No Equivalence Between US Riots & Hong Kongers

No Equivalence Between US Riots & Hong Kongers

We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, my brothers and sisters-Plymouth Rock landed on us Malcolm X, American Black Power Activist

President Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and its state controlled media have pounced upon the billowing conflagration of the American riots. They see it as a great opportunity to turn the tables. Well they might. Some say the Red Chinese have used their fifth columns built over 40 years of partnership with America, to instigate the mobs.

The Red Chinese are trolling the Americans on the very Social Media platforms they have banned in China. They are calling the riots “beautiful”, even as the looters  steal Louis Vuitton luggage and Flat TVs. 

The CCP or its media organs however should not be the ones to talk.  They praise themselves as the good Chinese. Bad Chinese to them are the Hong Kongers, the Uigurs, the Taiwanese, all dissidents, Chinese Muslims, Christians. Common or garden critics - Chinese or otherwise, at home, or abroad. Chinese media and diplomacy is in a frenzy of finger-wagging at present.

They destroy Churches, defile Crosses, defrock priests, tear up Bibles - but let’s save that for another day. For now, let us focus on the province of Xinjiang that borders the occupied Indian territory of Gilgit- Baltistan and PoK . There, the CCP and its Han cohorts have interned uncounted Chinese Muslims, without incurring a murmur of protest from over 150 Muslim nations.

The CCP has shaved their beards and banned their worship, destroyed Mosques and Korans, harvested their body parts, raped and carried away Uigur women.

China welcomes the American riots at this time to try and get off the hook. It wants to strike an equivalence between them and its own iron-fisted power grab in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kongers, local and expatriate, are also at the receiving end of police batons, tear gas, mace, arrests. The Red Chinese are inventively spraying protestors on the streets with blue dye so that there is no evading arrest.

Hong Kongers want “universal suffrage”. They say they are willing to die for it. It is a throwback to similar struggles in Europe and America. The CCP however is not interested. It is afraid of the implications. Still, this David versus Goliath fight probably has an eventual transformation embedded in its heart’s blood.

The CCP is on a deliberate and planned mission. It wants to subjugate and destroy Hong Kong. It has worked hard to replace it with Shanghai in anticipation.  So it is unperturbed about the loss of Hong Kong’s special status. It is fine with the destruction of its financial markets, its real estate, the flight of its talented and wealthy people.

Crushing Hong Kong’s insubordination is paramount to the CCP. Taiwan, it has indicated, in its presently maniacal way, will be next. Except, this plan would have gone better before Covid-19 hit the world. The international community may no longer agree to tamely do business with Shanghai at all. But with the Chinese economy falling apart, playing this game of strength for the domestic gallery is crucial.

The young people of Hong Kong who have nowhere to go will stay on. But they won’t give up on autonomy, democracy, even independence.  Red China’s brute force won’t stop them. Fiercely independent Taiwan, Britain, its erstwhile ruler and inspiration, America and its other allies, will help them.

Red China cannot draw a legitimate and credible equivalence. It purveys a spurious equality and illusory rule of the proletariat. It is red in tooth and claw from the mass oppression of its own people. This ruthlessness is embedded in its Communist DNA. More than 30 million Chinese were murdered in Mao Zedong’s time . This mirrors the now vanished USSR, where Stalin cold-bloodedly despatched a similar number.   

Stung by universal global condemnation for  its insane tip-over into bio warfare, Red China  is hurtling towards self destruction instead of repentance .Its predatory diplomatic and military imperialism, thieving of data, unfair trade practices, refusal to adhere to international treaties, are legion. It is blatantly trying to extend its land borders and seize international waterways.

Red China is determined to crush the Hong Kongers that have protested for much too long. The goal of preserving the rule of the CCP at any cost is everything. But it is indeed perplexing. Red China was born in 1949, just 71 years ago. It has only been prosperous for twenty years.   

The American riots are like a periodic purging of anger. It has already gone on for eight days and nights as I write this piece. It all began in Minneapolis, before rapidly spreading all over the country. There are demonstrations, arson, looting, shootings, arrests in their thousands. Shocked police forces around the country are bending their knee in mea culpa. Millions of Americans have condemned what happened.  

The rage is enormous. Fire-bombing mobs outside the White House were so menacing that the Secret Service whisked President Trump and his family into the fortified bunkers under the building.

Unemployment, the ravages of  the pandemic, recession, poor health and nutrition, co-morbidities, lack of money, bleak prospects, crime, gangsters, routine police bullying, existential frustrations, ghettoisation, being locked down - all contributed. It was so much gunpowder waiting for a match. 

Police stations and patrol cars have been torched. Shops and businesses destroyed. In some places, The National Guard has been called in. The US Army could be next.

Such US riots have come with sickening regularity over the years. The African American has been abused and oppressed for 400 years. This riot however is only partly spontaneous. It is reportedly instigated and financed by left wing forces funded by Jewish billionaire George Soros, including one called ANTIFA.

George Soros was a major contributor to the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and now backs former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden himself quipped: you are not Black if you don’t vote for me.

White Supremacists, supporters of President Trump, and the Christian Right, are also said to be afoot.  Many of the demonstrators are indeed white.  Others are clearly non Black Muslims. America is 14% Black, and just over 3% Muslim.

President Trump is undaunted. Anarchy will not be permitted. Twitter and Facebook have been hauled up for facilitating the promotion of jihad. George Soros, who declared against “Nationalists” at Davos recently, part-financed the recent North Delhi riots too.  The powerful Jewish lobby in America and the Times of Israel denies his involvement, calling it a right wing slur. Trump has already banned ANTIFA as a terrorist organisation.

Have these various additional forces hijacked the African American outrage over the Minneapolis murder? Some of what has gone on is clearly anarchist in tenor and  seeks to make America ungovernable.

The George Floyd murderer has been booked  for third degree murder and 2^nd degree manslaughter. His three companion policemen have been sacked along with him. But is this enough?

It is undeniable that the wounds of slavery, apartheid, lynchings, poverty, criminality, bias, are seemingly never allowed to heal in America. And every time something like this happens, Black America is brought up short to look in the mirror afresh.

 Abraham Lincoln- a Republican, John and Robert Kennedy - Democrats, Christian Preacher and Civil Rights activist Dr.Martin Luther King,  Muslim preacher and Black Power Activist Malcolm X, were all assassinated trying to change this shameful trajectory.

The Minneapolis Police have triggered this fresh paroxym. But let us remember, every nation state in the melding has committed similar and worse crimes. The United States is not only a democracy, but a new nation as well. It may be the richest and most powerful on earth, but it is still very much a work in progress.

America will still be a democracy, when these fires burn down. A democracy, committed to the French revolutionary values of liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness. It will still strive to be “the home of the free, and the land of the brave ”.

Many patriotic Black Americans have died fighting for their country. Even as ironically, a majority of Blacks fill its prisons. 

The Minneapolis murder and others during the riots that have followed go much beyond the outrage of the Black Lives Matter  hashtag.  That it should have happened yet again in 2020 is shameful, and indicative of a national psychosis that must be cured.

 (1, 393 words)

For: The Sunday Guardian

June 3^rd, 2020

Gautam Mukherjee