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Cultural enrichment
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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Americans have jesters privilege. We can say anything we want as long as it doesn't matter. As soon as the government thinks it might matter, they have a million tools to silence you.
This is horse shit. There are examples of protests being countered (e.g. When Trump gassed protesters and clergy members to hold a Bible up upside down at their church), but these examples are rare and those people weren't actually "silenced". They told everyone about what happened.
Americans have freedom of speech protected by our constitution. China, on the other hand, has actual laws dictating against many forms of speech.
For example... "The PRC bans certain content regarding independence movements in Tibet and Taiwan, the religious movement Falun Gong, democracy, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, Maoism, corruption, police brutality, anarchism, gossip, disparity of wealth, and food safety scandals."
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_China#:~:text=The%20PRC%20bans%20certain%20content,wealth%2C%20and%20food%20safety%20scandals
The US cracked down on Gaza protests quite harshly. Many states enact book bans these days and some ban topics like slavery from schools. Also historically protests against Vietnam were partly gunned down. The black panthers were often murdered and in fighting them the US even bombed one of its own towns. Red Scare was huge and Ernest Hemmingway was probably driven to his suicide by FBI surveillance, for which he was called paranoid but later proofed real by declassified files.
Censorship in China goes farther, but the US is far from being a free speech haven or ever having been that.
But it's also worth noting that the Chinese don't even have that. At least in America, you can get your message out by getting a billionaire to agree with you.
I thought the Jester's job was to say stuff that DID matter, but he presented it in a way where the king could save face.
Looking it up, it's unclear how much jesters were respected for having political competency that kings and court would listen to vs how much they were were entertainers who were permitted much greater liberty with content because he was non-threatening and affected nothing.