It’s toxicity and indecency that is killing Hong Kong
- It seems Hong Kong politics has reached such an extreme that many on both sides have lost all sense of restraint with the family and friends of those in the public eye subjected to doxxing and verbal assaults both online and in daily life
As they say, all is fair in love and war. When you have been engaged in political warfare in the past few years and actively take sides in the political divide one way or another, you paint yourself a target. So, we are all fair game, even when our critics and attackers are not, we think, being fair.
But that doesn’t extend to families and friends. Yes, attack your enemies, but leave their families alone. More specifically, leave innocent families caught up in this in struggle alone.
But it seems Hong Kong politics has reached such an extreme that many on both sides have lost all sense of restraint. It’s not just a failure of being civil to each other; we have given that up for a decade or two now, ever since lawmakers decided to curse and throw things at each other and government officials.
But it seems we don’t need to be decent human beings any more, so long as our targets are on the opposing side.
When the family of teenager Chan Yin-lam attended her inquest, they were harassed outside the court by several members of the “yellow” or anti-police/government camp.
Courage shines at the cruellest of times
When pro-democracy activist extraordinaire Joshua Wong Chi-fung recently walked his dog with his mother and girlfriend at The Peak, they were verbally abused for almost half an hour by several people, who actually filmed the whole incident and then put it online.
I have had similar experiences from people who didn’t like my column and my political stance, but I won’t be complaining about that. When you put yourself in public, you open yourself to attacks. Wong is fair game, so far as I am concerned, but not his mother or girlfriend, or their dog. The people who accosted them, including the dog, cursed them in the rudest slang possible in Cantonese, which I won’t repeat here.
When you put yourself in public, you open yourself to attacks
What I find particularly disgusting, disgraceful and disturbing is that virtually all the YouTubers in the “blue” camp with the most subscribers and viewers have put up the video clip and applauded the abusers. For the first time in my life, I find myself sympathising with Wong, or at least his family.
Of course, both sides have gone extreme. The yellow camp has long been doxxing police officers, government allies, political opponents and their families.
It’s this highly concentrated level of toxicity and indecency that is killing Hong Kong.
