The Hong Kong Protesters Aren’t Driven by Hope “We might as well go down fighting.”

HONG KONG—For months now, I’ve been told that Hong Kong’s protests would end soon. They’ll end when school starts, I heard during the summer. School did start, but the protests wore on, only now I saw high-school students in crisp school uniforms joining the protesters’ ranks. Next, the mask ban of early October was supposed to slow protesters down, but the very first day after that ban, I watched streams of protesters in masks and helmets make their way to their usual haunts on Hong Kong Island.

The government shut down many of the subway lines that day, a practice that has become a de facto curfew, because Hong Kong’s über-efficient subway system is the way most people get around. No matter; the protesters ended up walking, sometimes a lot, and I walked with them, asking some of the same questions I had asked for months: Do you think you will continue protesting? What would it take for you to stop?

One of the most popular chants in Hong Kong is “Five demands, not one less.” These include the full withdrawal of the anti-extradition bill, which originally sparked the protests in June; an independent commission to investigate police misconduct; retracting the riot charges against protesters; amnesty for arrested protesters; and, crucially, universal suffrage.

Nothing animates the Hong Kongers I’ve been talking with as much as that final demand. Yesterday, the police shot one protester in the stomach at point-blank range, and another police officer drove into the protesters with his motorcycle, weaving into the crowd to circle back again. Later in the day, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, gave a press conference and, in chilling language, called the protesters the “enemy of the people.” She was voted into office by 777 people from the 1,200-person “Election Committee,”

[A group of peasant soldiers was marching somewhere in China long ago.

“What’s the penalty for arriving late?”

“Death.”

“What’s the penalty for rebelling?”

“Death.”

“Hey brothers! I got news for you! We’re late!” ]

Initially, they were a small part of a movement - the equivalent of movie set extras - where senior dynastic officials had already usurped power, with the First Emperor’s most trusted advisor, the Chief Eunuch, having killed the emperor’s hand-picked heir. Once that happened, I expect everyone, aristocrat and peasant alike, thought someone had fumbled the ball (of imperial legitimacy) and the throne was up for grabs.

The overly-neat, tied-up-with-a-ribbon, parable-driven nature of Chinese historical narrative makes me suspicious as to whether the events described actually happened, but the “calling a deer a horse” loyalty test always gave me a kick, regardless of the truth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Gao#Calling_a_deer_a_horse

Its analog in the recent past would be this passage from the Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago:

[ At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name). ... For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the stormy applause, rising to an ovation, continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin.

However, who would dare to be the first to stop? … After all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who would quit first! And in the obscure, small hall, unknown to the leader, the applause went on – six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly – but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them?

The director of the local paper factory, an independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on applauding! Nine minutes! Ten! In anguish he watched the secretary of the District Party Committee, but the latter dared not stop. Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers! And even then those who were left would not falter…

Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved!

The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel. That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed Form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him:

“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.”]

[The more I read about Eisenhower, the more I realize how rotten he was. Folks forget that he eviscerated the Republican Party when he was President, and it took 40 years to repair the damage (by which time, the damage done to the nation was incalculable).]

By not evicting the Chinese from Korea, Ike paved the way for the Vietnam War. He basically punted. I’m not a JFK fan, but some of his problems arose from Eisenhower’s inaction. It’s a travesty that Ike allowed Batista to be toppled. Without Castro in power, there would have been no Cuban missile crisis. And Kennedy was right - you can’t simply threaten a nuclear-armed adversary with nuclear annihilation when he’s holding your kin hostage with the threat of nuclear retaliation. The US needed a conventional deterrent, and not Ike’s BS about a “military industrial complex”, on his way out the door. Since Ike’s time, the civilian component of government spending has tripled as a % of national economic output, whereas military spending has gone down by 2/3.

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