If you want to know who really has the power in this world just see how no one in public is allowed to speak on certain things, whether they are MPs in parliament, guests on TV, or otherwise. If I questioned Hamas "slaughtering 1400 Israeli civilians" in public or with coworkers, or worse yet, said you get what you deserve, I would 100% lose my job, and probably ruin my highly specialised career.
So presumably everyone else has to do a lot of sef-censorship as well?
How can you do that !!?
Are you ready to explode at any moment or are u zen ?
Oh that's the way i guess,
shit dude, sorry,take care of urself and let u explode sometimes !
I just don't talk about it and my coworkers don't bring it up? we have a no politics rule that's pretty strictly enforced, entirely to avoid making anyone feel uncomfortable. I haven't yet encountered a "this is actually politics but the libs don't consider it politics" situation yet.
In the UK a good one is the monarchy because they are so thoroughly endorsed, whereas I would like them all to go the way of Tywin Lannister in hit TV series The Crown.
Frankly im more concerned about my skin color leading to disadvantages or straight up violence. I live in a majority white country that is sliding towards fascism and I have 0 faith libs will resist in any serious manner.
Not saying you shouldnt be careful if you are in any way out in the open about your radical politics.
My workplace is thankfully pretty chill and I dont plan on changing it anytime soon if I can avoid it.
Oh you french ? xD im, thats a joke because the same here...
getting a knock on the door from the police about your political beliefs?
This one has already happened to me. Why there's now some manner of weapon in every room of my home, just in case the next time, it's less 'questioning' and more 'raiding'. It's not a matter of 'if', but 'when'. For any and all of us. I may avoid the situations that could lose me what I have... But if it comes to me I won't go quiet.
Both, I'd gotten stopped by local PD out for a walk like a week beforehand. Genuinely one of the most horrifying moments of my life; got me to TOTALLY switch up my opsec practices.
Can I ask what kind of things you were posting that led to being noticed by cops? Like were you posting about communism on a public account or something?
I won't be exact to avoid self-doxxing, but to put it delicate, talking too reckless on too public an app with no kind of real obfuscation tactics.
Nah, cuz i don't have any reason to go all "commie" around the people i work with. I generally consider proselytizing with labels to be useless to change people's minds so i play with concepts that are universally accepted or twist the words already in use by big prop to my ends. My end goal is neuron activation. I want people questioning narrative handed to them because my personal belief is tanking em up is a few steps past what an MSM-pilled person is ready to swallow
this is it. as soon as you label yourself "anarchist" or "communist," you've handed people a trash bin that says "put all my new or uncomfortable ideas here"
just focus on the ideas and people will be way more open-minded
There isn't usually a strong motivator to bring politics up at the workplace for me, but occasionally it comes up. Sadly when it does I have to draw the line short before my own opinions.
i dont really self censor personally. like i dont really post stuff with my face in it online but yeah everyone knows my views, school, work where ever, never really have, i dont think I could live with myself any other way.
i am once again audre lord posting
spoiler
“I was going to die, if not sooner than later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.
What are the words you do not have yet? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.
And, of course, I am afraid– you can hear it in my voice– because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation and that always seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, “tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside of you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth.”
I began to ask each time: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, “disappeared” or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.
Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”
I remember one place of employment, if there was list of top 100 woke companies sorted by how often right wingers complain about how woke it is, this company is not low on that list, I just won't say it's name for woke reasons. I'm 100% confident that if any a person of C-Suite there found out my political beliefs, they'd probably slap my name on my next yearly layoff.
I remember my first day, an older male coworker had a plaque on his desk that said "I went to Thailand... for a thing." and was an open libertarian. It's been years and he's still working there.
I don't think it'll happen tbh. My job involves very little interaction with others and when politics does come up i don't think I've heard a single person talk about Isn'trael or Russia Ukraine or anything. Maybe in the future it'll be more than "Trudeau bad" but for now I'm not worried.
The government knocking on my door? I've not done real praxis in years and even then it's debatable. Not sure what they'd be doing here
I definitely don't show all I believe except when in good company, mostly because there's no point at all ranting about 'dictatorship of the proletariat' to someone who's gonna check out as soon as they hear 'dictatorship.' But I'm not afraid to lose a friend or start a big argument with a lot of other people when it's called for.
I've posted here before about recruiters in my area, and I've taken action against them by reaching out to people with info where possible. I self censor when I do, I never tell people the long story of how American imperialism is a system that arises out of international finance capital's need to split up the world and monopolize resources + labor, and I don't tell people how the military actions are one and the same as the soft power, covert ops utilized to project power across the world. 95% of people don't need to know all that stuff to understand why they shouldn't sign up to work at Raytheon, they just need a couple figures about how much harm wars in the Middle East have caused and pictures of villages in the countries their bombs land on.
More time is going and more I'm scared to get both
My only real worry is that I won’t be able to get security clearance that might be necessary for some lab jobs working for the government. The acceptable range of political views in my field ranges from “What Biden claimed to be in 2020” to “Let the streets run red with the blood of the bankers”
I usually just say "I like to think in am independent thinker and I try not to label myself."
Yeah I'm a centrist (ML's and anarchists both make good points)
I do censor myself to a certain degree. I think we're better off organising and protesting and the like than we are intentionally crossing the law and ending up imprisoned over stupid shit that we say on the internet.
For example, governments around the world are cracking down on "Hamas" propaganda being shared. You aren't going to save a single Palestinian by posting shit that attracts the attention of the feds but you might just remove yourself from the political equation for a long time and if that happens then you will find yourself subject to a high degree of ongoing surveillance from that point onwards.
That's not what Palestine needs but it certainly an assist for your government's agenda.
"Extremist" posting is a form of adventurism imo and we all know the failures of adventurism.
On the other hand, there are ways to post using plausible deniability. Weasel wording like "Some people say..." or "I've heard that..." isn't going to protect you from scrutiny from three-letter agencies but if it goes before a judge you're going to have a much better chance at defending yourself against charges.
There's also ways of talking around censorship and communicating what needs to be said without saying it. A good party or organisation member knows how to say things without explicitly saying them. Discretion is important to exercise and it needs to be exercised even amongst comrades.
For examples of ways to talk around things, on one post here somewhere there was discussion of a particular pact-signer who had a "drink" named after them. On it I commented "Remember what they say: on the hood always looks good but between the wheels when shit gets real". Is that walking a line? Sure is. But I don't think it's sufficient to bring heat down on me.
Likewise, there was a post of an Israeli police thug violently detaining a Palestinian child on a mainstream social media site. Some Zionist complimented the pig for being "so handsome". I responded by saying "His beret doesn't suit him. He'd look better with a🔻on his head."
Anyone who reads it knows exactly what I'm saying. AI probably isn't going to be able to flag it as anything worthy of admin attention. I'm not actually calling for any sort of action or making any threat, just expressing an opinion with plausible deniability that I can hide behind. But I'm still counter-trolling and saying what I want to, just in a format that should fly under the radar and not bring any undue heat down upon me.
I guess it's worth always assuming that there's at least one fed within organising spaces and radical spaces. The Spy Cops scandal in the UK is evidence that we're not always going to be able to detect a true comrade from an infiltrator. If you talk in a way which is intentionally unspecific, an infiltrator is going to struggle to collect dirt on you, especially anything actionable, and they might just press you to clarify your meaning which is immediately going to arouse my suspicions.
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It might happen someday, but it hasn't happened yet. I know a few people that the latter has happened to, and that are at risk of the former.
The FBI, DHS, and some local police departments have at various times showed up to my 9-5, but I don't think it had much to do with me.
I have found giving material context explained in a factual manner without appeals to emotion - as far as they're concerned, playing Devil's Advocate - can allow you to soften up reactionary beliefs, and over time get them to say the things you want to for you. It's not quite self-censorship, as I don't particularly hide my sympathies, but I do leave specific statements of support unsaid, and maintain plausible deniability as presenting all sides of the issue.
