Obama’s warning about ‘woke’ culture could have been directed at Hong Kong during the protests

Hong Kong’s fervent young protesters have turned to harassment or even assault against those who disagree with them, an even more extreme form of the behaviour the former president recently criticised among American progressives

Alice Wu

Published: 3:00am, 4 Nov 2019

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All the talk about the Hong Kong government being determined to stop the violence and restore calm in the city is, well, just talk. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor repeats these empty words week after week but there’s little determination to act and that’s why her popularity just took another dip. People can tell it’s lip service.

What has happened to the dialogue platform Lam took all summer to set up? There was one public forum that achieved nothing as public anger rose and violent confrontations on the streets escalated. Hong Kong seems determined to keep burning.

So, here we are, at week 22, and there is no sign of anything abating. The violence on the streets cannot be curbed. There is no sign of calm on the horizon. Empty talk achieves nothing. And (un)fortunately, most have stopped looking to Lam for any sort of leadership or words that carry any weight. But that’s not saying her words aren’t “effectual”.

Just last Tuesday, Lam blamed violent protesters for Hong Kong’s economics woes and accused them of “finding excuses” to unleash chaos and, of course, by saying that, she was the perfect “excuse” for them get back out there again.

Surely, calling them out doesn’t solve anything, nor does it show her government’s determination to stop the violence. Perhaps that’s what former US president Barack Obama, who was elected 11 years ago on Monday, was talking about at the Obama Foundation Summit at the Illinois Institute of Technology last week, when he said that such call-outs are “not activism”.

Former US president Barack Obama recently took progressive activists to task for demanding excessive “purity”, and in the process won praise from pundits who had criticised his presidency. Photo: AFP

“That’s not bringing about change,” he said. “If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far.” Obama was calling out the young progressives in America, but his words speak to many beyond American borders.

And, surely, Obama was also talking about those who have, for the past 22 weeks, been engaging in “hashtag activism”, sharing links accompanied with disparaging commentary dripping with hateful judgment.

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He said some appear to think the way to bring about change “is to be as judgemental as possible about other people, and that’s enough” when it all amounts to “slacktivism”, done for self-satisfaction. And Obama is absolutely correct, because slacktivism isn’t conducive to meaningful engagement and will not bring about change.

He offered more words to the wise: “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly.” These particular words really should speak to our university students as well, because against the backdrop of street violence, our campuses are under siege.

Vice-chancellor of Chinese University Rocky Tuan meets students on the university campus in Sha Tin on August 1. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

For the past few weeks, we have seen university students, in the name of open dialogue, subject the heads of their schools to all sorts of abuse – by shouting them down, hurling obscenities, shining laser pointers and hindering their movement.

The president of Open University was slammed for not kneeling and was called a “dog official” because a student failed to understand that being chairman of the Consumer Council, as Professor Wong Yuk-shan was, is a public service.

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But this incident not only illustrates the naivety of some of our very angry students, it also points to how easily we are willing to abandon reason and, in the name of social justice, engage in the sort of purges reminiscent of the Red Guards half a century ago.

They, too, were intoxicated by the fervour for revolution. They, too, felt “politically woke” and were passionate about purging elitism. And none of us need to be reminded of how that ended.

And, therefore, it would be sobering to listen to wise words offered by people like Obama and our Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li. In his speech last week at the Education Colloquium, Ma called for students to have “a sense of community rooted in the fundamentals of tolerance, respect and compromises”.

We can’t purge this city of people who have different political views and goals. But we must recognise that they have every right to them, as we do ours.

Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA

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