America’s double standards apparent over student protests

Tom Fowdy says the current discord at US universities is being condemned by the same elites who praised the riots in HKSAR

Recently, there have been largescale protests on American university campuses. Students, angered at America’s foreign policy on a certain issue in the Middle East, have created “encampments” in colleges throughout the country, most notably at Columbia University in New York, demanding that their place of studies divest from a specific country. The trend has spread to scores of other institutions. Notably, however, the mainstream media and politicians have been united in their opposition to these protests, with many calling for their arrest. They have claimed that they are disorderly, disruptive, intimidate students, and more explicitly, that they are “antisemitic”, which is the term regularly used when America’s unconditional support for this country is questioned. Generally speaking, these protests have neither been violent nor chaotic.

I remember, back in 2019, when the US-backed riots in Hong Kong were ongoing. Unlike the encampments in the US, these protests in Hong Kong were far from peaceful. Instead, many advocated explicit violence and destruction of infrastructure. When I visited the city in the middle of the riots, I observed how the entrance to my former exchange university, the University of Hong Kong, had been subjected to severe damage. The rioters had destroyed every single entrance from the MTR station to the campus even to the point of burning them down. Bricks had also been torn from the pavement to throw at the police, while campus walls had been filled with anti-China graffiti.

Not only that, but I went to see, from a distance, the campus of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, which had been badly burned. Here, a number of rioters had barricaded themselves into the institution and created a siege situation against the police. The campus was desecrated in the confrontation, and authorities later found scores of makeshift weapons. Despite the extreme lengths these radicalized Western-backed Hong Kong students had gone to, and the destruction they had caused, the attitude toward them from the same US media and authorities, which are now denouncing protests back home, was very different. In sharp contrast, they continually promoted those extreme activities as part of “democracy” and “freedom” and persistently demanded that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government and China’s central government tolerate them. As then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi infamously commented: “What a beautiful sight to behold.”

It is ironic, of course, that the US campus

“encampments” do not even come close to the same style of disorder and chaos that the Hong Kong riots unleashed on the city. There has been no such campaign of sheer destruction or violence. Sure, there are minor clashes with the police, but the fundamental difference is that people here support the right of law enforcement to restore order and security, and to arrest troublemakers, if need be. Does the US have such a right? Who would deny it? The problem is, however, that there is a blatant double standard in the media and from politicians that seek to deny the same rights to others, even in much more severe situations.

If these protests were to, say, escalate into an outright insurrection, as was the case in Hong Kong, the US would presumably go a lot harder on such groups, their leaders and backers than anything you would have seen in Hong Kong. Ironically, the words “national security” would be used a lot, and the US would also have no dispute with accusing foreign backers of enabling them. It is arguable that the recent backlash the US government has faced from young people concerning the Israel-Palestine issue is one of the reasons they are trying to ban TikTok on misleading pretenses, claiming, without evidence, that the app is a “propaganda” tool. There is no doubt whatsoever that the US has no tolerance for perceived radicalization or unrest among its young people.

In this case, the US’ opposition to Hong Kong’s national security laws, its enablement and backing of the rioters, and its resistance to any efforts to promote law and order in the city, citing “freedoms”, is a huge double standard. Americans are quick to lose their patience and duly demonize a crowd for far less than what happened in Hong Kong, and that’s always worth keeping in mind.

The US’ opposition to Hong Kong’s national security laws, its enablement and backing of the rioters, and its resistance to any efforts to promote law and order in the city, citing “freedoms”, is a huge double standard.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.