LAST WEEK, Hong Kong’s protesters were attacked by a group of masked men in white shirts.
The attackers were allegedly members of the local triad, quite possibly paid by powerful interests to dissuade the protesters from showing up in the streets.
These attacks shocked a lot of people both in Hong Kong, and the rest of the world, because it felt so out of place. Hong Kong is supposed to be one of the safest and richest cities in the world. For it to descend to political violence is a sign that something had gone terribly wrong
Unfortunately, there is nothing particularly special or exceptional about what’s happening in Hong Kong right now. Most people have a binary understanding of conflict. According to this way of thinking, a place, nation or country is either at peace or it’s at war but it can’t have both.
But is this really true though?
Outside of total war and total peace, there is another condition that most modern people have forgotten: Low Intensity Conflict. This type of conflict is the norm in places where society is in a state of decline and division.
A good example would be the Martial Law era, where the public was in a constant state of anxiety and paranoia. People weren’t fighting in the streets but society wasn’t at peace either, and had People Power failed, it’s very likely that the Philippines would have spiraled into escalating levels of violence that would eventually culminate into civil war.
Cities and countries which have been at peace for decades are now experiencing low intensity conflicts. Several good examples include terrorist attacks in Europe, mass-immigrant / refugee / invasion into the US border and increasing political tensions all over the globe, including Hong Kong. The usual sectarian violence in Middle East is also a good example, and the violence perpetrated in such places will only get worse as geopolitical tensions escalate.
These events are not quite at the level of bombs and artillery strikes, but peace is definitely not there either. Low intensity conflicts represent the breakdown of society, its institutions and its power structures. Whether it’s disagreements over election results or questions of sovereignty, these conflicts represent deep divisions at the heart of affected societies and their ruling elites that could not be resolved, but only repressed.
History, unfortunately, shows that such divisions are rarely ever solved. Whether it’s the collapse of the Roman Republic into Imperium, the fall of various Chinese dynasties or good old Civil War, low intensity conflicts represent instabilities that can only be resolved with the most ancient tools at humanity’s disposal: Raw Force.
And things will only spiral into escalating levels of violence until a dominant group or faction emerges, and reasserts stability, usually by being more violent than the competition./PN
