[Multicomp]

In response to the protests, the government line has been to continue to stall and to claim that everything happening in Hong Kong is magically just the result of foreign interference by actors like the CIA, that way they don't have to actually listen to their own people, they can just plug their ears and say lalalalala the CIA did it all.

This comment appears to support that general narrative, so I suspect people are seeing that and not wanting to see the standard government obfuscation line here are downvoting it.

Just ask yourself, if the CIA has such control over Hong Kong that it could cause 10 weeks of protests by large large amounts of the population, whether or not they wouldn't have already declared independence and declared themselves a mini United States state or something to that effect.

The Hong Kong government's accusation and Beijing's continual messaging that this is all just the United States messing with them is untrue, a bald faced lie and ridiculous on its face if you think about it, but they haven't come up with anything better just yet so they're just sort of holding onto that line for anyone who will listen.

[oraphalous]

How are the ringleaders surviving? Not a lot of bank to made protesting I suspect.

I resent the claim tho that my comment supports the "general narrative" - I explicitly disavow the Chinese regime as authoritarian that "deserves comeuppance". I'll add here that I think the protesters have a genuine cause that deserves support.

I do, however, think that the CIA, the U.S. and the west generally - doesn't actually give a fuck about the interests of the HK people. It's just convenient to them currently to make China look bad.

[Multicomp]

My apologies for painting with too broad a brush. I do believe that the same sort of people who downvoted the original comment jumped to the same conclusion I did, which was that your comment was intended to support the government line about foreign interference and function as a distracting debate rather than commenting on the merits and effects of the HK protests.

I personally think the CIAs involvement is limited to none, completely without evidence and fueled by optimisim that the HK protesters are doing all this completely by and for their own people.

[icebraining]

Eh, I don't doubt the US is helping the protestors, but surviving is not really a problem when you're the leader of a mass protest. You'll have plenty of followers willing to give you the necessities of life. If you read the histories of revolutionary leaders, they often lived for years from the support of regular people.

[throwaway2048]

Do you really think that a protest movement with such widespread support has leaders that need to be supported financially somehow by the CIA?

[oraphalous]

I'll grant that in these days of crowdfunding etc... your counter has more plausibility than it would have in days past.