This is literally my parents. They told me to stop criticizing the people in power, even going as far as saying I shouldn’t criticize the government of my former country. I don’t even have citizenship in my former country anymore, not sure how I could even get in trouble for criticizing is effecively a foreign country to me. (I’m talking about PRC btw).
My mom told me to “just focus on improving your own life and stop worrying about things like you can’t control like politics” (as in, both the politics of my former country and the politics of my current country)
Am I in the wrong here? Should I just keep quiet and not say anything so that I don’t “get in trouble”?
There’s very little upside to attending a protest in the PRC, and a huge downside (cfr. 1986). The calculation is different in the US, obviously, although Trump is potentially changing this as well. They’re just using their past experience and they’re trying to keep you safe.
You just need to make a decision for yourself, are you willing to go to a protest now, potentially be imprisoned, deported to China, or do you just focus on getting a job and hoping it blows over. In a lot of ways it’s a prisoner’s dilemma: if you’re only a small group protesting, you’ll be crushed and nothing will change. If everyone’s protesting and organising some kind of resistance that can’t be ignored, you can win. The tricky part is making everyone come to the same conclusion at the same time to maximise chances of success.