Look at Japan you can go over there and mention the bombs and their war crimes and most won’t care.
I really don’t think picking out the most conservative and conformist country on the planet supports your point very well. Of course they don’t care, denying their past war crimes is the official position. Meanwhile in the US, the evils of Western Imperialism (including recent ones) is standard textbook material. Whether you agree with those textbooks or not, the phrase “history is written by the victors” usually doesn’t imply self-critical writing.
The ideas are public but most people are not willing to state them and risk their social lives.
Or perhaps people are not willing to state them because they don’t agree those ideas? If people are protected by legal rights to free speech and anonymity on the web yet some ideas still can’t gain any traction on the market of ideas, you should start considering the possibility that those ideas aren’t even secretly popular.
There are not many anonymous free speech places left. I only know of one or two and they are constantly under DDOS attack (amongst others) to shut them down. All the major platforms don’t allow contrarian opinions to gather momentum and the mainstream news just ignores what they don’t like. This mass censorship ensures that ‘those ideas’ never have a chance to become popular.
I do not wish to further this discussion since it is off topic and you seem to not understand my point. That said I will give you a small response.
Obviously culture can repress and encourage certain opinions and facts. Just because there is law for free speech doesn’t mean you can say anything you want without repercussions.
Even if you suppose that the U.S. and China would want to censor the same types of things (past embarrassing things), there can exist different levels of censorship (and openness). The fact the U.S. talks about some past misdeeds does not mean 1) that it talks about current misdeeds, or 2) there are other past misdeeds it doesn’t talk about.
Establishing more specific examples would require more discussion—what do you mean by “Western imperialism”? Particularly, recently?
I really don’t think picking out the most conservative and conformist country on the planet supports your point very well. Of course they don’t care, denying their past war crimes is the official position. Meanwhile in the US, the evils of Western Imperialism (including recent ones) is standard textbook material. Whether you agree with those textbooks or not, the phrase “history is written by the victors” usually doesn’t imply self-critical writing.
Or perhaps people are not willing to state them because they don’t agree those ideas? If people are protected by legal rights to free speech and anonymity on the web yet some ideas still can’t gain any traction on the market of ideas, you should start considering the possibility that those ideas aren’t even secretly popular.
There are not many anonymous free speech places left. I only know of one or two and they are constantly under DDOS attack (amongst others) to shut them down. All the major platforms don’t allow contrarian opinions to gather momentum and the mainstream news just ignores what they don’t like. This mass censorship ensures that ‘those ideas’ never have a chance to become popular.
I was going to bring up Red Ice TV as a counter-example but just found out they got banned from Youtube 2 weeks ago. Troubling indeed.
I do not wish to further this discussion since it is off topic and you seem to not understand my point. That said I will give you a small response.
Obviously culture can repress and encourage certain opinions and facts. Just because there is law for free speech doesn’t mean you can say anything you want without repercussions.
Even if you suppose that the U.S. and China would want to censor the same types of things (past embarrassing things), there can exist different levels of censorship (and openness). The fact the U.S. talks about some past misdeeds does not mean 1) that it talks about current misdeeds, or 2) there are other past misdeeds it doesn’t talk about.
Establishing more specific examples would require more discussion—what do you mean by “Western imperialism”? Particularly, recently?
Except when it’s written by the losers.