PhilPaine.com

Mah­moud Salem, one of the Egypt­ian vet­er­ans of the 18 days in Tahrir Square, has some use­ful advise for pro-democ­ra­cy pro­test­ers in Hong Kong, and it is very good advice. “Learn from our fail­ure,” he says, and lists eight points that match my own impres­sions and (some) pub­lished points. I list them here, with a few quotes. Go to the arti­cle to read the full text.

1. Do not count on the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty’s sup­port. “The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty espous­es many plat­i­tudes it nev­er actu­al­ly enforces or backs for all sorts of real­ist con­sid­er­a­tions — and being on Chi­na’s bad side is some­thing no Amer­i­can leader can countenance.”

2. The world’s atten­tion span is very lim­it­ed. “You have the world’s atten­tion now. Soon very few peo­ple will care. Now is the time to com­mu­ni­cate your message.”

3. Do not allow the gov­ern­ment to manip­u­late you. “If you can’t define who you are, the gov­ern­ment will define it for you. They will try and turn the most obnox­ious and rad­i­cal of pro­tes­tors into the face of your move­ment. This becomes espe­cial­ly true if your protest drags on, incon­ve­nienc­ing the same peo­ple whose sup­port you des­per­ate­ly need. You then lose con­trol of the mes­sage — and it’s sur­pris­ing­ly easy for the gov­ern­ment to shift focus to a side issue the gov­ern­ment cre­at­ed or is hap­py to exploit.” “Anoth­er favorite gov­ern­ment tac­tic is pub­licly call­ing for dia­logue, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly arrang­ing for mobs to phys­i­cal­ly attack pro­tes­tors — thus forc­ing demon­stra­tors to refuse dia­logue and appear unrea­son­able, as seemed to hap­pen on Oct. 3 in Hong Kong. The gov­ern­ment looks rea­son­able, and you look unrea­son­able and thuggish.”

4. Know who is with you on the local lev­el. “One of the prob­lems of the Jan. 25 move­ment was that its lead­ers did­n’t both­er to find out which locals — peo­ple liv­ing in the same build­ing, or on the same street — sup­port­ed their cause.”

5. Do not allow inter­nal or exter­nal forces to sep­a­rate you from the peo­ple. “While you may be fight­ing for the rights of Hong Kong cit­i­zens, many of your fel­low cit­i­zens might not want to fight. The gov­ern­ment will use that to paint you as ‘dif­fer­ent,’ ‘for­eign-fund­ed,’ or ‘extrem­ist,’ to cre­ate a divide between you and the rest of the people.” 

6. Do not count on your oppo­nent to think ratio­nal­ly. “Sure, mas­sacring you in the streets may mean that they could lose face and tar­nish their rep­u­ta­tion, but Bei­jing will do what­ev­er it needs to main­tain pow­er in Hong Kong”

7. Aban­don all hope. “Hope is fleet­ing and going into bat­tle with a height­ened sense of expec­ta­tion is a sure­fire path to defeat. Deter­mi­na­tion wins wars, not hope. And whether you like it or not, yours may end in a week, a month, even a decade.”

8. Aim for more, but know what to set­tle for. “Don’t be ashamed by set­tling; it’s bet­ter than los­ing everything.”

Salem’s points are all cogent. Much as arm­chair activists are charmed by the romance of rev­o­lu­tion in the streets, it rarely results in lib­er­a­tion. It works, as it did in Prague in 1989, when con­di­tions are exact­ly right and there are years of intel­li­gent prepa­ra­tion behind it. But most of the time it fails, or ush­ers in either new bru­tal mas­ters or re-invig­o­rat­ed old ones. Poor­ly orga­nized pro­test­ers who suc­ceed in over­throw­ing a regime will quick­ly find them­selves under the thumb of some total­i­tar­i­an move­ment that is well orga­nized. Those who don’t suc­ceed will be quick­ly for­got­ten by a world that actu­al­ly does­n’t give a fuck about any­body’s free­dom — includ­ing their own — as long as the fuel keeps pour­ing into their cars and they can get cheap tube socks at Wal­mart. Those who imag­ined that “social media” would change the game were over-opti­mistic. It was a tem­po­rary advan­tage that repres­sive regimes soon met with effec­tive counter-strate­gies. No pro­test­ers could have been more ide­al­is­tic or sin­cere than the ones who met in Tianan­men Square in 1989. But min­utes after they were mas­sa­cred, their mur­der­ers were clink­ing cham­pagne glass­es with emis­saries from George H. W. Bush. Now the bru­tal butch­ers are wel­come in every glam­our joint in the world, their bums are kissed and licked by every gov­ern­ment on the plan­et (most dis­gust­ing­ly, and with the most craven cow­ardice, by our Con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter in Cana­da), and they have suc­ceed­ed in effec­tive­ly eras­ing the event from history. 

It takes more than protests to win freedom.