its only a matter of how and when;

The frantic efforts of am exploitive elite to eliminate dissent only accelerates the regime's path to collapse.

Regimes that are losing public support always make the same mistake: rather than fix the source of the loss of public trust--the few enriching themselves at the expense of the many-- the regime reckons the problem is dissent: if we suppress all dissent, then everyone will accept their diminishing lot in life and the elites can continue on their merry way.

What the regimes don't understand is dissent is the immune system of society: suppressing dissent doesn't just get rid of pesky political protesters and conspiracy theorists; it also gets rid of the innovations and solutions society needs to adapt to changing conditions. Suppressing dissent dooms the society to sclerosis, decline and collapse.

Dissent is the relief valve: shut it down and the pressure builds to the point that the system explodes. Regimes that no longer tolerate anything but the party line fall in one of two ways: 1) the pressure builds and the masses revolt, tearing the elite from power or 2) the masses opt-out and stop working to support the regime, so the regime slowly starves and then implodes.

Here in the U.S., the suppression of dissent is the work of the corporate media and the Big Tech monopolies: Facebook, Twitter and Google. As Mark St.Cyr and I discuss in a new no-holds-barred podcast (1:08 hours, 4 segments), Big Tech is effectively suppressing dissent via shadow banning, de-platforming and de-monetization:

-- shadow banning: the audience who gets to see your content is throttled back to a fraction of your pre-shadow-banning audience. The mechanics are shrouded in secrecy, Stasi-style.

-- de-platforming: the Big Tech monopoly declares you persona non grata for a supposed violation of their Kafkaesque Terms of Service and bans your content from their platform, effectively silencing you.

-- de-monetization: your content is still officially on the platform in truncated form, but the flow of advertising revenue is turned off: you're welcome to post content but you will no longer be able to make any money from it. Enjoy!

When you crush dissent and spend a full year cracking the skulls of protesters, you end up with, well, France's general strikes. I covered the yellow vest protests in some depth a year ago: France in a Nutshell: "The Government Stopped Listening to the People 20 Years Ago" (December 12, 2018)..........https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec19/suppressing-dissent12-19.html