Moral Authority

Many people - from the establishment, neutral and even protester sides - have commented that many, if not most, of the police are reasonable people.  Not at all the brutes that often appear opposite the protesters and even by-standers, beating up people, planting incriminating evidence, instigating criminal acts, arresting indiscriminately, colluding with the triads.  

What many people forget is that the same person can behave differently in different situations.  When they are calm and not stressed, most people, including the police, behave reasonably.  But when they are on the street, sweating under heavy gear, hungry, facing flying bricks, irritated by laser, seeing colleagues hurt, it is very easy to vent the frustration and anger on the people in front of them.  The same happens on the protesters’ side.  And the vicious cycle continues.   

And now the cycle has slipped down an ominous slope.  Some police and establishment have started openly calling the protesters cockroaches - an attempt to de-humanize the people that they dislike.  It was what Nazis call the Jews in Germany, and also what the Hutus called the Tutsis in Rwanda, a crucial step towards the evil that is genocide.  The implication of the name-calling is that their enemies are not humans, hence do not have to be treated as such.  It is an extremely treacherous road indeed. 

What can be done to stop this from escalating (degrading) further?  The original instigators of this mess was, of course, the government, who proposed the Extradition Bill and continues to try to stonewall their way out of it, which is deepening the crisis instead.  However, this is a bunch of people without much imagination, lateral thinking or sense of morality.  Expecting them to have the imagination and courage to take the moral high ground is perhaps not realistic.  

On the other hand, the protesters have demonstrated fluidity, respect for the regular citizens, and a strong sense of justice.  If they can stop to think a bit, they may come to the realisation that violence cannot help them achieve their aims of justice, democracy and peace.  If they can refrain from violence, they can concentrate on building up their moral authority by insisting on doing the right thing.   They have already demonstrated that they can disrupt the government, traffic, and so much more almost at will.  They don’t need to continue to do that every day.  They don’t even have to stop completely.  

Instead, they can build up more moral authority by refraining from violence from now on, and concentrate on, e.g., contesting the coming elections, at the district level as well as the city-wide legislative council level.  They have successfully mobilises a large segment of the citizenship, to care about their own community, about justice.  

They will have to deal with the gloating of the establishment, which will certainly claim that they have defeated the protesters.  It takes a lot of self-belief and self-control to not stoop to the lower level of your opponents.  It is precisely because it is hard, that it is valuable.  It is worth considering.