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Comment by jlduan | Hacker News Reader

Used to be a fan of him until he actively spreading lies of US election. Turned me off.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-dissidents-back-trumps-...

Are they the same person? They seem to have different names and appearance.

That article mentioned Ai Weiwei spread misinformation doubted the result of the US election and was accused of spreading conspiracy theory on Twitter.

I have watched several documentaries produced by him in the past. Quite disappointed.

He also called Germany "still a Nazi country" because one(!) Taxi driver in Berlin refused service after threw an entitlement fit. That's after he lived in Germany for many years and was supported by the government in every way possible. Dude has delusions of grandeur.

I don't understand your comment. Your link does not seem to be about Ai Weiwei.

The article (If you listen to it if you can't get around the paywall) mentions that Ai Weiwei spread information that doubted the results of the US 2020 election and was accused of 'spreading conspiracy theories' on social media.

Maybe the parent comment agrees that having an opinion (conspiracy or not) is a crime in the US, otherwise what was the 'criminal record' that Credit Suisse is mentioning on a person that was never charged or convicted of any crimes?

Canceling political dissidents.

If you don't mind me asking, how would you characterize your background and political leanings?

Technically, both Biden and Trump are "the man" here.

This is more of a case of enemy of my enemy is my friend that somehow leaked into US politics.

I edited that out because it's distracting. Realistically, Trump was clearly a practical revolutionary, standing in stark contrast to a vested establishment that ceaselessly sought to upend him and his supporters.

How is saying Trump won the election an act of political dissent? Trump was president!

The overton window has shifted so far on this site that saying "I don't like this person" is grounds for starting a whole debate about cancellation! Y'all are absolutely out of control

People are allowed to not like other people. Sorry if people you like aren't liked by other people

It's obviously an excuse for suppression.

The premise is "A is being suppressed. The response is 'I don't like A.'" Do you think that is a valuable insight? Is that useful received wisdom?

There is strong of evidence that introduction of reactionary 'feeling' consideration acts as a countervailing force to analysis.

> Used to be a fan of him until he actively spreading lies of US election. Turned me off.

You have to look at things from the perspective of those people. They're not part of your domestic political faction, they're dissidents from a foreign country. Western politicians have been mealy mouthed and soft for decades with regards to the PRC. As far as I know, Trump was the first American president to take a hard line against them in my conscious lifetime (even though his motives were unprincipled), and they probably decided to throw their weight behind him lest things return to the status quo and they lose hope for the thing they really care about: China.

On top of that, from outside, US election system does seem... Easily rigged.

If my country allowed to vote without a national ID, I'd not trust the outcome of such election at all.

Or postal vote... Like how would you ever secure such system to acceptable level. Maybe it is barely acceptable in limited scale. But in general it seems open to exploitation and something that would only be used in countries without real democracy.

How would you corrupt a postal election without getting caught? Maybe you could get a handful of bad votes in, but I don’t know how you could do it at scale.

Reading how last US presidential election was caught... You could get hold of someone else's ballot. No need to show your ID to cast in your vote.

That only works if the real voter doesn’t show up.

Given the usual turnout, there's a pretty good chance...

The problem at scale is that you no longer have a secret ballot.

Where I live there are nested envelopes. The outside envelope is associated with you, but the inner envelope that has your vote is not. So they can see that you voted, but not how you voted.

A frequent schema in my country is to buy votes from local drunks. Go to a local bar with minivan. Grab a bunch of people, drive them to polling station, drive them back, buy beer and give some change.

This doesn't scale that much because you can't verify the vote and you're limited to few days. It's pretty easy to spot it too. Other politics' support is on the lookout for returning cars and scout cheap bars too.

Now move this schema to postal voting. You've plenty of time to buy voting ballots off drunks. And you can fill them in yourself. It's much harder to spot too.

My country does have postal vote and I do trust it. This is how we run it:

- mail-in is limited to municipality buildings

- mail-in is limited to wednesday-thursday in a week leading up to the election day

- you can go to any municipality regardless of your legal address

- you have to show your ID to get voting papers

- election officials and community supervisors are present in voting hall

- votes are counted along with normal votes after polling station closes on sunday

I don't call that postal voting, but early voting. Entirely separate system.

Fair enough. Early voting does solve most (if not all) of the issues that pure postal voting solves though.

Yeah, and I don't have anything against it as custody of votes is clears as is who was the voter. On other hand systems where you just put ballot in regular mail or some box without oversight and verification is done by signature... No words...

It's insane to me to see so many other countries have ways to verify you're a citizen of the country when going to vote, but in America it's such a controversial issue that anybody mentioning it is immediately bombarded with heinous accusations and name-calling.

> It's insane to me to see so many other countries have ways to verify you're a citizen of the country when going to vote, but in America it's such a controversial issue that anybody mentioning it is immediately bombarded with heinous accusations and name-calling.

Yeah. It's so stupid that the Democrats don't knock the wind out of the Republicans' sails by embracing voter ID requirements coupled with an intense, funded push to provide an ID to everyone who lacks one (e.g. have government employees who go around to places like homeless shelters and jump through all the bureaucratic hoops and pay all the fees to get someone an ID).

Lacking official ID is a serious hindrance to modern life (and fixing that can have a lot of Catch 22s), so getting people ID is a great way to help the disadvantaged.

Bcs maybe Blue corp dont want to make itself useless solving problems? Its the loop of getting votes by crying Wolf as opposition even while ruling and never solving the issues to use them as votes grab next cycle

See most other Chinese dissidents given sanctuary in the US so they may be wielded as propaganda mouth pieces / geopolitical tools. Ultimately these people are more interested in undermining the land they left then the wellbeing of their host countries, i.e. survey of 300K Hong Kong Canadians living in HK indicated their primary concern during last federal election was wellbeing of HK not Canada. Countries reliant on immigration ultimately imports drama from their most vocal diasporas, but very few managed to gain clout like the anti PRC crowd who has heavy support from the US political establishment. Though hilariously, at this point, FLG / Epochtimes has caused more harm to US society than it ever did to China. I mean it's their right since they are mostly naturalized Americans afterall, but in my experience diasphora democracy activists tend not to care about democracy of their new "home" because their identity and paycheck doesn't depend on it.

Chinese government even get benefit from FLG in such a way that FLG create a lot oversea Chinese support CPP. Maybe due to FLG members zest behavior.

I don't believe CPP intentionally doing anything manipulating FLG that but there are some conspiracy theory about controlled opposition.

At least there's a very good strategy that attack a political opponent in a very bad way, for example smear in very stupid lies, can actually give the opponent a boost. I haven't seen any real sample of a politician using this strategy yet.

He is much better than average dissidents who are usually worse on integrity. It's a very mysterious phenomenon that the dissidents, whether inside China or overseas, almost all happened to have integrity issues. A lot of them including a few famous dissednets, are quite abnormal. There's an exception named ZHANG heci who keeps his integrity but has been often attacked by his fellows.

It's also very interesting that western journalists have been hiding the integrity issues related to Chinese dissidents by portraying them as heroes until last election that a lot Chinese dissidents involved in US domestic politics. WSJ is one example.

Western public are not aware of this wired issue because most of them don't read Chinese. For those who read Chinese, here's a site that exists for almost 20 years.

http://www.duping.net/XHC/list.php?bbs=11

It's very good for homo sapien research which is not available very often. Need some patience to understand though.

> It's a very mysterious phenomenon that the dissidents, whether inside China or overseas, almost all happened to have integrity issues.

Oh, so very mysterious!

It's called a smear campaign. The government purposefully discredits the people it does not like because it is unable to directly address the dissident propositions. It is a very simple and old propaganda trick, and yet you allowed yourself to become a complete victim to it.

It's called a smear campaign perpetrated by the Chinese government (or it's compatriots) in order to discredit or demean someone and their opinions.

Hope the 50 cents was worth it!

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