To me, Brexit was an absolute expression by the British people of our right to decide our own destiny and a refusal to allow ourselves to be governed by an unaccountable, unanswerable body, that would never take responsibility for the outcome of its decisions. This is an extension of the long standing impulse within British and Anglosphere political history of rejecting arbitrary authority in favour of self determination; Magna Carta, Henry VIII’s break with Rome, the Civil War and execution of Charles I for his claim of Divine Right, the 1688 Glorious Revolution and of course the American Revolution was an expression of this which also had quite a successful outcome.
Recent discussion about political alignment shows political beliefs as a two axis system, the well understood left right division, upon which is superimposed a north south, authoritarianism versus freedom divide.
Now
that the Tories have magically found the magic money tree, the old
Conservative claims of not having the money to spend to make people’s
lives better has gone away, somewhat deflating the economics inspired
left right dynamic, so the real schism in politics now is between
authoritarianism and freedom.
Once
Brexit had occurred, the aftermath saw much talk of ‘Global
Britain’. Surely, the one thing that would have massive traction
with the world’s population, to the benefit of all, would be for us
to engage with the world on the basis of sharing and promoting our
doctrine of individual liberty.
It
is in that context that I am utterly demoralised by the failure of
the UK to intervene publicly in the Hong Kong situation.
By
intervene, I mean make some public statement and really kick up a
huge stink about the trashing of Hong Kong by Beijing that has been
going on for approaching a year now and the fact that this is in
breach of The Sino-British Joint Declaration, which is an
International Treaty (and as we all now know from Brexit, these are
binding in perpetuity).
This
Treaty required China to maintain Hong Kong law until 2047, “one
country, two systems”. The attempt in 2019 by the Hong Kong
government, under pressure from Beijing, to allow extradition to
China of anyone, without Hong Kong judicial review (which would have
allowed China to extradite people wanted for political dissent or any
reason for that matter, even where the charge was not a crime in Hong
Kong), was a violation of this Treaty and resulted in the unrest
which has been going on since June of last year.
The
CCP will no longer tolerate this dissent and have put their own
placemen into HK. If the legislature has been captured, then in order
to stand up for their legal rights there is no alternative open to
Hong Kong people other than to demonstrate publicly on the streets.
HK police are becoming increasingly violent in their behaviour
towards those demonstrating. Pro Beijing gangs are also involved in
battling pro democracy protesters.
The
situation escalated at the weekend with a fight breaking out over
occupancy of the chair in one of the Legislative Council committees
responsible for debating new legislation being brought in to stamp
out this dissent. This shows that the CCP are now going flat out to
suppress any kind of democracy in Hong Kong. It is now reported that
the Hong Kong government will pass a law which mandates a penalty of
3 years in prison for anyone who insults the Chinese national anthem.
Why
is this illegality and thuggishness not being opposed by the UK ?
It’s
not as though this has come out of the blue. The current incumbents
(i.e. the Xi Jinping regime) have form in their lurch towards
extremist authoritarianism. The attempt to stamp out the Uyghurs and
Falun Gong (a slightly loopy sect of spiritualists) by throwing them
in concentration camps (where some of them are murdered for their
organs – freshly removed to order, a healthy human heart can sell
for about $200k) is evidence of China’s increasingly out of control
ruthlessness and inhumanity under Xi.
And
as for coronavirus, the evidence that it came from the Wuhan lab is
very strong. OK I know this is being hotly debated by ‘experts’.
If it was from the Wuhan lab, it was obviously released by accident
since it killed thousands of Chinese people, but China didn’t tell
the world about it, then allowed travel to seed it globally, lied
about it and locked up journalists who talked about it. They also
censured a doctor for a post on wechat warning fellow doctors that
something serious was afoot which went viral and eventually reached
the government. He subsequently died from it. They have clearly
enlisted the so-called World Health Organization to shill for them in
support of its deception and are now engaged in a massive
disinformation campaign across social media seeking to deflect blame.
In
this context, the attempt to cosy up to China by the UK via the state
visit in 2015 under Cameron and Osborne, plus the Huawei decision, is
utterly shameful. We’ll come back to that.
The
point about all this is that this is clear evidence of the abuses
that occur under authoritarian regimes and the fact that the effects
of the pandemic are being felt globally now indicates that the
failure to stand up for democracy in Hong Kong, by the only country
that has a legally binding treaty with China which could be enforced
in international law, is a foreign policy blunder of epic
proportions.
The
is because what is happening in Hong Kong is a microcosm of the
challenge humanity faces right now. The virus has demonstrated, as
never before, that the world is now connected as never before.
Therefore this battle between authoritarianism and freedom will take
place globally.
The
plane of authoritarianism versus freedom is distributed across both
sides of the left right divide.
Ultimately
authoritarianism can simply be defined as being ‘use of force to
compel, or deny, causing harm, or loss, or obstruction of potential’.
I can add ‘usually under the pretence of legality’. The
authoritarianism in socialism is also the reason why it always fails.
Authoritarianism is harmful under all circumstances.
The right wing view is that the left have been willing to tolerate authoritarianism, because, according to their narrative, it’s the only way to stop evil, greedy Tory capitalists (and Jews of course) from exploiting them and condemning them to poverty, by forcing the sharing of these ill-gotten gains “more fairly”. Naturally, anyone who objects to having their hard earned income redistributed at the whim of someone else is siding with these Tory fascists. The left blithely think that once their gang is in control it will only be used to compel people to do good, which of course is tragic nonsense, but also fuels their sense of moral superiority that induces their support for authoritarianism without considering the consequences of its inevitable eventual abuse.
The
left view is obviously the mirror of this. They see authoritarianism
as being a right wing thing which enables ‘Tory toffs’ to rule
based on their sense of entitlement, who think their opinion is worth
more than anyone else’s (think the Grieves et al of this world –
Brexit blockers) while having zero comprehension of how hard most
people’s lives are and therefore causing them to be dismissive of
people’s economic needs when setting fiscal, economic and law and
order policy. They observe that when Tories say they want to adhere
to strict economic principles such as prudent economic management,
(e.g. remain in Europe for the sake of the economy), that this
doesn’t usually work out too badly for said ‘Tory toffs’
themselves.
But
the game changing factor that has entered the equation and tilted the
political debate on its axis by 90 degrees is technology and I
believe that technology will very rapidly become the central arena of
the authoritarianism vs freedom battle.
Technological
development is not a democratic process; new technology is tumbling
from the future into our lives at a rapid pace and we don’t get a
say in whether we want it or not.
That
said, technology has brought huge transformative benefits to our
lives.
We
now have instantaneous peer to peer communication amongst people from
across the globe. Virtually all aspects of computing and associated
areas (such as 3D printing) have put vast capability into the hands
of more and more of the population, increasingly cheaply. Computing
has brought forth cryptography (computing was arguably the product of
cryptography; Bletchley Park) which has a couple of implementations;
communications (Signal, WhatsApp etc), and consensus i.e. blockchain
technology, which can include blockchain based distributed monetary
systems as opposed to ‘fiat money as debt’. Money is nothing but
‘effective demand’ thus this technology will also impact
political interactions; collective ‘centre of opinion’ will
eventually come to be arrived at by blockchain token voting, i.e.
true verifiable consensus, supported by private (i.e. non government)
digital IDs, with anonymity secured by cryptography.
The
flip side of this is technological authoritarianism. Surveillance
cameras everywhere, geolocation tracking via our mobile phone’s
traversal of the network beacons, Google, ‘Big brother’s little
sister’, monitoring our every mouse click and internet interaction.
Etc.
Plans
for the future include 5G mesh technology providing even greater
detail about our movements, as a whole host of Internet of Things
devices connect us to Skynet, where our every digital financial
transaction is also monitored and available to scrutiny, (although
this would only be on the say so of a judge, (oh no, hang on, he
would be paid his salary by the state)). But don’t worry. Think of
the benefits.
Now
the reasons why the UK hasn’t intervened in Hong Kong are hard to
fathom.
Idle musing leads me to think of 5G and Huawei and the 2015 state visit. I would be very interested to hear about, how can we put this, the ‘financial considerations between the parties’ that led to the government adopting Huawei as supplier and its failure to kick them out now it’s obvious that Huawei is an appendage of the Chinese state and is likely to be damaging to our relationship with our cousins in the USA. Not to mention China’s clear breach of the Hong Kong Treaty.
It’s
really not very confidence inducing.
Cooperation is the means by which true advances are brought about. So it’s vital we enforce the Brexit promise of defeating the globalist authoritarians (Team Blair and his Remain cabal, EU anti democrats and US Democrats). Allowing consensual collective decision making to be displaced by coerced implementation of decisions made by a few under this new technology infused environment, would be a disaster for humanity.
If we do not stop it we will see an authoritarian, technology powered Chinazification of the world.
We’ve
just celebrated VE day and remarked how amazing it was that all those
men went off and did their duty.
This
is the next war.