Opinion | LeBron James’ and Jeremy Lin’s Black Lives Matter support does not mean they must have a view on Hong Kong protests
- Joshua Wong highly critical of star’s silence on NBA-China crisis and Hong Kong protests while being vocal on US
- Social media whataboutery to athletes such as Jeremy Lin diminishes everyone’s cause despite success not being zero-sum
But what about?
These are among the worst words on the internet, often coming before a charge of hypocrisy while not dealing with the matter at hand.
“Defending democracy is vital, but @KingJames [LeBron James] only talks loud in the US. On China, not only is he silent, he actively shuts others up,” Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong wrote on Twitter last week. “He called @dmorey [Daryl Morey] ‘misinformed’ and ‘not really educated’ for supporting #HongKong. All he cares about is money, not human rights. Hypocritical.”
The tweet was retweeted more than 11,000 times and got nearly 25,000 likes. It also resulted in a lot of comments that posted memes of James in league to China, such as his face replacing Mao Zedong’s on the 100 yuan bill. Wong himself replied with several of them.