Universal values have disappeared from our community discourse

Lau Nai-keung warns that the new opposition, which abandons concerns for the mainland in favor of seeking 'Hong Kong independence', is far from an improvement

Public discourse in Hong Kong is going from bad to worse.

In the past, local dissidents were fixated on the alleged mistreatment of their fellow dissidents on the Chinese mainland. Most of the accusations toward the central government were, of course, untrue, but behind all this was the concept that Hong Kong is part of China, and Hong Kong dissidents cared about political advancement on the mainland.

Back then, our city's dissidents were wrong to assert that China must follow some abstract Western or international model of democratization, but at least they cared.

Today the new breed of dissidents no longer cares about political events on the mainland because that's the internal affairs of "another country". The new dissidents are more concerned about building an independent Hong Kong, or at least a Hong Kong with a thick firewall between itself and the mainland.

Therefore, ironically, we really cannot be too self-congratulatory when our local dissidents no longer point their fingers at the mainland's "human rights situation".

The same is true for the concept of the so-called "universal values". There was a time when we heard a lot about this concept, no matter what it is - about the lack of it on the mainland, and about why Hong Kong people should be so proud because it still survived in our city against all odds.

Alarmingly, the discussion of "universal values" - however subversive it was - has also subsided.

First, people cried wolf about the death of the "rule of law" in the city. We are not sure what there was to be gained for the dissidents. If they make outsiders believe Hong Kong no longer has rule of law - which is not true - does it benefit us or hurt us? Of course it would hurt us!

Say people outside China believe the dissidents. Hong Kong is now "just another city in China", as our dissidents like to threaten, and that the city also no longer has rule of law - just like "another city in China". How would foreigners react to this? They would no longer prefer Hong Kong to other cities of China when they choose where to invest and locate their headquarters.

This tactic of crying wolf is self-defeating. Multinational companies are realists. Politicians are realists. Nothing will be gained by making them believe Hong Kong is doomed. They will only be leaving. Pity has no place in the grand scheme of things.

Another major reason why our dissidents are abandoning the notion of universal values is that they have decided not to practice what they preached. Right now, the trending ideology among them can only be described as neo-fascist.

Neo-fascism is an ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. It usually includes ultra-nationalism, populism, anti-immigration policies or, where relevant, nativism, anti-communism, anti-socialism, anti-Marxism, anti-anarchism and opposition to the parliamentary system and liberal democracy.

Look at what is happening on our campuses. Students are calling for independence. They curse everyone who is against them - including a parent who recently has lost her child. As a whole, the dissident camp turns a blind eye toward these behaviors, which clearly are against universal values. In fact, these students and their supporters have no regard for basic empathy and decency.

A value is a universal value if it has the same value or worth for all, or almost all, people. Spheres of human value encompass morality, aesthetic preference, human traits, human endeavor and social order. Whether universal values exist is an unproven conjecture of moral philosophy and cultural anthropology, though it is clear that certain values are found across a great diversity of human cultures, such as primary attributes of physical attractiveness.

To be neo-fascist is to go against universal values. This process started when radicals decided not to follow the dissident camp's established tradition of "peaceful, rational and non-violent". Once they decided to go down the road of violence and irrationality, they could no longer rely on "universal values" as their support.

"Universal values" is a bad concept but abandoning it abruptly without a proper replacement is even more dangerous. Hong Kong's pro-unification and pro-establishment camp must build a positive discourse to fill in the void, or else our public discourse will only deteriorate.

(HK Edition 09/19/2017 page8)