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Non violent actions such as strikes brought us many human rights improvements such as 40 hour week and safety and health regulations. Many societies reformed af
by theseadroid 6y ago
Non violent actions such as strikes brought us many human rights improvements such as 40 hour week and safety and health regulations. Many societies reformed after their citizens striked extensively. I'm curious why there's no sweeping strikes in Hong Kong yet?
- mdorazio 6y agoCan you provide an example of a time peaceful strikes worked against a well-organized, massive, and authoritarian government like the CCP? I don't think comparing wins in civil rights in Western democracies is a good basis for policy here.
- jcranmer 6y agoSolidarity, leading the way to the Polish revolution of 1989 and ultimately the restoration of democracy to the Warsaw Pact?
- mdorazio 6y agoThat's an interesting one, but mostly because it's tied to the collapse of the Soviet Union at the same time. China is not anywhere near the same state of affairs. Poland was also a relatively small economy and war power.
- theseadroid 6y agoThe non violence movement in India against Imperial Britain? You can argue the particularity of every historical event but to me striking is one of the immediately reachable weapon against CCP that is not employed. With the same logic we can say protesting is not effective against CCP yet ppl still do it?
- jerf 6y agoImperial Britain is still not China of today. There are some cultures that will simply read your nonviolence as weakness and stomp over you. Our modern tendency to compete on who can most hyperbolically denounce Western Imperialism strips us of any ability to calibrate between cultures. Do you know what Imperial Rome would have done to the nonviolent Indian revolt? They'd have executed it at its infancy and it would be a historical footnote. They wouldn't have even waited for it to become a big movement; the death penalty would have been used early and often. To some degree, even as entertainment. My read on China is closer to first-century Rome than 20th century Britain. YMMV.
- theseadroid 6y agoAnd a single city with guns would be able to topple Rome with modern weaponry? To be clear, neither I or you are certain what the majority of HKers want to trade for democracy. Realistically if they want democracy so bad, what else they can do other than the protesting they are doing? Long term striking seems to be something they can do TODAY, RIGHT NOW. Equiped with weapons or not, one of the bet they have to make is that the international community would not sit idlely while many HKers get killed.
- jerf 6y ago"And a single city with guns would be able to topple Rome with modern weaponry?" I don't know how that's relevant to anything I said. My point is about culture. Nonviolent protest requires you to be protesting an amenable authority. There have been plenty of examples in history of authorities that will just spill as much blood as it takes. To my eye, the only constraint on China doing that is their fear that people might stop paying into their economy. Bear in mind that if China decided to roll into Hong Kong and simply kill everybody there, it would only increase the current Chinese government's death toll against their own people by somewhere between 16% to 40%. It wouldn't even double it! This is the government that brought you the "Great Leap Forward" in which they killed 18-45 million of their own people. This is a government being credibly accused of engaging in ethnic cleansing. Are you sure advising "nonviolent protest" against that is a good idea? "one of the bet they have to make is that the international community would not sit idlely while many HKers get killed." That is not something I'd advise anyone to bet their lives on.
- theseadroid 6y agoI thought it was relevant because my initial reply was to someone saying >They are too scared of weapons and (justified, defensive) violence to make Chinese occupation unviable. To that end I felt striking is probably a better option to try before more violent forms of fighting get involved. Maybe nonviolent protest is not a good idea, but it's probably not a worse idea than violent ones. >That is not something I'd advise anyone to bet their lives on. Say without international community support, is there any winning strategy you can think of? I personally think once the confrontation becomes more heated, at least a dozen western countries would allow HKers to immigrate to their countries, which doesn't require too much resources to do? One example is last year Sweden has already started granting China's Uighurs refugee status.
- akamaka 6y agoHow often do violent uprisings turn out well? A thorough reading of history shows that they aren’t very effective, either.
- jki275 6y agoWorked in the US and France as I recall.
- akamaka 6y agoThe US is a great example to consider: compare the odds of success of a violent secessionist movement in Hong Kong to those of the Confederacy winning the Civil War. Or perhaps a French example might be more relevant, with a single city at stake: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune
- jki275 6y agoRevolutionary war. Not civil war.
- akamaka 6y agoCall it what you like: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_American_Civil_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_American_Civil_...
- jki275 6y agoTalking about a different war dude. History didn't start in 1860.
- akamaka 6y agoSorry I wasn’t clear about what I was trying to say. My argument was that most violent independence movements aren’t successful, an example of which was the Civil War, which was also called the “War for Southern Independence” by the rebels. Having a revolution sounds great if you expect it to turn out like 1776, but the majority of the time it doesn’t work out that way.
- wenc 6y agoWell... I can think of two: Korean protests in 1987 (against a military strongman) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Struggle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Struggle Carnation Revolution in Portugal 1974 (against dictatorship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnation_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnation_Revolution
- me_me_me 6y agoThat is the best way of achieving long lasted change - solidarity mentioned. However China is different cup of tea. They don't care about image as they can suppress and buy PR - Tibet. They massacred their own youth, organized mass organ thief etc. They have different approach to (de)valuing human life. I am afraid that HK is under a CPR steamroller slowly crushing the resistance.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago> They don't care about image as they can suppress and buy PR - Tibet. Yes and no. China is almost crazily touchy about their image. They claim that it's an insult to their nation if anyone admits that Taiwan exists as a separate entity. You can't even mention Winnie the Pooh in China, because some people use it as a derisive label for Chairman Xi. (Imagine having the NSA notice every on-line mention of "Orange Man", and ordering the hosting site to remove it.) Now, they may not care about their image as much as they care about suppressing Hong Kong. But the rest of the world can make them pay a price in terms of image - a price that China seems to find rather painful.
- mannykannot 6y agoMaybe they throw a hissy fit at the mention of Taiwan, but do they give a shit, really?
- jtjbdhsjjdnd 6y agoJust for info sake. Only memes with Xi and Winnie are banned. Literally the first thing I saw in China were Winnie the Pooh images in Hainan airport toilet.
- lordlimecat 6y agoTheir concern for their image isn't egoism, it's propoganda. With Taiwan for instance, if you get everyone to agree for long enough that Taiwan does not exist internationally, Noone will care when you roll in and squash it.
- atomi 6y agoStrikes can also have the opposite effect; like Bacon's rebellion which ushered in an era of racial tensions that are felt to this day [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon%27s_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon%27s_Rebellion