What if objectivity and facts are non-existent?

Lau Nai-keung expresses concern about the opposition camp having too much control over the narrative regarding recent events in Hong Kong and the truth becoming lost

While we are on the subject of separating facts from fiction, can you remember what happened on the early morning of Feb 9, 2016 on Chinese New Year Day in Mong Kok? We all knew there was a riot taking place. The police were under attack by a mob of youths and a police officer had to fire a shot into the air to save a colleague. After more than two years of red tape, some rioters were recently brought to trial and convicted. We have videos, photos and news reporting to document this violent event. These to us are facts.

While we think we can rest our case, the dissidents started to reconstruct a new narrative. This has to start with a name. We called it the Mong Kok Riot, but on the drawing board, it was already being called the “Fish Ball Revolution” by the dissidents. Thus all the rioters are now crowned “revolutionaries”. The dissidents actually called them heroes!

One of those young “revolutionaries”, Lo Kin-man, allegedly sobbed after the sentencing: “Watch Hong Kong for me!” This line has now become iconic to mark their “heroic” assault on society.

In the summing up for the defense Lo’s lawyer blamed everything on injustice in Hong Kong, implying that people can do whatever they choose if they see a social injustice. This has now become the prevalent argument flooding our media, and spreading into our schools.

According to the dissidents, they started this violence to preserve the “space and culture” of Mong Kok streets where fish balls are sold by unlicensed hawkers, especially on Chinese New Year. But this cannot explain why they couldn’t do it peacefully; instead they proactively provoked a confrontation.

According to this strange argument, should a poor man encounter a rich man, he is then entitled to rob him in order to redress a social injustice. To push this just a little further, you can hurt another person just because he or she is stronger, prettier or taller than you. This is even worse than taking laws into one’s own hands, because there is simply a denial of rules to start with. Worse still, they have now put a halo on this illegal misbehavior and made it “heroic”— a manifestation of youthful idealism.

Following the screenplay of convicts of the “Umbrella Revolution”, these young people will be continuously glorified in the media as political prisoners. Lawmakers will line up to visit them and help them file complaints about food, lodging, hairstyles and everything else in the prison. They will again be dignitaries inside and outside the walls and advocates for prisoners’ rights. Those poor souls cannot choose their food and lodgings; they will be forced to perform manual labor below the minimum wage. Documentaries will be made about them; these will win awards here and overseas.

But for these young social misfits, there is literally nothing to lose and everything to gain. Practically all unfavorable information about them has been deleted from the web to be replaced by favorable ones. To those who are even younger, they will be ingrained with a reconstructed reality and have no idea what actually happened and therefore no questions asked.

In modern communication theory, there is no such thing as fact or non-fact — no truth or untruth. What we are dealing with is our subjective perception of the world in the form of data. Such data is also restricted by the selective perception of the reporter. Are they real? They are as real as you think they are. In the philosophical realm, there is no objective reality, only intersubjective perception. Politics is perception, and perception is reality. It is fake news if you and many others believe it is. Otherwise it is a “fact” to you.

This is very dangerous. Ten years from now when most Hong Kong people under 40 believe in the dissident narrative, whatever good work our central and special administrative region governments do will be annulled. Come universal suffrage, who do you think these younger people will vote for? Just think about it, it is horrifying.

Ten years from now when most Hong Kong people under 40 believe in the dissident narrative, whatever good work our central and special administrative region governments do will be annulled. Come universal suffrage, who do you think these younger people will vote for? Just think about it, it is horrifying.