My TakeMore to consulate brawl than meets the eye

As I read British news reports about a Hong Kong protester being beaten by Chinese consulate staff in Manchester, I felt like a subject in a famous social psychology experiment.

In the escalating diplomatic row, virtually all the British media and political class have gone into full outrage mode over the reported claim, now virtually unquestioned, that the Hong Kong man, identified only as Bob, was dragged onto consulate grounds and beaten up. He was only saved by the intervention of a police officer.

In the classic Asch conformity experiment, the subjects usually stopped trusting what they actually saw in a perceptual test and started conforming to the wrong visual claim made by all the other participants who had been instructed to give the same wrong answer.

I have seen several online clips, all edited to some extent, of the incident and they didn’t seem to show what was reported. What I saw, or thought I saw, was some consulate staff going outside to destroy or take away protest banners. One member of staff carried damaged pieces with him. Bob chased after him and grabbed him. In the ensuing altercation, both men were pulled onto consulate grounds through a half-opened gate.

Admittedly, a staff member was seen beating Bob repeatedly, but it appeared he and others were trying to get him to let go of their colleague, who at that point was lying on the ground. A police officer then pulled Bob outside. The whole incident couldn’t have lasted more than a minute.