alt Hacker NewsI lived in China in the early-2000s, and one of the things I noticed is that no one ever talked about any sort of politics. Never. It was weird at first, as political discussion is so ingrained in the culture (in the US). Even just regular smalltalk, like, "How's it going, Bob? / It'd be a lot better if the city council would pull their heads out of their asses and fix these potholes!" - there was nothing like that.
I asked a few local friends about it, and got two basic explanations:
1. What's the point? No one is empowered to change anything, so why bother talking about it at all?
2. You can get in big trouble for saying the wrong thing in public.
The weirder thing I noticed is that I kinda enjoyed it. It was nice to not hear a bunch of bitching about the government (not saying the government shouldn't be criticized - it should; just saying it was nice to be completely removed from it for a time).
Not sure if it's still like this in China; I haven't been there in years, but yeah, this was really strange to me when I lived there.
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I have been in countries like that and I've found they were quite open to talking to me about it, since I was obviously a foreigner much less likely to snitch on them than even their family or friends. Buy a beer for someone in a dictatorial country and I pretty much guarantee you they will open up in private.
I do think that a scary thing is that if there's a descent into fascism, how many people will hardly notice, or maybe even enjoy it. There was a quote I heard on this American life recently, that went:
"Life under autocracy can be terrifying, as it already is in the United States for immigrants and trans people. But those of us with experience can tell you that most of the time, for most people, it's not frightening. It is stultifying. It's boring. It feels like trying to see and breathe under water — because you are submerged in bad ideas, being discussed badly, being reflected in bad journalism and, eventually, in bad literature and bad movies."