The thing that most struck me about those students in the streets (1968) is the sentimentality of their anger.Sound like anything here in Hong Kong?
It was all about themselves. It wasn’t about anything objective. Here they were the spoilt middle class, baby boomers, who’d never had any real difficulty to cope with, shouting their heads off in the street, burning the cars belonging to ordinary people who they pretended to be definitely against, some imaginary oppressive structures erected by the bourgeoisie in acting out a self-scripted drama in which the central character was themselves.
[I’d saved this as a draft in October last year, but not posted it because I wanted to find the video link, which I still haven’t done. His death on 12th January this year, my birthday, brought him back to mind. Great mind. And so I’ve posted his address to the Oxford Union on 22 December 2017]
