đž Archived View for library.inu.red âş file âş crimethinc-three-months-of-insurrection.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 08:52:30. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
âĄď¸ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Three Months of Insurrection Author: CrimethInc. Date: September 20, 2019 Language: en Topics: Hong Kong, analysis, insurrection, China, authoritarianism, the Left, interview Source: Retrieved on 17th June 2021 from https://crimethinc.com/2019/09/20/three-months-of-insurrection-an-anarchist-collective-in-hong-kong-appraises-the-achievements-and-limits-of-the-revolt
In the following timeline and interview, an anarchist collective in Hong
Kong presents a complete overview of the months-long uprising, reviewing
its achievements, identifying its limits, celebrating the inspiring
moments of mutual aid and defiance, and critiquing the ways that it has
yet to pass beyond a framework based in the appeal to authority and the
outrage of the citizen. This is a follow-up to the interview we
published with the same group in June.
The struggle in Hong Kong has been polarizing on an international level.
Some conspiracy theorists are determined to read any form of protest
against the Chinese government merely as the machinations of the US
state department, as if it were impossible for protesters to set their
own agenda apart from state oversight. Others cheerlead for the movement
without concern about the nationalist and neoliberal myths that still
hold sway within it.
The events in Hong Kong show how a movement can actively reject the
legitimacy of one government and its laws and police while still
retaining a naĂŻve faith in other governments, other laws, other police.
As long as this faith remains in some form, the cycle is bound to
repeat. Yet the past months of insurrection in Hong Kong can help us to
imagine what a worldwide struggle against all forms of capitalism,
nationalism, and the state might look likeâand help us identify the
obstacles that still remain to the emergence of such a struggle.
In spring 2019, the government of Hong Kong introduced a bill allowing
for people to be extradited from Hong Kong to other countries, including
mainland China.
A massive peaceful demonstration against the extradition bill took place
on June 9, attended by millions of people. During the following week,
some people on the online forum LIHKG proposed that the movement utilize
economic protest tacticsâfor example, the comprehensive withdrawal of
cash from savings accounts and general strikes. This did not occur on a
visible scale until much later.
On June 12, when a meeting was scheduled in the legislative council
about the extradition bill, protesters and police clashed around the
government headquarters and the CITIC Tower. The meeting was adjourned.
Police fired over 150 tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at
protesters, injuring many people; they arrested five people, charging
them with rioting.
Although the government announced on June 15 that the extradition bill
would be suspended, a protester fell to his death later that day. In the
will that he left, he called for the âcomplete withdrawal of the
extradition bill, the retraction of the riot charge, the unconditional
release of injured students; the resignation of Carrie Lam.â From that
point on, most of these were counted among the demands of the struggle.
Two million people participated in street protests the following day, on
June 16.
On June 21, protesters carried out the first experiments in âguerrillaâ
action, moving from the government headquarters to the police
headquarters, the Revenue Tower, and the Immigration Tower in the
adjacent district, blocking entrances and temporarily closing the
respective departments. Some went back to the Revenue Tower the next
day, June 22, to apologize to users for the inconvenience.
A crowd-funded global advertising campaign calling for G20 leaders to
act on the Hong Kong crisis on June 26 generated no discernible
response. Two more protesters committed suicide at the end of the month.
Desperation intensified, leading many to propose that the struggle was
facing an âendgameâ situation with the approach of July 1.
That day, July 1, protesters broke into the Legislative Council (LegCo)
building. Pacifist demonstrators privately voiced concerns about this
action, but ultimately chose not to condemn those who engaged in it.
Four protesters who entered the council chambers refused to leave when
the riot police arrived, and a dozen protesters went back in to ârescueâ
them. From that point on, the resolutions ânot to splitâ into factions
(ä¸ĺ˛č) and âto come (arrive at the demonstration) and go (escape from
the riot police) togetherâ (é˝ä¸é˝č˝) defined the collective ethos of
the struggle.
During the Umbrella Movement of 2014, demonstrators had invented the
Lennon Wall, an impromptu and unauthorized public bulletin board, as a
way for âconscientious citizensâ to âpeacefully petition the government
for redressâ in a widely visible way. During June 2019, this model had
transcended its strictly pacifist origins to take on the functions of
disseminating information and coordinating strategy. On June 30, the
police destroyed the Lennon Wall that protesters had set up at the
government headquarters. In response, Lennon Walls began to appear in
every major district, staffed and guarded around the clock.
Although no one was arrested on July 1, many people feared that there
would be subsequent police reprisals. Some fled to other countries.
Necessity compelled everyone in the struggle to memorize, by rote, what
they should sayâand not sayâwhen captured by the police. The phrase âI
have the right to remain silentâ(ćĺéčŹ) became a popular meme, and
the repetition of this mantra began to be used as a way to upvote posts
on the LIHKG message board.
On July 7, the first rally occurred outside the main protest areas on
Hong Kong Island, with slogans and leaflets directed at the Mainland
tourists frequenting the area. Protests spread to a variety of other
districts over the following weeks, notably occurring in Shatin on July
14. People from the neighborhood showed support by throwing swimming
boards out of their windows to protesters, to be used as shields, and
yelling at the police who entered their housing estates. Police charged
into a shopping mall for the first time, leaving the floor of the Shatin
New Town Mall bloody. The train to Shatin was suspended on police
orders, while self-organized carpool teams formed to facilitate
protestersâ escapes.
On July 17, after a few severe clashes, thousands of senior citizens
marched to show their support for young protesters, declaring that they
were not conservative knaves like so many of their generation, like the
apathetic and apolitical ones young people call âold rubbish.â
A march to the Liaison Office of Chinaâthe official PR outlet of the
Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kongâsaw the national emblem of China
smeared with a thick coat of ink. For the first time, people chanted the
slogan âRestore Hong Kong to Glory, Revolution of Our Timesâ (ĺ 垊éŚć¸Ż
ć䝣éŠĺ˝) en masse. Police fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and sponge
grenades[1] without prior notice.
Meanwhile, at Yuen Long station, white-shirted triads[2] assaulted
protesters and civilians on the train. Some believe that pro-Beijing
legislator Junius Ho was behind this attack. The assaults took place
with the assistance of the police, who sat idly by. Few of the
perpetrators were arrested and none were charged. This incident aroused
deep popular rage against the police.
For the first time in popular memory, the police refused to issue a
permit for the march that was to take place in Yuen Long on July 27, a
week after the triad attack. Thousands took defiantly to the street
regardless. Marching without permission has since become the norm. A
misunderstanding occurred between the protesters on the âagreedâ
departure time, resulting in long discussions on LIHKG and calls for
better communication between the frontlines and the rows of partisans
behind them.
On July 28, 49 partisans were arrested; most were charged with rioting.
From that day until early August, the protests became more spontaneous
and ephemeral, with protesters traveling to different stations via the
Hong Kong metro, MTR (Mass Transit Railway), chiefly targeting police
stations. For the first time, people began hurling Molotovs and bricks
at police stations, as well as using slingshots. More and more people
from the neighborhood came out to support the struggle, yelling at the
police and driving them back into their stations. Police repeatedly
deployed tear gas in residential areas and around homes for the elderly.
People blocked the Cross-Harbor Tunnel on August 3. On August 5, a squad
of male officers carried away a female protester in Tin Shui Wai,
deliberately lifting her skirt and exposing her. At the same time,
reports began to circulate about sexual assault in police stations.
On August 5, thousands participated in a âgeneral strikeâ in different
districts. People blocked the doors of train cars on the MTR early that
morning, stopping almost every line of the MTR. (This had been
ârehearsedâ on July 30, when one station was shut down early in the
morning, followed by short and periodic blockages at various important
interchange stations on Hong Kong island in the afternoon.) In many
districts, the clashes around police stations lasted all day. That
night, pro-government gangs dressed in blue or white shirts attacked
protesters with iron poles and knives.
In response to the police arresting a young man for owning 10 laser
pointers, describing them as âdangerous weapons,â people created their
own harbor-front light show with laser pointers outside the Hong Kong
Space Museum on August 7. That same day, the first press conference took
place on behalf of the struggle, organized by a group of protesters as a
counterpart to the daily police press conferences.
Flash-mob blockades appeared in multiple districts the weekend of August
10. On August 11, protesters from Sham Shui Po moved to Tsim Sha Tsui,
where the police ruptured the right eye of a female first-aider using
beanbag rounds. âAn eye for an eyeâ became a viral meme, and the âEye
for Hong Kong Campaignâ started by Kim Ui-Seong, a well-known South
Korean actor, spread around the world later in August.
On the same day, police fired tear gas inside an enclosed space at Kwai
Fong station and shot at protesters from close range, pushing them down
an already crowded escalator at Tai Koo station. Undercover cops dressed
as protesters made arrests without prior notice. This sowed distrust
among protesters.
The next day, August 12, thousands gathered at the airport to condemn
police brutality, causing hundreds of flights to be cancelled. Rumors
that riot squads were about to arrive spread all afternoon; many left
early, before 6 pm. Afterwards, feeling deceived, angry protesters
returned to the airport on August 13 and actively blocked passengers
from boarding. The atmosphere became tenser later in the evening when
protesters identified two men disguised as protestersâone a mainland
security officer, the other a journalist from Global Times who had close
ties with the mainland security department. Both were tied up and beaten
by protesters. The incident was widely reported in the mainland,
stirring strong opposition to the movement. Disputes raged afterward
among protesters regarding how to treat infiltrators, leading to a
public show of contrition on August 14. Despite the disagreements, a
sense of âunityâ persisted, a unity that protesters swore would survive
a nuclear explosion (ć ¸çé˝ĺĺ˛).
Millions of peaceful protesters attended a march on August 18 despite
heavy rain. On August 23, the âHong Kong Wayâ action took place across
the city. Aviation staff and Cathay Pacific union leaders who assisted
the airport blockades or showed sympathy to the movement on social media
were fired under pressure from Beijing. Multiple reports circulated
about detainees being badly beaten and sexually assaulted, even raped. A
On August 24, the MTR closed down several stations and stopped train
service at the related districts immediately before a demonstration in
Kwun Tong. From that day on, protesters began to refer to the MTR as the
âParty Trainâ (靨éľ); it became a target of vandalism. At the Kwun Tong
protest, protesters presented what have become known as âthe five
demandsâ: full withdrawal of the bill, revocation of âriotâ charges,
unconditional release of all arrestees, establishment of an independent
inquiry into the crimes of the police, and universal suffrage. Some also
cut down the âsmart lamppostsâ installed in the district, RFID-equipped
streetlights that are set to be upgraded with facial recognition
technology. They sawed the posts down, disassembled the circuitry, and
identified where the component pieces were manufactured.
On August 31, despite the arrests of high-profile activists and
councilors, thousands still took to the street. Water cannons had been
tested for the first time on August 25; now they were used at full
strength to douse the crowd with blue pepper liquid. Protesters set fire
to roadblocks around the police headquarters; they also identified and
surrounded an undercover policeman.
Later, in Prince Edward station, police indiscriminately beat and
pepper-sprayed protesters and commuters in a train cabin. Seven people
were seriously injured. At least three people are still unaccounted for
at the time of writing; many believe that police murdered them. There
has been no response to popular demands for the MTR to release the CCTV
footage. After this, hatred against the police and the MTR reached new
heights, and people circulated various methods to evade train fares.
On September 1, thousands gathered at the bus station and on the main
road towards the airport, the airport building itself being off-limits
since the high court passed a restraining order on protesters following
the airport blockades. This action effectively paralyzed traffic towards
the airport throughout the afternoon. Universities and secondary school
students went on strike on September 2, with many facing assaults from
police and supporters of the government in front of their schools.
Students and alumni formed multi-school human chains in various
districts throughout the week.
Finally, on September 4, the chief executive announced the withdrawal
process of the extradition billâa process that will begin after the end
of Parliamentary Recess in October. Yet the movement continues to insist
that the government must grant all five demands. As of this writing,
vandalism in MTR stations continues, along with inquests regarding the
whereabouts of the âdisappearedâ and demands for the release of the CCTV
footage from August 31.
---
We conducted this interview with an anarchist collective that has been
active in the struggle over the last fifteen weeks. Between ingesting
vast amounts of tear gas, they met to ruminate over these questions. The
answers are the result of many sleepless nights spent in introspection
and recollection, each member of the collective helping the others to
fill in the lacunae in their overworked memories.
At what points has the movement plateaued? What has made it escalate,
spread, survive?
The âplateauâ was probably reached on August 5, on the day of the first
proposed âgeneral strike.â Though not properly a general strike in the
technical sense, it effectively shut down much of the city for an entire
day. In many ways, it was a momentous event, both in its magnitude and
because it was the first time that a strike was called for political
(rather than simply economic) reasons by working people operating
outside a union.
At the same time, despite the fact that police stations were
surroundedâand, in certain cases, subjected to continued attacks,
torched, or even destroyedâthe events of that day accomplished little in
the way of tangible results, with the state remaining silent. Nobody
could have anticipated that the day would have turned out as gloriously
as it did, as popular revenge on the police took the most unforgettable
forms across the city, but that was very much the point at which people
began to feel as though they had done everything they could to compel
the government to respond, and the euphoria of that evening began to
develop into exasperation.
Anger at police has been one of the chief factors that has propelled the
movement since then.
Many of you must be aware of the unfettered brutality of the Hong Kong
police, a brutality that they have been given greater and greater
license to indulge in with each passing day. This is the same police
force that went to painstaking lengths to stake a claim to being âAsiaâs
finestâ after the riots of the late 1960s and decades of corruption.
Certainly, it has been traumatic for many to lose the illusion that Hong
Kong is a liberal metropolis in which producers and consumers can go
about their lives unmolested, enjoying the unhindered traffic of
opinions and commodities. But young graduates from the police academy
have to come to terms with their own trauma, as well, having lost hope
of obtaining a temperate and uneventful career with regular promotions
and bonuses, without any of the risks of precarity that characterize the
occupations available to others who have limited education.
We have no pity for the police, but it is clear that they are motivated
by pure and uninhibited wrath. This wrath is what they share in common
with those that they brutalizeâthe difference, of course, being that
they are legally authorized and encouraged to enact it. One shudders to
think what sort of perverse, Full Metal Jacket-style motivational talks
they are given by their superiors before they are deployed in protests,
what sort of disgusting discussions they have in their cadet Whatsapp
groups, what other means they use to keep themselves foaming at the
mouth, straining at the leash to crack a protesterâs head open. While no
one in our collective knows for certain what actually happens in police
stations when you are captured now, there are widespread reports of
torture, sexual abuse, even rumors of the gang rape of female
protesters.
On the other side of the lines, one gets the feeling that any escalation
in tactics that has taken place since August 5 has been a reaction to
heightening police violence or to the ways that private companies
facilitate this violenceâsuch as the company that runs the MTR, which
has made a massive fortune building private malls and apartments
adjacent to their subway stations, or the New Town Mall, the shopping
center that inexplicably allowed squads of riot police to storm it and
bloody the floors of one of the cityâs oldest consumer citadels. The
struggle often resembles a blood feud between protesters and the police.
Last week, the police laid siege to Prince Edward MTR station. They
rushed into a subway car, began indiscriminately beating anyone who
looked like a protester, and left the victims in a bloody heap on the
station floor, prohibiting them from receiving medical aid. They
transformed the station into a sealed internment camp for hours,
disappearing three people who are rumored to have been beaten to death.
As the stakes continue to rise in the conflict, this spiral of
retribution is likely to continue. With so many people fixated on live
feeds, aghast at what is transpiring before their eyes dailyâjournalists
losing their eyes, bystanders being apprehended for questioning police
authorityâthis fixation on the police is difficult to break, though
certain threads on LIHKG have been started to plead with those in the
struggle to look at the larger picture rather than concentrating all
their efforts on acts of popular vengeance against the police. Such acts
are clearly encouraged by the police themselves, who need a sensational
retroactive alibi for their activityâto such an extent that they have
been caught disguising themselves in the frontlines in order to throw
Molotov cocktails.
Loath as we are to admit it, this struggle thrives on police violence.
We should address and reflect upon this.
For example, on August 11, a medic behind the frontlines lost an eye
after she was hit by a rubber bullet. This was hardly accidental
âcollateral damageââthe police have been aiming at peoplesâ heads for a
while now. The next day, a huge mobilization took place at the airport,
with a meme demanding that the police return an eye going viral,
supplying a powerful emotional impetus to the events of that afternoon.
That evening, protesters made a citizenâs arrest, apprehending two
people suspected of being agents of the Chinese communist party and
skirmishing with elite airport police squads.
As long as the struggle continues to feed on popular indignation aroused
by police transgressions, pleading for a higher tribunal to bring the
police to justiceâbe that the United States, the Western world, or the
United Nationsâits momentum will be contingent on police provocation and
it will remain arrested at the precise point that social struggles in
Hong Kong have yet to overcome: the righteous indignation of the
citizen.
What will happen when the reservoir of civic outrage about this or that
injustice is exhausted? Is it necessary for those in the struggle to
always situate themselves on the higher moral ground, legitimizing their
illegal activity as a reaction to the excesses of the state? How can
they take the initiative, take the offensive? This doesnât necessarily
mean striking first in a physical sense, but âbecoming-activeâ in the
sense Nietzsche spoke of, dispensing with the âslave moralityâ of
dependence uponâand fascination withâthe enemy.
The scandal of police violence has polarized the city to such an extent
that entire neighborhoods have come out in support of the black-clad,
gas-masked protesters amassed outside police stations in various
districts. The most famous of these events took place in Wong Tai Sin
and Kwai Chung, where hundreds of people came downstairs in shorts and
flip-flops to harangue the police, making one officer so unnerved that
he pulled a loaded rifle on unarmed uncles and aunties. Police violence
has also served as a nucleus to organize various neighborhood endeavors
around. For example, in an effort to combat misinformation spread by
mainstream media outlets, people have held neighborhood screenings in
public squares so people can see the footage what really happened;
likewise, the space adjacent to the information counter of New Town Mall
in Sha Tin has been transformed into a counter-information bureau,
staffed by protesters who are always available to chat with curious
passersby. Meanwhile, the âLennon Wallsâ that have emerged in every
district, typically around public housing estates, have become convivial
sites as well as places of deadly confrontation and murderous rage; as
banal as their content often is, it has been necessary to defend the
walls of post-it notes against late-night arsonists and knife-wielding
thugs. These neighborhood initiatives are momentous and important. They
may indicate a path out of the impasses of the present, possibly
stretching into a nebulous future held in common.
This brings us to our final point regarding the question about what
makes the movement survive. One thing that surprises friends who come to
visit Hong Kong from elsewhere is the unity and unanimity of the
movement, which has seen insurgents of all manner of ideological
persuasions and backgrounds working together on concrete actions rather
than squabbling over ideological niceties. Adherence to this unanimity
has been almost religious, a mantra that has been repeated ad nauseam on
message boards every time a dispute arises that could jeopardize it. The
significance of this solidarity in everybodyâs eyes, this consensus that
keeps the mass together against the continued efforts of the state to
exploit tactical disagreements within the struggle, is summarized in a
hilariously over-the-top statement: âI wonât excommunicate anybody from
the struggle even if they decide to detonate a nuclear bomb.â The gulf
between pacifists and Molotov-throwing insurgents still runs deep, but
these are not roles that are set in stone. While the ranks of those at
the front continue to be decimated by mass arrests, some who were
spectators a few weeks ago are moving to fill these gaps. Message boards
and Telegram channels offer circuits of communication for both sides to
exchange reflections and feedback after each episode of struggle. This
is marvelous in many ways; it is undoubtedly a formidable achievement
that it has persisted for so long and will conceivably persist for a
long time yet.
At the same time, the enforcement of this unanimity obscures systemic
problems in the movement and forbids people to evaluate them, something
that we will shed further light on later in this interview. It goes
without question that it is necessary to sustain popular morale in a
mass movement, that we must constantly attend to the affective climate
of the struggle, that people should encourage one another in times of
tumult and despair. But when this affirmative ambience masks an aversion
to difference, divergence, and disputation, for fear of alienating
people and diminishing the turnouts to the demonstrations, positivity
begins to be indistinguishable from paranoiaâand the singularity of each
person present is effectively nullified, everyone being reduced to a
body standing alongside other bodies en masse.
This atmosphere makes it very difficult to conduct a critique,
especially of highly questionable phenomena such as the waving of
American or colonial flags. Throughout the struggle, the principle of
liberal tolerance has been weaponized in an unprecedented wayâbrothers
and sisters, you have your opinions and I have mine, we all respect each
otherâs right to hold contrary opinions, so long as they donât threaten
to create antagonism among us. The fact that this has worked up until
now is no proof that it is healthy for the future of social struggle in
Hong Kong. This sort of culture pretends to marginalize no one while
effectively marginalizing everyone, excluding everyone from engaging
with questions that could be painful, disquieting, or unsettling, that
require us to probe the depths and confront the conditions that
constitute us as subjects. To do so, we would have to go beyond the
trauma of immediate events and confront a trauma of much vaster
scopeâthe âorderâ that we participate in reproducing on a continuous
basis.
After all, it is this âorderâ that renders certain people effectively
invisible. For example, few have stopped to consider the plight of
foreign domestic workers over the last few months. Ordinarily, every
Sunday, these women congregate en masse in the public squares of major
districts including Central, Causeway Bay, Mong Kok, and Yuen Long, all
of which have been swept by clashes in the recent conflicts. Not having
access to the real-time maps that are created for partisans, they are
often not forewarned when these areas are being gassed. Consequently,
they are forced to move somewhere else on their only day off.[3] This
would be an unfortunate but acceptable consequence of the struggle, if
only protesters made some kind of effort to acknowledge this and
communicate their sympathies to them.
Ordinarily, the situation of domestic workers goes without notice,
despite the fact that so many families in the city employ them; hardly
anyone affirms the brave, sustained protests they organize via their
independent unions against the arrangements between their own
governments, the employment agencies, and the labor department in this
city. Their active support for and perceptive understanding of local
social struggles goes unremarked. At the same time, participants in the
movement against the extradition law go out of their way to solicit the
sympathy of upstanding citizens of âthe free world,â taking the time to
explain the plight of Hong Kong to tourists arriving at the airport.
This is currently a major blind spot in the struggle. Having been left
unexamined, it recently culminated in a grotesque and inexcusable
campaign against domestic migrant workers hanging out in the public
places where clashes have taken place. Over a period of weeks, LIHKG
threads appeared asking why migrant workers were allowed to congregate
and have picnics on the street while protesters were arrested and
tortured for participating in âillegal assemblies.â Their
tongue-and-cheek tone did not conceal the repulsive implications of
their content. Why the double standard, these posters askedâshouldnât we
force these nonchalant, karaoke-singing aunties, enjoying themselves
while protesters feared for their skins, to understand what kind of city
they were living in? Why were we being denied the license to protest
when they could have parties on the street without ever having to submit
a request to some government bureau?
All this nonsense came to a head a few days ago, when some complete
idiots started pasting stickers on public thoroughfares and bridges
stating that all foreign domestic workers are not welcome to hang out in
public places without a license. These disgusting stickers represent the
tragically stunted extent to which protesters have attempted to
communicate with the sizable population of migrant workers whose plight
nobody has taken the time to contemplate and ponderâbefore, during, and
likely after this struggle. Admittedly, those who made and posted the
stickers should not be considered representative of the movement at
large, but at the same time, they have not been openly denounced in
pubic.
The âorderâ that characterizes daily life in this society also
reproduces the noxious sexist culture that has repeatedly reared its
ugly head within the movement. Protesters have unearthed the Instagram
profiles of policewomen and called them whores that they would like to
violate; demonstrators taunt policemen by suggesting that their wives
are out banging other men while theyâre gassing people late at night;
hot-blooded chest-beating male protesters prevent women from standing in
the frontlines, or pledge on message boards to âdefend their womenâ from
being captured and raped by police forces. When news of sexual abuse and
possible rapes in the police stations first spread and women on LIHKG
put forward the idea of organizing womenâs marches, men began to panic,
worrying that maybe the women had it in their heads to march on their
own without the protection of men. This led to the ludicrous spectacle
of men swearing that even if they werenât permitted to march alongside
their sisters, that they would stand behind the march in full gear
prepared to defend them to the end. That was their idea of militancy.
We donât mention all this stuff to further the proliferation of âcancel
culture,â which all too often results in sanctimonious disengagement,
moral soapboxing, and the perpetuation of social stratification, none of
which do anything to alter the social relationships that we are all
entangled in. Rather, we want to acknowledge the mess weâre in and the
fact that this mess is far more complicated than the simplistic
narrative of an oppressed, victimized people pushed to the wall by a
ruthless âcommunistâ killing machine.
As long as examining these problems is treated as peripheral or
demoralizing on the grounds that the most pressing exigency is to
vanquish the Great Beast China, we will see little progress towards
accomplishing the purported aim of this struggle, âliberating Hong
Kong.â
When we communicated in June, you described an inchoate new social
momentum, a sort of headless nationalist populism arising from the
failures of past pacifist, democratic, and parliamentarian movements.
Have new leaders, new narratives, new internal structures of control
emerged yet? Have new frameworks or horizons opened up for what people
could fight for or imagine beyond national sovereignty?
No, things havenât changed in a dramatic way since the last time we
spoke. The general understanding is that those who take part in the
movement have to speak in a unanimous, collective, and consensual voice,
as opposed to a multiplicity of different, possibly dissensual ones.
In Telegram groups and message boards, one encounters the occasional
voice calling for Hong Kongâs independence; while one cannot escape the
sense that this desire is tacitly held by a good many participants in
the struggle, they are often shouted down, for fear that the movement
will lose sight of its immediate agenda (the five demands) and out of a
general wariness of the dangers attendant to articulating this desireâas
establishment politicians have repeatedly asserted that this struggle is
not really âaboutâ the five demands but is actually a âcolor revolutionâ
organized by foreign powers and separatists, and the Chinese press have
repeatedly reiterated this narrative. In addition, there is the fact
that for many who continue to cross the border for work or other
personal reasons, the independence of Hong Kong would not be a welcome
development. There are a lot of people who simply want to see the âone
country, two systemsâ stipulation that was outlined in the Basic Law
observed and enforced.
For the benefit of foreign friends who are unfamiliar with the political
and cultural climate here, we have to emphasize thatâat least in our
estimationârumors about the impending demise of liberalism as a
political culture are unfounded, at least as far as Hong Kong is
concerned. We would go so far as to suggest that the logic of
liberalism, understood as a form of intuitive âcommon sense,â may be
stronger here than anywhere else in the world. Much of this has to do
with the context that we elaborated upon in our previous interview, with
the fact that this city was built by refugees from communist China. The
following anecdote illuminates the ways in which this condition is not
simply endemic to Hong Kong, but is shared with kin on the mainland as
well.
At a panel on the subject of art and politics that took place a few
years ago, one of us participated in a discussion with a dear friend
from a certain punk rock capital in China, where resistance against
gentrification and the construction of âecological theme parksâ is
ongoing. Talking late into the night afterwards, over drinks and blunts,
that friend began to expound upon the difficulties of speaking about
anarchy in China. As Mao made so eloquently clear in his red notebooks
and essays, the Communist Party is the anarchic force, the âconstituent
powerâ that transcends and enforces the arche as it sees fit,
instituting a perpetual state of emergency for the sake of the
revolution; consequently, quotidian life in China is âanarchicâ on a
mundane level. That is to sayâwhen comrades in the West speak of âuseâ
(in the sense in which Agamben employs the term in The Use Of Bodies) in
reference to occupying plazas, throwing parties on the streets, and so
on, this term loses its meaning in China when such âuseâ of roads and
public thoroughfares in various parts of the country is an everyday
occurrence, there being no established protocols that distinguish the
proper use of âpublic spaceâ from an exceptional use.
Chinese police have the license to operate entirely outside their
professional remit, behaving in ways that would be unfathomable anywhere
else. For example, until recently, our friends in the aforementioned
district of China ran a common space that held cultural events open to
the villagers that live around the area. This space was open to all
comers, its doors being unlocked at all times; drifters and vagrants
would stumble in, often staying for days or weeks. This also meant that
plainclothes policemen would come to the space when they were âoff
duty,â offering gifts of American cigarettes, alcohol, and car rides
into town, buddying up to the inhabitants of the space while making it
clear that the police were very much aware of the fact that the
participants were opposed to gentrification in the area. âWeâre
friendsâyou wouldnât mess around and ruin our friendship, would you?â
The same policemen were doing this with villagers in the area, inviting
themselves to tea at villagersâ houses and lavishing them with gifts
while gently reminding them that visiting the space up the hill was very
much discouraged, that they could become persona non grata if they
mingled with the folks living there. A horrific situation, to be sure.
In such conditions, in which everybody is compelled to live in a
permanent state of exception, enmeshed in elaborate networks of formal
and informal surveillance, our friend told us that to many people,
liberalismâthe rule of law, a rule that would enforce private property,
proper boundaries that they imagine would safeguard the individual from
state powersâappeared to be the most radical thing that there was.
When friends ask us why âanti-capitalistâ discourse and rhetoric seem so
outlandish to people in Hong Kong, we must answer that this is very much
a matter of context and circumstance. For Hong Kongers, capitalism
represents enterprise, initiative, and self-reliance, which they
juxtapose with the corrupt nepotism of the party and the big Hong Kong
tycoons and politicos who ingratiate themselves into the company of this
cartel. Beyond âcapitalism,â however, we find the sacredness of the law,
which remains the transcendent horizon beyond which social struggle has
yet to cross. Yes, everybody across the world continues to bear witness
to the feats of heroism that black shirts take part in every
dayâreducing the façades and machines of subway stations to rubble,
devastating police stations, and the likeâbut there is still a latent
belief that this is all done on behalf of preserving the rule of law and
the institutions that specific personnel have betrayed.
Seen in this light, all these acts of illegality can be apprehended as a
means of reminding the authorities that the âmandate of heavenâ has been
withdrawn from them. While it might seem âmythologicalâ to utilize an
archaic conceit to describe current events, as if we were speaking about
a âcollective millenarian Chinese unconsciousâ that has persisted from
the ancient dynasties up to the present, it remains apposite, because
everything leads us to believe that we continue to live in mythical
times. How else can we explain the continual appeals to the courtiers of
the âinternational community,â utilizing the international mass media as
a tribunal through which we hope to gain an audience with the
emperorâi.e., the United States? There remains the faith that at a
higher court of appeal, the criminality of the rogue states that govern
us can be brought to justice and punished, in the name of elemental,
natural rights that have been violated in the full light of day.
Somewhere, we believe, even if only in the hearts of decent,
right-thinking people everywhere, there is a sense of solidarity with
this primordial and transcendent law, and justice will be done, justice
will descend from the skies.
Itâs all depressingly Kantian, actually. The failings of the local
police do nothing to discredit the Idea of the Police, who will arrive
on some messianic day.
So the question the movement has posed itself seems to be this: what
would it take for us to put together a case that would compel the Police
to action? How do we convince the magistrates that this crisis has to be
at the head of their list of priorities? Here we are, gathering and
archiving evidence with our very bodies, amassing recriminations and
grievances from all quarters in our inquest into a failed state,
soliciting influencers everywhere to speak on our behalf, in the hope
that all this blood will be redeemed by prosecution and legitimate
retribution. When civil disobedience escalates into property damage,
street fights, airport occupations, and general strikes only to meet
with state indifference, then the popular imagination begins to conceive
of ways to precipitate the ultimate catastrophe, the arrival of the
Peopleâs Liberation Army into Hong Kong, an event that many anticipate
would be the catalyst for international intervention. Surely the Police
wouldnât ignore us then?
This is the apocalyptic disaster theory that is beginning to circulate
on LIHKG and elsewhere, the embrace of âcommon collapse,â a âletâs all
burn togetherâ fantasy in which protesters imagine the city being
swallowed up in the abyss, awaiting international sanctions on a
Communist Party gone amok. In this hypothetical scenario, as a
consequence of the unrest in Hong Kong spreading into the mainland like
some sort of variant of the Arab Spring, Chinaâreeling from the pressure
of tightening international trade embargoesâbalkanizes and fractures
into a multiplicity of territories, each formally and juridically
independent (such as Fujian, Wuhan, Xinjiang) alongside a democratic
Hong Kong, which might form a state with Guangzhou.
While the consequences of such a development are left unexploredâfor
example, the fact that these âautonomousâ territories would be lorded
over by party apparatchiks all the sameâthis speculative perspective is
welcome on one level. If nothing else, it represents an effort to come
to terms with a future that could be completely different from the one
that we have been habitually accustomed to in times of affluenceâa
future in which our internet could be shut off, in which we would have
to work collectively to secure food, water and electricity, such
questions being imperative as the world continues to fall to pieces and
ecological disaster looms ominously on the horizon.
For others, the imagined catastrophe is seen as a means by which to
restore Hong Kongâs rightful place among the foremost cities of the
world, something that is indicated in the most popular slogan of the
struggle: âRestore Hong Kong to glory, revolution of our times.â The
âgloryâ referenced in the slogan is a fantasy of prelapsarian purityâthe
Hong Kong of hard work, the individual initiative of the honest,
entrepreneurial common man, whose life is unsullied by the machinations
of big politics.
While itâs fine to hypothesize about a situation of common ruin, why
canât we also think about how to create the material basis for everyone
to thrive and flourish together? And what could this âtogetherâ mean,
who does it encompass, when everyone we customarily exclude from the
pictureâethnic minorities and their second-generation offspring,
domestic migrant workers, new migrants from China, and mainlanders who
await the right of abodeâis implicated in the future of the city? Why do
we believe that these questions should be deferred until a government is
elected to address them, when there are so many instances of autonomy in
this struggle that could serve as premises upon which to develop these
conversations right now?
Almost three months into the unrest, what are the goals and
strategiesâavowed or implicitâof different currents within the movement?
As we mentioned above, the tacit intention of the struggle at this point
in time is to find the means to escalate the situation until that the
âglobal communityâ is compelled to intervene. Maintaining mass
mobilizations and creating affecting viral spectacles that can be
disseminated on international networksâsuch as the âhuman chainsâ of
protesters holding hands on sidewalks and, more recently, outside
secondary schools during the student strikesâkeeps the struggle at the
forefront of public attention. More immediately, continued
insubordination in the subway, in busy commercial areas, and at sites
such as the airportâincluding protesters finding novel ways to shut down
traffic going towards the airport without violating the letter of the
lawâis thought to have discernible effects on the economy, tourist
traffic, foreign investment, and the like. Meanwhile,
counter-surveillance measures have become customary practices, including
felling the RFID-equipped âsmart lamp postsâ installed in several
neighborhoods and spraying or dismantling CCTV cameras before big
demonstrations.
All this points to an intuitive understanding of a reality that the blog
Dialectical Delinquents has outlined very well over a number of years
(and we thank them for their continued painstaking efforts to sketch the
rapidly emerging contours of this reality): Hong Kong is poised at the
forefront of a struggle against the Sinification of the world. That is,
it appears to us that, with neoliberalism dying a drawn-out, protracted
death under the weight of mass revolts that all advocate secession from
neoliberal global arrangements, the Chinese variant of the authoritarian
surveillance state, complete with a panoply of carceral camps and
quasi-legal institutions, is the only means by which the world as we
know it can be held together by coercive force. We are not the only ones
who perceive this; not so long ago, Dialectical Delinquents featured an
interview with a Huawei executive that is illuminating in its
frankness.[4]
As we described in our previous interview, Xinjiang is at the back of
everyoneâs minds, and the horror of Xinjiang, coupled with the rapid
introduction of surveillance apparatuses across the city, gives the
struggle a pronounced apocalyptic flavor: it is reiterated time and
again that if we do not win, we will find ourselves in internment camps.
We are in general agreement with this, but it is imperative that we
recognize that we are waging the same âhand to hand fightâ [Agamben,
What Is An Apparatus?] against these apparatuses as countless other
insurgents across the worldâthat China is not the great Satan that âthe
free worldâ can deliver us from, the Antichrist that we have to slay at
all costs, but a shadow from the future, a shadow looming over a
disintegrating planet.
It goes without saying that China serves as a welcome distraction for
Western audiences as well, offering Western governments the opportunity
to decry Chinese excesses in order to parade their commitment to âhuman
rightsâ while killing and jailing their own populations.
Letâs talk about the tensions and contradictions internal to the
movement. Outside Hong Kong, we have heard a lot about protesters
displaying the British flag, singing the Star-Spangled Banner, sharing
Pepe the frog memes, and employing other symbols of Western nationalism.
How visible has this been on the ground inside the movement? Has there
been pushback?
We are sure that many of you will have seen images of the action that
took place a week ago in which people congregated in full black bloc
regalia outside the American embassy, waving American flags, singing the
American national anthem, and exhorting the White House to pass an act
on Hong Kong as promptly as possible. This led us to make the tragicomic
observation that Hong Kong might be the only place in the world where
the black bloc carries American flags.[5]
Many âflag-bearersâ are dismissive of the critiques directed their way;
this characterizes those who support the continued appeals to the White
House in general. When a comrade from the US came to visit us recently,
he approached the flag-bearers and made no secret of his contempt for
his own government. âFuck The USA!â was his pithy opening remark, before
he elaborated upon the murders perpetrated daily by the American state
machine. This exchange was captured by a student press and circulated on
Facebook for a few hours, engendering discussion and debate. Many of the
comments were revealing: they dismissed our American comrade as the
âAmerican variant of left plasticâ [an insulting term for old-fashioned
leftists explained in our previous interview] and accused him of being
an ignoramus. âDo you really think we are American patriots? We are just
being practical, enlisting the help of somebody who can really help us!â
They insisted that singing the American anthem, waving the American
flag, and publicly declaring how much they admire the American way of
life are just calculated appeals to the powerful sentimentality of
actual American patriots. (Some such patriots have made the trip to Hong
Kong, such as fascist organizer Joey Gibson, who had a blast taking
selfies with unsuspecting protesters only too glad to applaud a
hot-blooded flag-waving American who appeared friendly to the cause.)
The flag-bearers claim that those who criticize the flag-waving are
naĂŻve: they donât know that the message that they are sending is a
double-coded one. On the anniversary of September 11, some called for a
city-wide cessation of protest activity in commemoration of those who
lost their lives on 9/11âyet another shrewd move aimed at winning
American sympathy. As clever as these play-actors think they are with
their cunning grasp of realpolitik, the joke is on themâand, ultimately,
on us if we fail to shatter this ongoing fascination with the sham
tug-of-war between the âgreat powersâ of the world.
Many friends from the West have asked us repeatedly whether this
sentiment is shared by a vast proportion of the struggle, or whether
this fixation with the West is a fringe phenomenon. Letâs put it this
way: at the present moment, anything that bears any relation to China is
fair game for defacement and desecrationâthe government insignia is
destroyed, flags are torn off of poles and thrown in the water, the
premises of banks and even insurance companies that bear the name
âChinaâ are covered in tags, the shutters of âChina Life Insuranceâ
recently having been tagged with âI Donât Want A Chinazi Life.â If a
storefront bearing visible American iconography were attacked in the
same way (say, by us), we fear that we would likely be stopped.
We should also add that of late it is not simply American flags that are
seen at protests, but the flags of other âfriendlyâ members of the G20
as wellâCanada, Germany, France, Japan, the UK, and the likeâwith the
flag of the Ukraine also making an unfortunate appearance last week,
presumably because screenings of âWinter On Fireâ have been taking place
in public squares and the public has little knowledge of what that
documentary conveniently omits.
Meanwhile, there have been continued campaigns urging the United Kingdom
to assume responsibility for the foundlings it left behind by issuing
BNO (British National Overseas) passports to Hong Kong citizens once
more. Though this passport does not grant its holder the right of abode
in the UK, nor guarantee consular protection, for some it seems to
embody the hope of escape from a city that many are beginning to regard
as a death trap. âIâd rather be a second- or third-class citizen in a
Western country than be thrown in a thought correction camp,â someone
commented weeks ago on a message board thread.
Seen in this light, the waving of Western flags seems less like a deft
act of strategic cunning and more like a desperate and pious plea for an
almighty deliverer. This is a deadly mixture of fear and naĂŻvetĂŠâthe two
feeding off and compounding each otherâthat we are making efforts to
combat. Our American friends recently gave us a marvelous slogan that we
hope to spread everywhere: âChinazi & Amerikkka: Two Countries, One
System.â
Which institutions and mythologies have lost legitimacy in the public
eye in the course of the unrest? Which have retained or gained
legitimacy? Can you describe the success or failure of efforts to
critique these institutions and mythologies, or at least to open up
dialogue about them?
As we described in the previous interview, for many years, it was
believed that there were two paths in social struggle: pacifist, civic,
and genteel protests accessible to housewives, the elderly, and others
who could not hazard the risk of arrest, and bellicose, confrontational
participation in the frontlines, employing various kind of direct
action. These two paths persist, but what is unprecedented in the
current situation is that both are illegal: the government rejects
applications for protests and every assembly is de facto prohibited,
however innocuous it may be. Simply being physically present at or near
the scene of an illegal assembly already constitutes grounds for arrest
and detention. When you are sitting on the subway train or the bus home,
you never know whether riot squads will storm the vehicle and proceed to
beat the life out of everyone on board, whether vigilantes have tipped
you off to the cops or are following you home, whether the triads will
be out in force where you live late at night. Partisanship renders you
into a body that can be maimed, tortured andâit appearsâkilled by those
whose acts are authorized in the name of âorder.â As the guardians of
order make clear, we are âcockroaches,â pests to be exterminated and
disposed of so that business can proceed as usual.
In addition, professing sympathy for the struggle could very well leave
you unemployed if you work for a company that has longstanding ties with
the Chinese market. Consider the high-profile case of Cathay Pacific,
the upper management of which demanded a list of members of a union that
had participated in the movement or helped to leak flight information of
the police; this company is carrying out a thoroughgoing purge of
partisans among their staff, directed by careerist snitches among the
crew.
Teachers at school who tutored you in algebra just a few months ago
could aid in your arrest; principals and heads of departments stand idly
by as riot squads seize you and your friends outside your school
building. This is the reality that protesters are becoming rapidly
habituated to. As a consequence, networks of mutual assistance have
rapidly formed to address the situation, offering employment, shelter,
transport, and meals to those in need.
In short: the future, as a horizon of foreseeable advancement, an
itinerary of fulfillable and forestalled plans and projections, has
collapsed, and we are left consulting, moment by moment, the live maps
drawn in real time by volunteer cartographers, telling us which stations
to avoid, which roads to take a detour around, which neighborhoods are
presently being gassed. Daily life itself becomes a series of tactical
maneuvers, everyone having to exercise caution about what they say at
lunch in cafĂŠs and canteens lest they are overheard and reported,
experimenting with different ways to ride the subways for free without
being too obvious about it, inventing codes to use on instant messaging
or social media that evade quick decryption. It is quite extraordinary
that so many are willing to forego the craven comforts and conveniences
of the metropolis, the enjoyment of anonymity as they go about their
business. It is necessary to find and maintain clandestinity in other
ways.
It is impossible to deny that through it all, a sense of invention and
adventure saturates the minutiae of our waking lives.
What would it take for the unrest to spread to mainland Chinaâif not in
this movement, in some future sequel to it? Or do the premises of the
movement itself render that impossible?
For one, it would require us to confront the sobering fact that Hong
Kong is beholden to China for much of our food and water. This alone
should make it evident that any successful revolt here must necessarily
involve active support from comrades in the regions that surround Hong
Kong. This practical imperative would more readily find an audience here
than abstract arguments, as Hong Kongers notoriously exhibit little
patience for discussions about ideology.
Here we should note that this point is a contentious one; several in our
collective suggest that this dependence is a point of intense resentment
for many in Hong Kong, particularly as it is a consequence of nefarious
political arrangements that have seen the gradual decimation of much of
Hong Kongâs agricultural land in the northeast territories, which was
cleared to make way for private residential compounds that are often
subject to foreign (and mainland) speculation, as well as the grotesque
water import deal that we have with Guangdong. That isâthis dependence
merely reinforces the ardor for independence and sovereignty rather than
attenuates it.
Another necessary step would be to let go of the fantasy that Hong Kong
is exceptional, the way people imagine the city as a world-class liberal
entrepĂ´t populated with free-minded, liberty-loving cosmopolitans, in
contrast to the bootlicking, crass, and brainwashed peasants up north.
Trite as it may sound, we have to empty âHong Kong identityâ of any
positive contentâall of its pretensions of civilization, urbanity, and
enlightenmentâin order to make way for the consummate negativity of
proletarian revolt, which can cut decisively through the divisive
brouhaha generated by governments on both sides of the border. It has to
be said that whenever there has been an upheaval or report of a âmass
incidentâ in China during this struggle, people have paid close
attention.
Many have also explored inventive avenues for âsmugglingâ information to
mainlanders, even going so far as to edit porn videos on Chinese adult
sites, substituting footage of police brutality in Hong Kong for the
money shots. This reminds us of our favorite ancient Chinese rebellions,
in which contraband information circulated through parchment hidden in
buns and pastries.
As we mentioned above, there are those who volubly advocate
âindependenceâ and âautonomyâ for each region in China, the
balkanization of the country following the collapse of the Communist
party (the latter being the priority, the former being regarded as
simply a favorable consequence). Yet for others a more plausible
eventuality, considering how folks over the border are often imagined as
lost sheep watched over by an almighty shepherd, is the hope that Hong
Kongâs sovereignty will be backed up by the threat of international
military force, its border policed so that our destiny is decoupled from
that of the Chinese.
Dismantling this ideological matrix and undermining the bases of Hong
Kong cultural identity in favor of dangerous cross-border work is deeply
unpleasant and unpopular work. Truth be told, few of us know how to go
about doing it on a significant scale, especially since all the
information channels on the Mainland are subject to comprehensive
controls. Our friends on the mainland have made extensive efforts to
disseminate information regarding this struggle on message boards and
social media, but this information is often swiftly removed and their
accounts are quickly banned.
You can imagine how daunting this task is, the difficulty being
magnified by its urgencyâespecially now that crowds are beginning to
form choruses to sing a newly-penned âHong Kong national anthemâ in
public spaces.
Give us a rundown on the tactical and technical innovations that have
occurred over the past months and what they have enabled participants to
do that was previously impossible. Imagine that you are addressing
people who will be in a similar situation to yours at some point in the
future.
Years from now, we will continue to look back and marvel at all the
incredible things that emerged in response to the concrete problems that
insurgents have faced over the course of the past three months.
In response to teenagers having no homes to return to because they were
practically âdisownedâ by their parents for attending demonstrations and
remaining on the streets when states of emergency were declared, people
created a network of open apartments to which young partisans could
retreat and stay temporarily. In response to minibuses, buses, and
subway trains no longer being safe for escaping protesters, carpool
networks were formed via Telegram to âpick kids up from school.â We
encountered elderly drivers who didnât even know how to operate
Telegram, but who drove repeatedly around the âhot spotsâ reported by
the radio news, watching for running protesters who needed a quick ride
out of danger.
In response to young people not having any work or enough money to buy
food at the front lines, working people prepared supplies of supermarket
and restaurant coupons and handed these out to people in gear before
large-scale confrontations. This remarkable fact is often used by
conservatives to suggest that foreign powers are behind this âcolor
revolution,â because⌠where did all the money for these coupons come
from? There has to be somebody bankrolling this! They cannot fathom that
any worker would be willing to reach into his own pockets in order to
help a person that he does not know.
In response to the suffering, trauma, and sleeplessness induced by
long-term exposure to tear gas and police violence, whether experienced
first-hand or via graphic live feeds, support networks appeared offering
counsel and care. In response to kids not having enough time to do their
homework because they are out on the streets all night, Telegram
channels appeared offering free tutoring services. In response to
students ânot being able to have an educationâ because they were on
strike, people organized seminars on all manner of political subjects at
schools that were sympathetic to the cause and also in public spaces.
Meanwhile, people have started chat rooms on Telegram to discuss
subjects that protesters may be curious about; we are in the process of
starting one ourselves. The subject matter might be technical (how to
take a subway ticket machine apart, how to pass through a turnstile
without paying), it might be historical (we recently saw one about the
French Revolution), it might be spiritual, or about self-defense and
martial arts.
All of these efforts are breathtaking in their breadth and efficiency.
Affinity groups form to make Molotovs and test them out in forests.
Others develop friendships and trust playing war games in the woods,
setting up simulations of crossfire with the police. Impromptu martial
arts dojos are held in parks and rooftops. Say what you want about
people in this city, they are extraordinary at solving practical
problems with minimal fuss.
This struggle has played a pedagogical role for everyone who has
participated in it. It is a phenomenological pedagogy in which the city
that we inhabit has acquired an entirely new significance through the
process of the struggleâevery aspect of every city has taken on a deep
tactical significance. You have to know which areas are frequented by
triads; every bend in the road and cul-de-sac could make a difference in
whether you come out of a demonstration in one piece. Over the last few
months, we have found ourselves in neighborhoods that are foreign to us,
but even the neighborhoods we have grown up in all our lives become
strange to us when we are fleeing from rushing riot squads or perusing
message board threads full of stories shared by those who, thanks to
their employment or background, are intimately acquainted with aspects
of the city that we could never access on our own. Couple this with the
extraordinary real-time maps drawn by teams to indicate zones of danger
and avenues of escape and you begin to grasp how the last three months
have been an accelerated psychogeographic and cartographic tour of our
city, the value of which is inestimable both for this struggle and those
to come.
Of course, at the end of the day, it isnât simply about those on the
streets; there are many, even in our own collective, who prefer for
various reasons not to be where street fights take place. The monumental
contributions of those who draw maps and supply real-time information
off-site, tirelessly verifying the accuracy of the data that continually
streams in from a multiplicity of channels, have been instrumental in
ensuring the safety of partisans and the elimination of false news
(certain accounts on message boards continuously spread false
information on a regular basis, the purpose of which remains unknown).
Itâs also meaningful that people take the time, after exhausting street
combat, to collectively debate the finer points of tactics on Telegram
channels and message boards, openly and in a comradely spirit. This is
what makes it possible to accomplish each projected initiativeâbe it
shutting down a subway line, a highway to the airport, or the airport
itselfâeven if, as in the case of the subway line, early attempts are
tentative and unsuccessful. The will to accomplish objectives must be
coupled with the collective determination to create the informational
infrastructure to make it happen.
What can people outside Hong Kong do to support arrestees and prisoners
in this movementâspecifically anti-authoritarian ones? Are there other
things you would like to see people elsewhere in the world do to support
you?
In the coming days, we will disclose information about a global
solidarity action that we are coordinating with some friends overseas.
Watch this space!
Also, it would be extremely helpful if you would publish your own
literature about the state of affairs that we are all facing, at this
historical moment, in regard to China and the continuing development of
surveillance technologies around the world. We cannot allow the
narrative of this struggle to revolve simply around self-righteous
denunciations of the Communist Party. The party is absolutely worthy of
our contempt, but we must not imagine that the evil of this world is
concentrated in China, we cannot allow this farcical facsimile of the
Cold War with its laughable division between the upstanding citizens of
the âfree worldâ and the sentinels of 1984 to divert us from the demands
of our time and the project of hastening the ruin of everything that
continues to separate us from the life that awaits us.
Spread the spirit of proletarian mockery. Let us laugh in every language
we know!
[1] A sponge grenade is like a rubber bullet, except about twenty times
larger and tipped with styrofoam sponge instead of rubber.
[2] Triads are gang members involved in the racketeering organizations
that have a long history in Hong Kong and Mainland China. Their
genealogy stretches all the way back to the secret societies that
opposed the Qing Dynasty during the imperial period, a case study in how
revolutionary organizations are recuperated.
[3] By Hong Kong law, employers are only required to give their helpers
one day off a week and many find ways to contravene this law.
[4] You can consult the interview here, along with many more examples of
Chinaâs extensive networks of control that the curator has collected
over years of painstaking research.
[5] Editorâs note: Sadly, this is not true. In Germany, where black bloc
tactics originated, some âanti-Deutschâ left radicals became famous for
marching with American flags, often in black bloc formations. The
stupidity of seeking salvation from one empire in the arms of another
knows no bordersâand militancy alone is no proof against it.