I highly recommend reading chapter 10 in Democracy for the Few to see the amount of political repression that actually happens in US. Especially against the people who are deemed to be an actual threat to the system. US regime slaughtered many political opponents over the years, MLK and Fred Hampton being two prominent ones. It’s also worth reading up on McCarthyism and all the purges that happened then. I find that once you really start looking at how US regime operates it becomes clear that the freedoms are paper thin in practice.
I do indeed know about McCarthyism. I believe my high school US history class covered it briefly, then my English class covered it more in depth when covering The Crucible. In the US, many of the worst excesses of the FBI can be traced to J Edgar Hoover. That includes his harassment of King and murder of Hampton, but not the murder of King. My understanding is that Hoover’s reign is such a dark spot because he had dirt on a lot of Congress. Once he was gone, the FBI got reigned in a lot. We know of programs like COINTELPRO because of the US Senate’s Church Committee report. I’m skeptical that a thin-skinned authoritarian regime would do that sort of investigation.
All that said, there are still way more freedoms to speak your mind. I can go protest a government decision in the streets and generally things stay pretty calm. Even protests that go sour don’t usually go that sour in the modern day. And there are lots of ways to influence local decisions that the left especially underestimates.
I highly recommend reading chapter 10 in Democracy for the Few to see the amount of political repression that actually happens in US. Especially against the people who are deemed to be an actual threat to the system. US regime slaughtered many political opponents over the years, MLK and Fred Hampton being two prominent ones. It’s also worth reading up on McCarthyism and all the purges that happened then. I find that once you really start looking at how US regime operates it becomes clear that the freedoms are paper thin in practice.
I do indeed know about McCarthyism. I believe my high school US history class covered it briefly, then my English class covered it more in depth when covering The Crucible. In the US, many of the worst excesses of the FBI can be traced to J Edgar Hoover. That includes his harassment of King and murder of Hampton, but not the murder of King. My understanding is that Hoover’s reign is such a dark spot because he had dirt on a lot of Congress. Once he was gone, the FBI got reigned in a lot. We know of programs like COINTELPRO because of the US Senate’s Church Committee report. I’m skeptical that a thin-skinned authoritarian regime would do that sort of investigation.
All that said, there are still way more freedoms to speak your mind. I can go protest a government decision in the streets and generally things stay pretty calm. Even protests that go sour don’t usually go that sour in the modern day. And there are lots of ways to influence local decisions that the left especially underestimates.