Couple of notes here, not that my two cents bear a whole lot of weight.
First off, I think we don’t really know a lot about the people we speak with on-line. I think we don’t really know a lot about the people we speak to in general, but especially on-line.
This guy is saying he used to live under a dictatorship. Now the level of manipulation that goes on under a dictatorship really can’t be understated. The tools they employ to stay in power are devious, sadistic even. Living under a dictatorship you’d be surrounded by lies and propaganda everywhere you went and almost every second of your life.
It’s not just some dictator on TV spewing a bunch of obvious lies, there would be a parade of “experts” all corroborating the official narrative. Anyone attempting to see through those lies would be targeted for defamation to discredit their character. In the event of failure they’d be brought up on trumped up charges and thrown in jail if not outright murdered. Anything to keep them from causing disillusionment.
You can’t expect someone that comes out of an environment like that to suddenly start trusting government like none of it ever happened.
Additionally, try to understand more about what motivates people. The assumtion here is that freedom is good, that freedom is right and that people try to do that which is right so all that need be done is ensure people know what constitutes freedom and they’ll do just that because it’s the right thing to do.
The problem here is that people only pay lip service to goodness and righteousness. In reality most people care not about what is good or right, but what they perceive to be in their best interests.
Most people are incapable of surviving on their own, they need to be accepted as a member of a particular social group. So if a person were confronted with, call it the truth or call it revelation of wrong doing, but that truth conflicts with the conduct of their social group they will side against the truth in order to maintain status in that social group as a means of survival.
Again, this is because they are incapable of surviving outside of that social group and conducting themselves in a manner that is not in accordance with the group’s standard of acceptable behavior means exile.
Of course, they would never admit to that. Few, if any, would even admit it to themselves as doing so would cause considerable cognitive dissonance. Instead, they’ll fight tooth and nail to defend falsehood and wrongfulness as truth and righteousness. In the event their arguments become indefensible they’ll either run away or turn violent in an attempt to defend themselves against the pain that comes from acknowledging the truth.