Hong Kong, Newspeak and Psychological Subversion

Hong Kong, Newspeak & Psychological Subversion

2015. A relatively uneventful year for Hong Kong. Nevertheless, the resignation of Ronny Tong (湯 家驊) from the Civic Party (公 民黨) managed to arouse much attention.

“Tearful Ronny Tong quits as legislator,” reported the SCMP ( 南華早報) on 22 June 2015. The lawmaker, when founding the Civic Party, had hoped “to inspire the party… to win over moderate Hongkongers too in order to strengthen the democratic movement”. Following this break from his former party, Tong founded the Path of Democracy (民主思路) in pursuit of his political principles.

The SCMP quote above was a translation of Tong’s ‘致各公 民黨兄弟姊妹書’, which was essentially his resignation letter. The original passage in Chinese is as follows:

納更多政治傾向較為中立的港 人，以壯大民主運動。

The word ‘中立’ was translated to English as ‘moderate’. This translation is bad to say the least, since it leads to misunderstanding. For the original Chinese word ‘ 中立’ has two different meanings – one is to imply ‘moderation’ or ‘the middle way’, the other is ‘neutrality’.

Or perhaps the translation was correct. In that case Tong was responsible for causing this misunderstanding. It is unnecessary to use the word ‘中 立’ to convey the first meaning. For instance, Tong could say ‘中間 路線’ instead, which has a literal meaning of ‘in the middle way’. He certainly has the ability to do so, himself being a renowned lawyer – a profession notorious for their selection of words. Instead, Tong used the word ‘中立’ in multiple instances in his resignation letter to convey the meaning of the ‘middle way’. So what made a great literacy like Ronny Tong blunder in perhaps his most important letter of his life?

But let us first consider the nature of the misuse of wordings. In essence, this is a form of Newspeak, as a reference to Orwell’s 1984. Being the official language of a fictional dystopian nation named Oceania, Newspeak was specifically engineered to remove the possibility of rebellious thoughts among its people. One of its techniques is ‘doublethink’, which makes a person simultaneously accept contradictory concepts. For example, the word ‘free’ in Newspeak does not imply ‘free will’. Instead it would mean ‘the absence and lack of something’, which is contradictory to its original meaning. Back to Tong’s case, his blurring of two distinct and opposing concepts of the word ‘中立’ has far-reaching consequences. For one would now

自零九年底，我開始察覺公民 黨所走的路線，與當日創黨的 理念日漸偏離。我一直期待透 過我的不斷努力，可以啟發黨 的視野，由單是面向民主派最 堅實的支持者，轉而致力於吸

use the word ‘中立’ to suggest that he did not take a political stance while claiming to be a moderate at the same time, which in itself is a politial stance.

With the current turmoil in Hong Kong, we are beginning to grasp the full extent of the horror of such a misconception. The unconscious personal bias due to ‘doublethink’ means that people are increasingly unable to convey what they actually think. A current phenomenon is for someone to claim themselves as ‘中立’ (moderate) while ‘opposing violence of all sorts’. This is actually self-deception, as the word ‘moderate’ is confused with ‘neutrality’. Apart from this, their sentence contains one more misconception caused by Newspeak.

That is, the confusion of ‘violence’ (暴力 ) from ‘force’ (武力 ). This is in a slightly different manner, and although it does not necessarily lead to bias, it is extremely likely to. Violence, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is “the unlawful exercise of physical force or intimidation by the exhibition of such force”. Hence the word

implies illegitimacy. To briefly illustrate this, we could take a look at the Social Contract Theory. The theory considers that man, with a purpose to improve their own well-being, had at some point decided to come together and form governments to provide security, and gave the government legitimacy to exert force. Try to imagine the word ‘force’ being replaced by ‘violence’ instead. This would sound odd, because the sentence would become self-contradictory. How could any party exert legitimate force illegitimately? One has to utilise ‘doublethink’ to be able to say something like that. Back to the original stance, ‘I oppose violence of all sorts’. A common meaning of this sentence, in the current context, is that they acknowledge how there is both violence from the protestors and abuse of power from the police – and that they oppose both of them. However, the ‘abuse of power’ from the police does not translate perfectly into ‘violence from the police’. For the police belongs to the government. Ergo, most of the police’s exertion of force, when according to law, cannot be described as ‘violence’, at least in a normative sense. Perhaps this may be debatable in a positive sense, such as that the law may grant the police too much power. However, this does affect the police’s legal status. The police’s exertion of force can be categorised into two different types – the use of ‘force’, and ‘abuse of power.’ Contrary to this, when the protestors use ‘force’, it in itself is illegitimate in a normative sense – the fact that it is unlawful and that they do not belong to the government means that ‘force’ by the protestors is equivalent to ‘violence’. Therefore, in this context, we are describing three categories of ‘forces’ – ‘force’ from the police, ‘abuse of power’ from the police, and, ‘violence’ from the protestors. It is important to distinguish these categories of ‘forces’ because this saves us from entering a false dilemma. ‘Force’ from protestors can only be described as ‘violence’ because the protestors are not a legitimate unit. This may lead to one thinking that forces from all parties can only be phrased as either ‘violence’ or ‘force’, judged by whether the unit is legitimate or not. As this line of thought is applied to the police, problems arise. If we did not establish a “The unconcious personal bias due to ‘doublethink’ means that people are increasingly unable to convey what they actually think”

distinction between the three categories of forces mentioned above, we would observe that the police is a legitimate unit, and thus reach the conclusion that all police actions are legitimate. As a consequence, police actions would only be described as ‘force’ instead of ‘violence’, and when one claims to ‘oppose violence of all sorts,’ one is, in reality, opposing only violence from protestors, again without consciously being aware of it. Hence the common stance for ‘neutrality’ in contemporary Hong Kong collapses in the face of two inherit contradictions, namely, mixing ‘neutrality’ with the ‘middle way’, and ‘force’ with ‘violence’. This could all be avoided, however, if the position was clarified. For instance, if I say instead, ‘I am a moderate, and I oppose both violence from protestors and abuse of power from the police’, it would not lead to any logical fallacies within the sentence. Hence, while the proposition can be challenged on the outside by arguments, it does not fall apart within, and one would be saying exactly what they have in mind. It could as well be said that the second confusion of ‘force’ and ‘violence’ stems from the first one. It is simply too easy to make the whole point explicit. Yet it might seem to some that what is mentioned in a sentence first bears a greater weight. In this case, if someone claims to be a moderate and ‘oppose both violence from the protestors and abuse of power from the police’, another person might challenge, ‘so you oppose the protestors more than the police?’ And the first person, in order to avoid potential conflict, would try to act tactfully and reply ‘I oppose violence of all sorts,’ and thus plunge into selfdeception and confusion. And we now see how attempts to manifest one’s ‘neutrality’ pave the way to mishandling ‘force’ and ‘violence' – for the person could just state ‘I oppose both equally.’ This is a grave issue, for as Thomas Mann proclaimed, “thinking well was the next thing to acting well.” If language is being mishandled, this would lead to confusion and a subversion of fundamental social values. Social norms and values may vary according to the virtues or vices of times, yet little are those changes related to a misuse of language. The use of language, the amount of words or meanings a language could convey has always been increasing. Rousseau’s anthropology in his Second Discourse elaborated that man’s first “language” was his “cry of nature”, which is to cry out when faced with urgency or danger. Language has always been evolving as man’s thoughts spread and began to build closer personal relations. The fact that language is becoming less “Thinking well was the next thing to acting well” – Thomas Mann

able to convey meaning is against human nature.Ergo, the failing, or societal mishandling of a language could only be the result of an deliberate process.

Our readers could now have a glimpse at the answer to the question put forth earlier on in this discourse, ‘What made a great literacy like Ronny Tong blunder in perhaps his most important letter of his life?’ His confusion between ‘neutrality’ and ‘moderation’, as we have deduced, is a form of Newspeak and ‘doublethink’, which leads to illogical use of language. And if the failing of language could only be the result of a deliberate process, what kind of process is that? That is, psychological subversion warfare.

Psychological subversion warfare is originally a strategy deployed by the Soviet Union, and the term was first introduced to the

Western World by a Soviet defect, Yuri Bezmenov. Rooted from Sun Tzu’s ‘philosophy of winning a war without fighting’ (不戰 而屈人之兵者，善之善者也), psychological subversion aims to, in Bezmenov’s own words, “change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions.” Despite Bezmenov’s reference to America, the case is extremely relevant in contemporary Hong Kong as well. The whole process consists of four stages: Stage 1: Demoralisation (15-20 years) Purposed to ‘re-educate’ an entire generation of people. The aim is to break down traditionally established social bodies and norms, including events such as population resettlement, ridiculing religion, in an allencompassing state and emergence of ‘sleepers’ – the new generation after demoralisation. Stage 3: Crisis (6 months) There would be “violent change in power, structure and economy”. The society descends into either ‘civil war’ or foreign invasion. Stage 4: Normalisation The society is completely subverted and comes out from the ashes of the crisis under a new ideology and political structure. An important thing about psychological subversion is that it is an overt and continual process. There is nothing behind the scenes. All of its symptoms are to be seen by everyone. Another takeaway is the peculiar similarity of those symptoms with what has been happening in Hong Kong. “An important thing about psychological subversion is that it is an overt and continual process”

unconstructive education, lobbyists and pressure groups etc. There is also generalisation through propaganda which leads to mistrust. as Bezmenov stated, “exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who was demoralised is unable to assess true information. The fact tells nothing to him.”

Stage 2: Destabilisation (2-5 years) Essentially radicalising the process of demoralisation, aiming to destabilise all accepted institutions and organisations. This results Is Newspeak a form of psychological subversion? Apparently so, as it spreads confusion – the goal of demoralisation. Be aware that Ronny Tong’s ‘neutrality’ stance was brought about only after the Occupying Central movement. Hong Kong had previously been politically apathetic. Tong’s stance became prominent because it took advantage of the occupying central movement, where everyone seemed to have been involved. Combined with the aforementioned aftermaths of Tong’s stance, the answer to the question seems obvious. Furthermore, Christianity is now treated as farcical by nonbelievers, with the rise of phrases such as ‘Yeh-Lun’ (耶L). Clearly, religion has been ridiculed, even among believers. Old family-run businesses are substituted by chain stores. The media, both left and right, makes their position explicit through their articles, disregarding their claims of neutrality. Lobbying from developers meant that housing and rent problems remain unsolved. Are all these just coincidences, or do they imply more? Is it not disconcerting how Hong Kong descended into its current position so suddenly? Is it not surprising that Hong Kong is having a political crisis on the 22nd anniversary of its return to China, about the same time as when the demoralisation and destabilisation process is complete in psychological subversion?

What is Truth? 20th century political theorist Hannah Arendt highlighted how “factual truths are never compellingly true. The historian knows how vulnerable is the whole texture of facts in which we spend our daily life; it is always in danger of being perforated by single lies or torn to shreds by the organized lying of groups, nations, or classes, or denied and distorted, often carefully covered up by reams of falsehoods or simply allowed to fall into oblivion.” This

concept is similar to psychological subversion. “Defactualisation”, according to Arendt, or ‘post-truth’, is becoming increasingly normalised, thus causing confusions. From when have we started considering that it is normal to merge ‘neutrality’ and ‘moderation’ as synonymous concepts, like Ronny Tong did? It is only that we have been affront to this idea for such a long time that this “lying becomes counterproductive. This point is reached when the audience to which the lies are addressed is forced to disregard altogether the distinguishing line between truth and falsehood in order to be able to survive.” Again, posttruth is a deliberate process, and that it contributes to creating a ‘demoralised’ person. One of the agents of ‘post-truth’ is the media. Once more we can see how truth is corroded. A few years ago, there were at least several ‘neutral’ or ‘unbiased’ sources of media. Now every medium is at least perceived as being biased to one side or another. There is ‘CCTVB’, ‘red-SCMP’ and ‘yellowNowTV’, to name a few. Hence, it is hard to believe that a news source is addressing an issue in its entirety, and from an uncensored perspective. The tragedy begins when a certain news source is deemed to be prejudiced. And when the crowd begins to follow this narrative, they themselves become confused and demoralised, thus the news source is no longer considered credible. The outcome, as everyone can

see, is the ‘blue’ and ‘yellow’ camps denouncing each other’s news source as ‘biased’. All of which are psychological subversion. As things stand, 2019 appears to be the watershed of Hong Kong politics and there is no going back. The likely results are either the pro-Chinese side coming on top and increasing Chinese control over Hong Kong, or major concessions from Beijing and perhaps even universal suffrage. If psychological subversion continues, things might escalate as we enter the ‘normalisation’ stage. If democracy and universal suffrage dawn on Hong Kong, very optimistically speaking, there will still problems our society would face. Let us just imagine the situation: Hong Kong becomes a democracy with about 30% of its population being a ‘deep blueribbon’. The media is no longer trusted. A leadership figure in both the pro-establishment and democratic camps is lacking. Meanwhile, the economic consequences of the series of protests would begin to reveal themselves, and perhaps have a disastrous effect on the bubble housing prices. The market will not recover its confidence in Hong Kong quickly. Constitutional problems arise as to how the political and election systems should be set. It is not difficult to imagine that after another 10 to 15 years, a new generation would grow up thinking that democracy is a great mistake and long for the former system where there is stability and a strong government – just like how some of our current generation look back in awe at the British colonial rule. These are questions which we have to begin to think about in order to avoid another collapse of the Weimar Republic. Fortunately, we are not the worst case. Germany fared much worse in 1945. Yet they endured, and flourished as a democracy. How do we deal with psychological subversion and propaganda in particular? How do we avoid sophistries such as Tong’s fusion of opposing notions? How do we avoid demoralisation and confusion of the population? All of these require an answer. It is adventageous that we ponder so that in the case we have full access to our political freedom, we do not make the same mistakes again. “Defactualisation is becoming increasingly normalised”

“As things stand, 2019 appears to be the watershed of Hong Kong politics”