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https://www.threads.net/@nprpubliceditor/post/DIhOEQQOyqP
EDIT: Also worth noting that the next nationwide protest date for 50501 is May 1st
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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Because their tactics are not why they failed, and they were a modern protest movement using sophisticated modern tactics to put up an incredible fight against a much bigger, equally modern enemy they could almost certainly never beat on their own, whose tactics and strategies we can appropriate and use for our own movement.
They were coordinated, smart, disruptive, fighting a panopticon mass surveillance military superpower with resources and political sway other superpowers would also struggle with. We hear about the underdogs winning because it's notable. Underdogs usually lose, no matter how big their fight, and they were the underdogs, by a LOT.
We should absolutely take from the more successful civil rights movement of the 60s, Ghandi's Indian independence movement, the Suffrage movement, but looking at stuff like the Hong Kong protests gives us a look at tactics and a general approach that can be used in the modern day to combat modern day oppression effectively.
You can do everything right and still lose. Hong Kong's protesters did everything they could, went far above and beyond what a weaker movement could have managed. The tools and tactics they used shouldn't be ignored just because they were beaten. They were powerful methods of disruption and resistance, ways to fight and protect the most people in the movement at once as possible.
Hong Kongers would not go the last step.
They chose not to make the city dangerous to the CCP. They chose to resist and disrupt gently.
How many men and women fit for fight lived in Hong Kong? A few million? They chose to fold, rather than commit to civil war. The protest never went that last step, to put their lives in the line to fight for freedom when it became clear the government would not budge to disruption and "resistance". They chose life over freedom, and I expect most Americans will make the same choice. They'd rather accept Gilead and try to live with it, than die in the effort to stop it.
Could they have made the city dangerous to the CCP without inviting a proportionate (or disproportionate) military response? Protesters get violent and things start looking a lot more like Tienanmen Square. There was not the sort of external support to enable that sort of rebellion on the scale that would be needed to directly combat China. Because someone has to supply weapons, information, medical support, something they'd need help with but China would not.
They would have set themselves up to die for nothing. Not even their own freedom, they didn't have the backing of their own government and the necessary resources that'd have required, and so would have to secure food, water, shelter, medicine, defences, security both physical and informational, on their own, at a bare minimum to even put forth a token guerilla warfare effort like that. Even the US had the support of France during the American revolution. These things don't just happen because there's the will for it. Non-violent resistance is not a compromise on violent resistance, it is a strategic decision.
If there's not a solution to a proportionate military response to violent retaliation from Hong Kong movement, then it doesn't matter if they fight and die for their freedom or not, they won't be keeping it. Making the decision to kill and die for a cause that will collapse under the weight of its opposition is not an effective act of resistance, the force needed to scare off the CCP with violent retaliation did not exist in the Hong Kong protest movement. Like Russia with basically any and all prolonged military problems, China could afford to throw bodies at the problem until it went away, and Hong Kong, as organized and efficient as their movement was, did not have the material support to survive an onslaught like that.
But none of that matters to the bigger point, the tactics used, the anonymity, the discrete messaging apps and security protocols adopted by protesters, the decentralized organizational structure for direct, disruptive protest actions, the countermeasures against police force and tactics like using laser pointers en masse against helicopters and security cameras to make it difficult to fly, aim, or identify protesters, the counter measures against tear gas and protocols for dealing with it quickly, pre-arranged escape routes and ditching any markers identifying you as a protester before merging into crowds , burner phones, all tactics they used that were extremely effective at countering typical police tactics, and were methodologies we should be using when organizing our own direct actions. None of which were tactics that were necessary in periods before mass surveillance states were the norm.
Don't like the implication that they were cowards or failures for choosing to live, when they chose to fight the best way they thought they could under the circumstances they were under. They certainly weren't sitting on the internet asking someone else to do it for them, and they weren't just standing around with signs chanting either (though they were also doing that, building support and solidarity is necessary).
If you're willing to give up, then you're willing to give up. I'm guessing Americans are willing to give up.
The rest of your fluff is lost in the weeds as history goes on.
I'm not. Don't put words in my mouth.
Fighting without a plan for success is the same as fighting for nothing. In Hong Kong, there was no plan for success that could involve violence, strategically. It's easy enough to say people somewhere else should kill and die for a cause you believe in, it's another thing entirely to commit millions of people to doing so. They would have been treated as an invading army and far more than the active protesters would have been targeted and killed as "collateral damage".
My actual perspective on it is that if I thought killing and terrorizing the CCP, or any authoritarian government like that would work, I would be here screaming from the rooftops to pile the bodies high. I have no qualms about dragging fascists out of their homes and butchering them like animals in front of their families, because that is the world they want to build for others, but you cannot commit to violence like that without a rock solid plan, a plan that would involve being able to count on non-combatants seeing violent action and sticking around or joining in. And even if that was the right course of action, this is not Ukraine being invaded by Russia, people getting their homes and cities bombed to pieces, you'd have to convince people that level of retaliation was necessary when the danger was in the form of powerful people signing documents making agreements out of sight. You have to CONVINCE people to do it. And then those people have to actually see it through.
And I'm NOT saying they're even the main movement we should be taking lessons from, but to ignore the usefulness of the tactics they used that DID work, and not looking at what SPECIFICALLY DIDN'T work, at what caused them to fail would be FOOLISH. Take from the Civil Rights movement. Take from the Suffragate movement. Take from the Indian independence movement. There's even lessons to take from revolutions that turned violent. The Boston Tea Party was a non-violent act of economic terrorism that cost the British government the equivalent of almost 2 million dollars. That's the sort of thing we can do TODAY. But we are in the early stages of this thing, and the organizational infrastructure IS NOT THERE. That's WHY we do the marches. To build momentum. To make each next step easier and easier to commit to, and to build communities and networks around protesting like this, making it routine and just another part of people's lives so it can be done sustainably. We want them to be fighting us all day every day on every front without rest, and it takes a LOT of time to set something like that up, especially across an entire nation and ESPECIALLY one as big as the US.
I am unwilling to disparage and dismiss the intelligence, effectiveness, and effort of the Hong Kong protesters, or any protest movement that tries but collapses under the weight of their opposition. Unions used to be a stronger force in the US, until they were systematically destroyed by the forces we're currently fighting. Would you say that of them because they failed and didn't then choose to die fighting an enemy they couldn't beat? I wouldn't. I'd say survive until you can create an opportunity to fight again, better next time.