To answer your prior question: all over the internet. They are especially prevalent on youtube. I usually chalk them up to being Russian trolls, but I have also seen examples of real Americans holding these opinions towards Europe. Some of them were youtubers I was subscribed to for years, who became radicalized trump lovers and while I generally do not unsub from creators whose political opinions I disagree with, I just had enough of the aggressive anti-European rhetoric, that 9 time out of 10 was based upon lies or ignorance. I have even heard shit like "Europe has no freedom of speech" and then they use Britain's strict speech laws to paint all of Europe with that same brush. Be like me saying that all of America is anti abortion and that no place allows for women to have an abortion just because some states have either outlawed it or narrowed the rules around legal abortion.

The narrative that Europe is weak and "sends strongly worded letters" has more or less been used for mockery and killing our spirit since Putin sent missiles toward Kiyv in 2022.

Europe is not an innocent Saint who cannot be criticized and we definitely have been way too trusting and naive, but we are not stupid and we are not weak. The only people who repeat this sentiment over and over and over are our enemies who want to destabilize, divide and destroy us so that Putin and Trump can fight over who gets what piece of Europe in the end.

That is very clear to me and I fucking refuse to fall for that shit.

Ps, no hard feelings about you asking btw. It is valid to ask when you are in doubt of something. I do that all the time.

[–] wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Fair enough. I only interact with Lemmy, nebula and dropout, so I don't really see that side of things (the few YouTube things I can't get on nebula are science-related, so they're fairly unlikely to join the Turd Reich)