tim's experiment

What has got into Regina Ip? Rather good piece on the back of the Post spoiled by a resounding piece of language abuse at the beginning. Ms Ip said that an “atmosphere of violence” had set in and was poisoning the atmosphere in our city. She then proceeded to list the symptoms, none of which actually involved violence.

We were offered five sentences starting “Violence in the form of…”, followed by one beginning “Also, violence in the form of…” If we may abbreviate this stirring piece of writing a bit, the forms of violence bothering Ms Ip are:

1. Calls for a peaceful occupation of Central.

2. “Extreme positions” on the method of electing the Chief Executive.

3. Filibustering in Legco.

4. Attempts by young radicals to storm the Legco building.

5. Verbal abuse of mainlanders.

6. And also … students insulting the guest of honour (the Chief Secretary) at an APA graduation day.

Now many of us may be hard put to provide a dictionary definition of “violence”, but we know it when we see it and we are not looking at it here. Calling for an occupation of Central, violent or otherwise, is not violence. It is speech. Positions on the methods of electing the chief executive, whether extreme or held obstinately or not, are opinions. They are not violence. Filibustering is purely verbal phenomenon, as are unkind comments on mainlanders. There is nothing violent about turning your back on the person awarding your degree if you find your institution has appointed to its highest post a politician you despise. The storming of the Legco building sounds more promising, though violence against buildings hardly justifies the attempt to identify a new atmosphere.

So what is violence? Violence is Loving Hongkong thugs turning up at other people’s demonstrations in the hope of starting a fight. Violence is chopper-wielding assailants attacking newspaper editors. Violence is policemen pepper-spraying children in moments of excitement. None of these items appeared in Ms Ip’s list, oddly enough. So it appears that basically for the purposes of her piece “violence” is just a word you attach to people you disapprove of. I suppose this is the sort of linguistic manipulation they teach you at Harvard.

A more sophisticated version of the same thing comes near the end of Ms Ip’s piece, after a rather good tour of current discontents about the wealth gap, real estate hegemony, and education. The argument over CE elections, we are told, is whether “we are willing to support the national goal of safe-guarding sovereignty, security and developmental interest, or insist on going the other way.” And what exactly is “the other way?” Are those of us who would like genuine elections really (objectively?) against sovereignty and in favour of insecurity? Does Ms Ip suppose that any method of choosing our CE which gives people a genuine voice in the matter will imperil national sovereignty? The national sovereignty of the UK is not endangered when the Mayor of London is elected by the people of London. The US does not wilt when State Governors are elected by the people of the states concerned, without the candidates being vetted by the Federal government. India and Japan have local elections free from manipulation by the central authorities. And what has security got to do with it? I hope Ms Ip is not the source of those paranoid fantasies with which the China Daily entertains its readers, in which malign foreign interests are constantly scheming to subvert Hong Kong. The truth is less exciting. Overseas countries do not care about Hong Kong. When people overseas hear about Hong Kong, most of them think it is in Japan.

And what, I wonder does Ms Ip have in mind by “developmental interest”? This looks suspiciously like “the interests of developers”. Well I suppose we can all agree we’re not in favour of that.