Thread by @hkwuliff, this may be a hot take but as a relatively apolitical person, [...]

this may be a hot take but as a relatively apolitical person, after spending just a year in protest, i honestly can see why there's such strong anti-left sentiment in hk

(granted, while im definitely not a leftist by the standard definition, i tend to agree with left or progressive views. i do identify as a political noob and feel like im very unaware of shiit)

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but from a perspective that is based on very patchy international understanding, the whole "communist = left" thing starts us off on a bad foot already...

like OBV china is anything but communist but the alignment is there

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and then when hkers reached out for international connections, the first to respond (and to respond enthusiastically) were people who were definitely not from the left

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this support from the right was loud and flashy and maybe can be said to be stable

who knows how sincere it was, but at least it was there.

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then when we in hk think of international allies, we assume everyone in the west are like the ones who we have connected with — aka the right. every american must therefore have similar values, bc right-America is all the america we see

so there’s that: loud support from the right that has shaped how hkers view intl allies.

but then theres also the left….

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again im coming at this from my perspective as a relatively apolitical person whose focus was mainly on hk

pls do not expect me (or other hkers) to have intimate knowledge of how the left works, or how intl politics works at all for that matter

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tbh idt i would’ve noticed support from the left in 2019 lmao (except that i had some interest bc of college). no offense!!!!!!

if they did speak up for hk, they would’ve sounded like another american, which, as established before: all americans are on the right, right?

people on the left were not as vocal imo, AND THEN added to the fact that maybe we didn’t notice they were leftists….oops. sorry we now believe the left is silent

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ofc pelosi and other folks have spoken up but again they are American and the definition of American has been shaped so strongly by the initial support from the right

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slowly tho, as we begin to understand the nuances (slightly) of american politics, we realize oh! the right has opponents! opponents who are less supportive of us, and who our “allies” (the right) seem very angry at

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oh! if our allies are angry at them — these allies who have spoken very loudly for us for a good while — then that means these opponents are bad for us

maybe i’m oversimplifyng, but u can see how this works, right? esp for political noob

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obv this then drags a ton of weird left/right US debate into hk, and also drags hk into a lot of weird right-wing horrorshows but im not going into that bc noob. as someone 8000miles away how tf am i supposed to understand the nuances of ur politics when i am facing jail time

and then aha. TANKIES! ah, lovely lovely tankies. they are 1 of 2 examples of leftists i see on twitter, and they are so…vile? they tell lies about us, they don’t care about our human rights, and they’re….denying the uyghur concetration camps?????

aiya

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however!!!! oh my god!!!!1 theyre getting attention!!!! from others who call themselves leftists!!!!!!!

who cares whether or not those ppl are “normal” leftists? those are all the leftists we see. so even if communist ≠ left, wow! god we hate leftists for their lies

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and heres a truly hot take:

the other example we see of leftists are people who do care, but also either use really big words or put their own western standards onto us

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these folks are not like tankies, who make us angry. these folks are, sorry, easy to dismiss.

do they speak out loudly enough for us to be heard in foreign governments? hmm…

do they say “hkers are wronged! help them!” without caveats? hmm

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again im saying this as a political noob. i have no concept of how western poltiics works. i have no previous contact with the idea of systemic racism (the IDEA of it ok, not saying theres no racism in hk) or other kinds of progressive issues

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we live in a place where people of different ethnic minorities are not seen (which is fucked.) and have no true concept of things that asian americans face. and from what we hear from these leftists — seems like they dont understand what we face, either

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it feels like these leftists (non-tankies) are judging us all the time by standards we don’t understand, or asking us to do things that we’re like ??? what does this mean??? and if we don’t meet these standards, whoops. we are not good enough

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meanwhile, we don’t hear flashy statements from these leftists either. where’s the help, we’re thinking. where's your flashy legislation? what are you doing tht will actually help us?? to stop us from being swallowed into an authoritatian state??

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the conclusion to be drawn based on my patchy understanding, then, is that intl leftists are either intentionally malicious (tankies) or nitpicky and useless. based on the response we’ve seen, is it so unfair that this is how we view the international left?

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obv there’s a lot of nuance to it. there’s a lot of careful wording and careful thought and careful networking-building that comes of the non-tankie intl left

but its hard to see, yknow? it’s hard to understand all the nuance in so short a time, and in so fraught a time

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seeing “hkers must reach out in solidarity” is a nice-sounding phrase, but it is incredibly frustrating to hear because it seems like it’s the only thing that intl leftists are willing to say for hk

hot take amirite

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in a way, it’s like…leftists either lie or don’t do shit. and then they say we’re racist and all kinds of bad shit — which to us, given our noobass or previously-formed non-left/progressive views, is super startling.

we’re bad people? but…we’re fighting the bad people!!

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how are we the bad people!!! we’re good! we’re fighting for freedom! we want human rights (in the way that we understand)!

if they say we’re bad, then…are they the enemy?

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so in a year’s crash course, here’s what political noob learned:

• the right supports us loudly! they are our allies
• tankie leftists actively try to lie about us to discredit us
• non-tankie leftists are all jargon and no action

so, uh...

in conclusion: whoops there is a reason for this anti-left sentiment in hk

obv im only touching on ideological shit, not even other topics but based on the Right and Left that i’ve seen this year?

oof im sorry. i can understand why many HKers are anti-left

just in case this gets understood wrongly (which it def will lmao, hello tankies)

im saying this from the perspective of someone who has lived their entire life in hk and has next to 0 connection with western politics and ideology.

to expect us to 100% understand eVERYTHING about ur politics, and then for us to interact 100% within the acceptable conventions of ur politics

that is a ridiculous angle to take

you may have good points and good intentions! (personally i have been honored to know a lot of sincerely kind leftists)

but those points and intentions do not translate perfectly. they really don’t.

i hope this helped lmao. if not then well it’s a hot take u can ignore it

i also want to add: i myself am guilty of a lot of this too. my dad said to me last night “i want donald trump to win bc only a bastard can control another bastard” and i got mad

but it was also unfair of me to assume he has all the context and understands who trump really is

ive definitely also done this on twitter, too, when im like DONALD TRUMP SUCKS or like “thats not what the left is!” or “we have to stop listening to steve bannon!”

and thats my fault! i am expecting others to have context for things that is not on them to know

it is not fair to judge people on opinions that are based on a different set of understandings than ours — i really need to get better at this

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