1 hour ago
(This post was last modified: 1 hour ago by C C.)
EAST OF THE WEST
https://youtu.be/ORmrfTutjmo
VIDEO EXCERPTS: Why is it that Eastern Europe is frowning upon gay people? Why is it that the Balkans think that Western Europe is far too liberal and soft? Why are same-sex marriages illegal in most Eastern European states? Why are Eastern European leaders making sure to keep it this way? And why is it very likely to not see this trend change anytime soon? Let's try to answer these questions and make the current situation make sense.
Let's stop pretending Europe is one big happy family. We are constantly told this fairy tale about a perfectly united continent, a Europe where politics and society work together, where everyone shares the same values and understands each other. But if you look at the actual numbers, that story just isn't true. When it comes to social issues, especially accepting LGBTQ people, Europe is split completely in half. It's a divided mess full of double standards.
And the dividing line looks exactly like the old Iron Curtain. I have walked the streets of the Balkans for over 10 years. In all that time, I've seen fewer than a handful of same-sex couples openly together. And that's me being generous. In this video, I'm not going to argue for or against it. I'm not taking sides. I'm just trying to explain why I think things are this way. Any Westerner visiting the Balkans will notice how traditional life is over here.
In the West, you have politicians wrapping themselves in rainbow flags. They're constantly praising themselves for being so modern and accepting of others. In the east, you have governments winning elections by huge margins by saying those same flags represent a dangerous foreign threat to their countries. And everyone is shouting.
No one is actually listening. Western leaders act like they're better than the East. They treat Eastern European countries like children who are behind the times and behaving badly. Children who just need Brussels to teach them a lesson and make them follow the rules.
Eastern leaders criticize the West right back. They describe Western Europe as a society that's lost its values and is falling apart. They say it only cares about issues of identity like gender and sexuality while its economy and communities fall apart. Both sides are playing a dishonest game. Both sides are using this issue to hold on to power and turn attention away from their own failures.
Today we're going to look past the way both sides play with our emotions. We're not taking sides, and we're not judging what's right or wrong. We're going to set our emotions aside and look closely at why this huge divide exists. Because if you really want to understand modern Europe, you have to understand how this fight over values works.
To understand the present, you have to look back at the past. The biggest reason for this divide is history. For 40 years, Eastern and Western Europe lived in completely different worlds. In the 1960s and 1970s, Western European society went through huge changes that continued for years. Attitude towards sex was changing. People were fighting for equal rights and forming groups to push for change. People were protesting in the streets, questioning traditional rules and demanding that governments respect their personal freedoms.
Over the years, governments slowly began to respond to these demands from ordinary people, even when they didn't want to. Now look at the east. During the exact same period, countries like Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria were under strict communist rule. The government controlled absolutely everything. There was no room to live your own way. There was even less room for ordinary people to start a movement about sexuality. The group was everything, and the individual was nothing.
What mattered was surviving and following the rules, not expressing yourself. If you try to organize any political or social movement outside government control, the secret police would crush it. So the east missed out on the decades of slow social change that happened naturally in the West. When the Berlin Wall fell, the East was suddenly pushed into a modern, connected world. But you can't force 40 years of social change to happen overnight.
This brings us to the second major reason, money. The numbers show a direct link between how wealthy a society is and how open it is to social change. It's basic psychology. You can look at Maslow's theory of human needs. Basic needs come first. When people are struggling to put food on the table, debates about social issues don't come first. In the 1990s, Eastern Europe went through sudden and painful economic changes.
[...] Then there's the role of religion, which works completely different on either side of the continent. In Western Europe, religion has been losing its influence for well over 100 years. Far fewer people go to church. Religion is mostly seen as a private matter kept separate from government decisions. In Eastern Europe, the story is the exact opposite. Under communism, governments placed severe limits on religion. The church was one of the very few organizations that quietly stood against those controlling governments.
So when the communism finally collapsed, the church didn't just return as a religious organization. It became a powerful symbol of the nation, its survival, and its history of standing up to those in power. In places where Catholicism is strong or where most people follow the Orthodox Church, religion became closely linked to love for your country. And those churches strongly support traditional values. They promote strict ideas about family and the roles of men and women as the foundation of a stable society.
When Western organizations push for LGBTQ acceptance, local churches in the East describe it in a very specific way. They don't describe it as a human rights issue. They describe it as a direct attack on who they are as a nation and on their recently regained right to govern themselves. They present themselves as the strongest defenders of traditional European values against the West that's turned away from religion and lost its sense of right and wrong.
This brings us to the most dishonest part of the story. How politicians use this issue as a weapon. Politicians on both sides use this cultural divide to hold on to power. In the West, politicians who support social change use LGBTQ rights to judge how civilized a country is. They use these rights to show voters how good and fair they are. They also use them as a reason to cut EU funding or take political action to punish Eastern countries. It becomes a very useful way to claim that the West is better and should have more power within the European Union.
In the east, politicians who put national identity first are just as willing to play with people's fears. They desperately need an enemy to bring their voters together because many of these governments can't fix their country's deeper economic problems. They can't stop the huge number of young people leaving for better jobs in the West. So they create a fight over values. They point to LGBTQ rights and say, "Look at what the West is trying to force on us."
They describe it as the West trying to control them by forcing its beliefs on them. They tell voters that Brussels wants to destroy their traditional family, religion, and national identity. It's an incredibly effective way to win political support. By focusing all the attention on one social issue, they turn people's attention away from corruption at home, an economy that isn't growing, and roads and public systems that are completely falling apart.
But if you look past the loud political arguments in Brussels and the national capitals, everyday life is much more complicated. The divide isn't just east versus west. It's old versus young and cities versus the countryside...
Why do Eastern Europeans dislike LGBT+? ... https://youtu.be/ORmrfTutjmo
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ORmrfTutjmo
https://youtu.be/ORmrfTutjmo
VIDEO EXCERPTS: Why is it that Eastern Europe is frowning upon gay people? Why is it that the Balkans think that Western Europe is far too liberal and soft? Why are same-sex marriages illegal in most Eastern European states? Why are Eastern European leaders making sure to keep it this way? And why is it very likely to not see this trend change anytime soon? Let's try to answer these questions and make the current situation make sense.
Let's stop pretending Europe is one big happy family. We are constantly told this fairy tale about a perfectly united continent, a Europe where politics and society work together, where everyone shares the same values and understands each other. But if you look at the actual numbers, that story just isn't true. When it comes to social issues, especially accepting LGBTQ people, Europe is split completely in half. It's a divided mess full of double standards.
And the dividing line looks exactly like the old Iron Curtain. I have walked the streets of the Balkans for over 10 years. In all that time, I've seen fewer than a handful of same-sex couples openly together. And that's me being generous. In this video, I'm not going to argue for or against it. I'm not taking sides. I'm just trying to explain why I think things are this way. Any Westerner visiting the Balkans will notice how traditional life is over here.
In the West, you have politicians wrapping themselves in rainbow flags. They're constantly praising themselves for being so modern and accepting of others. In the east, you have governments winning elections by huge margins by saying those same flags represent a dangerous foreign threat to their countries. And everyone is shouting.
No one is actually listening. Western leaders act like they're better than the East. They treat Eastern European countries like children who are behind the times and behaving badly. Children who just need Brussels to teach them a lesson and make them follow the rules.
Eastern leaders criticize the West right back. They describe Western Europe as a society that's lost its values and is falling apart. They say it only cares about issues of identity like gender and sexuality while its economy and communities fall apart. Both sides are playing a dishonest game. Both sides are using this issue to hold on to power and turn attention away from their own failures.
Today we're going to look past the way both sides play with our emotions. We're not taking sides, and we're not judging what's right or wrong. We're going to set our emotions aside and look closely at why this huge divide exists. Because if you really want to understand modern Europe, you have to understand how this fight over values works.
To understand the present, you have to look back at the past. The biggest reason for this divide is history. For 40 years, Eastern and Western Europe lived in completely different worlds. In the 1960s and 1970s, Western European society went through huge changes that continued for years. Attitude towards sex was changing. People were fighting for equal rights and forming groups to push for change. People were protesting in the streets, questioning traditional rules and demanding that governments respect their personal freedoms.
Over the years, governments slowly began to respond to these demands from ordinary people, even when they didn't want to. Now look at the east. During the exact same period, countries like Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria were under strict communist rule. The government controlled absolutely everything. There was no room to live your own way. There was even less room for ordinary people to start a movement about sexuality. The group was everything, and the individual was nothing.
What mattered was surviving and following the rules, not expressing yourself. If you try to organize any political or social movement outside government control, the secret police would crush it. So the east missed out on the decades of slow social change that happened naturally in the West. When the Berlin Wall fell, the East was suddenly pushed into a modern, connected world. But you can't force 40 years of social change to happen overnight.
This brings us to the second major reason, money. The numbers show a direct link between how wealthy a society is and how open it is to social change. It's basic psychology. You can look at Maslow's theory of human needs. Basic needs come first. When people are struggling to put food on the table, debates about social issues don't come first. In the 1990s, Eastern Europe went through sudden and painful economic changes.
[...] Then there's the role of religion, which works completely different on either side of the continent. In Western Europe, religion has been losing its influence for well over 100 years. Far fewer people go to church. Religion is mostly seen as a private matter kept separate from government decisions. In Eastern Europe, the story is the exact opposite. Under communism, governments placed severe limits on religion. The church was one of the very few organizations that quietly stood against those controlling governments.
So when the communism finally collapsed, the church didn't just return as a religious organization. It became a powerful symbol of the nation, its survival, and its history of standing up to those in power. In places where Catholicism is strong or where most people follow the Orthodox Church, religion became closely linked to love for your country. And those churches strongly support traditional values. They promote strict ideas about family and the roles of men and women as the foundation of a stable society.
When Western organizations push for LGBTQ acceptance, local churches in the East describe it in a very specific way. They don't describe it as a human rights issue. They describe it as a direct attack on who they are as a nation and on their recently regained right to govern themselves. They present themselves as the strongest defenders of traditional European values against the West that's turned away from religion and lost its sense of right and wrong.
This brings us to the most dishonest part of the story. How politicians use this issue as a weapon. Politicians on both sides use this cultural divide to hold on to power. In the West, politicians who support social change use LGBTQ rights to judge how civilized a country is. They use these rights to show voters how good and fair they are. They also use them as a reason to cut EU funding or take political action to punish Eastern countries. It becomes a very useful way to claim that the West is better and should have more power within the European Union.
In the east, politicians who put national identity first are just as willing to play with people's fears. They desperately need an enemy to bring their voters together because many of these governments can't fix their country's deeper economic problems. They can't stop the huge number of young people leaving for better jobs in the West. So they create a fight over values. They point to LGBTQ rights and say, "Look at what the West is trying to force on us."
They describe it as the West trying to control them by forcing its beliefs on them. They tell voters that Brussels wants to destroy their traditional family, religion, and national identity. It's an incredibly effective way to win political support. By focusing all the attention on one social issue, they turn people's attention away from corruption at home, an economy that isn't growing, and roads and public systems that are completely falling apart.
But if you look past the loud political arguments in Brussels and the national capitals, everyday life is much more complicated. The divide isn't just east versus west. It's old versus young and cities versus the countryside...
Why do Eastern Europeans dislike LGBT+? ... https://youtu.be/ORmrfTutjmo
