Most present-day Westerners have lived with a high degree of liberty for several generations.  Many nowadays lack knowledge of what oppression means.  It does not help regional customs has been called “oppressive”.  Naturally they can be seen as oppression if they mean one-sided exploitation.  But this has then been misapplied on entire social institutions.  People started believing perceived discrimination meant they were oppressed.  This way the concept came to be misunderstood as some sort of general unfairness.  Which there don’t have to be any intention behind.

Some go even further than that.  Just being contradicted in public is misunderstood as if it would consist a centrally dictated punishment.  As if people could not by themselves want to contradict them.  Some believe themselves to be persecuted just because they don’t get as they want.  To everyone who claims this I want to ask a question.  Why would you get as you want without consideration of everybody else?  Your will is not your entire group’s no matter how much you want to believe it.

Persecution is tangible punishment for things one can’t help.  People are assaulted and battered or locked up by the authorities.  In some casesm they are killed or forced to die from hardship (cold, starvation, thirst).  The government supervises all kinds of people in an attempt to find individuals with whatever it wants to punish.  Does it care about having a trial it is open about what one is accused of.  People are not accused of things like tax evasion or breaking traffic codes.  They are usually put on trial for having “disturbed public order”.  Something they interpret so broadly as to include inevitable variation.  This can also include expressing certain opinions.  In such cases it does not matter if someone gets insulted.  At worst it could be imagined one is accused for “national traitor”.  After the turn of the millennium, it is also common to be accused of “terrorism”.  This even if the accused does not promote violence in any way.

In this context it is important to know how common dissidents are.  Some seem to be of the impression they are much less than one percent.  I think there are at least several percent expressing they are.  Police states subject a noticeable number of inhabitants to tangible punishment.  In such countries everybody knows at least one who has fallen victim to this.  To everyone who thinks they risk being punished for their opinion I want to ask a couple of questions.  Do you know any person falling victim to this?  Was the person’s opinion then mentioned as the reason for punishment?  If the answer to the first or the second one is no you don’t need to worry.

Uploaded on the 5th of December 2023.