Five years have passed since the massive protest movement that shook Hong Kong in 2019-2020. Looking back, the movement failed but what was the movement and how did it evolve. Looking at this DW interview of protest leader Joey Siu in 2019, it appears to me that regardless of some good intentions of the movement at the beginning, by mid-2019 the movement had taken on disturbing traits of Chinese radicalism which plagued the country throughout the 20th century: enacting violence against political opponents, intolerance of different opinions, lack of concern for human life, and extremism. If the movement had succeeded, I don’t think the outcome would have been democracy. Rather, the movement was heading towards a rerun of the Cultural Revolution or the days of Terror following the French Revolution. Maybe something good would have eventually risen out of it but only out of the ashes of the city’s once vibrant environment. This begs the question: what was the movement’s real end goal? Were they really seeking democracy? Were they even seeking a successful conclusion to the movement? I have my doubts that perhaps the movement was more like a suicide corps that sought to bait China into a violent crackdown that would then be useful for the United States to portray China as a repressive, evil country. Was the movement serving as a tool of the U.S. government? https://www.dw.com/en/joey-siu-on-conflict-zone/video-51143289
blame Trump
USA doesn’t have a monopoly on democracy. It’s possible for groups of people to independently come up with a belief system that’s aligned with US interests; doesn’t mean that they are puppets of America.
This Joey Siu protest leader being interviewed works for US government front organizations that meddle in the domestic politics of other countries including China. The issue here isn’t that they were trying to create democracy. The issue is that they appear NOT to be fighting for democracy but instead in bringing down Hong Kong and the rest of China. If they were trying to fight for democracy then they should have practiced democratic values but they didn’t.
In any large movement, there’s a spectrum of how far people will go to achieve their objectives. There’s going to be extremists that can dilute the message, whether actual radicals or a false flag. There’s plenty of non violent participants as well. Personally I don’t agree with violence but some believe it’s necessary when non-violence doesn’t work.
It was more like Occupy Wall Street in practice, but with the goal of stalling the local economy to force government to give in. There were miscalculation on both sides and in the end didn’t achieve anything meaningful. I wouldn’t be surprised the movement got infiltrated and high jacked by all sorts of power including gangs, corrupt officials, spies, communists, radicals, etc. After a few old people got killed and a few students got into freak accidents, and the lack of leadership keeping people discipline in the movement, you know it will end like occupy Wall Street (end up as a homeless and drug addict cesspool). Covid put an end to it. They lack the logistics and financial movement necessary for most civil rights movement to begin with, and the so called leaders were all self appointed with no discipline, no influence in keeping their members in check, and no rules on what to do and what not to do. This was doomed to begin with.
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Thanks for the reminder. Amazing how this was fast forgotten about