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Comment by pphysch | Hacker News Reader

I would wager she was a vulnerable person (just watch her videos, they're still up) who made some poor choices was preyed on by Western propagandists who encouraged her to snowball her plight and garner media attention. Probably fed her lies that she would become an international symbol of oppression like Anne Frank.

Unfortunately for her handlers, such narratives have been overplayed and attention is a scarce resource nowadays.

Needless to day, I hope she ends up safe and healthy through this ordeal and isn't driven to suicide for worthless ideological points.

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Huh, so trying to open up access to real information (instead of, you know, propaganda) about what was happening on the ground in the early days of a pandemic is now being a "Western propagandist?" Would you have said the same if the outbreak had been in, say, Cleveland? Because, if it had, I can guarantee you there would have been loads of on-the-ground reports from citizen journalists streaming online from minute zero (including from some number of folks who might be "vulnerable" people in their own lives!) and not a single one of those people would have gone to jail for it.

Also, to be sure, I don't think that last bit was all that "needless to say."

You misunderstand. She is not a "Western propagandist", she is being cynically abused by them--like the authors of this article.

Many people in America have gone to jail for being radicalized and behaving erratically, from islamic extremists to Jan 6 rioters. It is statistically guaranteed that any large society to have small numbers of vulnerable, impressionable people & sociopaths who would abuse them for narrow personal or ideological gain.

Why do you think it is controversial that she deserves to be safe and healthy?

How is she being cynically abused by the people calling for her freedom? You think that in itself is western propaganda?

Also, it's absurd to equate what she's done to any form of violent extremism or the Jan 6 rioters -- that's an apples and hand grenades comparison.

And of course she deserves to be safe and healthy -- I say release her now (hell, my vote would be never imprison her in the first place, but I'm incapable of rewinding time). I just don't think it was "needless to say" coming from you given the rest of what you've written here, elsewhere on this thread, and elsewhere on this website.

> Also, it's absurd to equate what she's done to any form of violent extremism or the Jan 6 rioters -- that's an apples and hand grenades comparison.

Just because the ideology in question is your particular ideology, does not make manipulative radicalization defensible.

I'd wager that most people imprisoned for getting radicalized do so before committing any violent acts.

Especially when we're taking about East Asian nations, where social harmony tends to be valued over personal freedom, relative to the West.

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