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Comment by centimeter | Hacker News Reader

(For context, I lived in Hong Kong from 2014 to late 2020)

I'm not sure why protestors would take tips from the HK protestors. After all, they were not at all successful.

I attribute this problem to two things:

1) Hong Kongers are culturally mostly British.

2) Modern British culture has no martial tradition whatsoever, and therefore no practical ability to mount a successful resistance to any kind of even moderately-equipped state actor that is willing to use force.

If you're dealing with a polite government that's strictly constrained by voter approval, then the HK strategy might work.

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> and therefore no practical ability to mount a successful resistance to any kind of even moderately-equipped state actor that is willing to use force.

Culturally Ireland has more in common with Britain than differences and the IRA were at very least at it for a while.

I vaguely agree with the conclusion however.

I think Ireland's lack of a martial tradition from the British side was compensated for by the healthy martial tradition on the Catholic side. (No value judgement about the IRA intended.)

How is “martial tradition” related to protest effectiveness? You know there’s more to building long lived protest movements than street fighting, right? The doc itself lists many forms of effective action that had nothing to do with “martial tradition”.

> You know there’s more to building long lived protest movements than street fighting, right

There's also more to being successful than being "long lived".

If you're going up against the Chinese government, you need some degree of violence in excess of that levied by the HK protestors.

> The doc itself lists many forms of effective action

The HK protest actions were not at all effective.

It may have been that there was no winning position for HK.

Departure.

Part of winning strategically is understanding that only 'sufficient' tactical engagements must be won.

Getting annihilated does not advance the cause.

Culturally and politically influenced by Britain sure, but to say hk is culturally British is just nonsense.

I spent 2 years in London and 6 years in HK so I think I'm reasonably equipped to make that judgement

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