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Comment by badpun | Hacker News Reader

By your metric, the most "socially backward" country that joined the EU was the United Kingdom, as its the only one that actually exited so far.

EDIT: regarding your edit - yep, Ukraine is currently a very backwards and crappy country, basically no better than Russia. While Russia is propped up by infinite monies flowing from the ground, Ukraine doesn't have it, so it's much more dilapidated. It's a small miracle that it didn't collapse economically and became Putin's client, just as Belarus had before. However, the one huge difference is that Ukraine doesn't have centuries of imperialistic and autocractic traditions that define Russia - so, it's population is not excited about subjugating other nations, and is ok with democracy as a form of government.

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Last time I checked the UK didn’t have to face widespread homophobic attacks conducted by groups advocating discrimination and violence, widespread gender-based violence, ineffective investigation of violence against journalists, impunity of police and issues relating to bringing torturers to justice. Because that was the reality in Ukraine before the war.

Yeah maybe check again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LG...

Considering the rest of your comment picturing Ukraine as some backwater (post)soviet hell hole: You've never been there. You've never even talked to someone from there.

I don't think that has anything to do with it. The UK is not at all normal socially though.

It's a very strange country, what its lack of respect for freedom of speech etcetera. It's been formalizing its authoritarian excesses and made them normal, and I get the impression that the British have gotten used to it and accept it as the way things should be.

I can't read Hungarian or Polish, so maybe I don't see these things, but I don't feel that Poles or Hungarians have internalized a view that they can't say what they mean in the way that I feel that the Brits have, so while you may be intending some kind of irony in your remark, Britain may in fact be the most backwards country, socially, in Europe.

The Brits seem to feel that punishment of people who are in the way, or inconvenient, or challenging the state is legitimate.

> Britain may in fact be the most backwards country, socially, in Europe*

Probably time to go and touch some grass

* apparently the op has gone back to edit this out of their original comment

Yes, but surely freedom of speech, the right to protest etc. are much more basic than the stuff the Polish dislike?

As long as the Poles and Hungarians aren't arresting people willy-nilly for protesting or writing things on the internet then they're not even in the same league as the Brits when it comes to social regression.

> surely freedom of speech, the right to protest [are the fundamental determinants of social progression]

a) No, that's pretty arbitrary. Every country has limits on freedom of speech and expression, and they all draw the line in different places.

b) It is 100% not illegal to express an opinion that Charles isn't fit to be king, that the monarchy should be abolished and so on. No end of people saying just that on the radio, on the TV, in print, etc

c) Protest remains legal; there was a large protest about the shooting of Chris Kaba this weekend

d) Picketing funerals is considered a breach of the peace, and a public order offense

To use point D to claim the UK is the most socially backward country in Europe is to have spent faaaar too long online.

Surely however, democratic society has its foundation in these things.

Without freedom of speech, we don't a free formation of ideas in society, so there can be no legitimate elections. Without freedom to protest and to have political gatherings we don't have freedom to communicate ideas to people who don't see them, and then again, we don't have prerequisites for a functioning democracy

I think a) is very dubious-- even things like the 'crying fire in a crowded theater' are associated with suppression of speech that afterwards could be seen to be deeply illegitimate, so even the US assurances concerning free speech are likely to be much too weak.

With regard to b) people have despite this been arrested in the context of remarks such as 'fuck imperialism', similarly with regard to c), perfectly nonviolent protesters have been arrested, even charged.

d) is not relevant, for the context of at least these arrests and charges has been the proclamation of Charles as King and if the proclamation is mixed with the funeral, such an mixing of the ceremonies is outside of the control of those who wish to protest the proclamation.

You are now changing your argument from "Britain may in fact be the most backwards country, socially" to "Britain doesn't have a functioning democracy".

Every country on earth has forms of expression that aren't protected. I'm sorry you don't like that, but it doesn't make it any less true.

People have not been arrested because they said "fuck imperialism". Here, I'll say it now. Fuck Imperialism! There is zero chance I will get in any legal issue in the UK for this, and I also believe that you know this full well. Once more with feeling, fuck imperialism!

In the UK, as in almost every country, violence isn't the sole determinant of whether or not a protest is legal. In the US for example, the degree to which you obstruct traffic is important to the legality of your protest.

To, me democracy is something social and at the core of the social functioning of a country. However, these things are prerequisites for democracy, they are not democracy itself and are much more connected to social progress than democracy itself.

That some countries go further than the UK does not change how to view what has been aid.

People have been arrested because of a placard where the offensive element was the word 'fuck' in the sentence 'Fuck imperialism' near an event relating to the proclamation of Charles as King. It has been a major story and has been decried as illegitimate by the British press. Indeed, there is a case of a lawyer being threatened with arrest after expressing the intent to write 'Not my King' on it (https://metro.co.uk/2022/09/13/man-threatened-with-arrest-if...).

Your last remark is not relevant, because such things have not been alleged in any of these cases.

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