Ever wonder why regular large Yellow Vest protests in France don't get the coverage that protests in Hong Kong or Moscow get on western mainstream media?
Have you heard that Extinction Rebellion has called for September 23 protests in Washington DC to 'shut the city down' due to our governments lack to real response to climate catastrophe. Do you think the police will allow them to block major intersections in the capital city and do you really believe that the media will give them huge and friendly coverage? Do you figure that Trump will tweet support for them and V-P Pence and John Bolton will speak in their favor?
Why the big difference?
See this bit below from K. J. Noh, a Korean-American who is an expert on China and other Asian countries (and VFP member). In an article for Popular Resistance he writes:
The Banality of Protest: Western “Progressives” Support Yet Another Color Revolution in Hong Kong
Misinformed “progressive” western “activists” and pundits are putting down their remote controls and organic smoothies just long enough to tweet out that Hong Kong protesters need to be supported as paragons of virtue and justice. Some have even blogged and bloviated about the importance of these protests as a struggle for freedom against “dictatorship”.
Most of these individuals never question why, out of the thousands of daily protests, or the 200-plus ongoing global independence movements, or the 50-plus ongoing violent conflicts, this particular struggle has been curated to penetrate the thick fog of their ignorance and their lightning-flash attention span.
Most of these individuals wouldn’t be able to distinguish Hong Kong from Hokkaido, and couldn’t tell Putonghua from Toisanhua from Cantonese. Most have never seen or spent a day in China. In fact, you know it’s not a real color revolution until the stupid section of the western “progressive” blogosphere gets to cheerleading.
This is what they are willfully missing:
- It’s not a progressive popular uprising if the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is involved. The NED is the soft-power coup arm of the US government, doing what the CIA used to do–regime change and dirty tricks–by other means. The NED is crawling all over this. This is an off-the-rack NED project.
- It’s not a progressive popular uprising if the key funder and fluffer is a fascist media billionaire with close ties to the most reactionary elements of Western rightwing reaction: Hong Kong’s Rupert Murdoch, Jimmy Lai, the owner of the misogynist, racist, xenophobic, Next Media/Next Digital Corporation/Apple Daily is the driver of this.
- It’s not a progressive popular uprising if the key leaders are racist, anti-immigrant, secessionists that court and consort with powerful rightwing extremists and regime change ideologues in the US (John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Marco Rubio, Eliot Engel, Larry Diamond, etc). John Bolton, for God’s sake?
- You know it’s not a progressive popular uprising when foreign powers (US Congress, State Dept) proclaim their ardent support for the protestors, write bills, make threats, and threaten consequences if the protests are not allowed by the government. When was the last time the US government actually supported a real populist movement?
- You know it’s not a popular progressive uprising—at least one with a shred of sense– when the protesters make appeals for US intervention or want to go back to being a colony: a shamelessly white supremacist, colonial [British] Apartheid state without a hint of democracy or representation.
- Popular progressive uprisings don’t wave US flags, UK flags, chant colonial slogans, use swastikas and alt-right symbols, terrorize children, spew hate speech (“Chee Na”), or beat unconscious people with US flags. Fascists do.
- Popular progressive movements for democracy and free speech don’t try to shut down free speech and terrorize all who disagree with them.
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