Meanwhile in the Real World
Europe and US crime numbers continue to decline, despite rightwing mangling of reality to instill fear of the "other"
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A theme emerged during my recent appearance on The Thom Hartmann Program:
As we discussed my report on the closure of hundreds of Trump Organization accounts due to anti-money laundering probes, as well as my report on the ways France is hardening against propaganda and social media manipulations, I realized that what we are really talking about is the fact-based world versus the alternate world autocrats invent and then try to force people to live in.
As I wrote in my American Overthrow book review, autocrats lie to exert power over us. With this awareness, it becomes ever more clear that reporting facts consistently should be the default. Trump says shocking shite daily. Elon Musk amplifies liars as he breathes. Their racist slurs are designed to make people fear the “other” — an old fascist ploy.
All this, to disable truth and continue to push the remnants of the democratic world further toward autocratic capture.
Meanwhile, in the real world, crime in both the EU and the US continues to decline.
According to a new report, residential burglaries in the EU are down by 38% in a decade. Burglaries in the EU declined by 35.4% in 2024, from 1.86 million cases in 2014, registering a continuous decrease until 2021 (1.1 million), when it reached the lowest value in the 10-year analysis.
Compared with 2014, residential burglaries dropped in 2024 by 38.1%, from 1.17 million cases in 2014, recording the same evolution as the main category.
In addition, in western European countries such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain, murders have fallen by 30% to more than 50% since the late 1990s. Italy's annual murder tally has fallen from 1,917 in 1991 to 327 in 2024, giving it one of the lowest rates in the EU.
Despite these facts, polls continue to show that Western Europeans believe crime is rising.
Now, why would that be?
Could it be the “influencers” paid to tell people that Europe is so scary, and that immigrants are your enemy? Or the pro-Russian politicians who jump on every video clip with brown people and start reciting Nazi talking points with the fervor of Joseph Goebbels.
None of this stuff is new, but social media spreads their lies wildly.
In the US, a new Axios report shows the decline in violent crimes “now spans two presidencies — it began falling under President Biden after the pandemic-era surge, and has kept dropping under President Trump.”
According to the report:
Trump came into office casting America as being overrun by crime at a time when the numbers were already declining dramatically.
Axios notes that “Trump falsely singled out Aurora, Colorado as a city “being overrun by Venezuelan immigrant gangs” during the 2024 election. But in fact, it saw a 58.8% drop in homicides.
So facts: crime is down across multiple metrics in both the EU and the US. And in the US, the decline began under Joe Biden’s watch.
And yet, Trump’s MO is to instill fear in Americans by targeting people of color.
In 2024, he told you Haitians were eating your pets.
On Monday, he ranted against people of Somali descent.
In 2015, he launched his campaign by slandering people from Mexico.
“[Mexico] are sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and their rapists.”
The pot calling the kettle black.
With important elections coming up both in the US and the EU, as well as the French presidential election in 2027, don’t let autocrats subjugate you by making you fear your neighbors.
Democracy dies when you vote for politicians whose only true goal is to enslave you.
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