HONG KONG’S BALLOTS CHALLENGE CHAIRMAN MAO’S GUN BARRELS:
The Hong Kong pro-democracy movement’s overwhelming Nov. 24 election victory demonstrates that the city’s brave citizens disdain Mao Zedong’s political ditties almost as much as they scorn the crooked Chinese Communist Party tyranny the mass-murdering former chairman created.
Mao, who fancied himself a poet and philosopher, declared that political power grows from the barrel of a gun. From the Soviet Kremlin to the University of California, Berkeley to Jane Fonda, the global left waved Mao’s Little Red Book, applauded his so-called “thoughts” and proclaimed radical Marxism to be humanity’s future.
Hong Kong’s 2019 protests and the recent district election results are actions –deeds, not words — that directly challenge Mao’s gun barrel maxim and lay claim to a future where political power expresses the will of free people.
My latest Creators Syndicate column.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Beijing Was Confident Its Hong Kong Allies Would Win. After the Election, It Went Silent.
The Chinese government seemed confident that its allies would prevail in the Hong Kong elections on Sunday.
For a week, commentators wrote brassy pieces saying the Hong Kong public would go to the polls to “end social chaos and violence,” a vote against what they saw as rogues and radicals. Editors at state-run news outlets prepared stories that predicted withering losses for the protest movement.
When it became clear early Monday that democracy advocates in the semiautonomous territory had won in a landslide, Beijing turned silent. The news media, for the most part, did not even report the election results. And Chinese officials directed their ire at a familiar foe: the United States.
The sudden pivot reflects the ruling Communist Party’s continuing struggle to understand one of its worst political crises in decades. At various moments in the months long protests in Hong Kong, Beijing has been caught off guard, forced to recalibrate its propaganda machine.
They don’t understand democracy, or how people used to democracy think. How could they?
UPDATE (FROM AUSTIN): Glenn’s addition is right in line with my column, which I wrote on Monday. The issues the essay explores will resonate for 30 years. 30 is a reasonable number — the Tiananmen Square massacre has resonated for 30 years, despite the Chicoms attempts to erase it from history. Sunday’s November 2019 ballot in Hong Kong was the first time Chinese citizens had a chance to cast a vote rejecting the Chinese Communist Party’s June 1989 thug decision to turn Tiananmen Square into a slaughter house. The Beijing Commies lost the 2019 ballot, big time. Why? My guess: Thugs tend to surround themselves with frightened yes men. My latest book, Cocktails from Hell, explores Red China’s numerous gambits, delusions and fragilities.
