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Comment by throwawaylinux | Hacker News Reader

> As a Russian student studying in Paris, it was a terrifying realization that the mayor can, apparently, prohibit any and all mass protests by simply issuing a decree, no higher authority needed. (This was in 2018 IIRC.) This is apparently part of the anti-terrorist law or something? I dunno, and nobody seemed to care except for the participants of the protests that were happening at the time.

That's because the governments actively work to and encourage the fracturing of their population and cultures and the breakdown of trust in society. If you hate or fear your neighbor, you will be okay with the state trampling their rights.

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It’s to easy to explain away this stuff as merely gov deception fooling people. But I’ve seen far too many well educated people on HN making arguments in favour of this stuff. They always have their pet emergencies that are unlike other times in history requiring compromise now and a naive trust in the good intentions of local politicians, who often do care about some real present issue, but lack the capacity to see the longer term consequences and wider picture.

The fact they are more often religiously promoted by people often from EU countries or wealthier cities in the US is a signal but that doesn’t mean they were merely fooled by bad actors in gov hiding stuff. They could just as often see a consistent positive stability in their own local community, then immediately rationalize/correlate that to the popular mantras of the well intentioned local politicians… regardless if such that positive state is a stagnated legacy of prior success, claiming issues in other regions that their country/community never really experienced is because x gov policy (ie, using the absence of negatives to rationalize some norm, regardless if it’s been tested IRL), or merely positives happening in spite of their own govs policies.

Gov policy making / promotion is far too complex and multilayered to dismiss it outright as intentioned manipulative and planned.

The "well educated people on HN" are some of the most meekly subservient to government authority and blind cheerleaders of its power I've ever encountered, and there is a strong scorn and open hatred for lesser "deplorable" classes of society with incorrect opinions who they need government protection from.

It has come to my attention as well that the more higher educated people in my circles are more blind to the power grab that is happening by government here. Topics around housing, energy, immigration, covid, EU policy, nitrogen ect are blindly followed by whatever the authority is saying and without any desire to think for themselves.

It has come to the point where debating any of above Topics is impossible and gets you stamped as "crazy, outlier".

And on a lot of these topics, the messages from government that have been sent were plain wrong, but no corrections have been made, thus the cycle continues.

Where the more 'poor' people around me seem to think more for themselves and with common sense. Those are the people that wonder why the riots in Paris are nowhere to be found in our mainstream media (Netherlands).

I wonder why this is the case and if this is unique to me. One explanation could be that the wealthier group has more to lose when going 'out of favor'. Thoughts?

There certainly seems to be class hatred and division behind it. I don't know if there are any rational elements to it like the higher classes having more to lose, or it is purely driven by propaganda from the ruling class to cement their power.

That people are irrational or willfully ignorant about things is not surprising. People can become irrational and blind to truth through their own self-delusions or through propaganda. Being "educated" or having more money doesn't change that.

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