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I lived in HK 2018-2020, leaving around the passage of the “national security law”. I think HK is a perfect case study of a line of fallacious thinking popular

by wyager 5y ago

I lived in HK 2018-2020, leaving around the passage of the “national security law”. I think HK is a perfect case study of a line of fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. This is wrong for at least two reasons. The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerable to bad PR, so generating a bunch of sympathetic imagery (photos of student protestors getting gassed or whatever) might not actually be useful in swaying political outcomes. The second mistake is assuming that most (putatively) peaceful protests in the western world are actually the impetus for political change, and not just part of a legitimization strategy for political changes that were already in development before the protest started.

gameshot911 5y ago
Thank you for your perspective.
an_opabinia 5y ago
> the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. I understand you are making a stylized appeal for liberal political change via violence. China's leadership has peaks and troughs of liberalism, and violence there, in the Soviet Union, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran and in many other places around the world was followed more often by a hardening, not a softening, of daily life. Violence in Hong Kong would delay liberalization and usher a vicious and oppressive crackdown. > legitimization strategy for political changes that were already in development before the protest started. Here you appear to know that the real strategy is waiting. Eventually, Xi will die, and it's more likely than not that his successors will liberalize.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Eventually, Xi will die, and it's more likely than not that his successors will liberalize It is more likely there will be a contest for power. It could become violent, though that is unlikely. In that event, I see no reason to ensure like-minded Chinese are sufficiently armed, or at the very least informed. China's path changed when Xi installed himself as dictator for life. It's foolish to ignore that seismic shift.
  - NhanH 5y ago
    Not holding the office for life was relatively new changes in the 90s when Deng Xiaoping stepped down (just a bit, he was the paramount leader despite never hold the two highest positions in China. So the step down from Central Military Commission was mostly ceremonial for the next few years or so.) If you believe that Xi Jinping has Chinese’s best interest at heart, and he believes that in 2018 China was still under turmoil that only he can manage to get them through, and that he was still (relatively) young even now. Then it is conceivable he would step down in a few years or so in his 70s. Yes, it’s best if your President can’t change the constitution at will, but that has never been China and the situation might not be that big of a shift
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > China's path changed when Xi installed himself as dictator for life. It's foolish to ignore that seismic shift. It didn't change. It's foolish to not to acknowledge that communists been in power in China all along. Hu, and Wen were just very convenient fronts the party let the West, and its populace see, while it was pulling strings from behind, and bidding time for the comeback in force. The West, its politicians, its generals, its intelligence analysts, and its civil society, have been completely bought into that laughably trivial deception.
    - powerapple 5y ago
      When was Obama's contain China strategy declared? The only thing the West didn't predict to happen is that with the development of living standard, Chinese people become more supportive of their government. It has shown again only sanction works: make people suffer, then they will overthrown your enemy.
      - Dah00n 5y ago
        In 50 years it's as likely to be China that can sanction the US into submission as the US can sanction China. IMO much more likely. The US (and everyone that follows their contain evil strategy) is shooting themselves in the foot.
- bhawks 5y ago
  > Here you appear to know that the real strategy is waiting. Eventually, Xi will die, and it's more likely than not that his successors will liberalize. What leads you to think this will be the case? The west has been trying to spread liberal democracy for over the past 100 years. It is successful in some places, but not in others. There doesn't seem to be magic formula, and as technology disrupts human interactions it feels like existing liberal democracies are at risk. I want to share your optimism. Orwell's vision of the future being a boot stomping on a person's head forever feels a little too close to being a reality. I don't think passively waiting for more benevolent masters is a winning strategy.
  - GordonS 5y ago
    > The west has been trying to spread liberal democracy for over the past 100 years. It is successful in some places, but not in others. I think success largely depends on how democracy arrives - we've seen time and time again that forcing it upon a country (whether by military force or the more skullduggerous, CIA kind of force) is doomed to failure. I believe it needs to come naturally, slowly, over time.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      It's hard to deliver democracy and freedom by oppressive means; the means undermine the ends. However, it's also a common error of the privileged to consign the suffering to wait for a slow, gradual process that results in their entire lives passing by, and those of their children and grandchildren, etc.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >Eventually, Xi will die, and it's more likely than not that his successors will liberalize. Based on what evidence?
npunt 5y ago
I'm not actually sure if you polled westerns that they would assume protests alone are the impetus for change, this may be a straw man. A more generous line of thinking would be 'do peaceful protests help bring about change?', which many in the west would probably agree to, and many in HK probably not. And they'd both be right - peaceful protest likely works better in certain contexts (democracies) than others (authoritarian regimes).
- ILMostro7 5y ago
  How and why do authoritarian regimes get toppled? Ultimately, capturing hearts and minds of people throigh peaceful protests is beneficial. The question is not whether protests always work directly and timely even. Wheteher or not special interests play a role, the result is easier reached when there's at least a larger audience that may become allied or organized better. To me, it's a fallacy to say that on the one hand ideology or protesting even doesn't play a part in political change when they can be greatly exploited by special interests or governments to gain power or better control and order.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > How and why do authoritarian regimes topple? They don't topple, they are toppled.
  - Seirdy 5y ago
    > How and why do authoritarian regimes topple? Multiple overlapping reasons, some of which include: - the military overthrows the rest of the executive/legislative powers - Gross incompetence resulting in the government's self-destruction - Financial collapse - Secession - Very strong external pressures (invasion, economic destruction, etc). - Multiple violent insurrections straining executive resources and undermining the rule of law, allowing other groups to fill the role of the government. Note that those necessary to take power are not always the same as those necessary to keep it; people often end up with something different than what they bargained for. An excellent read: "The Dictator's Handbook". To say that politics is a dirty business is an understatement.
jawkx 5y ago
Hongkongers are not protesting peacefully lol. They literally burned people that say that they love China. I think it is a perfect case study on how creating chaos (running into parliament building and vandalise), doxxing and threaten the family of police officers and supporting Donald trump (for whatever reason) is not helping.
- limoce 5y ago
  Sad to see you are being downvoted. I guess some protesters are peaceful, but some are not. Some police are calm but some are violent. Different countries apply different filters in order to get their expected views of Hong Kong.
  - lifeformed 5y ago
    Obviously you'll get "good" and "bad" behaviors within any large group. It's a bell curve along a continuous value of the whole range between "good" and "bad" (or whatever metric). That doesn't mean dwelling on the outliers is a reasonable counterpoint. What matters is the middle lump of the bell curve - where does that value settle at? HK protesters have generally been peaceful. The HK police response has generally been excessively violent. To use outliers as a counterpoint is meaningless at best, subversive at worse. I constantly see people pointing to the ugly end of bell curves and throw their hands up and say, "both sides are the same" or "it's too complicated" or "it's impossible to know the true story." No, this kind of smug apathy is just a silent approval of the status quo, that it's better to just let things be than to push for messy-but-necessary changes.
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      It seems to me you are saying the same thing but from different places. Do you have a neutral source that shows that "the middle lump of the bell curve" is "excessively violent" HK police? Because that lump is shown differently in different countries and even in different media.
    - jawkx 5y ago
      And the "middle of the bell curve" are not condemning the action of the extreme one. You realize they just occupy an university, make molotov inside it and throw it at the garbage truck driver that just want to get home right? It's not "a few person" things.
samirillian 5y ago
I think both of these points hold, in their own way, in the Western world. As Guy Debord writes in The Society of the Spectacle: > [The Spectacle] defines the program of the ruling class and presides over its formation, just as it presents pseudo-goods to be coveted, it offers false models of revolution to local revolutionaries. Or as Zizek once said (in paraphrase): It's not Jihad vs. McWorld, it's McJihad vs. McWorld. Do you think that the West exported this spectacle-based theory of change?
- skissane 5y ago
  > Or as Zizek once said (in paraphrase): It's not Jihad vs. McWorld, it's McJihad vs. McWorld. "Jihad and McWorld are two sides of the same coin. Jihad is already McJihad" https://www.lacan.com/zizekslovenia.htm https://www.lacan.com/zizekslovenia.htm
xxpor 5y ago
>The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerable to bad PR, I mean we're talking about the same government on the bad side of the Tank Man photo. I think that's kind of obvious. The difference is in HK I don't think people were anticipating China to completely break the Basic Law and the handover agreement. They were protesting the elected HK government, not Beijing directly.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > They were protesting the elected HK government, not Beijing directly. I don't think it's ever been correct to say the HK government was elected. It had some elected elements, but they were never in the majority: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_Council_of_Hong_Kong#Membership_composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_Council_of_Hong_Ko.... IIRC, one of the five protest demands was for a fully elected government.
  - xxpor 5y ago
    The FCs are elected, but by people in the function it sounds like. That's an election, a weird one, but still an election. I'm sure Beijing was pulling the strings but it's not like they were directly appointed.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > That's an election, a weird one, but still an election. I'm sure Beijing was pulling the strings but it's not like they were directly appointed. IIRC, they're structured so Bejing's allies would control those seats, with few exceptions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_(constituency) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_(constituency)). I think most of the "voters" are representatives of industry associations and the like.
- deleted 5y ago
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- lions_share 5y ago
puppymaster 5y ago
Supposedly, there were even handbooks on how to crush these protests. Look at Belarus, Myanmar and Iran. So far the oppressors are winning.
- mc32 5y ago
  It's almost tautological but "nice" oppressors are not going to win. They will be "taken advantage of" The opposition will duly detect the weakness and attack it. That's just the way it is and these regimes know that. If you're in the oppression business you have to be a bad one. We all wish there weren't oppressive regimes, but there are.
  - deleted 5y ago
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- est 5y ago
  Hong Kong’s Police Violence Is Stamped ‘Made in U.K.’ https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/18/hong-kongs-police-violence-is-stamped-made-in-u-k/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/18/hong-kongs-police-viole... Bonus: > the techniques were on full display in British police violence against miners during the 1984-1985 strike
  - dismantlethesun 5y ago
    Are you implying that the current Chinese government should be forgiven for abusing its citizens because the British did something similar 35 years ago? I don’t mean to offend, but your comment is so short that I can tell what kind of context you are trying to add.
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      No, they are criticizing the UK.
      - dismantlethesun 5y ago
xwolfi 5y ago
But violent protests made it worse. The gov removed the extradition law at first but we gave them the opportunity to do worse to restore order and Im forced to back it because I prefer the national security law and some order than no law and no order which it was starting to look like... However you re so very right: protests movements in the west are barely responsible for change. What s responsible for change is slow and long discussion among the population, progressive education, love of the debate rather than pursuit of efficiency, and in general the acceptance we re all part of the nation, not just a minority group. When most chinese will see us as them and we ll see them as us, then it ll get better. Until then, we cant even start a debate: we're trators, they're invaders.
- fieryscribe 5y ago
  No, the government did not remove the extradition law until September 2019, after proposing it in February 2019. By then, many Hong Kongers had been protesting, arrested, beaten and worse. The reason we Hong Kongers did not and have not stopped is because there has been no justice for them. That's the principle behind 5 demands, not 1 less.
- bakatubas 5y ago
  All forms of government no matter how big or small are fcorrupt. That’s how it works—they/them who bends the will of the masses wins. Either that’s done by manipulating folks into believing the next candidate will “take their pain away”, or by inflicting pain for non-compliance. Or they change the rules: voter suppression, censorship, etc and pretend they “won the election.” Or they just murder the opposition and blame it on Santa Claus.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    It's plainly fallacious to say there is no difference in corruption, conduct, and outcomes of different governments and different forms of government. To say 'all governments are corrupt' is the same as saying 'all people are violent'; but some are murderers, some got in shoving matches with their siblings when they were 12, and there is the entire range in between.
TeeMassive 5y ago
> I think HK is a perfect case study of a line of fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. It's not fallacious. It has worked in the past and continue to work even to this day. Peaceful protests are proven to work more than violence; when they are allowed in the first place. Violet uprisings rarely lead to positive change and mostly end up in either worse conditions or disaster. Most Western governance are inheritors of violent revolutions of some sort, which people tend to be aware of but take for granted. The US has made it a point to elevate the right to bear arms as a natural right. The UK on the other hand arrest people for tweets. HK never had guns to begin with.
- naniwaduni 5y ago
  > Peaceful protests are proven to work more than violence; Are they? Remember, a successful violent "protest" is often just retroactively called by a different name, like "revolution" or "coup d'état", it's not as if they're fundamentally different things. How do you compare those to successful peaceful protests?
  - ILMostro7 5y ago
    Lol How do you go from a protest to a coup d'état?
    - fogihujy 5y ago
      There was a revolution or two that started as simple protests...
  - TeeMassive 5y ago
    There are many fundamental difference between standing armies and/or organized militias and violent mobs in terms of scale, martial effectiveness, negotiations, treaties and post-conflict continuation. Mobs don't win wars, they merely destroy and the rest is left to fate, often with disastrous results(see Libya as an example). Mobs can't sit at the negotiation table Mobs can't agree to treaties and enforce them Mobs can't form proper functioning and recognized government.
vmception 5y ago
There is a Cambridge University Press / APSA study about the United States that shows populist swelling or the popular vote rarely results in any legislative change that matches the sentiment, and legislative changes come from well funded special interests that were already there. It is either purely coincidence when those changes match what the protesters want because special interests became interests, or were already interested. You can see the desperation in trying to find an exception to this, given how much energy would be expended by protestors and those bound by the popular vote, so the we can at least concede - for their sake - that they may have gotten the attention of special interests sometimes, with one influencing the other. I think the more efficient use of energy would be to identify the most effective special interest groups and capture them. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  cool article. really long I skimmed it so far. seems focused on comparing economic elite/interest groups to common population, which would skew the policy measured to tangible economic/business outcomes? My first thought to your comment was an opposing example of gay rights. Sure gay marriage was SCOTUS but it first changed as policy at the state level. politicians changed because it became popular enough and strong voice in media (remember obama was against marriage equality amongst other things at first). We're now seeing this struggle with Trans rights. Where it's >52% popular you see equality legislation, where it's a good wedge issue for Republicans they act against (e.g. DeSantis is running for president on the backs of attacking children..) Civil Rights Act comes to mind too and interesting in that it had such strong opposition, interesting question of what are special interests if you expand beyond 'economic and business elite.' NAACP et al were very powerful. Marijuana & decriminalization is another quick thought, though that's a bit more cloudy especially with later states with a more established business interest group. But I worked on the original campaign here in CO and our budget was pretty tiny...
  - vmception 5y ago
rantwasp 5y ago
i like the French approach. whenever shit does not work they start building a guillotine: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6477953/Yellow-Vest-protesters-erect-GUILLOTINE-bearing-French-Presidents-political-party-amid-riots.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6477953/Yellow-Vest... It's a very powerful symbol that if things don't work out violence is on the table and people are going to be held accountable. For those who know a little French history, you know that those French people don't fuck around.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  The French Revolution was mostly a tale of radical actors taking control of the government and then using it to violently get rid of competitors. Absolutely nothing to do with "the people" holding "government" accountable.
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nine_k 5y ago
I remember a good thought experiment. Gandhi's peaceful protests were successful because they impressed the British public via free press, and the public opinion affected the British government. Now imagine that instead of post-war British, the colonial regime were held by their contemporary Stalin. How much would a peaceful protest achieve?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  It's obviously multifactorial, and I do not diminish Gandhi's efforts, but it would be hard to ignore Britain's diminished capabilities after WW2 as having a role in Britain letting go of India. They simply had no capacity to control a country like India on the other side of the world in their state at the end of WW2, so might as well save as much face while they can.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    Not just a question of capacity. The British Empire almost fell to Hitler's ambitions and while Great Britain was never invaded it definitely looked a lot weaker than what it was supposed to. This meant that the British Empire was far from invincible and definitely led the path to decolonisation.
- pydry 5y ago
  There were also violent protests in India. It does seem like opposing nonviolent and violent factions who reject each other works better than just one. Northern Ireland, Malcolm X/MLK, etc.
  - orwin 5y ago
    Interesting point of view, never thought about the irish liberation, even though it was a recent development. My opinion is that the fear of marxism permeating the civil right movement (especially the BPP) and starting to reach the Latino and disfavored white people (the "rainbow movement" if i remember correctly) did strike fear into the US government (hence the assassination of Fred Hampton, who really started this). This fear allowed to Civil right movement to be successful, because ethnic tension, while useful to exploit a minority, is not worth the danger to the social order.
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doesthismean 5y ago
> ... peaceful protesting... Is setting fires on public transport, damaging roads and buildings, beating up (in some cases almost killing) innocent bystanders "peaceful protesting"? What westerners do not understand is that the 2019 riots in HK are motivated by hatred toward Chinese mainlanders who have risen in wealth in recent decades and to whom HK residents have historically felt superior. A parallel in the West may be racially motivated hate crimes. You don't call Ku Klux Klan rallies "peaceful".
- GordonS 5y ago
  I love HK, and I have friends in HK. What I've heard is very different - most protesting has been peaceful, sometimes turning violent after actions by the police or a few anarchist types on the fringes (and let's be honest, there's a good chance these are often working under instruction of the secure apparatuses). They also vehemently deny any kind of racism against mainlanders - people are against the new security laws and restrictions on personal freedoms, nothing else.
  - doesthismean 5y ago
    > They also vehemently deny any kind of racism against mainlanders Do racists happily admit that they are racists though?
    - GordonS 5y ago
      By this logic, they are vile racists no matter what?!
      - Dah00n 5y ago
        It's being critical of a source. You look at their actions and words, not at if they deny to be something bad.
    - throwaway_oil 5y ago
      This account was created today and has only commented in this thread.
blast 5y ago
Question to wyager or anyone else about that second point: what are some examples of political changes that people think were caused by protests, but in reality were already in development before the protest started? Also, who are the best-known advocates for this idea? If the answer is "I, wyager, came up with it", that's totally fine, I'm just curious if the concept has an interesting history.
- pas 5y ago
  It's hard to untangle causality for these complex society-wide changes. It's hard to organize a protest if there's not already a societal development for that cause. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/13/does-reality-drive-straight-lines-on-graphs-or-do-straight-lines-on-graphs-drive-reality/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/13/does-reality-drive-str... There's also the dynamic systems viewpoint: between two "attractor states" the tipping point sits on a locally almost flat region. So a transition from one "stable" potential well to an other goes through these confusing no one's lands. Sure, the speed of transition is unknown, and obviously depends on a lot of things like how strong the attractors are (how deep the wells are), and how strong is the societal push - to push society uphill. But just as there are no protests in North Korea, there is no need to protest for free speech in the US. (That's a crude analogy, yes. I know that free speech is a hot topic nowadays, but the point I'd like to make is that the "political speech against the state is protected by the state" is absolutely unquestioned, the debate is about how tolerant folks ought to be of racists/homophobes/xenophobes.) And between these two extremes there's a lot of countries. And somewhere in the middle it seems that protests happen, but it doesn't matter. (Eg. in Russia. Protests happen, but Putin is still king. Similarly in China [0] ... but in both cases it seems that the authoritarianism is getting stronger. But we don't know what society thinks. Are they getting completely brainwashed, like in NK? [1] In Russia and Belarus people seem to be aware that it could be better, but the current power structure is very efficient in crushing opposition, so people instead drink a lot and die early.) [0] https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/college-merger-protest-06082021144646.html https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/college-merger-protes... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9rLqYXTaFI&t=6m40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9rLqYXTaFI&t=6m40s
- saiya-jin 5y ago
bosswipe 5y ago
Your two points are only true when there is no democracy.
mrd3v0 5y ago
A little bit off-topic, but it's quite interesting how the name of the law and the intentions behind it is quite the same as in Egypt. Both were installed to actively seize means of opposition media and capture any persons involved for an indefinite period of time. For more context on the Egyptian side, it was the effective law of land during the nearly 30-year tenure of former dictator Hosni Mubarak and then got reinstated after another Coup d'etat by current dictator El-Sisi.
GordonS 5y ago
> fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. Haha, as a westerner, I believe peaceful protest is invariably futile. Take the 2003 protests against the Iraq war for example - 3 million protested in Rome, 1.5 million in Madrid, 1 million in London, and millions more across the west. What happened? They went to war based on lies anyway. It's always the same.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  Protests are a legal part of the system as a blow-off valve to let average citizens get rid of their rage. It's there to keep the status quo. It makes no difference without force behind it. As long as the opposing view doesn't feel endangered it is working for them and against the average citizen. As soon as it makes a difference it is no longer protests but a rebellion, which most who will protest doesn't have the stomach for.
  - malwarebytess 5y ago
    And barely legal at that. Right to protest is curtailed bit by bit year by year. It isn't a protest if you have to apply for a permit and have to stay in some "free speech zone."
    - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
      In some places in America it’s legal to kill protestors. (Florida IIRC recently passed a law granting immunity to people to run over protestors with their car.)
      - snowflake_ptr 5y ago
        Fact-check: false. The Florida law only applies to rioters, not protestors. "Riot" is defined as: "three or more people acting with common intent resulting in injury to others, damage to property, or the imminent danger of injury or damage." There's a second "Aggravated riot": "25 or more participants cause great bodily harm or more than $5,000 in property damage, uses or threatens to use a deadly weapon, or blocks roadways by force or threat of force." If you're doing any of the above things, you're not protesting. The law was most likely the direct result of a violent mob climbing on top of this guy's car in Florida, one of whom the driver hit in his attempts to get away.
mschuster91 5y ago
> The second mistake is assuming that most (putatively) peaceful protests in the western world are actually the impetus for political change, and not just part of a legitimization strategy for political changes that were already in development before the protest started. This "but protests must be peaceful!!!" attitude that persists in Western countries and grew in popularity with the '68 generation is actually reproduced by (mostly conservative) politicians these days, as it's easy to simply ignore a peaceful protest. Just compare worker protection and social security regulations in France (where unions and people literally fight, to wide approval in society and media) vs Germany (where the population is kept docile and any protest that even only looks non-peaceful gets decried in media).
csomar 5y ago
> the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. The protest itself is not effective, or at least doesn't change the current day order. But it signals an important opposition to a certain rule that a smart politician should pick up. > The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerable to bad PR, so generating a bunch of sympathetic imagery (photos of student protestors getting gassed or whatever) might not actually be useful in swaying political outcomes. You are wrong. China does care a lot for its image. More than you'd expect. China does give a bunch of money to improve its image (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_foreign_aid); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_foreign_aid); certainly less than the US but it is sizable and also smarter. They are building popular stuff (like hospitals) in the middle of nowhere and making lots of fanfare about it as well as putting their flags. And no, these are not loans, these are grants (ie: free money!). The coronavirus and current US-led media campaign did damage the Chinese reputation a lot. But here is where you might be lost: China doesn't really care about the educated western population and the western population in general. > The second mistake is assuming that most (putatively) peaceful protests in the western world are actually the impetus for political change, and not just part of a legitimization strategy for political changes that were already in development before the protest started. It's a process. Protests are a manifestation of discontent, and are a good indicator when no transparent voting mechanism is in place. It gives the US good leverage against China by weighing discontent. Sure, it makes no changes, but that's because we live in a distorted world where democracy for small countries is possible. Democratically, independent and small countries like New Zealand are only possible today because of the world order the US has placed. Otherwise, there is nothing stopping China from walking to New Zealand and declaring it New China.
- dumb1224 5y ago
  >Democratically, independent and small countries like New Zealand are only possible today because of the world order the US has placed. Otherwise, there is nothing stopping China from walking to New Zealand and declaring it New China. This sounds a bit outlandish to me. I respect what your sub message might be but in real world scenario it's quite exaggerated.
dumb1224 5y ago
I'm wondering why most of the comments here are not discussing the content of the article but rather the general HK protest. Most of people in China understand the value of rule of law. And we never deny that the environment there is far from any democratic western society. But if you read the article and are the readers of the mentioned media outlets you would agree a bit that those are a little dubious (Post852, Winandmac Media etc, Apple Daily included). It's definitely not good to have a sweeping ban, but pretending all non-mainland chinese media is pro democracy and liberal values and not populist (sometimes provocative and radicalised) to attract viewers is a little naive in my humble opinion.
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  So just to be clear you actually believe that media being populist justify abitrary detentions, jailing people from indefinite duration without ever putting them to trial while threatening them with life in prison if not straight murder?
  - dumb1224 5y ago
    I doubt anyone with the right mind would support that, wouldn't you agree? But I'm afraid nobody has perfect information. People in mainland China read anything with filters and are aware of what's really going on, so I don't think it should be that different elsewhere.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > I'm afraid nobody has perfect information. People in mainland China read anything with filters and are aware of what's really going on, so I don't think it should be that different elsewhere. That's a false equivalency, like saying 'people in Pyonyang aren't perfectly free, nor are people in New York, so it's basically the same.' It's not at all the same.
      - dumb1224 5y ago
        I didn't equate anything to anything. I simply pointed out that no one has perfect information. What you read about China might be a mix of many true and false (maybe exaggerated) information. I'm not even comparing different population. If I wasn't clear then I apologise.
_tik_ 5y ago
There are many reasons other than the choice of peaceful strategy. The movement doesn't have any clear achievable goals, lacks united leadership. There is a strong opinion the movement is designed to fail. The real goal of the movement is to humiliate CPP. An the violence stage of the protest. My HK relatives, political refuges from cultural revolution time, are more scared of the protester than CCP.
bsanr2 5y ago
This is why I scoff at the people criticizing the BLM protests and associated riots. We should have learned this lesson wrt the anti-war protests during the Bush years: when the person whose actions you need to change are absolutely intransigent, attempting to convince them directly is not an effective strategy, because they will not be convinced. Instead, the most immediate goal must be to liquify the set status quo; changes can be insisted upon more easily when the illusion of stability has been broken and there is less friction. Marginalized people usually serve as a sink for the rage and violence of people who are in power but are still bitter because an imperfect world remains perfect. Usually, these marginalized people simply eat those injuries, protecting society's stability. With riots; with graphic images of police beatings and murders plastered on TV and the internet; with infrastructure shutdowns; with resumed talk of things like police reform, social justice, and reparations, these people instead conserve and then redirect that rage and violence back out to the larger society to deal with. It's understandable that many do not like this disturbance of their peace, but that's kind of the point. And BLM et al. are not manufacturing it out of whole cloth; it's simply the intolerable oppression of an imperfect society, visited upon people who are used to shuffling it off onto lessers.
- answerretards 5y ago
  This comment made me very very mad, very strongly strongly to the point I made this account even though I don't usually comment on HN. You must be one example of somebody that live mostly in peaceful democratic society. You've never seen actual blood, war, limbs, raped girls, beheaded people? heads rolling and kicked down like a soccer ball? girls with vaginas stuck by sticks? I've seen a few, and it happened in a city, in.a.fucking.riot You wanna know how many people died? 1500 fucking people you fucking idiot. In a big fucking city. The army had to come down to quell the riot. BLM can protest peacefully, otherwise we normal people don't give a fuck about their message is. There are many people out there than just Black people. A lot of immigrants for example, don't generally give a shit about what happened this past 2 years about BLM this BLM that. They just want their stores not to be burned by these uncivilized people. No they don't have fucking insurance you fucking idiot. BLM can protest peacefully, otherwise be prepared to be gunned down. I don't care who he/she/it. Travel my property, burn my property, get ready for a lead in the head. I am not a Trump supporter, and as a matter of fact a Democrat, voted for Biden. but I'll lick Trump's boots and vote hard hard hard right if it means that I can prevent of defunding the police and keep the order. The politicians that do not condemn the riot and supporting defunding the police are simply out there for political points. They need to go down!
RobertKerans 5y ago
It's not Western though. You're right in that it generally doesn't work, but it's well known to only work in specific circumstances. Yes it's part of a political strategy, but the point of it is to demonstrate dignity, and given a state that is susceptible to shame, that greatly aids in the empowerment of blocs within the state to enact change. In retrospect, yes, it's fallacious thinking from the protesters if they thought they could successfully press for change just via the protests. But that's in retrospect, previously it might have worked. But as you suggest, the Chinese state is in a position where it doesn't have to care and will happily exterminate the protests. Only answer then is violence, but in this situation the only actors capable of that are other states. In which case, peaceful protest, not fighting back seems the logically correct thing to do -- the protestors require the moral high ground and to focus attention on the issue, which they did very successfully. Whether that has much effect -- probably not, China is ridiculously powerful, but they couldn't do much more (I mean, taken to Gandhian logical extremes, recognition of the failure of the non-violent protest should have been followed mass suicide of all the protesters, which is grotesque but hey, that's Gandhi for you).
- derefr 5y ago
  The logical extreme here, I would think, is mass organized emigration to other countries who have offered to willingly take in HK political refugees.
  - RobertKerans 5y ago
    Yes, that has direct precedent. And with the most obvious precedent, was the alternative taken when that group [surprisingly! /s] didn't do what Gandhi thought they should have done. Edit: but that isn't nonviolent protest, it's just leaving your home. It doesn't cause any political change, and it's not at all the logical extreme of nonviolent protest (the logical extreme is stupid, and seems only to have ever been carried out by millenarian cults, but hey ho).
  - scohesc 5y ago
    I would assume China is monitoring all their Hong Kong citizens and carefully scrutinizing them for any dissident behaviour before they even think of letting them leave the country.
wolverine876 5y ago
> fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. First, it's not 'westerners'. Democracy and peaceful protest are embraced throughout the world: All of North and South America, with few exceptions; almost all of Europe; Japan, S. Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines to extents, India, countries in Africa, etc. And protests happen outside democracy and go back long before it. Gandhi was protesting in a dictatorship; MLK was too, in many ways (it was in many ways a dictatorship for African-Americans). But what an odd world we have become, where people go out of their way to tell each other these things contrary to what is all around them. As a simple example, look at all the policing and legal reforms, all the social changes, that have happened in response to the George Floyd protests. The Arab Spring happened not long before that. People invest enormous amounts of time and effort in changing public opinion, and causing/stopping protest. Despair seems like a dumb, unpleasant trend. The people in power want you to think you are powerless; it obviously suits them for you to believe it. Similarly, to suppress votes they say 'your vote doesn't count' - something I've encountered in poor communities. The power is actually yours. History is filled with protests changing the world. Governments have power only from the consent of the governed. Like the fiat power behind currency, the government's power comes from people giving them that authority - the government says you must do X, and people choose to listen. They don't have nearly enough other power to survive without it, including - or especially including - non-democratic governments. If nobody listens to them, who are they? Just some people talking (ironically, similar to what authoritarians try to say about protestors - nobody listens). What is their authority? And if people don't go to work, if the streets are filled with protest, then it affects many more interests than those in office. You can see why some in power try to spread this idea that you have none. Protests also demonstrate and galvanize public opinion. People sitting home and feeling alone and powerless are no threat; other people telling them that that they are powerless are ideal. When people see others taking action, when they see they are not alone, then they act. Sure, life is more complicated than that. Few things happen only because of a protest, but that's just because the world is too complicated for simple solutions. But to say protests aren't a huge factor is really a fantasy of authority, and they push it for a reason. The world is yours.

by wyager 5y ago

gameshot911 5y ago

Thank you for your perspective.

an_opabinia 5y ago

> the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. I understand you are making a stylized appeal for liberal political change via violence. China's leadership has peaks and troughs of liberalism, and violence there, in the Soviet Union, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran and in many other places around the world was followed more often by a hardening, not a softening, of daily life. Violence in Hong Kong would delay liberalization and usher a vicious and oppressive crackdown. > legitimization strategy for political changes that were already in development before the protest started. Here you appear to know that the real strategy is waiting. Eventually, Xi will die, and it's more likely than not that his successors will liberalize.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Eventually, Xi will die, and it's more likely than not that his successors will liberalize It is more likely there will be a contest for power. It could become violent, though that is unlikely. In that event, I see no reason to ensure like-minded Chinese are sufficiently armed, or at the very least informed. China's path changed when Xi installed himself as dictator for life. It's foolish to ignore that seismic shift.
- NhanH 5y ago
  Not holding the office for life was relatively new changes in the 90s when Deng Xiaoping stepped down (just a bit, he was the paramount leader despite never hold the two highest positions in China. So the step down from Central Military Commission was mostly ceremonial for the next few years or so.) If you believe that Xi Jinping has Chinese’s best interest at heart, and he believes that in 2018 China was still under turmoil that only he can manage to get them through, and that he was still (relatively) young even now. Then it is conceivable he would step down in a few years or so in his 70s. Yes, it’s best if your President can’t change the constitution at will, but that has never been China and the situation might not be that big of a shift
- baybal2 5y ago
  > China's path changed when Xi installed himself as dictator for life. It's foolish to ignore that seismic shift. It didn't change. It's foolish to not to acknowledge that communists been in power in China all along. Hu, and Wen were just very convenient fronts the party let the West, and its populace see, while it was pulling strings from behind, and bidding time for the comeback in force. The West, its politicians, its generals, its intelligence analysts, and its civil society, have been completely bought into that laughably trivial deception.
  - powerapple 5y ago
    When was Obama's contain China strategy declared? The only thing the West didn't predict to happen is that with the development of living standard, Chinese people become more supportive of their government. It has shown again only sanction works: make people suffer, then they will overthrown your enemy.
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      In 50 years it's as likely to be China that can sanction the US into submission as the US can sanction China. IMO much more likely. The US (and everyone that follows their contain evil strategy) is shooting themselves in the foot.
bhawks 5y ago
> Here you appear to know that the real strategy is waiting. Eventually, Xi will die, and it's more likely than not that his successors will liberalize. What leads you to think this will be the case? The west has been trying to spread liberal democracy for over the past 100 years. It is successful in some places, but not in others. There doesn't seem to be magic formula, and as technology disrupts human interactions it feels like existing liberal democracies are at risk. I want to share your optimism. Orwell's vision of the future being a boot stomping on a person's head forever feels a little too close to being a reality. I don't think passively waiting for more benevolent masters is a winning strategy.
- GordonS 5y ago
  > The west has been trying to spread liberal democracy for over the past 100 years. It is successful in some places, but not in others. I think success largely depends on how democracy arrives - we've seen time and time again that forcing it upon a country (whether by military force or the more skullduggerous, CIA kind of force) is doomed to failure. I believe it needs to come naturally, slowly, over time.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    It's hard to deliver democracy and freedom by oppressive means; the means undermine the ends. However, it's also a common error of the privileged to consign the suffering to wait for a slow, gradual process that results in their entire lives passing by, and those of their children and grandchildren, etc.
AussieWog93 5y ago
>Eventually, Xi will die, and it's more likely than not that his successors will liberalize. Based on what evidence?

npunt 5y ago

I'm not actually sure if you polled westerns that they would assume protests alone are the impetus for change, this may be a straw man. A more generous line of thinking would be 'do peaceful protests help bring about change?', which many in the west would probably agree to, and many in HK probably not. And they'd both be right - peaceful protest likely works better in certain contexts (democracies) than others (authoritarian regimes).

ILMostro7 5y ago
How and why do authoritarian regimes get toppled? Ultimately, capturing hearts and minds of people throigh peaceful protests is beneficial. The question is not whether protests always work directly and timely even. Wheteher or not special interests play a role, the result is easier reached when there's at least a larger audience that may become allied or organized better. To me, it's a fallacy to say that on the one hand ideology or protesting even doesn't play a part in political change when they can be greatly exploited by special interests or governments to gain power or better control and order.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > How and why do authoritarian regimes topple? They don't topple, they are toppled.
- Seirdy 5y ago
  > How and why do authoritarian regimes topple? Multiple overlapping reasons, some of which include: - the military overthrows the rest of the executive/legislative powers - Gross incompetence resulting in the government's self-destruction - Financial collapse - Secession - Very strong external pressures (invasion, economic destruction, etc). - Multiple violent insurrections straining executive resources and undermining the rule of law, allowing other groups to fill the role of the government. Note that those necessary to take power are not always the same as those necessary to keep it; people often end up with something different than what they bargained for. An excellent read: "The Dictator's Handbook". To say that politics is a dirty business is an understatement.

jawkx 5y ago

Hongkongers are not protesting peacefully lol. They literally burned people that say that they love China. I think it is a perfect case study on how creating chaos (running into parliament building and vandalise), doxxing and threaten the family of police officers and supporting Donald trump (for whatever reason) is not helping.

limoce 5y ago
Sad to see you are being downvoted. I guess some protesters are peaceful, but some are not. Some police are calm but some are violent. Different countries apply different filters in order to get their expected views of Hong Kong.
- lifeformed 5y ago
  Obviously you'll get "good" and "bad" behaviors within any large group. It's a bell curve along a continuous value of the whole range between "good" and "bad" (or whatever metric). That doesn't mean dwelling on the outliers is a reasonable counterpoint. What matters is the middle lump of the bell curve - where does that value settle at? HK protesters have generally been peaceful. The HK police response has generally been excessively violent. To use outliers as a counterpoint is meaningless at best, subversive at worse. I constantly see people pointing to the ugly end of bell curves and throw their hands up and say, "both sides are the same" or "it's too complicated" or "it's impossible to know the true story." No, this kind of smug apathy is just a silent approval of the status quo, that it's better to just let things be than to push for messy-but-necessary changes.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    It seems to me you are saying the same thing but from different places. Do you have a neutral source that shows that "the middle lump of the bell curve" is "excessively violent" HK police? Because that lump is shown differently in different countries and even in different media.
  - jawkx 5y ago
    And the "middle of the bell curve" are not condemning the action of the extreme one. You realize they just occupy an university, make molotov inside it and throw it at the garbage truck driver that just want to get home right? It's not "a few person" things.

samirillian 5y ago

I think both of these points hold, in their own way, in the Western world. As Guy Debord writes in The Society of the Spectacle: > [The Spectacle] defines the program of the ruling class and presides over its formation, just as it presents pseudo-goods to be coveted, it offers false models of revolution to local revolutionaries. Or as Zizek once said (in paraphrase): It's not Jihad vs. McWorld, it's McJihad vs. McWorld. Do you think that the West exported this spectacle-based theory of change?

skissane 5y ago
> Or as Zizek once said (in paraphrase): It's not Jihad vs. McWorld, it's McJihad vs. McWorld. "Jihad and McWorld are two sides of the same coin. Jihad is already McJihad" https://www.lacan.com/zizekslovenia.htm https://www.lacan.com/zizekslovenia.htm

xxpor 5y ago

>The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerable to bad PR, I mean we're talking about the same government on the bad side of the Tank Man photo. I think that's kind of obvious. The difference is in HK I don't think people were anticipating China to completely break the Basic Law and the handover agreement. They were protesting the elected HK government, not Beijing directly.

tablespoon 5y ago
> They were protesting the elected HK government, not Beijing directly. I don't think it's ever been correct to say the HK government was elected. It had some elected elements, but they were never in the majority: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_Council_of_Hong_Kong#Membership_composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_Council_of_Hong_Ko.... IIRC, one of the five protest demands was for a fully elected government.
- xxpor 5y ago
  The FCs are elected, but by people in the function it sounds like. That's an election, a weird one, but still an election. I'm sure Beijing was pulling the strings but it's not like they were directly appointed.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > That's an election, a weird one, but still an election. I'm sure Beijing was pulling the strings but it's not like they were directly appointed. IIRC, they're structured so Bejing's allies would control those seats, with few exceptions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_(constituency) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_(constituency)). I think most of the "voters" are representatives of industry associations and the like.
deleted 5y ago
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lions_share 5y ago

puppymaster 5y ago

Supposedly, there were even handbooks on how to crush these protests. Look at Belarus, Myanmar and Iran. So far the oppressors are winning.

mc32 5y ago
It's almost tautological but "nice" oppressors are not going to win. They will be "taken advantage of" The opposition will duly detect the weakness and attack it. That's just the way it is and these regimes know that. If you're in the oppression business you have to be a bad one. We all wish there weren't oppressive regimes, but there are.
- deleted 5y ago
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est 5y ago
Hong Kong’s Police Violence Is Stamped ‘Made in U.K.’ https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/18/hong-kongs-police-violence-is-stamped-made-in-u-k/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/18/hong-kongs-police-viole... Bonus: > the techniques were on full display in British police violence against miners during the 1984-1985 strike
- dismantlethesun 5y ago
  Are you implying that the current Chinese government should be forgiven for abusing its citizens because the British did something similar 35 years ago? I don’t mean to offend, but your comment is so short that I can tell what kind of context you are trying to add.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    No, they are criticizing the UK.
    - dismantlethesun 5y ago

xwolfi 5y ago

But violent protests made it worse. The gov removed the extradition law at first but we gave them the opportunity to do worse to restore order and Im forced to back it because I prefer the national security law and some order than no law and no order which it was starting to look like... However you re so very right: protests movements in the west are barely responsible for change. What s responsible for change is slow and long discussion among the population, progressive education, love of the debate rather than pursuit of efficiency, and in general the acceptance we re all part of the nation, not just a minority group. When most chinese will see us as them and we ll see them as us, then it ll get better. Until then, we cant even start a debate: we're trators, they're invaders.

fieryscribe 5y ago
No, the government did not remove the extradition law until September 2019, after proposing it in February 2019. By then, many Hong Kongers had been protesting, arrested, beaten and worse. The reason we Hong Kongers did not and have not stopped is because there has been no justice for them. That's the principle behind 5 demands, not 1 less.
bakatubas 5y ago
All forms of government no matter how big or small are fcorrupt. That’s how it works—they/them who bends the will of the masses wins. Either that’s done by manipulating folks into believing the next candidate will “take their pain away”, or by inflicting pain for non-compliance. Or they change the rules: voter suppression, censorship, etc and pretend they “won the election.” Or they just murder the opposition and blame it on Santa Claus.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  It's plainly fallacious to say there is no difference in corruption, conduct, and outcomes of different governments and different forms of government. To say 'all governments are corrupt' is the same as saying 'all people are violent'; but some are murderers, some got in shoving matches with their siblings when they were 12, and there is the entire range in between.

TeeMassive 5y ago

> I think HK is a perfect case study of a line of fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. It's not fallacious. It has worked in the past and continue to work even to this day. Peaceful protests are proven to work more than violence; when they are allowed in the first place. Violet uprisings rarely lead to positive change and mostly end up in either worse conditions or disaster. Most Western governance are inheritors of violent revolutions of some sort, which people tend to be aware of but take for granted. The US has made it a point to elevate the right to bear arms as a natural right. The UK on the other hand arrest people for tweets. HK never had guns to begin with.

naniwaduni 5y ago
> Peaceful protests are proven to work more than violence; Are they? Remember, a successful violent "protest" is often just retroactively called by a different name, like "revolution" or "coup d'état", it's not as if they're fundamentally different things. How do you compare those to successful peaceful protests?
- ILMostro7 5y ago
  Lol How do you go from a protest to a coup d'état?
  - fogihujy 5y ago
    There was a revolution or two that started as simple protests...
- TeeMassive 5y ago
  There are many fundamental difference between standing armies and/or organized militias and violent mobs in terms of scale, martial effectiveness, negotiations, treaties and post-conflict continuation. Mobs don't win wars, they merely destroy and the rest is left to fate, often with disastrous results(see Libya as an example). Mobs can't sit at the negotiation table Mobs can't agree to treaties and enforce them Mobs can't form proper functioning and recognized government.

vmception 5y ago

There is a Cambridge University Press / APSA study about the United States that shows populist swelling or the popular vote rarely results in any legislative change that matches the sentiment, and legislative changes come from well funded special interests that were already there. It is either purely coincidence when those changes match what the protesters want because special interests became interests, or were already interested. You can see the desperation in trying to find an exception to this, given how much energy would be expended by protestors and those bound by the popular vote, so the we can at least concede - for their sake - that they may have gotten the attention of special interests sometimes, with one influencing the other. I think the more efficient use of energy would be to identify the most effective special interest groups and capture them. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

dillondoyle 5y ago
cool article. really long I skimmed it so far. seems focused on comparing economic elite/interest groups to common population, which would skew the policy measured to tangible economic/business outcomes? My first thought to your comment was an opposing example of gay rights. Sure gay marriage was SCOTUS but it first changed as policy at the state level. politicians changed because it became popular enough and strong voice in media (remember obama was against marriage equality amongst other things at first). We're now seeing this struggle with Trans rights. Where it's >52% popular you see equality legislation, where it's a good wedge issue for Republicans they act against (e.g. DeSantis is running for president on the backs of attacking children..) Civil Rights Act comes to mind too and interesting in that it had such strong opposition, interesting question of what are special interests if you expand beyond 'economic and business elite.' NAACP et al were very powerful. Marijuana & decriminalization is another quick thought, though that's a bit more cloudy especially with later states with a more established business interest group. But I worked on the original campaign here in CO and our budget was pretty tiny...
- vmception 5y ago

rantwasp 5y ago

i like the French approach. whenever shit does not work they start building a guillotine: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6477953/Yellow-Vest-protesters-erect-GUILLOTINE-bearing-French-Presidents-political-party-amid-riots.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6477953/Yellow-Vest... It's a very powerful symbol that if things don't work out violence is on the table and people are going to be held accountable. For those who know a little French history, you know that those French people don't fuck around.

ceilingcorner 5y ago
The French Revolution was mostly a tale of radical actors taking control of the government and then using it to violently get rid of competitors. Absolutely nothing to do with "the people" holding "government" accountable.

deleted 5y ago

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nine_k 5y ago

I remember a good thought experiment. Gandhi's peaceful protests were successful because they impressed the British public via free press, and the public opinion affected the British government. Now imagine that instead of post-war British, the colonial regime were held by their contemporary Stalin. How much would a peaceful protest achieve?

lotsofpulp 5y ago
It's obviously multifactorial, and I do not diminish Gandhi's efforts, but it would be hard to ignore Britain's diminished capabilities after WW2 as having a role in Britain letting go of India. They simply had no capacity to control a country like India on the other side of the world in their state at the end of WW2, so might as well save as much face while they can.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  Not just a question of capacity. The British Empire almost fell to Hitler's ambitions and while Great Britain was never invaded it definitely looked a lot weaker than what it was supposed to. This meant that the British Empire was far from invincible and definitely led the path to decolonisation.
pydry 5y ago
There were also violent protests in India. It does seem like opposing nonviolent and violent factions who reject each other works better than just one. Northern Ireland, Malcolm X/MLK, etc.
- orwin 5y ago
  Interesting point of view, never thought about the irish liberation, even though it was a recent development. My opinion is that the fear of marxism permeating the civil right movement (especially the BPP) and starting to reach the Latino and disfavored white people (the "rainbow movement" if i remember correctly) did strike fear into the US government (hence the assassination of Fred Hampton, who really started this). This fear allowed to Civil right movement to be successful, because ethnic tension, while useful to exploit a minority, is not worth the danger to the social order.

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doesthismean 5y ago

> ... peaceful protesting... Is setting fires on public transport, damaging roads and buildings, beating up (in some cases almost killing) innocent bystanders "peaceful protesting"? What westerners do not understand is that the 2019 riots in HK are motivated by hatred toward Chinese mainlanders who have risen in wealth in recent decades and to whom HK residents have historically felt superior. A parallel in the West may be racially motivated hate crimes. You don't call Ku Klux Klan rallies "peaceful".

GordonS 5y ago
I love HK, and I have friends in HK. What I've heard is very different - most protesting has been peaceful, sometimes turning violent after actions by the police or a few anarchist types on the fringes (and let's be honest, there's a good chance these are often working under instruction of the secure apparatuses). They also vehemently deny any kind of racism against mainlanders - people are against the new security laws and restrictions on personal freedoms, nothing else.
- doesthismean 5y ago
  > They also vehemently deny any kind of racism against mainlanders Do racists happily admit that they are racists though?
  - GordonS 5y ago
    By this logic, they are vile racists no matter what?!
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      It's being critical of a source. You look at their actions and words, not at if they deny to be something bad.
  - throwaway_oil 5y ago
    This account was created today and has only commented in this thread.

blast 5y ago

Question to wyager or anyone else about that second point: what are some examples of political changes that people think were caused by protests, but in reality were already in development before the protest started? Also, who are the best-known advocates for this idea? If the answer is "I, wyager, came up with it", that's totally fine, I'm just curious if the concept has an interesting history.

pas 5y ago
It's hard to untangle causality for these complex society-wide changes. It's hard to organize a protest if there's not already a societal development for that cause. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/13/does-reality-drive-straight-lines-on-graphs-or-do-straight-lines-on-graphs-drive-reality/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/13/does-reality-drive-str... There's also the dynamic systems viewpoint: between two "attractor states" the tipping point sits on a locally almost flat region. So a transition from one "stable" potential well to an other goes through these confusing no one's lands. Sure, the speed of transition is unknown, and obviously depends on a lot of things like how strong the attractors are (how deep the wells are), and how strong is the societal push - to push society uphill. But just as there are no protests in North Korea, there is no need to protest for free speech in the US. (That's a crude analogy, yes. I know that free speech is a hot topic nowadays, but the point I'd like to make is that the "political speech against the state is protected by the state" is absolutely unquestioned, the debate is about how tolerant folks ought to be of racists/homophobes/xenophobes.) And between these two extremes there's a lot of countries. And somewhere in the middle it seems that protests happen, but it doesn't matter. (Eg. in Russia. Protests happen, but Putin is still king. Similarly in China [0] ... but in both cases it seems that the authoritarianism is getting stronger. But we don't know what society thinks. Are they getting completely brainwashed, like in NK? [1] In Russia and Belarus people seem to be aware that it could be better, but the current power structure is very efficient in crushing opposition, so people instead drink a lot and die early.) [0] https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/college-merger-protest-06082021144646.html https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/college-merger-protes... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9rLqYXTaFI&t=6m40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9rLqYXTaFI&t=6m40s
saiya-jin 5y ago

bosswipe 5y ago

Your two points are only true when there is no democracy.

mrd3v0 5y ago

A little bit off-topic, but it's quite interesting how the name of the law and the intentions behind it is quite the same as in Egypt. Both were installed to actively seize means of opposition media and capture any persons involved for an indefinite period of time. For more context on the Egyptian side, it was the effective law of land during the nearly 30-year tenure of former dictator Hosni Mubarak and then got reinstated after another Coup d'etat by current dictator El-Sisi.

GordonS 5y ago

> fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. Haha, as a westerner, I believe peaceful protest is invariably futile. Take the 2003 protests against the Iraq war for example - 3 million protested in Rome, 1.5 million in Madrid, 1 million in London, and millions more across the west. What happened? They went to war based on lies anyway. It's always the same.

Dah00n 5y ago
Protests are a legal part of the system as a blow-off valve to let average citizens get rid of their rage. It's there to keep the status quo. It makes no difference without force behind it. As long as the opposing view doesn't feel endangered it is working for them and against the average citizen. As soon as it makes a difference it is no longer protests but a rebellion, which most who will protest doesn't have the stomach for.
- malwarebytess 5y ago
  And barely legal at that. Right to protest is curtailed bit by bit year by year. It isn't a protest if you have to apply for a permit and have to stay in some "free speech zone."
  - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
    In some places in America it’s legal to kill protestors. (Florida IIRC recently passed a law granting immunity to people to run over protestors with their car.)
    - snowflake_ptr 5y ago
      Fact-check: false. The Florida law only applies to rioters, not protestors. "Riot" is defined as: "three or more people acting with common intent resulting in injury to others, damage to property, or the imminent danger of injury or damage." There's a second "Aggravated riot": "25 or more participants cause great bodily harm or more than $5,000 in property damage, uses or threatens to use a deadly weapon, or blocks roadways by force or threat of force." If you're doing any of the above things, you're not protesting. The law was most likely the direct result of a violent mob climbing on top of this guy's car in Florida, one of whom the driver hit in his attempts to get away.

mschuster91 5y ago

> The second mistake is assuming that most (putatively) peaceful protests in the western world are actually the impetus for political change, and not just part of a legitimization strategy for political changes that were already in development before the protest started. This "but protests must be peaceful!!!" attitude that persists in Western countries and grew in popularity with the '68 generation is actually reproduced by (mostly conservative) politicians these days, as it's easy to simply ignore a peaceful protest. Just compare worker protection and social security regulations in France (where unions and people literally fight, to wide approval in society and media) vs Germany (where the population is kept docile and any protest that even only looks non-peaceful gets decried in media).

csomar 5y ago

> the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. The protest itself is not effective, or at least doesn't change the current day order. But it signals an important opposition to a certain rule that a smart politician should pick up. > The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerable to bad PR, so generating a bunch of sympathetic imagery (photos of student protestors getting gassed or whatever) might not actually be useful in swaying political outcomes. You are wrong. China does care a lot for its image. More than you'd expect. China does give a bunch of money to improve its image (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_foreign_aid); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_foreign_aid); certainly less than the US but it is sizable and also smarter. They are building popular stuff (like hospitals) in the middle of nowhere and making lots of fanfare about it as well as putting their flags. And no, these are not loans, these are grants (ie: free money!). The coronavirus and current US-led media campaign did damage the Chinese reputation a lot. But here is where you might be lost: China doesn't really care about the educated western population and the western population in general. > The second mistake is assuming that most (putatively) peaceful protests in the western world are actually the impetus for political change, and not just part of a legitimization strategy for political changes that were already in development before the protest started. It's a process. Protests are a manifestation of discontent, and are a good indicator when no transparent voting mechanism is in place. It gives the US good leverage against China by weighing discontent. Sure, it makes no changes, but that's because we live in a distorted world where democracy for small countries is possible. Democratically, independent and small countries like New Zealand are only possible today because of the world order the US has placed. Otherwise, there is nothing stopping China from walking to New Zealand and declaring it New China.

dumb1224 5y ago
>Democratically, independent and small countries like New Zealand are only possible today because of the world order the US has placed. Otherwise, there is nothing stopping China from walking to New Zealand and declaring it New China. This sounds a bit outlandish to me. I respect what your sub message might be but in real world scenario it's quite exaggerated.

dumb1224 5y ago

I'm wondering why most of the comments here are not discussing the content of the article but rather the general HK protest. Most of people in China understand the value of rule of law. And we never deny that the environment there is far from any democratic western society. But if you read the article and are the readers of the mentioned media outlets you would agree a bit that those are a little dubious (Post852, Winandmac Media etc, Apple Daily included). It's definitely not good to have a sweeping ban, but pretending all non-mainland chinese media is pro democracy and liberal values and not populist (sometimes provocative and radicalised) to attract viewers is a little naive in my humble opinion.

WastingMyTime89 5y ago
So just to be clear you actually believe that media being populist justify abitrary detentions, jailing people from indefinite duration without ever putting them to trial while threatening them with life in prison if not straight murder?
- dumb1224 5y ago
  I doubt anyone with the right mind would support that, wouldn't you agree? But I'm afraid nobody has perfect information. People in mainland China read anything with filters and are aware of what's really going on, so I don't think it should be that different elsewhere.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > I'm afraid nobody has perfect information. People in mainland China read anything with filters and are aware of what's really going on, so I don't think it should be that different elsewhere. That's a false equivalency, like saying 'people in Pyonyang aren't perfectly free, nor are people in New York, so it's basically the same.' It's not at all the same.
    - dumb1224 5y ago
      I didn't equate anything to anything. I simply pointed out that no one has perfect information. What you read about China might be a mix of many true and false (maybe exaggerated) information. I'm not even comparing different population. If I wasn't clear then I apologise.

_tik_ 5y ago

There are many reasons other than the choice of peaceful strategy. The movement doesn't have any clear achievable goals, lacks united leadership. There is a strong opinion the movement is designed to fail. The real goal of the movement is to humiliate CPP. An the violence stage of the protest. My HK relatives, political refuges from cultural revolution time, are more scared of the protester than CCP.

bsanr2 5y ago

This is why I scoff at the people criticizing the BLM protests and associated riots. We should have learned this lesson wrt the anti-war protests during the Bush years: when the person whose actions you need to change are absolutely intransigent, attempting to convince them directly is not an effective strategy, because they will not be convinced. Instead, the most immediate goal must be to liquify the set status quo; changes can be insisted upon more easily when the illusion of stability has been broken and there is less friction. Marginalized people usually serve as a sink for the rage and violence of people who are in power but are still bitter because an imperfect world remains perfect. Usually, these marginalized people simply eat those injuries, protecting society's stability. With riots; with graphic images of police beatings and murders plastered on TV and the internet; with infrastructure shutdowns; with resumed talk of things like police reform, social justice, and reparations, these people instead conserve and then redirect that rage and violence back out to the larger society to deal with. It's understandable that many do not like this disturbance of their peace, but that's kind of the point. And BLM et al. are not manufacturing it out of whole cloth; it's simply the intolerable oppression of an imperfect society, visited upon people who are used to shuffling it off onto lessers.

answerretards 5y ago
This comment made me very very mad, very strongly strongly to the point I made this account even though I don't usually comment on HN. You must be one example of somebody that live mostly in peaceful democratic society. You've never seen actual blood, war, limbs, raped girls, beheaded people? heads rolling and kicked down like a soccer ball? girls with vaginas stuck by sticks? I've seen a few, and it happened in a city, in.a.fucking.riot You wanna know how many people died? 1500 fucking people you fucking idiot. In a big fucking city. The army had to come down to quell the riot. BLM can protest peacefully, otherwise we normal people don't give a fuck about their message is. There are many people out there than just Black people. A lot of immigrants for example, don't generally give a shit about what happened this past 2 years about BLM this BLM that. They just want their stores not to be burned by these uncivilized people. No they don't have fucking insurance you fucking idiot. BLM can protest peacefully, otherwise be prepared to be gunned down. I don't care who he/she/it. Travel my property, burn my property, get ready for a lead in the head. I am not a Trump supporter, and as a matter of fact a Democrat, voted for Biden. but I'll lick Trump's boots and vote hard hard hard right if it means that I can prevent of defunding the police and keep the order. The politicians that do not condemn the riot and supporting defunding the police are simply out there for political points. They need to go down!

RobertKerans 5y ago

It's not Western though. You're right in that it generally doesn't work, but it's well known to only work in specific circumstances. Yes it's part of a political strategy, but the point of it is to demonstrate dignity, and given a state that is susceptible to shame, that greatly aids in the empowerment of blocs within the state to enact change. In retrospect, yes, it's fallacious thinking from the protesters if they thought they could successfully press for change just via the protests. But that's in retrospect, previously it might have worked. But as you suggest, the Chinese state is in a position where it doesn't have to care and will happily exterminate the protests. Only answer then is violence, but in this situation the only actors capable of that are other states. In which case, peaceful protest, not fighting back seems the logically correct thing to do -- the protestors require the moral high ground and to focus attention on the issue, which they did very successfully. Whether that has much effect -- probably not, China is ridiculously powerful, but they couldn't do much more (I mean, taken to Gandhian logical extremes, recognition of the failure of the non-violent protest should have been followed mass suicide of all the protesters, which is grotesque but hey, that's Gandhi for you).

derefr 5y ago
The logical extreme here, I would think, is mass organized emigration to other countries who have offered to willingly take in HK political refugees.
- RobertKerans 5y ago
  Yes, that has direct precedent. And with the most obvious precedent, was the alternative taken when that group [surprisingly! /s] didn't do what Gandhi thought they should have done. Edit: but that isn't nonviolent protest, it's just leaving your home. It doesn't cause any political change, and it's not at all the logical extreme of nonviolent protest (the logical extreme is stupid, and seems only to have ever been carried out by millenarian cults, but hey ho).
- scohesc 5y ago
  I would assume China is monitoring all their Hong Kong citizens and carefully scrutinizing them for any dissident behaviour before they even think of letting them leave the country.

wolverine876 5y ago

> fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. First, it's not 'westerners'. Democracy and peaceful protest are embraced throughout the world: All of North and South America, with few exceptions; almost all of Europe; Japan, S. Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines to extents, India, countries in Africa, etc. And protests happen outside democracy and go back long before it. Gandhi was protesting in a dictatorship; MLK was too, in many ways (it was in many ways a dictatorship for African-Americans). But what an odd world we have become, where people go out of their way to tell each other these things contrary to what is all around them. As a simple example, look at all the policing and legal reforms, all the social changes, that have happened in response to the George Floyd protests. The Arab Spring happened not long before that. People invest enormous amounts of time and effort in changing public opinion, and causing/stopping protest. Despair seems like a dumb, unpleasant trend. The people in power want you to think you are powerless; it obviously suits them for you to believe it. Similarly, to suppress votes they say 'your vote doesn't count' - something I've encountered in poor communities. The power is actually yours. History is filled with protests changing the world. Governments have power only from the consent of the governed. Like the fiat power behind currency, the government's power comes from people giving them that authority - the government says you must do X, and people choose to listen. They don't have nearly enough other power to survive without it, including - or especially including - non-democratic governments. If nobody listens to them, who are they? Just some people talking (ironically, similar to what authoritarians try to say about protestors - nobody listens). What is their authority? And if people don't go to work, if the streets are filled with protest, then it affects many more interests than those in office. You can see why some in power try to spread this idea that you have none. Protests also demonstrate and galvanize public opinion. People sitting home and feeling alone and powerless are no threat; other people telling them that that they are powerless are ideal. When people see others taking action, when they see they are not alone, then they act. Sure, life is more complicated than that. Few things happen only because of a protest, but that's just because the world is too complicated for simple solutions. But to say protests aren't a huge factor is really a fantasy of authority, and they push it for a reason. The world is yours.