This happens in every society. There is an official ideology and whether through central direction or self-organizing systems, that ideology is enforced. Occasional periods of lighter repression (when the official ideology is something like classical or Rawlsian liberalism) end up just being openings for more assertive ideologies to take control. America recently exited such a period.
A half-century later, Rawlsian liberalism has fallen to wokeism, which has become powerful enough to overcome the cultural and procedural obstacles to establishing itself as the new ruling ideology, taking out the liberal framework that enabled its rise, and beginning its own campaign of repression.
Though you could say it was the American Revolution that set things off and that it merely took America 250 years to go through the progression that the French Revolution traveled in a mere 5 years.
That people believed it was more real than it actually was, is another matter. But this invites the question - was it really the social consensus? Or consensus among some subgroups of society that simply didn't run afoul of speech taboos?
(FWIW, I'm borderline free speech absolutist, so bear this in mind - I'm not arguing that extreme liberalism in these matters is a bad idea. Only that the past is not a good example of what it should be like, once you set the propaganda and cultural distortion aside.)
Nowadays, even believing something that half or more of the population believes is far outside of the Overton window and will ruin your career.
We're still quite a far way off from literally beheading people in the streets (and no, having your Twitter account banned is not even remotely comparable)
(I mean that we've regressed into repression)
Plenty of China watchers are happy to claim that Chinese people all support their government - and yet the government is curiously unwilling to test this assertion in democratic polls. Tells you something about how strongly held these beliefs are (hint: not very).
Do you support the National Park Service?
Do you support the Federal Aviation Administration?
Do you support the USDA?
Do you support Donald Trump?
Do you support the FDA?
Do you support NIST?
Do you support Joe Biden?
Do you support NIH?
Do you support public schools?
Do you support Guantanamo Bay?
Do you support the Environmental Protection Agency?
The Chinese government, although not democratically elected, is similar in one aspect, in that it is a very multi-faceted set of institutions that do a whole lot of things well that the majority of people support, and a few things that the majority of people secretly do not support but are unlikely to be vocal about.
In a related matter, I wonder why mainland China came down so aggressively on Hong Kong's autonomy. Was the legal system in Hong Kong so lax that it was impossible to punish severely the main organizers of the illegal demonstrations? Why was the Hong Kong government so incapable of stopping the violence, but the mainland intervention so effective? I'm surprised China chose to abandon its international commitments and make it much harder to get Taiwan to agree with a similar or even more favorable arrangement.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Therein lies the philosophical difference between the US and China.
This is philosophically absurd, like a murderer pleading innocence by killing everyone who dares accuse him. What immense harmony must have fallen in the court!
FWIW China also has a culture that appreciates subterfuge/hidden efforts as a part of what it means to live skillfully in society. So the dissonance might not be as strong if you are high-trust on the surface, yet low-trust in the back.
Isn't it a brilliant tactic deployed by the regime, making people think that freedom of speech equals riot on the street. Like the USA is burning in hell with all the black live matters protest and the capitol protest/riot?
In general people don't agree with it. However, for a lot of people, it's not actually on their radar.
The reality is most people in China are so engrossed in their work and day-to-day life that censorship isn't really actually an issue for them, and taking political action is not something that an average citizen would do considering the grave risks to your career.
Also, it's worth noting that most citizens prioritize safety over free speech. If changes in the law indirectly mean that there will be riots on the streets, most citizens would rather have whatever it takes to have no riots. That isn't to say people agree with censorship, but for what it's worth, people are happy that you can more or less walk around anywhere in China without much fear of your personal safety. Most people in Shenzhen were extremely happy they were in Shenzhen where you could walk around freely instead of "free" Hong Kong where you had to be in fear of idiot high school students throwing Molotov cocktails and beating up anyone who spoke Mandarin.