bownage

Good on ya, fuck reddit, we don't need reddit

What's driving them? My educated guess would be your usual blend of misinformation, xenophobia and egotism / fear of losing what they perceive (and are told, by like minds) to be their birthright.

Symptoms include but are not limited to:

• othering minorities
• racism
• fear of trans people
• telling n-th generation Dutch people who happen to be not white to 'go back to their own country' (an all time favourite)
• fear of refugees (only when they're brown of course, no problem accepting Ukrainian refugees)
• violent protests against local govt when they announce a new refugee center
• nationalism
• misplaced nostalgia for when we were a 'proper' country (think white)

Probably forgot some but you get the idea. Then there's also some flavours that are just straight up fascism like Forum voor Democratie.

Recent low point includes above party initiating a motion to mark antifa as a terrorist organisation (they wish they were trump so bad) and it being passed in parliament by a majority (all the right wing parties summed) because no one bothered to think about it for even 2 seconds.

D66 is that, yes.

What I'm saying is that the far right parties, summed together, went from 40 to 42 (out of 150) seats and so their threat is still as real as it ever was. ('proper' left parties are ~30 seats taken together, for reference, everything else is relatively center)

In other words, just because PVV isn't the biggest party in parliament anymore and won't be in charge of forming a cabinet, the voters' sympathy for far right policies is still alive and kicking.

I definitely wouldn't say people are turning the page on them, it's definitely still a very real and sizable threat to our democracies. Managing to keep them out of power by the skin of our teeth is the best we got right now.

Most hopeful thing re: populism that happened in the Netherlands so far is that our local trump crashed the cabinet but that's barely changed people's minds on blaming minorities for their problems, they just picked different representatives for it this time around.

Well yes, but also no.

Far right hardly suffered losses, their seats in parliament just shuffled around a bit meaning one of the far right parties is no longer the largest in parliament like last election. Which cleared the way for a gay PM, which we love.

His mysoginist comments from the campaign trail are duly noted though 👀

Matt Berry :(

Congrats!!!! That's such great news 🥰

We're so in sync bestie

Thank you!!! I'm doing both lobes at once cause fuck it I know I'll want both anyway 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

Love that for you!!! I'm gonna get my ears pierced soon as well, I'm so excited 😭😭😭

Hahahahahaha hahahahahaha idiot

I definitely relate to some extent. I also joined around this time and was glad to see a queer friendly space here. I'd just gotten into /r/196 a couple months prior and during the blackouts I saw several people suggest this place, so it seemed like a good idea to continue that vibe. Now, it's obviously not the same place, and I'm happy that this is not 196. We have 196 at home hehe.

Anyway, I joined beehaw around the same time that I started seriously exploring my gender identity and presentation. It's been very nice to have a space with sane individuals who don't judge me. We don't always get that in real life.

To me beehaw is like a friendly third space where I don't see any of my personal life echoing around like I would on mainstream social media and I really appreciate that.

I haven't often used this space to get help from people, but I really do appreciate the queer vibes and respect :)

Edit: forgot to answer part of the question.

I think I'm privileged to have loved ones around me that can validate my feelings and respect my gender journey/struggle but I think in a way I was definitely happy to find a place online where I could just be me without judgement.