
Hong Kong Protests: The most striking illustrations from the movement so far - baylearn
https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/illustration/hong-kong-protests-most-striking-illustrations-from-movement-so-far/
======
potatofarmer45
A noble and brave people fighting for their rights and freedom against a
brutal and evil regime. It may seem like it but this is history in the making.

What still is shocking is how many Chinese people I know who are nice and
rational people, but once the word Taiwan or HK is spoken, become angry tape
recorders spewing hate. This is proof nationalistic religious-style patriotic
education in China is dangerous to both Chinese and the world.

~~~
pishpash
Hong Kong provides a sort of comfort to Western society, a place where, in the
face of increasingly credible challenges to hundreds of years of unchecked
dominance, Westerners can still have their superiority complex validated in
the image of yellow people willingly speaking their language, believing their
religion, singing their songs, using their laws, wearing their wigs, and
waving their flags. Any change to that is an unimaginable evil and a moral
affront.

What is shocking is how many Western people I know who are nice and rational
people, but once the word China is spoken, become angry tape recorders spewing
hate. This is proof nationalistic religious-style racist education in Western
society is dangerous to both Westerners and the world.

You see, Chinese and Western reactions are completely predictable, none better
than the other.

~~~
monkeycantype
I'm an Australian citizen and know that every day evil things are done in the
name of my government. People are beaten in police cells and detention
centers, important policy and budget decisions are made out of self interest,
not for the public good.

Very few people may be truly intentionally evil, but we are flawed, greedy and
lazy. I have every reason to believe that this is universal. I don't believe
that the inherent nature of westerners or Chinese people is any different.

I also know the democracy is not the wonderful perfect mechanism we like to
imagine, it is an arena, in which the contest is heavily weighted towards
government and the powerful. People who fight in this arena against power are
brave and rare. Most of us, in China or the west do not do this.

I admire the Hong Kong protesters, not because I see them as representing the
west against the east, but because I believe they are individuals bravely
standing together against power. I have stood in more modest protests, before
lines of Australian and American police, and I know how scared I was and how
limited my own bravery was.

Nationalists who embrace government propaganda without thought are frightening
whether they are Australian, American or Chinese nationalists.

Knowing these things, I believe any argument that presents the Hong Kong
protests as a conflict between east and west, regardless of whether they take
a pro-western or pro-Beijing stance, is using a grain of truth to tell a
dishonest story. But it's a story that will continue to be told because seems
to be something we all enjoy about hearing a story in which the the most
generous, idealistic view of ourselves or our group is contrasted against the
most negative achievable portrait of the other group.

So I am not surprised to hear, that mixed into the Hong Know protests is an
offensive caricatures of mainlanders. If it were not true, it would be the
perhaps the first conflict in human history to rise above petty unproductive
insults

~~~
monkeycantype
trying to explain what i mean further: Stories that portray an idealistic
image of ourselves against a negative portrayal of others are intoxicating.
Nationalism is a state of dwelling within those intoxicating stories, and what
makes nationalism so frightening is that in that state, people will do
terrible things to others, I believe, in part, to sustain the immersion in the
story. This same thing happens in protest movements too, being part of a
movement, especially if the cause is noble and good, the sense of yourself in
a grand narrative is exhilarating. Even if you believe the protests are good,
intelligent and brave - as I do - it's unrealistic to think there would not be
people in the protests who view the conflicts in racist terms. When I said
people are lazy, what I should have said is that we are limited, we can only
comprehend reality through simple models, and it can be very hard to remember
that the models we use to navigate reality are only models.

So many of the squabbles on this an other forums seem to begin with people who
have models of reality, perfectly suitable for navigating their own lives, and
assuming with no evidence that their model is also adequate for describing
other peoples lives, shouting their models at each other without a lot of
listening.

There's well deserved disapproval here of the 'whataboutism' approach to
debating, but a some whataboutism is necessary. You need to be able to see the
ways in which Tiananmen square and the Nagasaki bombing are similar events in
order to get past a cartoon view you, your group and the other.

------
Leary
I like this one that harkens back to Liberty Leading the People

[https://i.redd.it/w8q24l4r10l31.jpg](https://i.redd.it/w8q24l4r10l31.jpg)

This along with Hong Kongers singing "Do You Hear the People Sing" really make
it another great revolution just like the French Revolution.

------
geowwy
If you support Hong Kong's struggle for democracy, please don't turn your back
on Puerto Rico's.

The US has denied Puerto Ricans democratic rights for almost 120 years now.

~~~
flukus
Hong Kong good, Brexit bad, catalan independence bad. I haven't seen much
consistency on the right to self determination from the HN meta opinion.

~~~
mvid
That is such a blatant oversimplification.

Brexit is bad because it’s a shitshow that was never seriously believed would
happen let alone be properly planned. It will leave the UK in an objectively
worse position in terms of power, economy and politics.

Catalan independence is bad because it won’t improve anything, it’s a pride of
culture movement that will likely negatively affect the population. The EU
stated that it wouldn’t accept a Catalan state as a member, so the economy and
movement would be heavily restricted.

HK independence is good because the Chinese government and state apparatus is
evil. Having your home and culture consumed and extinguished is not something
anyone would wish for. Maintaining independence is objectively better than
being controlled by China.

~~~
flukus
So only those oppressed by brutal dictatorships deserve self determination?
Economically the damage done by independence would make brexit look like an
irrelevant blip, they're dependent on water and electricity from China.

~~~
rosser
> _So only those oppressed by brutal dictatorships deserve self
> determination?_

No, _everyone_ deserves it. It's just that people _not_ under brutal
dictatorships observably more often _already have it_.

~~~
flukus
> No, everyone deserves it

This is not what I usually see reflected in the comments here and the wider
media narrative. If we criticize one country for being a dictatorship and
criticize another for giving people a vote and following through on that vote
it's certainly worth looking at how we came to those opinions.

~~~
rosser
If you're referring to Brexit, I don't think it's meaningfully comparable. A
significant enough fraction of people were _deluded_ into voting for it or did
so on a lark, legitimately believing it was never going to pass, that it just
can't be taken as credible.

A vote that is substantially cast on the basis of disinformation or lulz _is
not a legitimate vote_ , and despite occasionally overwhelming public outcry
to the effect that they want one, the people haven't been given the chance to
recast it.

A clown, indicating every intent of _not_ following the vote of the Parliament
he leads, into an action which the polity he and that Parliament represent
seem, largely enough, not to want that a new referendum is the only not-insane
choice, is an existential danger to democracy. There is nothing to reconcile
between these not-exemplary-of-anything-but-themselves cases.

------
Chakazul
The first one was drawn by HK cartoonist Ar To
[https://www.facebook.com/Artohk/photos/a.337271833020631/239...](https://www.facebook.com/Artohk/photos/a.337271833020631/2393377254076735/?type=1&theater)

The caption reads: ️Full of love, pure love for Hong Kong #GodBlessHongKong
#GodBlessStudents

------
baylearn
Another thread with more visual art related to the movement:
[https://twitter.com/hardmaru/status/1163340286983979009](https://twitter.com/hardmaru/status/1163340286983979009)

------
rkagerer
Sorry, this page looks too much like those clickbait sites which make you
click Next for each morsel of information and relentlessly bombard you with
ads along the way.

It's a real shame the canvas doesn't do justice to the artists' illustrations.

------
ETHisso2017
Serious vote brigading going on in HN - hope the admins look into it.

EDIT: visit lihkg.com and search "ycombinator"

------
jdkee
Shill for China much?

------
senectus1
interesting to see that artistic style they have made the guy with the hammer
attacking the protesters in is a very obvious and unflattering stylist
"Chinese" man.

Shows they really see this as an "Us vs Them" situation...

~~~
ETHisso2017
The second week of the protests involved them hunting down middle aged women
who had the temerity to dance in a public park, because said middle aged women
were mainland Chinese. This is a localist, nativist protest through and
through.

~~~
throwaway1997
They were softcore sex workers soliciting in the middle of public parks. It's
nothing to do with their country of origin.

~~~
ETHisso2017
Were they convicted in a court of law? Where's the legally binding proof?

~~~
throwaway1997
It's not strictly illegal but it's antisocial behaviour and the government
didn't do anything when local residents raised their concerns.

------
springuper
Oh, why there is no picture showing how they destroy public facilities and
attack polices

~~~
Chakazul
Sadly we're still waiting for any remarkable art piece from the pro-Govt
side...

------
revwest
now show me the yellow vests, or don't you wonder why Western media completely
ignore the fact French yellow vests have been protesting their gov for 47
Saturdays in a row? and are still getting shot in the face by Macron's actual
fascist police?

~~~
sudofail
This account is only a few minutes old and seems to be deliberately spreading
unsubstantiated and misleading or false information.

------
revwest
y'all know the protests are being funded by the U.S. to siphon Hong Kong's
economy away from mainland China, right? it's "war by any means" nowadays, and
the war of wars has already begun

3rd world war: U.S. against China, winner take all (the planets)

~~~
fit2rule
The USA started World War 3 almost two decades ago.

Just because it hasn't hit any Western shores doesn't mean civilization isn't
being utterly destroyed by those with the military means to do so.

~~~
PavlovsCat
We only found out about extent of the death camps after the military defeat of
the Nazis. They were set to erase all traces.

So at this point, you don't even fully know what you're doing your
whataboutism with.

~~~
fit2rule
Its not whataboutism, because only Americans are ignorant of the nature of
their heinous wars. Some of us are on the lines with the refugees and the
orphans, and have heard more than enough details to the point where I only
_wish_ it were agitprop and cheap talk on a non-refugee-persons' website.

If you care to look, you can see the truth in the eyes of the children who
have lost their parents or brothers or sisters, or arms and/or legs. They're
out there, but of course, if you are living the high life in the good ol' USA,
you'd have to take a long flight to see, for yourself, the truth.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> because only Americans are ignorant of the nature of their heinous wars

Not everybody here even is American, I for one am not.

Of course it's whataboutism. When I say "hey, did you know drinking bleach is
bad?" and you talk about how alcohol kills more people, that's whataboutism,
regardless of how true what you distract with is.

> Some of us are on the lines with the refugees and the orphans

I also helped refugees, I just don't need to parade that around, in order to
justify my whataboutism, because I _don 't engage in_ whataboutism.

~~~
fit2rule
Hong Kong is just more of the same American/Coalition imperialism taking place
in order to gain further control over Western resources.

