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Many Hong Kong Activists Changed Their Twitter Profile Pictures To Trump As A Way To Protest The Trump Twitter Ban.
HONG KONG — One by one, the Hong Kong democracy activists last weekend began switching their Twitter profile pictures to the instantly recognizable image of President Trump.
“Support from Hong Kong,â€
wrote one supporter. “We are Trump,â€
said another.
Across Hong Kong, Taiwan and the globe-spanning Chinese dissident community, a significant number of activists have bought into the rhetoric and conspiracy theories promoted by Trump and some of his supporters, despite the president’s attempts to subvert U.S. democracy. As President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration nears, those who view Trump as dangerous and divisive are figuring out how to engage with Trump loyalists in their ranks, stop divisions from upending their mutual cause, and promote engagement with the new administration.
“We are trying hard to see where they are coming from, what exactly is at play that motivates people to support†Trump, said Sharon Yam, an academic at the University of Kentucky who is from Hong Kong. “This moment of reckoning for the U.S. has also become one for the Hong Kong movement, where we have to confront how right-wing we have become.â€
'The plastic left'
For many Hong Kong activists, their entry point into U.S. politics came in 2019 during anti-government protests that were fueled by fears that Beijing was moving swiftly to end the territory’s autonomy and long-held freedoms. By the time the protests broke out, Trump was defined by his tough-on-China rhetoric, and the relationship between Beijing and Washington was plumbing depths unseen in decades.
The demonstrators embraced the idea of Trump as a strongman ally, in particular for signing a bill in support of their movement that fundamentally changed Washington’s relationship with Hong Kong and created a pathway for sanctions. But Trump had initially demurred, saying Chinese leader Xi Jinping was a “friend.â€
Ahead of the November U.S. elections, popular broadsheets like Apple Daily, whose influential founder Jimmy Lai is a stalwart Trump supporter, began publishing op-eds endorsing the president. Through disinformation, including articles published in the
Epoch Times newspaper and other outlets that oppose the Communist Party, some Hong Kong activists started parroting the language of the alt-right. (The Epoch Times has repeatedly pushed back against charges of disinformation, saying it stands for “honest and accurate†journalism.)
“Trump didn’t try to subvert democracy in his own country. He wasn’t the one who cheated in the election,†said a popular Hong Kong YouTuber who goes by the name
Stormtrooper. “Everything he did was within the system, he did not incite people to be violent.â€
Stormtrooper, who comments frequently on U.S. politics, added that Beijing will “have a chance to breathe†under Biden — echoing the Republican view that Biden will be
soft on the Communist Party.
Debates between the Hong Kong camps have become so heated that those urging people to give Biden a chance often get attacked online, tarred with the same language as the president-elect. Hong Kongers who defend Biden have been called “leftards†or “the plastic left,†a term implying they are unrealistic and rigid. Lee Cheuk-yan, an activist who questioned Trump’s claim of election fraud in November, was vilified by people who said he had received money from the Democratic Party.
Right-wing factions have even coined new phrases in Cantonese, Hong Kong’s native language, such as “sam chang gwok ga†— meaning “deep state†— and are advocating for gun rights.
“It is quite difficult to cultivate a collective space in which we can talk and hash out these differences,†said Yam, who studies rhetoric and political emotion.
'Thank you Lord Trump'
In Taiwan, which Beijing routinely threatens to invade, Trump is perhaps even more popular. Taiwan has been lavished with official visits and statements of support by the Trump administration, part of its campaign to confront Beijing but which has had the effect of making the island more diplomatically engaged with Washington and globally relevant. A YouGov poll in October found Taiwan to be the only one of 15 European and Asian states that favored Trump over Biden.
Facebook and Twitter accounts that extol Trump and lambaste Democrats as soft on China are highly influential there. In a typical post this past week, “Meme Power,†a Facebook page that supports the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, celebrated Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s lifting of restrictions on U.S. diplomats’ interactions with Taiwanese counterparts.
“Thank you Lord Trump for your great love of Taiwan,†said the post. “The shackles of bondage that Lord Trump finally unraveled for Taiwan will be placed upon Taiwan again after Biden takes power.â€
Lev Nachman, a Taipei-based Ph.D. student at the University of California at Irvine who studies political sentiment, said support for Trump is one of the few issues Taiwan’s deeply polarized media can agree on. Outlets supporting both leading parties in Taiwan were filled in late October with negative reports about the business and sex life of Hunter Biden, the president-elect’s son.
“There’s a logic of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ †Nachman said. “A lot of people in Taiwan and Hong Kong feel they’re not in a position of power and are thankful for Trump’s help.â€
In December, hundreds gathered outside Taiwan’s tallest skyscraper, Taipei 101, at a rally organized by the Epoch Times, where they held signs that read “Stop the Steal†and “Taiwan, Fight for Trump.â€
Sang Pu, a lawyer and media commentator in Taipei, said he was one of many who believed the results of the November election were suspicious. As in Hong Kong, many in Taiwan are distraught over what they see as a Chinese-style effort by social media companies such as Twitter and YouTube to censor their hero, Trump, said Sang.
Charting a way forward
“Our work remains the same, and our work is to raise awareness on Hong Kong issues, no matter who is in the administration,†said Joey Siu, a Hong Kong-American activist. Sunny Cheung, another Hong Kong activist in exile, says he urges Hong Kongers not to “copy and paste jargon†into different political contexts, to accept the result of the election, and to “focus on policies favorable to us.â€
Yam, the academic, worries that all this bickering simply benefits China’s Communist Party.
“This is the collective moment in which we need to be finding new strategies during this time of heightened repression,†she said. “But instead we are all fighting each other over the U.S. presidential election.â€
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Top US Officials Warn President Trump Against Pulling Out The US Military From Afghanistan
Two of the most senior officials involved in planning the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden warned Thursday that a U.S. pullout from Afghanistan would result in a Taliban takeover within a year.After a six-month delay, peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government are due to start Saturday in Qatar, following Kabul’s transfer on Thursday of six high-priority Taliban prisoners to Qatar. The complicated three-way peace negotiations between the United States, the Taliban and the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani required the Taliban to release up to 1,000 Afghan security force personnel it had taken prisoner, and Ghani’s government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners. Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie at a Pentagon news briefing on March 13. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)Meanwhile, the top U.S. general for forces in the Middle East and Afghanistan, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, said Wednesday that the U.S. would reduce its military presence in Afghanistan from 8,600 to 4,500 by late October or November. The peace deal signed in February between the United States and the Taliban commits the U.S. to a complete military withdrawal from Afghanistan once the Taliban has acted on its obligations to not cooperate with any terrorist groups that threaten the United States or its allies.But retired Adm. William McRaven, who as commander of Joint Special Operations Command oversaw the planning and execution of the bin Laden raid, was skeptical that the Taliban would follow through on its commitments. “I’m not personally convinced that any deal with the Taliban will be worth the paper that it’s written on,†he told an online audience during a discussion hosted by the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security. “If we were to pull out U.S. troops completely from Afghanistan, it would not take the Taliban more than six months to a year to come back to where they were pre-9/11.â€Michael Morell, who was deputy director of the CIA at the time of the raid, and later served twice as acting director, said he shared McRaven’s concerns about the peace deal. If U.S. and coalition troops withdrew from Afghanistan, and then the United States ended financial support to the Afghan government, “my assessment is that the Taliban would take over the country again in a matter of months,†Morell said. In addition, despite the terms of the peace deal that explicitly forbid it, “my assessment is that they would provide safe haven to al-Qaida.â€Both former officials said the best approach for the United States would be to leave a small military force in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban from retaking power as well as to conduct counterterrorism missions against jihadi organizations like al-Qaida or the local branch of the Islamic State.Retired Navy Adm. William McRaven. (Mike Segar/Reuters)After 19 years of war, keeping even a few thousand troops in Afghanistan is “a high price to pay,†McRaven acknowledged. “But what we have learned in the military is how to do this in a way that hopefully will not lose a lot of great soldiers.†He added that the U.S. will “probably need to be in Afghanistan for a very long time.†But Morell said any strategy to keep U.S. forces in Afghanistan would depend on the support of the American public, which has grown far more pessimistic about the conflict in recent years, according to some polls. Without public support, the United States would be forced to withdraw, in which case “we’re going to have to find a way to do two things,†he said.First, Morell said, the United States would have to figure out how to collect intelligence on what was happening in Afghanistan, with a particular focus on whether al-Qaida had reestablished itself there and was preparing any attacks on the U.S. If that turned out to be the case, the second thing the United States would have to do is “to find a way militarily to reach in there and deal with that problem,†he said.But in a news conference Thursday, President Trump did not seem to be thinking in these terms. “We’re getting along very, very well with the Taliban and very well with [the government of] Afghanistan and its representatives,†he said. “We’ll see how it all goes. It’s a negotiation.â€McRaven, often a critic of Trump, did not lambaste the president for his desire to end the United States’ war in Afghanistan. “You can’t lay this at the feet of the Trump administration,†he said. “I think the Trump administration is trying to figure out what is a graceful exit strategy in Afghanistan. I don’t know that there is a graceful exit strategy.†
