Hong Kong protest paradox: can a democracy movement backed by bigotry and vigilantism succeed?
- The humour and humility evident in protest art is sorely lacking in those at the forefront of street unrest
- People who brush aside protesters’ acts of violence are doing the movement no favours
“We in the West have no right to condemn the violence of protesters facing tyranny,” writes Richard Lloyd Parry, talking about Hong Kong in British daily The Times.
I beg to disagree. There is inexcusable violence on both sides. The police, who are better armed and enjoy legal privileges, have much to answer for. But the black-shirted demonstrators do not get a free pass to vandalise, let alone beat and burn bystanders.
Parry attributes to Hong Kong a kind of Orientalist essentialism. What might look like deplorable violence to us “right-thinking” people in the West is not deplorable to them. Oh, really?
Sadistic individuals can infiltrate the ranks anywhere, but for a movement to remain viable, those with psychopathic tendencies need be isolated, contained and neutralised. There’s no room for bigots, bullies and thugs in a moral movement, as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela each learned the hard way.
Any democracy movement worthy of the name must take human rights, tolerance of diversity and peaceful conduct seriously. Accountability is key, so is honesty.
The assaulting of hapless pedestrians bears disturbing echoes of novels such as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Anthony Burgess’ Clockwork Orange, in which violence is the drug of choice.
The dirty secret of Hong Kong’s protests: hatred of mainlanders
With “frontliners” of this sort, who use the peaceful crowd for cover, how can Hong Kong’s democracy movement remain democratic? The plot has unravelled.
An abusive minority has poisoned the communal well, and nobody’s addressing it. Some are simply afraid to speak up. Others take a wait-and-see attitude. Some are blinded by partisanship, while others are obliged to seal their lips for reasons of operational discipline.
Parry exhorts his readers in The Times to “support” and “salute” the Hong Kong protests despite the violence; I say it’s time to cease “adding oil” to the flames and stop validating violence. Instead, it is time for accountability, atonement and turning a new leaf.
Philip J. Cunningham is the author of Tiananmen Moon, a first-hand account of the 1989 Beijing student protests