Activist and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, despite being incarcerated for seven years, thinks that even the freest man living in America is living in a prison. Does she have a point?
American citizens are conditioned from an early age to believe they live in the “freest” country on earth (their words).
U.S whistle-blower Chelsea Manning thinks otherwise. The former servicewoman spent seven years in prison for leaking army secrets and, after being pardoned by then-President Barak Obama in 2017, rather than celebrating her newfound liberty, has been very critical about the land of the so-called free.
“We really built this large, big prison, which is the United States,” she said during an interview at the Royal Institution in London, UK in October 2018. Manning then went on to list surveillance systems and police presence – which she compared to an occupying army – in addition to border walls as contributing to feeling of imprisonment in the U.S.