Just because the vise isn't crushing you, doesn't mean it can't

I was talking to a labmate from Singapore about how her friends back home agree with the Chinese government's views on the Hong Kong protests.

I was shocked.

It makes sense to me why people living in China feel that way about the protests. The environment they live in makes it almost impossible to feel otherwise. If there is only one source of news that everyone around you drinks from, deep rooted assumptions form that you don't even think to question, even years away from that source.

In my head, though, Singapore was different. In the media it's always portrayed as this ultra-modern society, utterly civilized and reasonable. High-achieving and a stressful society to live in, sure, but technologically advanced, clean, and lawful to the extreme. I didn't realize that the government there also controlled the state media, and that there is no expectation of free speech. That it's a democracy with only one political party.

After hearing all of that, it made sense. Just because the vise isn't squeezing doesn't mean it never will. Discrediting protests in another country is a way to lessen the power of protests in your own, so that there will be less resistance should the vise ever need to squeeze. In the current global political climate, this scares me more and more.