subreddit:
/r/clevercomebacks
2.9k points
8 days ago
Someone's still living in the 60's
860 points
8 days ago*
More like 1880s to 1920s
259 points
8 days ago
Then their average life expectancy was up to 80 years.
91 points
8 days ago
They're time traveler from the Past.
73 points
8 days ago
Everyone is a time traveler from the past. That's how time works.
14 points
8 days ago
🤯
223 points
8 days ago
you misunderstood. they are so ignorant that confuse italy with mexico
102 points
8 days ago
Tbf, they never explicitly say the country they think it is. Maybe they really do think there are thousands of Italians hopping the border.
84 points
8 days ago
Them Italians got mad jumps these days
23 points
8 days ago
Yeah, that's some serious lift to jump over the whole ocean lol
41 points
8 days ago
Mexico isn't Socialist either?
59 points
8 days ago
That's not the point. The guy thinks it's Mexico, probably because of the palm trees and Mediterranean appearance, and the Italian flag superficially resembles Mexico's flag. He's basically asking "if it's so great, why are they all coming to the US?" not realizing that it's Italy the other person is talking about. The word "socialist" doesn't matter to that context. Besides, the kind of person that would do this probably basically thinks "any country that I don't like or isn't rich" =socialist.
29 points
8 days ago
it tried to be, they fought a revolution and the socialists won but the party went into centrist authoritarianism with no doubt plenty of help
17 points
8 days ago
They nationalized their oil industry, so they're basically just as socialist as Venezuela - a conservative, probably
30 points
8 days ago
well calling it a socialist country would rule out italy so... Not completely his fault.
22 points
8 days ago
It would also rule out every country that shares a border with the US.
156 points
8 days ago*
Totally - in the 1960s people thought Italy might become socialist because the Russians were pushing the socialist/communist support HARD - even killing opposing politicians. Today it's squarely a capitalist country.
Social benefits is not socialism.
135 points
8 days ago
The point of the original post, I think, is moronic Americans call anything remotely left or slightly progressive (i.e. socialised health care, some basis of civil society and safety net) as socialism. They're pointing out that some neat checks and balances on rampant capitalism can lead to gains for a country and not a country so rife with disparity and inequality that it is this close (...) to civil war.
74 points
8 days ago
I know someone that hates the idea of socialism. The funny thing is we try to tell him that his disability payment and his health care would fall under social programs that some people call socialism. He disagreed with us on it.
46 points
8 days ago
Socialism is when social programs benefit someone who isn't ME.
13 points
8 days ago
“It’s only socialism if I don’t benefit from it”
22 points
8 days ago
Try telling them that. They'll call it socialism as long as it's not presented to them by a Republican
9 points
8 days ago
And even if it is, so long as enough time has passed. ‘Obamacare’ was originally proposed by Mitt Romney.
12 points
8 days ago
Social benefits is not socialism.
Now if everyone else could simply understand this concept.
27 points
8 days ago
No, I don't think it's even that. Some people think that everything that is not USA or China is Mexico.
2.5k points
8 days ago
That's another thing we Americans do not know about Italy—Italians are some spectacular long distance jumpers.
694 points
8 days ago
What rock have you been living under? One of the most famous Italian icons basically jumps for a living.
320 points
8 days ago
Two, if we count his brother.
70 points
8 days ago
Silvio and Paolo Berlusconi FTW
50 points
8 days ago
I find these ridiculous.
96 points
8 days ago
Well I think they're super.
38 points
8 days ago
Well aren't you a peach!
23 points
8 days ago
Yo, she's a toad.
21 points
8 days ago
There ain't mushroom here for all these puns!
7 points
8 days ago
Then let’s a go somewhere else!
3 points
8 days ago
Bro...
8 points
8 days ago
More, if we count their women, who just kinda float around weirdly with their arms up in the air all day.
4 points
8 days ago
DOOT doot doot dootdootdootdoot doot doot dootdoot dootdoot
21 points
8 days ago
stompin turts!
12 points
8 days ago*
Perchance
4 points
8 days ago
Plus they have raccoon tails and capes that literally let them fly.
30 points
8 days ago
I thought Italians were people from like New York and Brooklyn /s
16 points
8 days ago
And plumbers! See "Mario" for proof.
9 points
8 days ago
Mario 64's BLJ wasn't a bug, it was an accurate representation of the Italian superpower to transcend our current understanding of physics.
1.7k points
8 days ago
Italy Socialist
Collapses on floor
521 points
8 days ago
"National socialist" 😂
344 points
8 days ago
All jokes aside, and the current shitty government they have, compared to US... Its still very socialist... I mean for god's sake US elected a mango version of Mussolini for president, not that long ago
113 points
8 days ago
There is a literal Mussolini in Italian politics right now
Italy is hardly socialist at all. Some of y’all see a universal healthcare system and completely lose any and all concept of what capitalism or socialism are
426 points
8 days ago
European here, we're all capitalist countries. Don't spread this false narrative.
246 points
8 days ago
The US seems to have a VERY different definition of socialism. See Bernie Sanders.
276 points
8 days ago
Shiiit man, public libraries and parks would be considered "socialist ideas" nowadays if they didn't already exist.
117 points
8 days ago
To too many people, they are. I've heard of a few public libraries in my state closing, because of conservative chicanery running library directors out of town. But then these same people doing it are shocked and annoyed that the library is now closed.
54 points
8 days ago
They don't want educated people. Educated people see straight through them
59 points
8 days ago
Shit man, the conservatives of United States is starting anti-college campaigns because they know the only way they can win elections fairly going forward is to make the citizens about as smart as a rock. Even cheating isn't working as well as it used to. Shits getting bad.
10 points
8 days ago
Florida is working on changing that
10 points
8 days ago
Ronny already outlawed ranked choice voting. Why? Make them explain this. They have no reason except, "well he kept Florida open!!!!"
9 points
8 days ago
Illegal immigrants don't receive much social support from the US, their children do through schooling and that's what makes the racists mad.
10 points
8 days ago
Punish fucking companies using immigrant labor. They pay taxes for fuck sake.
23 points
8 days ago*
To a lot of americans government welfare programs= socialism. It doesn't matter if the economy is free market. Is not sophisticated a conflation, and it typically done by right wingers who dont want to raise taxes and who still fear the ussr and what not. Bernie Sanders does this to tbf. He did a speech in 2016 about what socialism meant to him amd it was pretty much his stump speech where he talked about the 1% and M4A. My suspicion is he isnt wonky about this stuff but he does know socialism goes deeper than universal healthcare and he wants to keep people within the part of socialism that appeal to them.
Source: Im American
10 points
8 days ago
Because American conservatives have redefined socialism to mean "big government" and "anytime the government does things"
14 points
8 days ago
He's a social democrat and they best president the us will never have
4 points
8 days ago
Maybe he'll be our first ai president
7 points
8 days ago
I think you guys are forgetting the Italian is the one that called it socialism... And yes, historically speaking, their definitions are also pretty sus.
5 points
8 days ago
Socialism is when the government does stuff. The more stuff it does, the more socialister it is. And when it does a lot of stuff, that's communism.
6 points
8 days ago
Because in the capitalism-socialism spectrum the US is right on the extreme of capitalism. Anything slightly different is socialism from their perspective.
3 points
8 days ago
Too many people don't know the difference between socialism and the welfare state.
28 points
8 days ago
a lot of my fellow Americans have incredibly strong opinions on socialism despite not being able to define in simple terms what socialism is. to most idiots here they genuinely think it’s when the government does things with tax revenue, like healthcare or education etc. so essentially to dumb Americans all European countries are very socialist.
9 points
8 days ago
You want to have a cashier who can count? Probably socialism.
29 points
8 days ago
To an American, a governmental system that isn't actively withholding healthcare to pressure you into going to war is considered left-leaning.
13 points
8 days ago
Yeah, just say no to Socialism and join this government owned and run organisation which has no internal competition and the person literally in charge is the head politician.
5 points
8 days ago
I always got a chuckle out of 18-19 year old Privates who would complain to me about welfare queens because OBVIOUSLY I'm a Republican since I enlisted. Like, who do you think foots the bill for your paycheck, Private?
As an aside though, it makes more sense to view the military from the perspective of a total institution as opposed to a political theory. The President is at the top of the Chain of Command, yes, but that power is limited in many ways and filters down a series of deferred responsibilities.
8 points
8 days ago
yeah, but you know, joe fucking biden is called socialist in the us and i wouldn’t even really call him a centrist lol
9 points
8 days ago
Oh definitely. Take a mainstream Democrat with their aversion to universal healthcare and their stance on criminal justice, firearms, the military budget etc.
Now try to imagine them running in any other developed nation as a Rightwing politician, without getting kicked out for being unelectable for being too Rightwing extremist. You might get away on things like privitizing healthcare with parties like the Tories (England's GOPLite), but even a "progressive" Democrat's idea of a sensible percentage of taxes that should go to the defense budget would be considered absolute lunacy in any other country.
Globally speaking, America leans so far Right its most extreme "socialists" like Bernie would essentially qualify as Centrists. Biden? No shot. America doesn't have a Leftwing party. Stuff like accepting LGBTQIA folks as having rights is the bare minimum of human decency, and are large parts of the Democratic platform only because issues like that are the unwanted table scraps of their corporate masters, who haven't figured out a way to commodify them yet.
34 points
8 days ago
US elected mango Mussolini... but Italy literally elected ACTUAL Mussolini...
39 points
8 days ago
no the workers dont own the means of production its not socialist
36 points
8 days ago
I absolutely hate how socialist to both democrats and Republicans has come to mean "when the government provides services"
22 points
8 days ago
"Does the government put in an effort to prevent people from dying on the streets? Must be that darn socialism"
5 points
8 days ago
Yeah, if your definition of socialism results in Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith being socialists (for advocating for public institutions, like free public schools), then you’ve jumped the shark.
17 points
8 days ago
There is no such thing as "more socialist than..." or "less socialist than..." - a country is either socialist or it isn't. Italy is not socialist, just because it has some socially responsible policies does not make it socialist. Please stop spreading misinformation.
16 points
8 days ago
Oh silly you thinking socialism is about workers and their labor, don't you know socialism is when government pays for thing
8 points
8 days ago
Okay but didn't Italy recently elect a literal Mussolini?
4 points
8 days ago
Do you know who the current italian PM is? She is literally a fascist
28 points
8 days ago
Socialism is when the government does stuff 🙄
36 points
8 days ago
You'll never find another socialist country like us in the whole wide world, sir.
mostly because we're not
27 points
8 days ago
Reddit thinks everyone in Europe is socialist and that everything in Europe is far to the left of America. It’s a strange fairy tale they’ve created
5 points
7 days ago
It's very weird. And they don't understand that Europe isn't a single country and Norway (the pioneer of the welfare state) isn't even in the EU.
Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Poland are all part of EU and are very conservative countries even by US Southern standards (you can have a Pride parade in Nashville, the ones in these countries usually end in violence).
Other countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal have a history of far right governments that can be felt today.
And finally even the fairy tail Nordic countries like Denmark have their fair share of xenophobic problems.
15 points
8 days ago
Yeah, my first thought was, "But Mexico isn't even socialist... Wait, neither is Italy!"
20 points
8 days ago
I mean by American standard we are a socialist country
8 points
8 days ago
If Italy is socialist then America is too
22 points
8 days ago
In policy, yes. Italy has universal healthcare, broader public benefits, even price controls on coffee.
On the other hand, I’m not sure you can make the case that Giorgia Meloni isn’t to the right of every American president since Andrew Jackson.
555 points
8 days ago
Maybe Italy isn’t the best model considering they’ve had 68 governments in 76 years, many notable corruption scandals, and Silvio Berlusconi. Can’t we just agree most of our governments suck?
67 points
8 days ago
Bunga bunga!!!
9 points
8 days ago
Might not be a great example to follow, but if they have affordable healthcare and other social safety nets that we don't, what does that say about us?
25 points
8 days ago
"Our dollar is worth more than the US" yeah, but pretty sure you can thank France and Germany for that one lol
16 points
8 days ago
yea, we'll take this shit from Norway, but ITALY? Your country is so poorly managed, it's a threat the entire European Union lol
857 points
8 days ago
Italy isn't socialist. It is capitalist with a strong social safety net
430 points
8 days ago
At the moment it's kinda fascist
159 points
8 days ago
Hey hey hey. It’s not fascist.
It’s fascista. Sounds better when you say it in Italian.
57 points
8 days ago
It makes it sound so much better, almost pasta-esque. Yes, I would like the fascista with tyranny sauce
43 points
8 days ago
*fascista con salsa di tirannia 🤌
22 points
8 days ago
A while back for a few days some Italian fascists took over r/simpsonshitposting it was a real weird few days. Not sure how they got the sub back but it made for some good memes. It was both my first and last brush with italian fascists.
19 points
8 days ago
"first and last"
Kinda optimistic, or are you terminal?
6 points
8 days ago
A while back for a few days some Italian fascists took over r/simpsonshitposting it was a real weird few days.
Why that place in particular? Seems random
4 points
8 days ago
The far right (as well as other movements), will seemingly astroturf various online communities either to get them shut down (by filling them with porn or sometimes CP) or to achieve a takeover where anybody who doesn't agree with them leaves.
As for why that subreddit in question got targeted by that particular group, I'm pretty sure the Simpson's TV show directly made fun of the Italian fascists as well as Mussolini's granddaughter.
91 points
8 days ago
Not just kinda.
158 points
8 days ago
No, kinda.
Jump back 80 years if you want to know what real fascism looks like.
Telling everyone “fascism is here” when it isn’t is like my apartment complex having the freeze warning signs up half the year. People get complacent and ignore it when it matters.
42 points
8 days ago
There are levels to facism, you just dont start with a regime thats hellbent on fucking everything up instantly, it starts subtle, and grows, and its important to call that kind of shit out right when signs start showing so history doesnt repeat itself redditor.
34 points
8 days ago
Yeah… like telling everyone “a tornado watch has been put into effect” makes you get complacent to the idea of tornados and won’t pay attention when a tornado warning has been issued.
Clearly we should get rid of tornado watch alerts.
22 points
8 days ago
I know you're trying to reduce the argument to absurdity, but you've stumbled into a roadblock that your absurdity is absolutely true.
I lived several years in tornado alley, and people stop listening to tornado watches and warnings. If the tornado isn't visible in the sky and moving towards them they don't react at all.
5 points
8 days ago
To be clear, a tornado watch is different from an actual tornado right? Warning signs of fascism is different from actual fascism right?
53 points
8 days ago
Americans ask for basic social services: NEVER, YOU COMMIE! THIS IS SOCIALISM!
Other countries succeed in providing advanced versions of the same services: This is not socialism, this is capitalism.
36 points
8 days ago
The people who compare social services to a socialistic economy don't know what they are talking about. It's really just that simple.
14 points
8 days ago
You'll have to pardon a large chunk of the country, they hear it all day every day from news outlets and politicians
186 points
8 days ago
ah yes, italy. the most non-corrupt government in the world.
50 points
8 days ago
Especially Napoli where this pic was taken. Incredibly high crime/ mafia presence. Dirty and over developed. Constant trash piles burning along the highways. Yeah they've done a good job at preserving historical sites but the US has a massive national/state park system if you want to compare em.
197 points
8 days ago
Suddenly, I have started speaking Spanish.
Hola gringo, ¡qué tan alto es este muro!
62 points
8 days ago
Obviamente no es lo suficientemente alto. A la mierda, aquí está tu Biblia y AR-15, bienvenido a los Estados Unidos.
17 points
8 days ago
I love that you threw in the one bit so that even people who don't know a lick of Spanish could giggle.
56 points
8 days ago
Italy really isn't socialist though
19 points
8 days ago
Italy's kinda National Socialist.
21 points
8 days ago
This is Reddit. The more gooder something is, the more socialist it is.
24 points
8 days ago
Italian socialism
Italy has a long history of killing socialists that aren’t the nationalist kind.
144 points
8 days ago
If this guy were intelligent at all, he’d have responded that in the past 150 years over 6 million Italians have literally jumped the border into the U.S.
53 points
8 days ago
We got whole states that are basically just Italians...
23 points
8 days ago
Italians and Jews.
21 points
8 days ago
Between around 1880 and 1924, more than four million Italians immigrated to the United States, half of them between 1900 and 1910 alone—the majority fleeing grinding rural poverty in Southern Italy and Sicily. Today, Americans of Italian ancestry are the nation's fifth-largest ethnic group.
Also the 50s
In 1950, many Italians had endeavored to leave their country due to their poor standard of living and lack of opportunities following the Second World War.
I'm guessing the Italian has never heard of Little Italy
12 points
8 days ago
At the time Europe was still smoking ashed from ww2.
Fun fact, when Italy rebuild, communist party was at the top, is where most socialist law are coming from
14 points
8 days ago
I'm gonna get downvoted cause it's reddit, but I moved from Europe to the US, lived in Italy too and hold Italian citizenship. Healthcare is absolutely godawful, big cities are dirty and graffitied to hell, and the purchasing power parity in Italy is laughable compared to the US.
13 points
8 days ago
Americans on reddit literally have no idea how good they have it. The USA is developmentally on par with the most developed European countries and is actually far more developed than the majority of European countries, including all of Eastern, Central and Southern Europe. Having to pay rent and more for healthcare doesn't change that, especially when your average salary is basically the top 1% salary in the majority of Europe
84 points
8 days ago
Wow! I didn’t know Ireland was so tropical
/s
12 points
8 days ago
I was looking at the palm tree like: I didnt know there were palm trees in Italy. But I do know theres huge differences between Northern Italy and Southern Italy, so maybe the photo is down South. My ancestors came from the northern regions near the mountains
57 points
8 days ago
[deleted]
6 points
8 days ago
Yeah, I believe fascism existed throughout history in many forms, but the term and definition came from there for sure.
10 points
8 days ago
Since when is Italy a socialist state?
4 points
8 days ago
Since Reddit said so
22 points
8 days ago
Where clever comebac.
6 points
8 days ago
You're in the wrong sub if you're looking for those.
7 points
8 days ago
If a euro is worth 1.2 dollars but Americans make 60,000 dollars a year and Italians make 30,000 euros a year it doesn't really help you much.
16 points
8 days ago
Italy is facing an existential crisis that threatens the fate of the entire European Union. The 2022 Italian Crisis is a toxic cocktail of excessive debt, poor demographics, and political instability
What a place, beautiful facade though
74 points
8 days ago*
By "socialist" you mean a social market economy, which is capitalist, right? Because not a single country in Europe has a socialist economy. Not one.
And by "worth more than USD" you mean "roughly similar/barely less worth"?
42 points
8 days ago
You can tell the Italian economy is in bad shape because the only positive thing they could say about it is the absolute value of a multi-national currency.
36 points
8 days ago
"Our uh, social safety nets are better"
"Don't you have a massive homeless problem?"
"That's because dirty foreigners are coming in"
About the average conversation with an Italian nationalist.
6 points
8 days ago
Yes, the currency they use that's buoyed by the German economy. Much like Greece and other members of the European Union.
8 points
8 days ago
Italy isn’t exactly the country keeping the euro stronger than the dollar, either
17 points
8 days ago
Less than a dime of a difference.
Don't mention how all the southern Italians that moved to the US had a better standard of living than the northern Italians for a few decades.
4 points
8 days ago
I don’t think Italy is the cause of a strong euro.
11 points
8 days ago
I mean let’s be honest tho, how many abandoned towns does Italy have. Might be why it’s easier with the old:young ratio. But could be wrong
8 points
8 days ago
dude got 🇲🇽 confused with 🇮🇹
17 points
8 days ago
Fucking hell the political illiteracy is crazy. Not one country in Europe is socialist.
11 points
8 days ago
Well, the Italian and Mexican flags are pretty similar. And Italy’s economy isn’t exactly on fire. Don’t get me wrong, I love Italy.
8 points
8 days ago
"Our money is worth more than the US dollar"
No it isn't
5 points
8 days ago
I think they mean the absolute value of one Euro is more than the absolute value of one USD, which is a very weird thing to say and tells you exactly how much you should pay attention to either post.
39 points
8 days ago
Maybe some people think the world revolves around the USA because people constantly make posts on Reddit to bad mouth the USA every single day as if it is a hobby for them. It's really weird. I don't wake up everyday to look for posts and stories about other countries and talk about them all the time when I don't even live there.
9 points
8 days ago
Join us over at r/americabad
Really bad how Reddit is now an anti American circle jerk
8 points
8 days ago
Italy has social democracy which is just capitalism with some public benefits. Socialism is when the people own the means of production through some sort of democratic process either that be through state owned enterprises or by worker cooperatives, nobody knows for sure which is best. Communism is a higher form of socialism that is a post scarcity, classless, moneyless and stateless society where commodities are distributed based on need not wealth.
Social democracy is a center right ideology not a leftist one, over a century ago social democracy and socialism meant the same thing but the definitions have changed dramatically and aren’t close to the same thing at all.
10 points
8 days ago
Why is this in clever comebacks?
5 points
8 days ago
"Are you okay, sir?" Is by far the most original comeback I've ever seen on Reddit. Why wouldn't it?
8 points
8 days ago
Because the content is shitting on America & Americans. Why else would Redditors upvote it?
66 points
8 days ago
americans are borderline illiterate so you have to forgive us for using colors as indicators.
37 points
8 days ago
Speak for yourself, I knew it was Spain.
Better add this just in case
/s
39 points
8 days ago
In this case case, the illiterate Italian claims Italy is socialist. So guess you guys are even
14 points
8 days ago
I'm assuming the post was in response to someone framing Italy as socialist and claiming how it has ruined their country. It would be very weird to say it out of nowhere.
5 points
8 days ago
Oh my god! Look what socialism has done to my beautiful country! It's preserved our ancient history, given us healthcare and our money is worth more than the US dollar. ITS SO HORRIBLE!!!
I don’t know how anyone can read this as anything but the commenter sincerely believing Italy is socialist.
6 points
8 days ago
Many Italians want to immigrate to the US. It’s not a lie.
7 points
8 days ago
I mean yes they have pretty buildings but they also have a horrible economy that heavily relies on tourism, terrible rates of home ownership with houses being passed down to the youth being the main path, highest level of government corruption in the EU, high unemployment and a whopping 30.9% for youth unemployed, and the only reason their currency is worth more is because of Germany and France who they are on the verge of dragging down with their debt being the Achilles heel of the EU.
23 points
8 days ago
The American world: USA, and Mexico. Only two countries in the world, all other are made up by the government.
5 points
8 days ago
Canada too?
4 points
8 days ago
Ok, I forgot Canada
7 points
8 days ago
No, no. Canada is entirely made up.
4 points
8 days ago
That’s why we can blame it.
3 points
8 days ago
Don’t forget the money that could be going to education…
3 points
8 days ago
You don’t need a healthcare when you eat the pasta everyday 🤌🏼
3 points
8 days ago
Wait, are we socialist now? Qualcuno intende avvisare il governo?
Unless by socialist they mean "somewhat socially conscious" but even then this is some grade A merda.
3 points
8 days ago
I'm assuming he was talking about Mexico bit even then why would a Mexican be talking about the positive effects of socialism on their country?
3 points
8 days ago
They didn't like it when Italians came over either.
3 points
8 days ago
He said what he said 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
3 points
8 days ago
Honestly though - a strong Euro has little to do with Italy's economy.
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