[liberationtech] What could we at Liberationtech do to help pro-democracy HK activists protest China's new security law?

[Klein, Hans K]

Well, I would propose a softer version of the posting below.

As currently practiced, liberation technology and its policy partner, democracy promotion, build on an implicit and overly-simple model of democracy. It involves catalyzing large public protests that destabilize governments. 

The model supposes that destabilization is followed by "democracy", but in fact destabilization is more often followed by chaos, civil war, and foreign intervention.

Libya had a brief democratic moment, but now it has a civil war; so far the list of interveners includes France, Italy, US, Turkey, and Russia.  Syria had its moment, but then came foreign intervention in the form of various radical mercenaries backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and even the US.  Ukraine had its big demonstrations, but the people in the Maidan were then given a government hand-picked by foreign powers  (See: BBC [ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957 ], Consortium News [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGq_Xvzn_3I ] .)  In every case, the people (the "demos") of the country came out as the loser.

What is a more effective model of democracy promotion?  I think it is one based on organic growth in the society.  Political development takes time;  the clock speed may be measured in human generations.  The successful model requires patient nurturing and no threatening or attacking. The terrible democracy recession that we have seen in the last 10 years is in large part a reaction to outsiders seeing democracy as an act of "liberation", i.e. as a rapid and kinetic process that can deliver immediate results. 

In each case, we can ask what is worse: the problem or the cure?
  Syria: Assad or the civil war
  Libya: Ghaddafi or the civil war
  Ukraine: Yanukovych or the civil war
(You can pose the same question of Iraq and Afghanistan...)

A useful question would be: given the learning that (hopefully) has taken place, what could we at LiberationTech do to *effectively* promote democracy?

Hans Klein
School of Public Policy
Georgia Tech



-----Original Message-----
From: LT [mailto:lt-bounces at lists.liberationtech.org] On Behalf Of grarpamp
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2020 6:32 AM
To: lt at lists.liberationtech.org
Subject: Re: [liberationtech] What could we at Liberationtech do to help pro-democracy HK activists protest China's new security law?

> What could we ... do to help pro-democracy ... activists ...
> do things that have not been done in the past.

Stop teaching them that they can somehow break free from whatever shithole government they're under now by claiming democracy is some magical font of freedom worth aspiring to. It's not, at all. It's just another form of same slavery, force, murder, trickery, theft, war, false authority...
Spread out, infused, diluted, harder to see and kill than their average dictator, by design... a ruse, a ploy, a trap for confusing the sheeple. And it worked.
"B-ah-ah-ah" they all said, "oh please give us that" they begged, while scrambling over each other in queues hundreds deep to cast discard their own fates down some worthless memehole in a box... a final act of spiritual suicide transformed into one of joy by the programming of the wolves that still rule over all of them.

Regarding "government", there is only one thing that hasn't been done in the past.

--
Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe, change to digest mode, or change password by emailing lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org.