1d ago

Is it time to get serious?

Most "Buy European" initiatives that I've seen are quite uncoordinated and disorganised. It's very grassroots. That's not bad, but maybe we could do better.

What do I mean by better? Well, imagine if there were ads in public transport, flyers in your mailbox, stickers, t-shirts and other merch, awareness campaigns on social media, a common database for European alternatives, outreach to businesses, partners, and even political affiliations.

I made a sticker, but I'm not a graphic designer. I asked about translations, but we don't have a place to really store that information. We don't have some kind of platform where we can organise stuff without the algorithm just hiding it after a day.

When a US company starts selling stuff in Europe, many people will know about it because of these things. It'll generate chatter and translate into action or purchases. This doesn't just count for products, but political campaigns, and so on. There's a directed, concerted effort, which we lack and probably waiting on some company or politician to get their lips off of a big tech donor's buttcheek will take a while.

Most people I know are barely aware of the Buy European movement. It's either not translated or it's in media they don't follow, but getting a flyer in your mail, seeing an ad on TV or while standing at a bus station, hearing a politician or influencer talk about it, will make people more aware.

Is this something we want? If so, how can we do it? Do we start an NGO? Reach out to a political party like Volt Europa (Although they don't seem to be on the fediverse)

29 comments

If you're really serious that people should buy more European, then essentially tariffs are the economical way to do it. People can still buy stuff from around the world, but they pay some extra if they want to buy from outside EU.

I say it would be a nice step forward. One step after another, this is how we May proceed.
I did not realize how deep american brands are settled in our habits and economy. Almost every succesfull brands here, since our childhood hase be bought by an american firm.
It's a first step that we understand that. And it is not only about turning out back on american brands, it's also about trying to make better for a better world.
My words may be naïve. I know. We won't replace every american product in 2 years, but we gain consciousness. So keeping on educating ourselves is one way to go forward.
It's more about changing ourselves than hating americans, for what they represent today is just what we are but maybe worse. We should not replace one bad habit with another but take the opportunity to be better.
- Honestly if y’all keep up this energy and keep investing in local goods, you could very well see a total flip on American products within two years. Stores don’t sell things that don’t sell for long. It doesn’t even have to be totally morally driven, the way this is shaking out it makes financial sense to carry non-american products.

I love M&Ms seriously, i buy a big pack like every week but i stopped since Trump went all craycray, its a hard (but healthy) fight, i haven't found an alterative yet.
- Well done, one step at a time.

"We don't have some kind of platform where we can organise stuff without the algorithm just hiding it after a day"
theres a server/forum on Revolt called "EU Vibes" that would be a bit better for organising things than here or on mastodon. https://rvlt.gg/eSHZgSP9
they mention BuyEuropean and BuyFromEU in their description so im guessing it was set up recently enough.
Revolt is a Discord alternative if anyone isnt familar. its based in the UK but beggers cant be choosers eh!
- I have tried so many times to hang out on revolt but literally every server I have joined becomes a graveyard within a month. Has anyone found a good tool for seamlessly migrating a discord server over? Asking people to go through the steps to join a new platform and leave their old one is always a lot. Anything that could make that transition more seamless would be great
- This community has a linked in the sidebar for a Matrix space. Federated so people from anyone Matrix account can join
  https://matrix.to/#/#buyeuropean:matrix.org
  
  I've joined the room from another server, but messages posted before me are displayed as "You don't have access to this message". Is this a normal feature of Matrix, a peculiar feature of the server, or a bug? (I'm very new to Matrix and Element)
- Well, buy european seems to include the UK as well. Some would even argue Canada. This forum is literally hosted on Feddit.UK

Let's make a wiki to store ideas. I'll looking forward to it and would apply for a mod postition because I really like that idea.
- being able to store things would be a great help. like being able to have all the different flyers that people are making in one place so others can pick and choose what they want, or even have the original .svg or .xcf files if people want to modify them or make a translated version

Reach out to a political party like Volt Europa (Although they don't seem to be on the fediverse)
I'm surprised as well, but some national parties chapters are on Mastadon:
Germany 🇩🇪 https://mstdn.social/@voltdeutschland The Netherlands 🇳🇱 https://mastodon.nl/@voltnederland UK 🇬🇧 https://toot.community/@Voltuk
Also a lot of local chapters do, not gonna link them. They seem to prefer to be on Bluesky, this is a link to the European account: https://bsky.app/profile/volteuropa.org
On their website they list their MEPs, but none contain social links to Mastadon or Bluesky, didn't check whether they are actually on either of them

Just want to add that we shouldn't neglect word of mouth as a useful transmission vector. Anecdotal, but I've started dropping the idea in conversations with the people I know (most conversations inevitably drift to the state of things, so it's not that hard to squeeze it in), and most started focusing on that. A couple of explanations and memes later, and they started reconsidering their shopping habits.
I think we're reaching the point where the level of degradation is high enough to be immediately noticeable, which means people are becoming receptive, if only through survival mechanisms. As you've said, most people are simply functioning based on incomplete data, and this particular boycot is like a lite variant, mildly irksome at best. Easier to switch from Coke to American Cola (I'm not kidding, this is an actual fizzy Coke clone made by European Drinks - now discontinued, I believe...), or whatever else there is.
I do completely agree that a public, official campaign for this would speed things along greatly. I'd second trying to see if Volt wouldn't be interested in including this idea in some of their campaigns. Could also talk to local councils/whatever form of local government is available about this, maybe it could even merge with promoting local products in some areas (my home town has a lot of supermarkets which import apples, even though it's actually pretty renown for its apple orchards and natural apple juice, it's downright stupid...). This would imply creating some reading material at least, but wouldn't need to do much more than explain the movement, then send the readers to an accessible (and mobile-friendly!) web page with more info ("buyeuropean.eu" has a nice vibe to it).
Edit: another long shot would be trying to talk to local businesses and see if they won't carry some info material, like have a "Pop!" poster with the concept somewhere, or even carry pamphlets. Most local businesses are very good nodes for transmission because everyone knows the local shopkeep, and the local shopkeep knows everyone. Sure, it's not in their immediate interest to have people refusing to buy their stock of American products, but the process should be slow enough to allow them to adjust their suppliers. A 1-2 month timeline, thereabouts. Unless they have longer-term contracts, but I don't know how those stand now that Liberation Day has happened [Heh, remember ~~Michael Bay's~~ Emmerich's (my brain is melting...) Independence Day? Yeah, they called it Liberation Day, too. Better plot than IRL...]
Edit 2: I'm an idiot! These exist, apparently. Yeah, we need a campaign=)))
- I feel word of mouth has already given the movement media coverage, not like big protest get talked about but a lot more than some other 'ideas for a better world' get mentioned by mass media. I think the organic spread by physical word of mouth and digital word of mouth is the actual foundation making this happen.
  You mention there needs to be reading material, there are a few websites that try to do this, I'll look them up in a moment and post them as a comment in this thread. Edit: they are pinned posts in the community, so I guess they're easy enough to find:
  https://buy-european.net/
  https://better-tech.eu/tldr/
  https://gohug.eu/
  What you're saying about local businesses might work, but bigger business might be open to this idea as well. There is a lot of globally operating companies that do not explicitly say they're a European company, maybe if they receive messages about this they are willing to put more emphasis on this. Just after the war in Ukraine started all of a sudden some services I used mentioned being developed in Ukraine but I never realised and wouldn't have cared before, but know this made me appreciate them more.
  
  Agreed, but I'm thinking of the people who aren't fully digital, which make up a large portion of the population (at least here in Romania).
  The nice Auntie next door who barely watches anything on TV beyond the evening news and folk music shows most likely won't catch word of this unless I tell her about it (and if she will, she probably won't really get it). And I am absolutely certain she'd love chatting about groceries for a while!

Y’all need a label like this. All sorts of notes and politics around it but ultimately it was widely adopted and meant something.
- ~~Shoo, USAian. Shoo.~~
  
  Well that certainly feels unwarranted but ok? Later I guess.

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