I grew up in a rough communist regime. I was really young when I overheard my parents talking about how the “supreme leader” was bad and things were starting to boil the next town over. There was nothing on TV or radio. Innocent me just asked my dad like, if he’s that bad, why don’t they just arrest the guy? They didn’t realize I actually understood what they were talking about. I can still remember, to this day, 36 years later, how the soul left my parents’ body in an instant, and we had a looong conversation about how I should never say anything like that ever again. People disappear when they talked like that, and “you don’t want your mum and dad to go away, do you”?
A few months later there was a nation wide uprising, people died, the regime fell, and they actually arrested the guy.
Lol, when we immigrated to the US, my mother told me never to publically criticize the government because it brings trouble, because their parents (aka: my grandparents) lived through the “Cultural Revolution” of PRC and this fear was passed down even after emigration, and I was like “but this is America? freedom of speech?”
Looking at modern day developments of the US, turns out they were right lol.
Maybe it wouldn’t be this bad if people like them had criticised the government.
I mean…
Some did
Then the Government sent the tanks…
🤷♂️
I think they were referring to criticizing the US government, not PRC. In an effort to keep free speech around in the US.
deleted by creator
You can have all the freedom you want, as long as your not dumb enough to actually try it
My great grandparents immigrated from Eastern Europe to the US. My Grandma told us about the time one of their relatives came to visit them. She remembers that he almost never took off his shoes, even when sleeping. They asked him about it and he said it was to run out the back door if the secret police came. He was amazed that nobody else in the family did the same, and then even more amazed to learn that nobody HAD to
Before modern mass communications, most people didn’t know what anyone said next door let alone the next town. Outside news was filtered through newspapers, radio or just plain word of mouth or reading a book about info that was often years old.
Most people said things to people next to them or who they met in town that day.
It wasn’t until about 30 years ago that we started getting to the point of knowing exactly what people were saying everywhere all over the world in real time.
In the old times people would only know the opinions of people close to them or what the rich people wanted them to think. Glad things have changed.
Those were the days. The idiotic crackpots were kept separate. They didn’t know there were others like them. They couldn’t discuss and coordinate their insane theories together easily.
The Internet allowed them to find each other, and recruit others to their cause one by one, bringing people down to their insane level of stupidity until they found their way into politics claiming obvious reality is fake just because they think it is.
I remember reading once that a weekday broadsheet newspaper contains more information in one single edition than a normal person a couple of centuries ago would receive in a lifetime.
I’ve just googled where this came from, and found that this was being reported/discussed around the turn of the millennium … so clearly this problem has just got worse and worse since then.
Newsletters kept some informed, plays even, books. After the printing press especially.
That is why the church was so powerful though, they had people all pushing the same message working off the same game plan and it gave them real power in organization and numbers.
Not until the 18th century did they lose strict control of truth and expression.
The French Revolution was a direct response to absolute monarchism so yeah, you can’t stop people from protesting by making dissent illegal.
The current Saudi government is also an absolute monarchy as it happens. The definition of an “absolute” in political terminology is the ability to create laws by decree btw, it’s not necessarily that an executive power has made all dissent illegal or runs their government completely unopposed. These things usually lead from one to another but you’d never find a “true” absolute ruler if you followed the popular definition.
More specifically, “absolute” refers to being above the law or other oversight. An absolute ruler is not bound by the laws that govern everyone else; being able to rule by decree is a consequence of that as there can be no laws that prevent this.
Depends on when and where and twas religious pricks taking issue with everything mostly. Voltaire and the philosophes penned stuff in other names all the time even as it was known to be them, they’re arrested quite often and thrown in prison but would get bailed out by there aristocratic Buddies sooner than later.
England had more freedom in this regard but by the 19th century the church had lost it’s monopoly on truth and speach even on the continent.
They stayed silent in public, but until recently it wasn’t feasible for the monarch to monitor what everyone said in private. That’s what has changed.
They probably did, but who might have heard of it? In a time when writing talking and private letters were the most common forms of communication, things hardly got public.
And printing dissent in the newspapers would quickly lead into serious trouble.
