obviously, america's free speech laws are hypocritical, not followed through with, and use cynically to strengthen capital.
one thing i hear quite often as an anti communist trope is that living in ussr/china/cuba/etc, you always had to be careful with what you said, or the government would have you taken away and/or killed.
i mean part of me understands that you need to crack down on any encroachment of capitalism, and that people that leave your country are most likely from a certain class who opposes communism (in blackshirts and reds, parenti notes that much of the dissent in late ussr was from the academic class who frequently emigrated to the us), but what does the reality look like living there? any stories from differing sources/classes?
A guy I met in cuba told me his unfiltered take on the castros (they’re selfish and occasionally wind up helping the Cuban people) and he seemed to be doing just fine.
Here's a link of how life was in the GDR, there's 3 parts. https://youtu.be/zkk-HlEJn-I As far as freedom of speech goes it varies from country to country also different periods and conditions. Hoxha after breaking off with the "revisionists" 60-70s instituted a very harsh dogmatic view on censorship. Tito's Yugoslavia had more freedom in this aspect.
bookmarked, looks like a comprehensive vid from my skimming.
im kinda just assuming that the average worker not being able to ever say anything negative about the government without being carried and dragged away might be an exaggeration though.
Well it depends. Like I said Hoxha was repressive In the later years but mostly with ppl of influence, generals, party members, religious leaders. Normal people were not in the same danger. They could get demoted or fired in most cases. So for most ppl the not speaking out was an economical problem kinda like today if you tell you boss you're a commie. At the same time Hoxha was also having severe mental decline and the party had no mechanism to remove him, so keeping members of the party from speaking out was very problematic. As far as I know late Hoxha and Ceaușescu were the worst at this kind of repression. Other socialist countries were much better at having some form of democratic mechanism. China today has 4 cardinal principles that you can't go against if you're a billionaire or someone with influence.
We must keep to the socialist road We must uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat We must uphold the leadership of the Communist Party We must uphold Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought
Other than that I see criticism over any privatisation, labor conditions, CPC working with capitalist, all over chinese websites even on books that the CPC publishes, criticising themselves basically.
Then you have countries like boliva and venezuela where and an opposing party can stage coups in collusion with other govt and literally nothing happens to them.