My Take‘Patriotic’ YouTube stars aim for legislature
- Young and aspiring pro-government figures are exploiting social media as a launch pad for a political career, beginning with next year’s Legco election
YouTube has become an incubator for the next generation of pro-government lawmaker-wannabes.
If you want to know who may be the new legislators in next year’s election, you may watch the more popular so-called KOLs (key opinion leaders) online. They have made no secret of their political ambitions, and would have been candidates if the September election wasn’t delayed for a year, ostensibly because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but in reality, part of a concerted political campaign to neuter the opposition.
The KOLs have several common characteristics: relatively young, in their late 20s and 30s; fiercely nationalistic; and adept at social media with a large following or subscription base, at least by Hong Kong standards.
They are also less stuffy than the older pro-establishment politicians. In their online clips, they often use funny memes to lighten up political topics, which they address with a mixture of humour, sarcasm and criticism, mostly directed at the pan-democratic opposition and protest movement. Almost all of them launched their online channels during the violent protests last year.
Not a few of them were district council members until they lost their seats last year in an opposition electoral landslide. Among the more high profile are Dominic Lee Tsz-king, Joephy Chan Wing-yan and Ivan Mok Ka-kit. They may not be household names, but their clips attract lots of eyeballs, not just because of fans but also for being frequent targets of online attacks by anti-government protest groups. Their YouTube subscriber numbers range from 226,000 to 278,000.
While a university student in the United States, Lee, 36, had worked as an intern for Democratic congressman Al Green. Back in Hong Kong, he was a Liberal Party member but jumped ship this year to the New People’s Party under Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, the former secretary for security.
Chan, 30, is a political star of the pro-Beijing Federation of Trade Unions and once beat veteran unionist and pan-democrat Frederick Fung Kin-kee in the 2015 district council election, only to be defeated in turn by his Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood candidate last year.