Even if you live in a western country you do all of that anyway. Self-censor at work and online so I don’t get fired or banned from w/e.

Accept elected officials whose policies don’t match up with popular opinion and accept standard employment hierarchy.

That's very different than worrying about going to jail for life or getting disappeared.

But this is in fact happening every day in the west, with people getting extrajudicially deported to El Salvador, or the ongoing trans and LGBTQ+ genocide [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_genocide

I'm against extrajudicial deportations to El Salvador, but those people are not being deported for their political opinions.

As for trans/LGBTQ+ genocide, it does not exist in the West.

> As for trans/LGBTQ+ genocide, it does not exist in the West.

Feel free to set the record straight and edit the Wikipedia article to correct this fact, or even suggest its deletion.

    United States

    Sue E. Spivey and Christine Robinson have argued that
    the ex-gay movement, which encourages transgender as
    well as other LGBTQ people to renounce their identities,
    advocates social death and therefore could meet some
    legal definitions of genocide. [...]

    Transgender journalist Emily St. James has described
    some US laws as meeting criteria mentioned in the United
    Nations definition of genocide [...]

This seems identical to saying that convincing someone with anorexia that they aren't overweight is "social death", and "social death" is (somehow) genocide.

I.e. it's nonsense.

Hm, what you're saying only makes sense if you believe that being gay or trans is a mental illness comparable to an eating disorder.

i.e. it's nonsense.

Body dysphoria is a recognised mental illness.

That's because they are.

Being gay is not generally recognised as mental illness, although it has been in the past. Being trans is less well defined (historically even being gay was not well defined, or defined the same way).

dysphoria is certainly a mental illness, transitioning is merely one possible treatment for it (though, pushed as one of the first rather than as one of the last options, which I personally find concerning.)

Using the same word “genocide” for what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in the US seems to make language pretty useless.

To say nothing of using the same word as what happened in the holocaust or to the Armenians or native Americans or Rwanda or is happening in Xinjiang....

This is what I have been saying for years. The far-left progressives have literally raped language beyond all recognition.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Men are women.

The obvious difference is that people with anorexia die and people who transition live happily.

Uh, some do.

How is that genocide? No one is being killed, no culture is being erased, no community is being wiped out. People might be persuaded to change their viewpoints but they are not forced to or sent to re-education camps.

Repeatedly denying GAC or banning PrEP as Republicans try to do every few months does indeed lead to death, yes.

Granted we're not under Reagan, but Republicans are practically praying for another AIDS crisis and doing everything in their power to make it happen.

Straight people largely don't know this because, well, it's not their problem.

Calling this genocide is ridiculous levels of hyperbole

This sort of nonsense is why many people do not take LGBT issues very seriously

If there was an LGBT genocide happening in America, there would not be open pride celebrations, come on

Exactly. This is just people acting as "professional victims" at this point and people are fatigued with it. Like the boy who cried wolf.

> Calling this genocide is ridiculous levels of hyperbole.

I mean, it's a systematic and deliberate processes done by our legislature with the goal of killing the most amount of gay and transgender people possible.

That's just what it is. That's not up for debate, so please don't try.

Of course, the people doing the killing-via-policy don't tell you that, because they aren't stupid.

No, theyre denying PrEP coverage for "religious reasons". And, they only think that GAC isn't safe. Doctors, medicine, and studies be damned.

> If there was an LGBT genocide happening in America, there would not be open pride celebrations, come on

I don't think you know what genocide means and I'm getting a bit annoyed at you obviously talking out of your ass.

Where in the rules of genocide does it say the victims need to be quiet? Nowhere, you just made that up.

There were pride celebrations even on the 70s - guess what, that doesn't mean jack fucking shit.

> This sort of nonsense is why many people do not take LGBT issues very seriously

The horse is driving the carriage here buddy.

You don't believe in what I'm telling you BECAUSE you do not take LGBT issues seriously. Not the other way around.

Obviously someone like you, who proudly proclaims to not give a fuck, would not believe a genocide could be happening.

Look, I'm not saying it's the worst genocide or the most extreme or direct, but the reality is the republican party does want gay people dead and they take steps every day to make it happen.

Don't like that? Take it up with your republican representatives, not me. I don't care what does or does not make you comfortable.

This hyperbolic take hurts your causes more than helps them.

So what? Lose your job, lose your housing.

Prison is at least 3 hots and a cot.

Some people value freedom more than comfort.

What freedom?

Anything that can’t be done while in prison, for starters.

so naïve

> Prison is at least 3 hots and a cot.

Decent prison conditions tend to overlap with countries with decent human rights.

IN authoritarian countries you might very well be starved or tortured in prison.

You might also just disappear and your body may or may not be found in an identifiable state.

I live in the free and morally righteous West and I self censor all the time. Every single day. My beliefs would have me ostracized from communities and fired from my job.

> My beliefs would have me ostracized from communities and fired from my job.

but not landed you in prison or disappeared, I take it?

True, but at least in prison you're (usually) fed… which may NOT be the case if you're fired from your job, put on a list, and blocked from the industry.

> True, but at least in prison you're (usually) fed…

Not adequately or safely.

https://impactjustice.org/new-report-provides-first-ever-nat...

Still better than the in the average US school.

The linked report describes a case study of a prison where rat droppings were falling from the ceiling into the prison kitchen. It also states 75% of surveyed prisoners reported being served spoiled or rotting food.

Was your school worse than that?

They might, if not now then possibly in the future. See e.g. people in the UK getting arrested for tweets.

If you’re telling people to punch other people in the balls maybe you should be arrested.

Your comment has deliberately omitted the context needed for honest discourse. Thus, one can only conclude you are trolling.

So did the one they're replying to. They're just replying like-for-like.

It's typical that when someone is arrested for "X action with Y detail" (e.g. buying a knife with intent to kill someone) people who oppose the arrest will only state the X (and for some reason this works). To correct the record when someone says "I don't expect to be arrested for buying a knife", "I do expect to be arrested for planning to a murder" is a correct response.

Only if it is proved to a criminal standard (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) to be intended to encourage an act of violence. It it is an expression of anger it is legitimate free speech.

A lot of US citizens have been imprisoned for their political ideas, though [1].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_prisoners_in_the_Uni...

So basically, you are OK with total authoritarian control over the population as long as its views that you agree with that are being enforced and views you don't like that are being oppressed. Not to mention that you didn't even care to find out what GP's views actually are - no room for nuance, just the fact that they are not socially acceptable is enough for you to condemn him.

Yeah. That's how society works lol.

I'm perfectly fine with the idea that people with morally reprehensible views are shamed and ostracized for it.

Notice he didn't even say what his views were, because he knew he would get no sympathy.

What beliefs are so dangerous in the west today? The supposed leader of the free world is a rapist who openly brags about assaulting women. His mugshot is used on giant banners that he approves of.

Self responsibility and chronic social problems.

Intelligence and genetics.

Genders and gender specific spaces.

Gender and social/professional roles.

Those are topics which have "sky is blue" level ideological certainty, and not open for debate.

It depends a lot on what kind of authoritarian society it is. It's not a binary, and many are "soft authoritarian" meaning that citizens don't have any effective control over their government, but it doesn't actively try to suppress even minute dissent DPRK-style. In most of those countries, people don't actually worry that much about what they say because it doesn't matter at their level. It only matters if you're a public person saying things in a very public way.

> worry about what they say, they self-censor out of fear, they defer to those in power

Sounds a lot like having a job.

its like what the old east german people said after the wall fell. i forget the exact phrase but its something like: "before, i could criticize my boss but i couldn't criticize the government. now i can criticize the government but i can't criticize my boss"

I agree that is a problem, particular with the concentration of power in small industries and the cultural homogenisation of people in power.

I recall in 2016 British employers who said they would fire any employees they discovered voted for Brexit - of course the only way they could find out is if people said how the voted but that is a free speech issue.

I think we need legal protections for things like free speech that we have traditionally had against governments to apply to employers and service providers. I think legislation that prevents various forms of discrimination proves it is achievable.

We’ve self censored regarding the state narrative on Israel/Palestine our entire lives in the west

Just because the censorship is outsourced to the private sector, mostly, doesn’t make the day to day any different when you rely on support of the private sector, alongside discretionary support from the state

Visa holders are experiencing detainment for this specific thing, this cycle. And in other western democracies anyone can be fined and imprisoned for it as well

Wishful thinking that there is imperviousness to disagreeing with the state narrative in the west

The reality is that it’s not always on the mind 100% of the time and you learn to appreciate the day to day life under Eastern and Western authoritarian systems

In Germany you literally get your house raided if you critize a politician online. A journalist got a suspended sentence because he posted a pic of then-interior minister holding a sign that was edited to read "I hate freedom of speech".

Lots of bad things in the west, certainly, but there is a huge difference between a suspended sentence and getting murdered: https://www.reuters.com/article/economy/sri-lanka-failing-to...

Picking on not the worst country in the world, but one I know (and was living in at the time this was at its worst). Things have changed there since, thankfully.