We live in historically unfree times, and yet the masses either don't understand this or don't care. Why?

Let me direct your attention towards this story of a proposed anti-hate speech bill in Canada. The subject matter itself isn't so exceptional, it will just serve as an example to talk about a wider problem. Consider too that while the United States may not be Canada, it's a difference of degrees — and maybe just time too — as the same forces are at work everywhere.

The bill will ban what's described as hate speech online by fining individuals up to $70,000 or subjecting them to house arrest, even without evidence of any actual crime being incited.  It's strongly supported by at least two of the three major national party leaders and it seems the bill's prospects are good. I came to this on seeing the tweet above with a photo of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and this supportive quote of his: "As a society there are certain things you can't say...This has to end." Singh has arguably succeeded in raising the profile of the NDP, the perennial losers of Canadian politics and longtime third wheel party, and is seen as having some cool factor, appearing on lefty Hasan Piker's gaming streaming show with AOC at one point. So it stings a little worse to see these things pass with so little controversy.

There's been an all-out war on our rights and way of life (note that the intended reader here is someone who already gets the problems with these sorts of laws, a full explanation for the uninitiated is better left to another piece, or others), my question is, how are they getting away with it? Do the masses get what's going on? If so, why aren't they more upset? These are critical questions we need answers to if we ever hope this to change.

I think I can offer a good explanation of the nature of their misunderstanding, at least. And yes, from my experience, while the masses have some sense of there being problems and they disapprove of some things, they definitely don't see the whole picture — if they did, I don't think there'd be near as many apathetic moderate voters out there.

An accurate and fair argument could be made that we live in historically unfree times. This is yet another point where the full explanation is best left to another piece, but that many would dismiss that as hyperbole shows that people genuinely don't get how bad our situation has gotten. The world is a far smaller and more connected place today, due to cheap and high-speed travel in the past, and the Internet of course in recent years. Regimes today have far more reach than they ever had before. There's a reason totalitarianism of the fascist or communist kind was a modern invention. Our liberal-progressive order has means of control authoritarian regimes could only dream of having in their use of social power in the enforcement of progressive taboos (i.e. what's known as the Overton Window).

Yet, the masses don't act like they're subjects of such an oppressive regime. They do have some sense that people can no longer speak freely on things — what they see as the problem of "political correctness" — so they're not completely blind to the problem. The regime of course claims the opposite: that we live in the freest time in history, that we've achieved true enlightenment not just with civil rights for black people, but societal acceptance of gays, and now transgenders. They claim this is peak freedom/liberalism. I think part of the problem is that the masses have bought into this narrative at least a bit and lack the wider understanding of history and politics to really get where it's wrong.

Long story short, progressives pulled a fast one on us whereas liberalism and the concept of rights had always been defined by individual liberties before, our priorities were redefined to be geared solely towards the advancement of minority groups, targeting increasingly fringe ones at that. Their "rights" don't complement our real ones, they clearly conflict with them — censorship goes hand-in-hand with their advancement, for just one example.

Now I'm hardly the first person to talk about these things. One may be reminded of well-known "NRx" intellectual Moldbug on this, or the thesis of Christopher Caldwell's recent book Age of Entitlement. Maybe I'm naïve but I work under the assumption that these are things that can be explained to the masses, that if they just understood some of this, we'd see a significant change to our position in politics. There's nothing that hard to understand here. There may be other factors involved, that prevent the masses from getting things or doing anything about it, but part of the problem is that they lack even the vocabulary to understand these things, with basic liberal education and mainstream politics obviously failing to prepare them to deal with the problem at this scale. What I'm suggesting is that with no one else doing it, we help them ourselves.