Just had a company event and out of nowhere they all started talking about ma freeze peach and how China is “literally 1984” and how we can see that our main conflicts nowadays are between “evil autocracy” and “democracy with western values where it could never happen that the press is lying”. I had to bite my tongue so hard the entire time, which I think they noticed. In the end I just said that I don’t want to provoke the inevitable world war 3 even more, which killed the mood hard lol.
It’s so frustrating to be alone in a group of “intellectuals”… Especially if you need to stay civil to not get fired.
How is it in regards to more social issues like racism, lgbtq rights, etc? I might have to check out my neighbour country some time :)
Far right extremism is a big problem, especially in Flanders. There’s problems with racism and segregation still.
LGBTQ+ rights are decent I think. Trans people have no huge problems with transitioning or changing gender as far as I know. Being openly gay or bi, especially in big cities, doesn’t give you much problems. But it needs work still. But in general it’s pretty good, just not perfect yet.
I would like to add to this regarding the far right thing: there’s also a strong left block to counter the far right movements. For example, this far right nutjob is touring the country with a book about the great replacement theory and every school he gets to, there are protests. Today’s protest, for example, consisted of 800 people waiting for him at the entrance. A couple of weeks ago he was in our city where he was met with several hundreds of protesters as well. So they don’t get a free pass to do what they want.
Here’s a pic from today for example
Sounds about as good as it gets in western Europe! Thanks for explaining :)