Ask Lemmy

I doubt OP is actually North Korean, but if you want a real answer from the perspective of people from authoritarian governments:

I'm Chinese-American, and I was the second child born to my parents. My parent's violated the One Child Policy. They have to pay a huge fine to get my legal documents (or else I'd legally not exist, like imagine being treated as an illegal immigrant in your own country), then my parents brought me and my older brother to the US (like way before 2025, for clarification) on an immigration visa.

So yea, that whole 计划生育 (Planned Parenthood) propaganda forced by the government as some sort of holy bible, my parents just tossed this bible in the trash, that shows just how much loyalty people really have towards the government.

But they did tell me to stop criticizing the government, so there's that.

Even in the US (again, before 2025, before this fucked-up shitshow of a US administration), my parents, especially my grandmother (who also lived with us, in the US), told me to STFU about the government, both CCP and the US government. Like, apparantly, the fear of government sentinment stayed with them.

I mean, I guess it makes sense. Even though I got citizenship through my mom (Google: Derivative Citizenship in the US), my dad is a PRC citizen, and my grandmother is also a PRC citizen. I guess that's why... two of the most powerful countries on Earth, they don't want trouble to follow because I said sometime that anger the elites. (China has secret police stations in the US, AFIAK)

They do say stuff like recalling the time before China opened up, and acknowledging it was kinda fucked up.

But then the Taiwan stuff show up in their Wechat feed, and if I start criticizing, they shut me down quickly. I'm like: "So do you agree with them? Who not just abort me like they (the CCP) wanted you to?"

Sometimes she'd shut up, other times she actually told me she regreted giving birth to me. Yea, thanks mom, mother of the year amirite? (Seriously, who says shit like this to their children?)

Idk what's with their flip flop stance.

I said I don't like the CCP because they wanted to "terminate" me, but then my mom said: "but you are alive, right?", completely dismissing the fact that I almost didn't exist because of CCP.

I'm having an existential crisis because I don't fucking understand my existence at all. In another timeline, I probably don't exist.

Sorry I kinda went on a rant a bit, I'm not high I swear.

TLDR: They kinda eat up half of the propaganda, but they wanted another child probably to secure their retirement (there is not guaranteed social security at that tine), so they ignored the One Child Policy. Not very that brainwashed IMO. But not too open minded either.

As for my older brother who spend longer time in China than I did, he became anti-CCP, but learning about Tiananmen probably shocked him so much, he became this weird right-wing libertarian type of person. Racist AF, and skeptical of government, anti-vax, all that shit.

So yea, authoritarianism fuck up your mind, a lot.

Anyways, I'm gonna look outside, into another autocratizing regime (USA).

P.S, Imagine: You're drowning in the ocean and rescued by a ship, but that ship is the Titanic (that would be going fron PRC to USA in this analogy), and the crew did a mutiny (2016 and 2024 elections) and are now sterring into icebergs (the ongoing fascism in the US). That's me right now. I'm on the Titanic. And there are no lifeboats, no ships nearby to save me. I don't have depression, I have stuck-on-the-Titanic-syndrome.