whistleblowing and justice

Note: If you pay more attention to the position of this article than to the reasoning process, please refer to Note 2 directly.

Last August, when I wrote the article "Pink Frenzy and Liberalism Outside the System", a friend from the left commented: "The 'reporting' can be used as the subject of political writing, and the liberals are really doomed. I agree that "reporting" is a very unbearable thing, but "reporting" has become the subject of political writing, which is not my intention to choose, rather, it reflects that the public culture of this country is getting lower and lower. , the political ecology is getting worse and worse, and we have to deal with such a degeneration.

Less than a year later, the list of reported reports has grown astounding. In the second half of the year, some of my friends who had expressed their views on current affairs were also posted on Weibo by Wumao Xiaopin, ranging from social accounts being bombed to being punished and expelled from the unit in severe cases. Since the epidemic this year, especially since the controversy caused by "Fang Fang Diary", the reported celebrities have become more and more important. Liang Yanping and Wang Xiaoni were dealt with by Hubei University and Hainan University respectively. Zhan Qingyun and Qiu Chen, the two contestants of "Wonderful Flowers", were dug up, and Qiu Chen announced his retirement from the entertainment industry because of this, and will no longer participate in the recording of "Wonderful Flowers". Not long before I wrote this article, I just saw a WeChat public account called "Red Soldier" reporting to Peking University that historian Luo Xin had anti-party and anti-state remarks, and asked Peking University to fire Luo Xin.

"Conversation" between chicken and weasel

In the past, liberals liked to say, "I don't agree with every word you say, but I will defend your right to speak to the death." I am not so noble. When I encounter a little pink provocation, I will block it, and sometimes I can't help but scold "mentally retarded", and I may also hang some extremely arrogant people in the circle of friends. Like the one who made various statist remarks last year, but returned to China and was quarantined this year, and his iPad was destroyed by the hotel during this period, I will definitely not help him forward it.

A while ago, I saw a media person working in Hong Kong on Facebook, and he shared some of his thoughts on "Little Pink". ta said that she met a designer on the Internet and liked her works very much. After contacting her, she felt that she was well-educated, but when the other party heard that she was working in the "Hong Kong Independence" media, she immediately proposed to cut her seat. So he sighed and said, "Little Pink" can also be a very good person in daily life, who will take care of family members and friends, and then "reflected" and said: Is it too arrogant for us to call them "Little Pink"? Didn't you give up the possibility of dialogue early in the morning?

I certainly don't think we should call all "patriotic" people "pink", and I don't think the person mentioned above belongs to what we generally refer to as "little pink" (just for the example he gave), but To rise to one's own stratosphere, to "self-arrogance" at once, and even to expect "dialogue" to solve the problem, is really a kind of political naivety in my opinion. It's like a Jew reflecting in a concentration camp: Are we not assimilating enough into German culture, are we too arrogant to the Germans, that's why they want to kill us? If we had been willing to talk, wouldn't we have ended up like this? I have been criticizing this kind of liberalism that advocates dialogue between chickens and weasels since 2015, but I think there are still many people who are poisoned by this kind of poison.

Some people think that Little Pink is not so harmful. They are still young and will wake up one day. I also don't think a person who takes the position of the Chinese government is a "little pink" unless he already has a certain degree of aggression. Such aggression includes advocating chauvinism, making human flesh, reporting (specifically reporting to power departments or units within the system, and not taking into account reports from social networking sites), cooperating, threatening people, and obstructing livelihoods. We are surrounded by people who support the Communist Party, but once a person becomes a "little pink", we should no longer treat him as someone who can be trusted and can talk to, because you never know if he will take advantage of you Trust will kill you.

The times under the epidemic have become more difficult for liberals: even if the world is not decoupling from China, even if it is not deglobalizing, China's relations with most Western countries will deteriorate in the short term, and at the same time, the domestic economy is in Under the epidemic, it will further decline, unemployment will rise, and society will be in a very unstable state. At this time, the authorities will inevitably further strengthen social control. However, due to the government's financial problems, it may lead to insufficient funds for maintaining stability. Therefore, it is not impossible to transfer social conflicts by looking for a "scapegoat", and it may have already occurred in in some departmental options.

If we look back at the history of anti-Semitism in Germany, it can be somewhat enlightening. Although Europe has had an anti-Semitic tradition since the Middle Ages, Germany was not the most anti-Semitic country to begin with, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Russian Empire was much more anti-Semitic than the German Second Empire. Germany's anti-Semitism is also the result of politicians, soldiers, capitalists, media, and activists at different levels playing "scapegoats" several times, making Jews responsible for the socialist movement in Germany, for the Treaty of Versailles, and for the Great Depression. From the "handing knife theory" created by the domestic media and some insiders against Fang Fang and liberal intellectuals this time, we can smell the smell of "scapegoating".

After the start of World War II, when the Jews were first sent to the ghetto, the Nazis set up "Jewish councils" among the Jews, led by some highly respected Jews in the Jewish community, most of them advocated that they would follow the Nazis. Cooperation in exchange for more chances of Jewish survival (and of course not without private purposes). As a result, with the cooperation of these Jewish leaders, the Nazis controlled the huge Jewish community scattered all over the place with minimal administrative cost, and finally successfully sent most of the Jews into the gas chambers, and these leaders basically themselves Inevitably bad luck, and some even committed suicide in guilt.

In the later period of the gathering area, some Jewish resistance organizations began to appear, mainly led by some young people. Although they were small in number, with their tenacious perseverance and ingenious organization, they caused great trouble to the management of the Nazis, and even significantly improved the survival rate of its own community. During the Soviet-German war, in Kyiv, only one Jew out of every 33,000 survived, but in the Belarusian wetlands area where Jewish resistance groups were present, at least half of the Jewish families who fled under the protection of these resistance groups survived.

Someone asked me in the past why I didn’t run away, but now I’ve figured it out clearly. I still have a purpose for staying here. At that time, I’ll slap the “leaders of the Jewish council” a few times, so that people don’t follow them to their deaths and realize the cruelty early on. The truth is ready to fight. But sometimes, cooperating with the persecutor doesn't have to be a humble gesture, it can also appear murderous and even pretend to be a radical.

What kind of whistleblowing do we object to?

A while ago, the "Hou Lang" speech at station B came out, which caused a lot of scolding among the liberals. One comment said: "Qian Lang has been reported by Hou Lang." If we despise "whistleblowing", we must ask, in what sense are we opposed to "whistleblowing"? After all, it is very reasonable to report an official for corruption and bribery, which shows that we cannot oppose all "reporting".

Some people think that there is no problem with reporting, but the system background is the problem. Of course, there is a problem with the background of a system that encourages reporting, but we must not forget the "banality of evil": Little Pink went to report Liang Yanping, and the relevant departments and units dealt with Liang Yanping. The problems here are only those departments and units and the people behind them. system?

If in a country, the ruler punishes some morally neutral or even good behavior, then the practice of reporting these behaviors is evil, regardless of the motive for reporting those behaviors. , or sincerely agree that those actions are wrong, because these whistleblowers reduce the cost of tyranny and make more innocent people suffer.

There are some behaviors that are morally flawed, but not to the point of being sanctioned by public power in common sense, such as lying in everyday trivial matters. Suppose a country also imposes heavy penalties on such acts (for example, in "Les Miserables", Jean Valjean has to do years of hard labor for stealing bread), and someone reports these acts, which is also unjust, Because it makes mistakes and punishments disproportionate.

If an action violates basic justice (in classical liberal parlance, the natural rights of others), and the law punishes it substantially commensurate with its fault, it is justified to report the action. Here, it doesn't matter how the country's laws are laid down, because most serious discussants, except extreme legal positivists, will admit that there are unjust laws. Last year outside the wall, someone left a message under my article and said, "Why can't I report you? Reporting is a citizen's legal right." I really can't refute what he said: even though the Chinese constitution stipulates that citizens have the right to participate in demonstrations rights, but there are countless clauses in the Law of the People's Republic of China on Assemblies, Processions and Demonstrations that can invalidate this right. Basically, this is a law made to protest the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. Therefore, the ability to judge morality is more critical here. Without this ability, we cannot judge what kind of report is legitimate and what kind of report is unjust.

All reports against thoughts are shameful, no matter how much we dislike that kind of thought, because just holding a kind of thought will not cause harm to the outside world. Some people will say that people who hold a "harmful" thought may do things that hurt others in the future, so they should be prevented in time. This kind of statement is not completely unreasonable. For example, a person's thoughts contain "it is reasonable to kill for fun". Such a person is undoubtedly a dangerous person and should be prevented in time. But should timely prevention include "reporting"? Generally, the national security department will not accept such a report, because he has not committed a crime. Suppose there is a country that not only punishes ordinary crimes, but also punishes people with criminal thoughts. In this case, would you report him? In the movie Minority Report, the government has systems that predict criminal activity, and authorities arrest criminals seconds before they are ready to do so. In our case, he didn't even have an "intention", he just had a very general idea. This idea may have been instilled in him intentionally by some people. It is also possible that he would never implement this idea in his life. Are ideas punished by public power?

While reports of behavior and thought are easier to discern, reports of speech are more complex. Here, I would like to put forward three arguments, namely the legitimacy argument, the generalizability argument and the operational argument, to justify my objection to the whistleblower speech.

The first is the legitimacy argument. The whistleblower we are talking about in this article is a cooperation between citizens and public power, so whistleblowing has a dimension of legitimacy. The question here is whether it is legitimate for a regime to regulate something. If it is legitimate for a regime to regulate something, it is legitimate for citizens to report it, and vice versa. Here, I am not adopting an "all or nothing" concept of legitimacy, not to say that democracies are completely legitimate, and totalitarian/autocratic states have no legitimacy at all. I think that even in a totalitarian or autocratic country, it is legal for the government to regulate actions involving basic justice, otherwise the basic order of the society cannot be maintained, so this is a Hobbesian legitimacy. . But a democratic government also has a higher level of legitimacy, namely "democratic legitimacy" or "procedural legitimacy", which can often not only maintain social order, but also receive direct authorization from the people to further governance of society.

Freedom of speech is not absolute. There is nothing wrong with a democracy enacting certain hate speech (overt expressions of hatred against a person, or a group identifiable on the basis of characteristics such as race, religion, gender or sexual orientation), because under hate speech laws Before its introduction, there was a lot of discussion about hate speech in all walks of life, and these laws were later approved by the democratic process. On the basis of procedural democracy and deliberative democracy, it is legitimate for a democratic country to introduce hate speech laws. So reporting overt hate speech in these countries is justified, it's just that there are more and more grey areas there because of the rise of the internet. And we must also be aware that not all democracies have hate speech legislation (for example, the United States does not), which means that hate speech is not in the scope of basic justice, and the differences in the implementation of hate speech in different democracies are precisely their the result of the functioning of its own democratic system.

In a totalitarian/authoritarian state, however, restrictions on freedom of speech are not legal unless that speech violates the rights of others (e.g. defamation, child pornography, disclosure of state secrets, or, as Mill put it, direct incitement against someone physical attacks by some). The totalitarian/authoritarian regime's restrictions on freedom of speech are arbitrary, and this arbitrariness is not only reflected in the lack of democratic procedures and the recognition of all sectors of society; but also in terms of specific implementation, in totalitarian/authoritarian countries, what kind of speech It will be restricted, and it is not enforced according to the express provisions of the law, but is often decided by some individuals within the public power, even by the most basic executives. Therefore, in a totalitarian or authoritarian country, reporting on speech, if not unjust, is inappropriate, because it tacitly reinforces the legitimacy of the regime's control of speech and "criminal punishment".

It may sound paradoxical: a totalitarian government has far more power than a democratic government, but its legitimacy is less than that of a democratic government. So one might wonder why reporting hate speech is not allowed in totalitarian/authoritarian countries as well as in democracies (if it works)? If hate speech is a violation of justice (more than a violation of the rights of others), why can't hate speech be reported in the same way that a violation of justice is reported? I call this position the "rational informer thesis", which is to cast aside positive law altogether and make decisions based on rational moral judgment: if based on rational reflection, something is a violation of Just, then they should be punished, and if there is a commensurate punishment for this kind of thing in a country, then they can be reported, whether the country is a democracy or a totalitarian/authoritarian country.

So here, I would like to offer two more arguments to further illustrate why the "rational whistleblower thesis" is undesirable.

The universalizability argument comes from Kant's "principle of universalizability": since it is based on rational reflection, the principle behind reflection should be universal. The words and the words of those you support are unrighteous. According to the rational reporting thesis, as long as a speech is reasonably identified as "hate speech", it should be reported, but under the condition of "universalization", it will face two obstacles.

The first thing we need to think about is whether we are mentally prepared for the generalization of reporting “hate speech”. If, as stated above, "hate speech" is defined as the public expression of "hatred" against certain individuals or "groups identifiable on the basis of characteristics such as race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc.", then hate speech can come from more than just racial The chauvinists and male chauvinists can also come from some self-proclaimed progressives, and possibly from yourself. For example, remarks that call Chinese people "Chinese people" or that Chinese people are of low quality are more likely to be regarded as hate speech than those who call liberals "hate the country" and "traitors". After all, "Chinese" is slightly more recognizable than "liberal". Some unmarried women call married women "marriage donkeys". Is this also hate speech? Do feminists who support punishing hate speech support reporting and punishing it?

Some people may say, then let these cheap people be taught a lesson. However, there is a deeper question here, that is, is there a consistent moral principle behind the punishment of hate speech? The ethical discussion of hate speech in Western academic circles basically revolves around the "harm principle" of JS Mill and the "offense principle" of Joel Feinberg. Neither principle does a good job of justifying punishment for hate speech, the "harm principle" doesn't cover most of it (even based on Waldron's reinterpretation of the hurt principle), and the "offensive principle" hits too hard This is why I prefer to understand their hate speech legislation in a democratic framework.

From an operational level, we may also face a problem, that is, "misunderstanding". Considering the differences in the ability of different people to express and understand, we cannot assume that in all cases one person can accurately identify another person's hate speech and then report it, or we can not assume that all people who are criticized The reported speech must be hate speech, and it cannot be assumed that the public authority that handles such reports will not generate such misunderstandings and deal with the speech. Suppose that in a totalitarian/authoritarian country, there is a punishment for certain hate speech, and a certain person publishes a public speech against a certain group. If you look closely, it is not hate speech itself, but due to the issue of the expressive ability of the publisher, it is rejected by some audiences. Misunderstood as hate speech and reported. Coincidentally, the public authority that deals with this speech also interprets it as hate speech, and imposes a severe punishment on the publisher. Since there is no appeal or remedy mechanism for citizens punished by public authority in this country, this misunderstood People have suffered injustice and suffering, and cannot be rehabilitated, let alone compensated.

It should be noted that we are not denying the existence of obvious hate speech, but the punishment for hate speech will not only target obvious hate speech, because speech itself does not self-label, we must consider the universal application of "reporting hate speech". possible after the transformation. So "generalizable argument" and "operational argument" are complementary to each other to some extent.

Who are we hurting?

I think the above three arguments are basically justified against whistleblowing in totalitarian/authoritarian states, but they are not what drove me against whistleblowing in the first place.

In my opinion, the only way a totalitarian/authoritarian state can escape the cycle of chaos is the maturity of its civil society itself, although it has become an irony to talk about civil society in contemporary China. As I said earlier, I am not against all whistleblowing. It is legitimate for a totalitarian/authoritarian to punish those who violate basic justice. However, if we don’t want to ignore those remarks that we hate or think are wrong, the best way is not to report them, but to fight them. If that kind of remarks is extremely insulting or will cause emotional harm to a group, then perhaps it is possible to find a way to "lesson" or even "revenge" them outside the scope of public power, and hurriedly resorting to reporting is equivalent to Giving up one's own autonomy and initiative prematurely is also tantamount to degrading civil society's ability to handle internal disputes.

Some people may not recognize the legitimacy of totalitarian/autocratic governments to control speech, but they believe that using public power to attack political opponents is a realistic political strategy. However, this is at best a short-sighted political realism, and whistle-blower speech could have far greater consequences in the long run.

Suppose one day, when the dynasty changed a leader, after he came to power, there were signs of starting political reforms, such as the appointment of some reformers, and the restoration of the tenure system and multi-person leadership at the same time, just like what Deng did in the early 1980s matter. At this time, he suggested that in order to avoid further fascistization of the country, encouraging the reporting of those who made extreme nationalist remarks can be traced back to the past.

Many people who were persecuted by Wumao and Xiaopin before felt that there was an opportunity for revenge, so they submitted online screenshots that had been collected long ago as evidence to the public authority. These reported Wumao and Little Pink were all punished for their previous remarks, and some people in the system who had remarks about the wolf were also reported. The higher the statist content of the speech, the heavier the punishment, ranging from being fired from the unit within the system, or being sentenced to the crime of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble". In the process, the state has also established a more complete reporting-punishment mechanism for speech (at present, I think this mechanism does not exist or is not perfect).

It didn't take long for the reform-minded leader to step down in a political battle for a leader with strong nationalist tendencies. He "rehabilitated" the reported five cents, little pinks, and people in the system, but the report-punishment mechanism left by his predecessor was completely inherited by him, and now he encourages reporting of "hate the country" remarks, which can be traced back to the past. Especially during my ex.

Of course I made it up, but who's to say that something like this must never happen? As we said before, in a totalitarian/authoritarian country, only the authorities have the right to define what speech can be reported, and its definition of such speech is unfounded, and sometimes the speech you hate happens to be within the scope of reportable , sometimes it happens to be your remarks that get reported. To make matters worse, reporting speech under a totalitarian/authoritarian state is, to some extent, accelerating the establishment of a reporting-punishment mechanism for speech.

Some people believe that the power structure and the general environment will still deteriorate if they report or not. This is not something that little pink can decide, nor can political opponents decide. However, some studies have found that there is actually some degree of "authoritarian responsiveness" in China. In 2015, there was an article published in the American Journal of Political Science called "Sources of Authoritarian Feedback: A Field Experiment in China", which mentioned that about one-third of county governments will respond to citizens' online expressions of interest. Asking for feedback, the more likely there will be collective action, the more likely it will be to report to the higher-level government, and the county government will be more responsive. But that's not necessarily a good thing. In the past year, many liberal intellectuals have been punished, which has a very direct relationship with Little Pink's report. When I was reported to myself, Guyan Muchan posted me on Weibo at noon, and the police had already knocked on my door at four or five in the afternoon. The "feedback" was not unpleasant. A large number of anti-statists are involved in reporting, which may lead to the crazy revenge of the little pink, so that the normalization of reporting has appeared in the society. In response to such normalization, "authoritarian feedback" is more likely to make the party-state justifiably institutionalize whistleblowing. Such institutionalization seems to have 50 major challenges, but in fact, it will only make the country more justifiably deal with "hate the country".

More seriously, I think doing so harms our own "integrity" in a deeper sense than simply restricting our freedom of speech and thought.

What's the difference between us and those little pinks who reported it? Is it because they love our country and we hate our country? Of course not, as Mr. Qian Yongxiang said, liberals can also be patriots, and progressives can also be patriots, and nationalists cannot monopolize the right to interpret patriotism.

Or because they believe in nationalist statism and we believe in liberalism? There is indeed a big difference between the two, but in terms of doctrinal advantages, the scale is not significantly skewed toward liberalism, and many critics of power do not all believe in liberalism.

Is that because we are smarter than them and have more complete channels of information? This kind of intellectual superiority does exist among progressives, but I have also met many dissidents with partial beliefs, and I have known some who still sided with the government and insisted on reporting after obtaining relatively complete information.

Or as Han Gan said, they are speculators and we can act on political convictions? I have analyzed this in the article "Political Cognitivism and Political Behaviorism": It is not that they cannot act based on political beliefs, and many people on our side do not criticize power based on political beliefs.

At the end of the day, we have to believe that we are at least a little bit better than them, doing things and not doing things. We believe that people have higher spiritual pursuits than material needs, and believe that in order to achieve these pursuits, a greater degree of freedom of thought and freedom of speech is required than at present. We sincerely agree with freedom of thought and speech, and are willing to pay a certain amount cost to defend them. We shouldn't do things that hurt freedom of thought and speech, otherwise our words and actions will be self-defeating.

Some people may think that hate speech or fascist speech should not be within the scope of freedom of speech, but speech that does not violate the rights of others cannot be naturally excluded from freedom of speech. Therefore, "reporting speech" is indeed a restriction on freedom of speech. This restriction can only be justified with a higher political value than it is, which is why I feel that reporting hate speech is only justified in democracies, because of the value that can be debated, except between groups” social justice", and "democracy". And reporting speech in a totalitarian/authoritarian country is both a restriction on freedom of speech and a cooperation with an unjust regime. I don't know what high political value can justify such a thing.

There is a person who has sincerely discussed this issue with me, and I think her doubts deserve attention. She said that an ordinary person like her did not have the courage to do something too outrageous to "revenge" a celebrity who made habitually insulting remarks about women, so she could only choose to "report" silently. She knew it wasn't "noble" to do this, but she had no other choice because she didn't want to swallow it. I am very sympathetic to her feeling this way. In "The Many Faces of Injustice," Judith Shklar argues that groups in society have the right to speak out about the "injustices" they feel, especially those who are disadvantaged, even if these injustices transcend others. the perception of the crowd, and not necessarily relief. But Shklay also emphasized that this kind of voice against injustice can only be guaranteed if it is based on a set of procedural democracy. Procedural democracy not only guarantees the right of these groups to speak out, but also ensures that the objects they accuse can Get a fair deal. Although we don't live in a democratic country, I can still sympathetically interpret her "reporting" as an "indictment of injustice."

How to survive in this era?

My position may not be easily accepted by most of my friends: I am against both talking to "little pinks" or aggressive nationalists, and fighting against reporting their speech. Little Pink has been reported by "Wang Guo Xian Shi Bao", are you going to run for them? I don't think it's necessary. But do we want to cooperate with the party-state to become a little pink? This is yet another question. Some friends may think that I am not worried about eating radishes. How could Little Pink be punished by the authorities for any remarks? However, considering the vicious international influence caused by the "NMSL expedition", the authorities may not control some chauvinistic speeches online. In fact, some so-called "dog fans" have already been found by public authorities.

Politics is of course realistic, or it may be dirty, and sometimes struggle is needed, but in the process of struggle, if you pull yourself to the same level as the other party, and obliterate the difference between yourself and the other party, just to win, then you will fight. In the end, even if our side wins, in terms of political consequences, it's just the other side's victory in another face. Little Pink and the party-state are both potential totalitarians. Reporting speech in a totalitarian/authoritarian country is itself a totalitarian practice. Using totalitarian means to let one totalitarian to suppress another totalitarian, is totalitarianism winning, or is it? Freedom wins?

Does that mean we're going to sit still? it's not true. The way to fight is not to report each other with the little pink, but to resist the report: ruthlessly criticize every little pink report, express solidarity and help to every friend who is reported and hurt by the little pink, and establish a support for victims. social network, spread all this, win the sympathy of passers-by, and even set up a blacklist of whistleblowers to keep our friends away from these people and avoid being stabbed in the back by them, and can also send it to those who own private enterprises. Friends, lest they recruit such despicable villains into trouble. Recently, the academic committee of Beijing Normal University protected a teacher who was reported to be "anti-Marxist", which is also a gratifying result of resisting the report. To put it another way, if we vigorously condemn the report, but also report it, criticize the repression of speech by the public power, and hurriedly report those speeches when we come across remarks that we hate. It is no longer a question of right or wrong, it is unprincipled and has no backbone.

I am reminded of the radical groups involved in social change in history. The successful examples are the British suffragettes (Suffragettes), and the failures are the Russian populists. The former went to smash the windows of officials' homes, and the latter went to terrorist acts. , but I haven't heard of anyone in there reporting male chauvinists and Slavs.

In the chapter "Father and Son" in "The Russian Thinker", Berlin commented on the "intellectual class" of the Russian liberals represented by Turgenev: "The dilemma of the liberals has thus become an unsolvable dilemma. They want to destroy a system of power they feel is utterly evil, they believe in reason, secularism, individual rights, freedom of speech and association and opinion, freedom of groups and races and nations, greater social and economic equality, and Justice above all. There are people who are so extreme that they risk their lives to overthrow the status quo with violence. They admire the selfless devotion of these people, the purity of their motives, and the spirit of martyrdom. But they are afraid that terrorism or Jacobin tactics will lead to The loss of life may be irreparable and outweigh any possible gain. They fear the fanaticism and brutality of the extreme left, their contempt for the only culture they know, and their blind faith in utopian delusions - anarchism, populism , Marxism, they think it’s all utopian delusions.”

In our era, on the left side of liberals are feminists, Trotskyists, and anti-statist Maoists. Since 2018, they have all been suppressed to varying degrees, and they may not have more room for activity than liberals. This article of mine was originally written for friends in the anti-statist camp in a broad sense, but if some friends outside the liberals do not accept many of my assumptions, then I will only write for the liberals. In the future, if the liberals are doomed in China, I hope that the fire of liberalism can be preserved, but if the liberals have completely degenerated into fighters who do not speak the principles of liberalism, what is the point of liberalism? Face to participate in China's future?

This is called "digging one's own grave".

Note 1: Jidong Chen, Jennifer Pan, Yiqing Xu. Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness: A Field Experiment in China. American Journal of Political Science , 2015, Volume 60, Issue 2.

Note 2: This conversation mainly revolves around Ke Jie being sniped by feminists. Ke Jie has made many misogynistic remarks on Weibo, but recently entered the list of the "2020 National Model Workers and Advanced Workers" formula, feminists on the Internet are against this. The first time I saw this news was on Douban's "Freedom to Eat Melon Base" and "Goose Group", because the above two groups participated in reporting and human flesh against me last year, and they took screenshots of Ke Jie's Weibo remarks Posting it is similar to Xiaopin's posting screenshots of liberal intellectuals' Weibo remarks. My initial reaction was, "What's the difference between this report and Xiaopin's report?" Finally, after discussing with some friends, I don't think this necessarily constitutes a The report can be understood as a "question" and "protest" against Ke Jie's being rated as a model worker and an advanced worker.