Why Hong Kong’s youth anger has parallels with German history
Nativism has recently emerged as a force in the local social movement. Its presence can be identified with specific isolated events – the anti-locust action, baby formula action, anti-cross-border parallel trade actions, and student union elections at several universities. The prospect that it may become a political force to be reckoned with was suggested in the outcome of the recent Northeast New Territories by-election.
A new generation of youths is becoming socially active. Not all of them have a nativist profile, many are still looking where to land, but they are discovering that nativism is appealing to a growing number of their peers.
Who are these young voters? Why are they interested in politics? I conjecture four factors are shaping their development, which I base on parallels in German history – a natural point of comparison because it is the intellectual home of nativism (that eventually transformed into nationalism) as a political force.
The four factors are (1) prolonged economic and social deprivation amidst growing opulence, (2) humiliation and failure to find human fulfilment, (3) rejection of the narrative of the glittering world, and (4) the search for a new narrative that embraces courage and the martial spirit.
The first factor is present in Hong Kong’s remote public rental housing estates, which are a fertile breeding ground of isolated, lonely, frustrated youths. These estates are now populated by low-income households, divorced households, single-parent households, and recent immigrant households. Many of them are concentrated in the remote and isolated parts of Hong Kong.
Individuals and families that live and grow up in public rental housing estates often do not circulate in the rest of the city because of the high transport costs. Their stable community is ripe for politicians trying to build a constituency, with a voter base of frustrated people and an army of youth volunteers eager for a narrative that can ignite their imaginations about the meaning of their future. This leads us to the second factor.
What kind of narrative strikes a chord? Here I draw on parallels in German history. The Thirty Years’ War, which ended in 1648, wreaked unimaginable destruction. In terms of total deaths as a fraction of the world population of the time, it ranks among the top 10 in world history and the worst ever in European history.