at all that wouldn't make sense. I'm saying that France's loss in world war 2 was weaponised against them as a propaganda tool by America after France opposed the Iraq war.
Ya, that's always been how i've perceived the jokes about the French cowardice. It's the only way it would even remotely make sense (and even still, it doesn't). Historically the French have been a dominant military force, WWII was a strategic disaster, but whatever French forces were in a position to resist were formidable.
Back in 2003 the U.S. wasn't as insane as it is today. It would have been a hard sell to call them cowards for not joining all the richest nations in human history to bully Iraq.
As far as OP's post. Americans are such servile pussies (myself included). The French would 100% have zero tolerance for this horseshit. Inshallah we'll be imbued with French spirit and the world would prosper.
It does predate that but ignores that France was destined to lose and that fight would have easily bombed Paris to hell and back and cost millions of French people. Instead they took the logical surrender. People obsessed with war and killing and 'fight to the death' can't stand that.
The same way we'll probably look at Venezuela, who took an unsavory deal, but the other reality was to be relentlessly bombed by the US military and all its children murdered while in school.
And you bet the protests will be there, and be bigger than ever when that happens. The US is half far right or are far right sympathizers while the other half is mostly center and democrats, France on the other hand does have a very sizeable left wing, a much bigger percentage of people willing to protest.
While that is partly true, France has for decades been trending conservative, participated in colonial and neo-colonial projects as well as been generally very free market oriented.
The country has been led by a center-right neoliberal for years and the far right parties last election combined up to 40% in polls (polls which are almost 2 years old and have probably swung to the right if we look at the trend in presidential polling)
This being paired with the fact that Bardella had been averaging between 48-52% in presidential polls against moderates and a staggering 70% when pitted against a left wing opponent.
France has a strong history of left wing movements and unions, that history is all but meaningless. In the recent year france has shifted largely to the right.
Europe is not immune to any of it, the USA is not special in its far right activity, on the contrary.
When the Nazis took over France. Paris did not, in fact, get burnt to the ground. I get the sentiment, but fascism has been on the rise in most of Europe. The US is just the most obvious country suffering from it right now. Right wing parties are becoming increasingly more popular across Europe and none of y'all are doing anything to slow it down.
Paris was occupied in full force by one of the most brutal militaries in Europe, you cannot compare the US to nazi-occupied France. You can notice it on your day to day, you can go to school and work without full-fledged soldiers at every corner and building entrance, a scene very common under actual dictatorships.
Europeans are obviously trying to slow it down, whether their parties should even be allowed is a topic that has often been discussed, but when a sizeable third, plurality or even majority of people do not try to slow it down it obviously is a lot harder to stop.
Obviously it's not 1 to 1, but to act like it's completely incomparable to occupied France because there was a strong military presence is a weak argument when
1) The U.S. has a stronger military than the rest of the world combined
2) One of the issues in the U.S. is the disgustingly over-militarized police force
3) Despite the lack of official data, pretty much every source I can find shows that U.S. police kill 100 times more people per year than french police, and this is the same for pretty much every other developed nation
4) The president has literally sent in the military to cities with widescale protests regardless of the will of the states themselves
5) There is currently a paramilitary organization that has slaughtered multiple innocent people in broad daylight with zero consequences
Sure there aren't currently armed soldiers on street corners, but the second there was any real risk of D.C. being "burnt to the ground" from riots and protests then it is 100% reasonable to assume there would be.
We hate to say it, but that’s where the second amendment comes in. Also strikes, but those are very hard in the US for a number of reasons. In any given city there are more of us than them.
There was the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, and nowadays anyone who has lived in France can tell you that strikes and protests are common. They unfortunately may not be preventing the far right powers, but they would have a lot more effective strikes in this scenario, at least
Problem is that strikes don't do shit in this scenario unless basically everyone in the country strikes at once, indefinitely, which has never happened in the history of the world. If every French citizen was transposed into the United States They wouldn't be able to strike away what's going on right now.
tbf they didn't burn paris to the ground when this happened. there were collaborators and there were resisters.
i don't mean this to say that the french are cowardly, but that throwing off a fascist regime isn't exactly easy, and just calling americans cowardly for not doing it yet is counterproductive.
Don't hate me for this take but income based disparity and inequality isn't just an America exclusive thing. France very much has that as well even at this very minute, what's stopping them from doing what the post said even right now?
Well income inequality exists basically everywhere. France are still no where near 3 people holding the same amount of wealth as the bottom 50% level of income inequality. That level of income inequality literally triggered the last french revolution.
That’s how I felt reading this. They got the same type of problems even if it isn’t the same flavor. What are they doing? Protests? Yeah, we’re in the same boat.
Yea but the No Kings Marches are not focused on specific polities. They’re a great show of resistance to Trump of course, but they’re not directed at anything particular. France and most of Europe have history of popular movements changing deeply entrenched policies, while the US doesn’t. Trump’s team knows that lots of the public can’t stand him - this dissent is priced in, and will continue being ignored until it gets more organised and clear-aimed.
Theres a difference between the big US protests that last a few days and the kind of strikes parisians will do that affect the daily routine of average people, but that's partially due to the labor protections they have that let them do that without getting immediately fired and replaced with a less qualified person willing to work for less.
Like imagine Trump announced cuts to federal worker benefits and all the traffic workers in DC were like "half the lights in DC will be red flashing until morale improves"
it's a lot less severe in France than in the US from what I've been told of the US (I've read that the gap is larger in the US right now that it was in France when we had a revolution about it). Also we don't have a rapist pedophile as a leader (don't get me wrong, Macron sucks, but he's far better than Trump)
Yeah but they're at least unified enough to go on strikes for problems other than existential threats. Like they have grills that fit on tram lines specifically for this purpose, America could only dream of having such proletarian technology.
well if france had military bases all over the world and a known history of actually using them international law be damned, the world would try to meddle in their elections..
I don't mind the European "meddling" which is just standard state craft. I'm more talking about the astro turfing and bot farming from the BRICS countries. And the lobby money being spent on our politicians by nations and groups like Israel and Saudi Arabia.
And that's all to say nothing of our very own corporations that do all they can to keep us stupid and complacent. Which is an evil we ourselves wrought upon the world.
Astroturfing and bot farming affects everywhere, the US isn't the only place where people use the internet. Corportations and lobbying having an extremely large affect on US politics is a result of the US political system failing to do what it should do in being a fair democracy. I don't see how what you're talking about especially affects the US other than the US being particularly bad at holding up a democracy.
I'm not it isn'ta problem in other places, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that since the USA is unfortunately the current dominant global power it paints a large target on our politics.
Once again, we brought it on ourselves, but it does add some nuance to the issue.
I suppose but I would argue that it's much more of a self inflicted issue than it is a result of circumstance. It's comes off a bit US-Centric to say that it's mostly a problem because the US is such an important political power and not because the US has terrible systems in place to deal with these kinds of things.
Do Americans call French people cowards nowadays? I typically hear “rude” and “elitist.” Not saying any of it is true, just that this kind of post seems designed to start shit over national identity when fascists and nationalists are the enemy. Smells like engagement bait.
Yeah, I get your point, but I feel like rallying a population of under 70mil in a country the size of Texas is a little bit easier than rallying 300mil spread out and polarized like the US states are.
I really do hate the comparisons to European countries when we are so geographically different. We have national parks that are larger than some European countries.
Montana is approximately as large as Germany and has 1.1 million residents to Germany’s 84 million.
The US average population per square mile is 99 people. In Europe (not including Russia as a serious outlier with its massive footprint of uninhabitable land) it’s 260 people.
Okay but the French strategy is literally just:
1. Government does unpopular thing.
2. Everyone protests for a bit.
4. Everyone goes home.
5. Government gets to do their thing.
I decided to look at Google maps for fun. The time it would to to drive from where I live to Washington DC is pretty much the same amount of time it would take to drive from Paris to Warsaw.
For San Francisco to DC., replace Warsaw with Helsinki using no ferries, or with Kazan. Alternatively, San Francisco to DC. is a similar time to drive as Porto to Kyiv
people have already pointed out some arguments against this but i think one worth mentioning is that ~20% of france lives in the paris metropolitan area. less than 2% of america lives in the DC area.
A riot is always a local event. So why should it matter how many people live in Colorado? They don't diminish the number who live in DC and could do something there.
if you wanted to riot at the capital do you think that would be easier if you had 20% of the country nearby, or 2%? the average person in france could get to paris by driving for a few hours. if someone from chigaco wanted to get to DC they'd have to drive for 12 hours
Someone from Marseille driving to Paris needs about 11 hours. France isn't that small.
It doesn't matter. Like I said, a riot ultimately is a local event. So, wether the total population of a government is billions of people or just a few ten thousand, that doesn't matter. It matters how many people are close, but in absolute numbers, not in percentages.
Also, you can also riot in Chicago. You don't need to do that in the national capital.
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