Hong Kong 'civil society' in action

[mrswdk]

In their latest advert for why Hong Kong needs more structured law and order, and better regulation of public debate and discourse, the minority of Hong Kongers who have taken it upon themselves to derail proposed legislation have:

Violently attacked government buildings



Vandalised public property:



Raised colonial-era flags representing the violent seizure of the island from the Qing Dynasty by colonists during the 19th century heyday of European imperialism:

[mrswdk]

The so-called 'civil society' these people want is nothing of the sort. As they have made abundantly clear over the past weeks, all they really want is the freedom to violently derail and strike down any policy or law that does not suit their own minority interests.

That is not how a society is governed and that is not how the interests of all the population are served. It is high time the Hong Kong executive grew a back bone and put these anarchists in their place. The stability and harmony of the city depends upon it.

[jimboston]

Aren’t you the guy that posts praising pictures and comments of black-hat/anarchist types?

[mrswdk]

Aren’t you the guy that posts praising pictures and comments of black-hat/anarchist types?

lolwat

In other news, the Hong Kong rioters have now stormed their way into the legislature's main chambers:



Are the HK authorities this incapable of maintaining basic law, order and societal functioning, or are HK's subversive elements just this wild and this destructive when not kept in proper moderation?

[NomadPatriot]

and.. I don't care..

[Dukasaur]

Despots have to be fought. Sometimes the means are not pretty.

[mrswdk]

The means employed by these so-called democratic protesters look more like an armed coup than anything else:



Duk is apparently one of those who believes it's acceptable to do anything you like as long as you think you are right. This is why people say you should never discuss politics or religion at the dinner table; it's not about manners, it's to avoid someone like Duk stabbing you with a fish knife because you disagree with his views on taxation.

[Dukasaur]

The means employed by these so-called democratic protesters look more like an armed coup than anything else:



Duk is apparently one of those who believes it's acceptable to do anything you like as long as you think you are right. This is why people say you should never discuss politics or religion at the dinner table; it's not about manners, it's to avoid someone like Duk stabbing you with a fish knife because you disagree with his views on taxation.

If China had real democracy then drastic actions wouldn't be needed. People could debate and vote on the issues.

With debate being censored and votes being largely irrelevant, people have no choice but to turn to other means.

I go back to my previous comments. Despots have to be fought. Non-despots can be reasoned with.

[mrswdk]

The means employed by these so-called democratic protesters look more like an armed coup than anything else:



Duk is apparently one of those who believes it's acceptable to do anything you like as long as you think you are right. This is why people say you should never discuss politics or religion at the dinner table; it's not about manners, it's to avoid someone like Duk stabbing you with a fish knife because you disagree with his views on taxation.

If China had real democracy then drastic actions wouldn't be needed. People could debate and vote on the issues.

Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China with very different laws and governance structures to the mainland. Hong Kong's press, judiciary and legislature are almost entirely copies of British structures and processes. It's interesting that you think the British system is 'despotic'.

With debate being censored and votes being largely irrelevant

I will agree with you that these violent thugs certainly do consider votes to be irrelevant.

Hong Kong has an elected legislature whose job it is to discuss the bill currently up for consideration. These thugs, however, have no intention of letting the elected legislature undergo its processes; they just want to use violence and intimidation to force the government to do what they want.

In doing so they actually are forcing a minority view onto the majority of the population. The two largest political blocs in Hong Kong are political parties known as 'pro-Establishment' (i.e. supportive of Beijing's policies) and political parties known as 'pro-democracy' (i.e. parties that support increased divergence from the mainland's political system), and in at least the two most recent elections the majority of seats in the legislature have been won by pro-establishment parties (see the chart here is an article detailing the current breakdown).

So, these violent thugs are not only attempting to subvert a free and open debate with mindless violence, but they are seeking to subvert the debate in order to force the views of a minority onto the majority. Going back to what you said in your post, Duk, the above is an interesting definition of 'standing up to despots'.

Do you really care about achieving representative governance, or do you just like watching people pick up the snow globe and give it a shake?

[Dukasaur]

Don't play games. You know damn well this movement is about the island government not being free and independent, and getting sucked into the tyrannical orbit of the mainland. If the Peking government gets away with extraditing political dissidents to the mainland for "trial", all chance is gone of the island being able to govern itself without interference.

[jimboston]

If this was happening anywhere in the US, she’d say that it’s the righteous people rising up to protect their rights.

[Ray Rider]

As someone who was in Hong Kong about a year ago and still has relatives living there, it's awesome to see some of the largest protests the world has ever seen standing up to China's growing tyranny.

[mrswdk]

The HK protests aren't that big. Compare them to the protests against the Iraq War:

The book of Guinness World Records currently lists the Feb. 15, 2003, Iraq War protest in Rome as the largest antiwar rally in history. The event drew an estimated crowd of 3 million. On that same day, protesters gathered in nearly 600 cities in a coordinated global effort to express moral outrage against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This included a reported 1.3 million protesters in Barcelona, Spain, and between 750,000 and 2 million protesters in London. All told, between 6 and 10 million people participated in the global protest.

The above is also a good example of how protest achieves nothing. The largest and most coordinated global protest ever was totally ignored by the governments it was aimed at.

Maybe these Hong Kong anarchists could learn from that and find a more productive way of trying to influence policy, rather than just indulging in carnage and destruction purely to satisfy their own egos.

[Dukasaur]

The HK protests aren't that big. Compare them to the protests against the Iraq War:

The book of Guinness World Records currently lists the Feb. 15, 2003, Iraq War protest in Rome as the largest antiwar rally in history. The event drew an estimated crowd of 3 million. On that same day, protesters gathered in nearly 600 cities in a coordinated global effort to express moral outrage against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This included a reported 1.3 million protesters in Barcelona, Spain, and between 750,000 and 2 million protesters in London. All told, between 6 and 10 million people participated in the global protest.

The above is also a good example of how protest achieves nothing. The largest and most coordinated global protest ever was totally ignored by the governments it was aimed at.

What matters more than absolute size of the protest is the relative size.

The 2003 protest may have included between 6 and 10 million people, but that was out of a population of something in the neighbourhood of 800 million people in Europe and America. It therefore represented something between 0.75% and 1.25% of the population. Governments feel relatively safe ignoring one percent of the population.

The Hong Kong protestors claim to have had participation from two million people. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48656471 Even the official estimate, which is almost certainly understated, was 338 thousand. The Hong Kong population is about 7.4 million, so the protest includes something between 5% (at the most pessimistic) and possibly up to 30% of the population. That's a lot harder to ignore than 1%.

It's never wise to bet against the ruthlessness of the CPC, but there's at least an outside chance that the protestors will succeed in getting the extradition bill rolled back. It's at least been suspended for the moment. The 2014 Umbrella protests famously failed to get the CPC to back down from its plot to hamstring democracy in Hong Kong. On the other hand, less famous protests in 2012 succeeded in stopping the mainland's plan to take over Hong Kong' education system.

[mrswdk]

possibly up to 30% of the population

There is a 0% chance that 'nearly 2 million' people took part in the protests. If you exclude children and the over 65s (who definitely were not marching), there are something like 5 million 18-65 year olds living in Hong Kong. For nearly 2 million people to have protested, that means nearly half of the city's adult population would have had to taken part - which they obviously didn't.

Take a look at this story. After the first protest, HK protestors claimed 550,000 attended. Police claimed 190,000. A team of researchers using a mixture of AI and manual counting then subsequently claimed 265,000. So apparently, once people had done some careful research they found that the police estimates were way closer to the truth than hyperbole released by the organisers of the protests. That shouldn't be a surprise but apparently if you're a Western journalist, it is.

The protest leaders throw stupid numbers like '6 billion!!!!' around because they know hostile Western media will report them without questioning them and people reading hostile Western media will read them then go off and parrot them without questioning them. Probably because the Western media and its reads share your obvious partisan support of the protesters' political aims.

[Dukasaur]

possibly up to 30% of the population

There is a 0% chance that 'nearly 2 million' people took part in the protests. If you exclude children and the over 65s (who definitely were not marching), there are something like 5 million 18-65 year olds living in Hong Kong. For nearly 2 million people to have protested, that means nearly half of the city's adult population would have had to taken part - which they obviously didn't.

Take a look at this story. After the first protest, HK protestors claimed 550,000 attended. Police claimed 190,000. A team of researchers using a mixture of AI and manual counting then subsequently claimed 265,000. So apparently, once people had done some careful research they found that the police estimates were way closer to the truth than hyperbole released by the organisers of the protests. That shouldn't be a surprise but apparently if you're a Western journalist, it is.

The protest leaders throw stupid numbers like '6 billion!!!!' around because they know hostile Western media will report them without questioning them and people reading hostile Western media will read them then go off and parrot them without questioning them. Probably because the Western media and its reads share your obvious partisan support of the protesters' political aims.

If the difference between the lower estimate of 338,000 and 2,000,000 follows the same pattern as the example you gave, then that would give a number upwards of 900,000. That would be about one-eighth of the population.

But even if the number is lower, it still represents a vastly greater percentage of the population than the Iraq protests. Even if it were the 338,000 that the police quoted (very unlikely) it would still be almost 5% of the population. Vastly more, in percentage terms, than the Iraq protest turnout.

[mrswdk]

possibly up to 30% of the population

There is a 0% chance that 'nearly 2 million' people took part in the protests. If you exclude children and the over 65s (who definitely were not marching), there are something like 5 million 18-65 year olds living in Hong Kong. For nearly 2 million people to have protested, that means nearly half of the city's adult population would have had to taken part - which they obviously didn't.

Take a look at this story. After the first protest, HK protestors claimed 550,000 attended. Police claimed 190,000. A team of researchers using a mixture of AI and manual counting then subsequently claimed 265,000. So apparently, once people had done some careful research they found that the police estimates were way closer to the truth than hyperbole released by the organisers of the protests. That shouldn't be a surprise but apparently if you're a Western journalist, it is.

The protest leaders throw stupid numbers like '6 billion!!!!' around because they know hostile Western media will report them without questioning them and people reading hostile Western media will read them then go off and parrot them without questioning them. Probably because the Western media and its reads share your obvious partisan support of the protesters' political aims.

If the difference between the lower estimate of 338,000 and 2,000,000 follows the same pattern as the example you gave, then that would give a number upwards of 900,000. That would be about one-eighth of the population.

It would be about 680,000, if we assume that the police and the protesters were equally far wide of the mark this time round.

That said we have literally no idea what process the protest 'organisers' (I thought the protesters have gone to great lengths to avoid having any leaders or organisers?) used to come up with their '2 million' figure. Sounds like they literally just plumped for the first number they thought sounded good. This guy from Hong Kong University certainly thinks their numbers are literal nonsense.

We could just say that police estimates grew from 190,000 to 338,000. If we assume the real number of protesters grew by the same proportion, then the 265,000 from the first time round grew to about 470,000 at the most recent peak of the protests.

But even if the number is lower, it still represents a vastly greater percentage of the population than the Iraq protests. Even if it were the 338,000 that the police quoted (very unlikely) it would still be almost 5% of the population. Vastly more, in percentage terms, than the Iraq protest turnout.

Still a small minority. Plenty of people in HK support the bill as well. 'Derp protest' doesn't prove anything about broader public opinion.

Incidentally, 3,000,000 people protested against the Iraq War in Rome in 2001, which was 5-6% of the Italian population at the time.

[mrswdk]

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam has said the controversial bill that would have allowed extradition to the Chinese mainland "is dead".

At a press conference on Tuesday, Ms Lam said the government's work on the bill had been a "total failure".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-48917796


Regardless of whether or not this result was in part contributed to by Lam's own total ineptitude, this is a shameful result. Violent thugs have undermined the democratic process and imposed their will on the silent majority through intimidation. Reform is needed to avoid further calamities of this nature in future.

[mrswdk]

And now the minority anti-Beijing brigade, cheered on by shrill commentators like Duk who say it is okay for these lawbreakers to behave in absolutely any way they please, have been caught stockpiling explosives and other weapons in advance of this weekend's street demonstrations:

Hong Kong police are investigating whether a haul of explosives found there is linked to ongoing protests.

The police said it was the biggest seizure of the explosive TATP they had ever made. Other weapons and protest leaflets were also found on Friday.

The find came ahead of a weekend of mass protests by both pro- and anti- China demonstrators in Hong Kong.

A 27-year-old man was arrested and was reportedly a member of a pro-independence group.

They said they found 2kg (4.4lb) of the highly volatile TATP, as well as 10 petrol bombs, acidic substances, weapons including knives and metal rods, and gas masks and goggles, the South China Morning Post reported.

The Hong Kong National Front said in a post distributed on the Telegram app that the man was a member of the group.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-49055785

[mrswdk]

I suppose the usual anti-China trolls will be in here shortly blathering about how this is all okay because if you don't like a government policy then slaughtering your country's leaders in their beds is a fair and just way to enact social change*.





*if it's in a far away country that you don't like. Obviously the only acceptable way to enact social change in a country like Canada or Germany is peaceful street demonstrations and voting.

[mrswdk]

Or maybe I should have said, the anti-China trolls will now all ignore this thread because they are now no longer able to pretend that the people they are supporting are anything other than violent extremists.

I am glad that we are all in agreement about this issue.

[waauw]

Having fun in your monologue?

[mrswdk]

I always enjoy being vindicated, yes.

[Dukasaur]

And now the minority anti-Beijing brigade, cheered on by shrill commentators like Duk who say it is okay for these lawbreakers to behave in absolutely any way they please, have been caught stockpiling explosives and other weapons in advance of this weekend's street demonstrations:

In countries where there is a functional democracy, people can find peaceful ways to effect change.

In countries where the democracy is a sham, people turn to more desperate measures.

And no, I don't suggest anyone seek violent change, but I do understand why it happens.

[mrswdk]

And now the minority anti-Beijing brigade, cheered on by shrill commentators like Duk who say it is okay for these lawbreakers to behave in absolutely any way they please, have been caught stockpiling explosives and other weapons in advance of this weekend's street demonstrations:

In countries where there is a functional democracy, people can find peaceful ways to effect change.

Pretty sure we already had this conversation. Take the US as an example: the majority of the population feel that their views are not listened to by government (Edelman Trust Barometer) and the government has constantly dismal approval ratings (every poll ever). Compare that to mainland China, where trust in institutions is higher and trust in government is higher. Mainland China is demonstrating what a functioning democracy looks like; the only people refusing to listen are the brainwashed populations of Western countries who have spent too long exposed to their domestic media's re-education campaigns.