Beware of the local Taliban dressed as Democracy Proponents, they are all just extremists

Daveed is the first guest post contributor of the Libertines Pub. You can also read one of his Chinese blogposts related to this shit here.


Getting to know the enraged nerds of Hong Kong was an interesting experience for me, as I don't live in this hi-tech village. The funniest thing is that some of the supporters of these people felt a sense of relief after knowing that Henry is not a Caucasian native speaker of English! Why should that make any difference? Are they really racists in disguise?

Although it was fun reading their intelligence-challenged well-constructed points of view, I couldn't help feeling a little bit concerned about some of these so-called "democracy proponents".

As a self-proclaimed libertine myself, I have no qualms about anyone's political viewpoint, no matter how ridiculous they are much I disagree with them; and to be fair to them, Hong Kong does need to have different voices to be heard. However, the way they go about their business bothers me. These people go about labelling others, revealing private information, and generally do not listen to voices that don't agree with them. There were even allegations that one of these democracy proponents beat up a female volunteer at a June 4th event in 2006.

To me, their action is exactly the same as those of non-democratic governments that they are supposed to be fighting strongly against!

What a strange world we live in! People fighting tyranny with another form of tyranny!! People fighting extremism with another form of extremism!

Are these people wolves in sheepskin?

We all know that extremism is a dangerous thing, but it's also the easiest thing to fall into, because it's so simple, so black-and-white. Just look at how many young minds are "tricked" into following the Taliban, the Nazis and joining the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution.

However, the real world that we live in is not just black-and-white, instead it's full of different shades of grey. The ancient Taoist symbol shows it best - the whole of the white half is within the black half, and vice versa, there is no complete black or complete white.

Perhaps some of those who proclaim to think in multi-languages (Chinese, English, Indonesian etc), should concentrate on thinking using a language that they are actually fluent in. This may prevent the muddled and twisted thinking enhance the clear analytical thinking that is currently evident. Then maybe, just maybe, they have a chance of understanding this.

A little mathematical explanation for other nerds who are maybe not so enraged:

Suppose you have some strong beliefs, which in an extremist's mind, are either correct (1), or absolutely wrong (0). If you have ten 1s, and multiply them together, you still get 1. Simple!

However, life is not so straightforward and the world is not digital, so it's not just made out of 0s and 1s. Suppose your beliefs are only 90% true (i.e. 0.9 instead of 1), when you multiply these together, you only get 0.35 (rounded up!), so are you so sure that what you believe so strongly is still so correct and infallible after all?

1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 = 1
0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 = 0.348678

Another mathematical analogy:

What happens at y=tan (π/2)? From the graph, you can say it's +infinity, or -infinity.


Conclusion, positive infinity is the same as negative infinity, just as different forms of extremism are essentially the same thing, just as extreme-left and extreme-right in politics are in fact both different forms of fascism.


The Pub would like to thank Daveed for his post. Haters and lovers, join in by writing to the editor.