Ale Lo’s “journey”, as they say, is the same as ours. He started off supporting the protests when they were anti the extradition bill. But he’s turned against them when they became violent and their demands inchoate and unrealistic.
The movement is leaderless and so lacks not only direction but also any restraint.
His Take is below the fold…
The current protest movement has drawn significant lessons from the Occupy demonstrations five years ago and developed tactics to avoid what it perceives as the causes of failure in the previous unrest. The question is: have they drawn the right lessons or made worse mistakes?
The movement is leaderless and so lacks not only direction but also any restraint.
His Take is below the fold…
The current protest movement has drawn significant lessons from the Occupy demonstrations five years ago and developed tactics to avoid what it perceives as the causes of failure in the previous unrest. The question is: have they drawn the right lessons or made worse mistakes?
From the outset, today’s protesters have decided they don’t need leaders; everything has to be as spontaneous as possible. Indeed, spontaneity is taken as proof of the movement’s legitimacy and authenticity – contrary to Beijing’s claims about protesters being in the pockets of Washington and Taipei.
Secondly, and this is related to the first point, to keep such a loose movement intact, there can be no public dissension among its people. You may belong to the “peaceful, rational, non-violent” camp, but you cannot openly criticise or argue against those who advocate violence.
Such strategies or tactics, I would argue, have enabled them to secure an early and total victory – if by that we mean the limited aim of forcing the government to withdraw the extradition bill.
But the logic of such a movement, unrestrained by any leadership or a peaceful faction, necessarily means it’s being led by the most radical members – and violence will escalate as their demands become greater and more difficult to satisfy.
No one has the authority to call off the protests or de-escalate, but anyone can get on social media to launch another wave of violent protests. The government may want to sit down and talk, but the protesters can’t. Even Joseph Lian Yi-zheng, the economist, journalist and intellectual eminence grise of the protest movement, admits this point. “Carrie Lam, the city’s leader, suggested that she wanted to open a dialogue with the protesters as soon as things calm down,” he wrote in The New York Times. “But with whom exactly would she communicate since the movement has no recognised representatives?”
The fact that the peaceful camp stays silent, however bad the violence becomes, means they are giving cover to the most radical and extreme among their comrades.
Lian and others think the movement can self-correct and rectify its own mistakes. That’s pure fantasy. What we are seeing is not moderation but escalation. The violent protests have undermined not only the rule of law but unwritten norms of behaviour – such as encouraging children to fight police – that have secured the city’s stability for generations.
The movement has spawned its own Frankenstein’s monster.
[Here]
