Storming The U.S. Capitol—Hong Kong Comes to Washington

Coup attempt

The invasion of the Capitol. Screenshot: ITV News via Twitter.

A crowd of thousands of Trump supporters storm the Congressional building on Capitol Hill. They climb the walls, they break through the doors, and they throw rocks, boards, and other objects at the police.

The US mainstream media and Washington officials call the crowd “a mob,” “rioters,” and denounce them as “un-American,” people who would tear down our democracy. The crowd fights with the police. One rioter, a woman, is shot and killed by police. The crowd occupies congressional offices and poses for pictures. The National Guard is called in, not only from Washington, DC, but also from surrounding areas.

Police from nearby states, FBI, Secret Service, and other agencies come from nearby states as well. After hours of struggle, the police and soldiers push the rioters out of the building. The mayor of Washington declares a 6 pm curfew, and immediately after 6 pm, police and soldiers push the demonstrators out of the area immediately around the capitol building. The media and congressional officials describe the events of the day “shocking,” saying this is what happens “in banana republics,” not the United States of America. They claim to never have seen this before, and that “this isn’t who we are.”

Hong Kong, July 1, 2019: A crowd of hundreds storm the Legislative Building in Hong Kong, using a battering ram to smash the front door and enter the building. They charge into the building, occupying it for several hours, painting anti-government slogans on the walls, smashing furniture and damaging the building’s interior, and draping Hong Kong’s former colonial era flag on the podium.

Police had withdrawn and were not present, but were accused of brutality anyway. That accusation, proven false by news videos of the scene—including Western news videos—was then used as an excuse for hundreds of thousands of protestors to go on rampages for the remainder of 2019, throwing rocks, bricks, and petrol fire bombs at police, firing at the police with bows and arrows, attacking police with sticks, metal rods, knives, spears, and other deadly weapons, and beating up civilian bystanders who voiced any disagreement with the protestors.

At the Hong Kong airport they blocked international passengers getting off or going to flights, tied up, beat, and tortured a mainland China reporter, and throughout Hong Kong smashed and burned stores they thought were either connected to the Chinese mainland—including American chain stores that were headquartered on the mainland—or not supportive of the demonstrators, and smashed and set fires in Hong Kong subway stations, often with passengers trapped in the stations. Rioters killed one elderly civilian and set another man on fire with gasoline. Police officers were cut by knives, wounded by arrows and fire bombs, and beaten with sticks. But throughout an entire year of such attacks, the police did not kill one person. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) stayed in their barracks and never engaged the rioters, not even when the rioters went to their army base and threw rocks and fire bombs at it. Riot police in nearby mainland China never went to Hong Kong.

What’s the connection? The United States government funded and actively supported the Hong Kong rioters. Our government not only had “seen” this before, we promoted it overseas. The US National Endowment for Democracy (a CIA spin-off operation) gave millions of dollars over the course of years to protest groups in Hong Kong, high ranking American officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Julie Eadeh, who is a US consulate official, and others met with protest leaders in Hong Kong and in the States, and publicly declared their support for the protesters, claiming they were fighting for “democracy.” But Hong Kong, according to the conservative think tank, the Cato Institute, was rated the third most democratic place in the world, while the US itself was rated number seventeen. Not reported in the Western media was the fact that there were also large demonstrations in Hong Kong in support of the Hong Kong government. The US has a long history of engineering coups, “color revolutions,” and other ways of overthrowing governments that don’t bend the knee to our wishes, be they in Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, or elsewhere. Now a riot mob has come to Washington. It seems there is indeed truth to the old saying, “What goes around, comes around.”

But there is one major difference between Hong Kong last year and Washington, DC, today. The mob in Washington was not aided or abetted by any foreign government; not China, not Russia. No, indeed. Today’s mob was aided and abetted by a US government official – the democratically elected President of the United States.

Michael Wong is the vice president of Veterans For Peace, San Francisco chapter #69, a co-founder of Pivot To Peace www.peacepivot.org and has been published in the anthologies, “Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace,” edited by Maxine Hong Kingston, “A Matter of Conscience,” by William Short and Willa Seidenberg, and in “Waging Peace in Vietnam,” edited by Ron Carver, David Cortright, and Barbara Doherty.

He is also featured in the documentary film, “Sir! No Sir!” about the Viet Nam era GI anti-war movement. Mike is a retired social worker with a Master of Social Work degree.

Suggested reading:
Behind a made-for-TV Hong Kong protest narrative, Washington is backing nativism and mob violence: https://thegrayzone.com/2019/08/17/hong-kong-protest-washington-nativism-violence/
Open letter to congress: Why the Hong Kong human rights and democracy act of 2019 must be opposed: https://www.nationofchange.org/2019/09/20/open-letter-to-congress-why-the-hong-kong-human-rights-and-democracy-act-of-2019-must-be-opposed/

Why is the National Endowment for Democracy fueling Hong Kong protests?: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-08-27/Why-is-the-NED-fueling-the-Hong-Kong-protests–JtMb2yKKWc/index.html
WHAT MANY US CORPORATE MEDIA HIDE ABOUT HONG KONG CRISIS: https://www.blackstarnews.com/global-politics/asia/what-many-us-corporate-media-hide-about-hong-kong-crisis.html

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