Posted on 11/20/2003 9:40:24 PM PST by maui_hawaii
Lev Navrozov Friday, Nov. 21, 2003
On Nov. 14, I received the following e-mail from Low Seng Kiat. I reproduce it, preserving its spelling and punctuation.
"U are a real racist western supremist. Trying to use us Chinese to kill our own motherland to protect your beloved western democracy, which forces others to adopt your ideology and then point your finger to others that they are dangerous and threatful. For god’s sake, you are the one attacking Iraq, Afghanistan and even our embassy and then you come here and tell us that we are threatening you??? How did your plane end up in Chinese territory? after killing our pillot. Good go ahead and set up your so called western survival centre. A decade ago you may be able to convince Chinese that your way of democracy is good and so on and make them serve you to betray their own motherland, but nowadays China is not even a communist government anymore, she is changing so fast that I could say China is now a nationalist government which will adopt ANY SYSTEM THAT CAN MAKE OUR CIVILISATION STRONG ….(MAYBE A COMBINATION OF DEMOCRACY, SOCIALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS). BTW your greedy MNCs made us economically strong, so I guess overseas Chinese would rather have a strong China. LONG LIVE CHINA!! LONG LIVE THE HAN RACE!!”
In my writings I have been emphasizing the greatness of Chinese culture. But it is my criticism of the post-1949 Chinese dictatorship that prompts Mr. Kiat to brand me with the words that have been used in the United States to brand those who, for example, persecuted blacks by denying them their rights or lynching them. I am "a real [!] racist Western supremist” (Mr. Kiat means "supremacist”).
The desire of the Chinese dissidents to know more about the dictatorship in China and its geostrategic intentions Mr. Kiat describes as my "trying to use us, Chinese, to kill [!] our own motherland.”
So, there are no Chinese dissidents versus Chinese lickspittles of tyranny. There are only "us, Chinese,” and for them to study the dictatorship in China and its geostrategic intentions is "to kill our own motherland,” for which purpose I "use” (yes, "use”) "us, Chinese.”
Some of these Chinese dissidents faced death in Tiananmen Square before they escaped to the United States. But according to Mr. Kiat, they have no will of their own – I USE Tiananmen Square heroes against their will. How do I do this? Do I promise them billions of dollars? Or do I coerce them physically?
We have received from China an article from a mass TV-print Chinese magazine about the founding in 1986 of "Project 863” to develop post-nuclear weapons in seven fields, such as genetic engineering. Do I USE the Chinese mass communication media against their will "to kill our own motherland,” that is, the motherland of "us, Chinese,” including the Chinese mass communication media?
For whose benefit am I engaged in this supernatural coercion? Mr. Kiat identifies me with what I have criticized for many years. Thus, I have criticized "the reverse side” of Western democracy as trenchantly as no one had done before me except John Stuart Mill in 1859. Mr. Kiat writes that I "want us, Chinese” to "kill our own motherland” in order to "protect” my "beloved [!] democracy.”
I have criticized the U.S. invasions of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, but Mr. Kiat writes that I am "the one attacking” Iraq, Afghanistan and even "our embassy” (in Yugoslavia?).
Just as there are, according to Mr. Kiat, no Chinese with different views, there are no Americans with different views. It is "us, Chinese” against them, Americans.
Mr. Kiat takes me for an American equivalent of his Chinese self – I am also a fanatical conformist, except that I fanatically conform to the U.S. government and he fanatically conforms to the dictatorship of China.
Is this equivalent? For all my criticism of the U.S. government and the "reverse side” of Western democracy, nothing has happened to me since my arrival with my family in New York in 1972, while should Mr. Kiat begin criticizing in China the "government of China,” he would at best find himself in a labor camp if not crushed by armor as were the thousands of Chinese dissidents in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Let me point out to Mr. Kiat that his e-mail is the best proof of what he attempts to disprove, viz., that China as of November 2003 is as much a tyranny as it was 14 or 54 years ago. If there had been any shifts away from tyranny, Mr. Kiat would have thanked me for my stand against the tyranny, autocracy, absolutism, dictatorship in China 14 or 26 years ago.
He would have said that owing to criticism such as mine, there have been shifts away from tyranny, and he would have enlisted these shifts. I dealt with all such allegations in my column of Oct. 17, "Is China Really Moving Toward Democracy?”
Mr. Kiat mentions only capitalism as proof that "China is not even a Communist government anymore” and hence no longer the tyranny or dictatorship it used to be "a decade ago.”
To this assertion, I have replied (see my column of Oct. 17) by recalling that Lenin also introduced capitalism in Soviet Russia in 1921, and it flourished until Stalin, for interests of his own (overall industrialization-militarization), abolished it as highhandedly at the close of the 1920s as Lenin had introduced it. After 10 years of capitalism, the Soviet dictatorship became only more ruthless.
Capitalism helped Hitler to come to power and never resisted him even after his defeat was clear.
When the dictatorship fell in Russia in 1991, I began to publish in the major Russian periodicals, while in my articles published in the West I called for giving a chance to Yeltsin and his new Russia. Similarly, had China become protected "against the tyranny of the political rulers,” I would have been the first to hail the change.
But no such change has occurred. In the 14 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre and subsequent mass arrests of Chinese dissidents, the rulers of China have never expressed any regrets. The tonality has been the same as that of your e-mail, Mr. Kiast: a victorious drumbeat for the glory of the "Han race” and the disgrace of all Americans, evidently also constituting a single race, in Mr. Kiat’s perception, only an inferior race, of course – all evil, warlike and inhuman.
Before the dictatorship fell in Russia, I had been receiving from "Soviet-Russian patriots” in the West letters just like Mr. Kiat’s. Only the ethnic details were different. Thus, the Soviet Russian "patriots” said not "LONG LIVE CHINA!! LONG LIVE THE HAN RACE!!” but "LONG LIVE OUR RUSSIA!! LONG LIVE OUR PEOPLE!!”
Mr. Kiat uses the word "race” – the "HAN RACE.” This makes his message more like that from a Nazi German than a Soviet "patriot.” But there is no difference between such "patriots,” depending on the tyranny they fanatically conform to. Tyranny is tyranny, whatever its national and ideological attire at the moment.
Those Soviet-Russian "patriots” who vilified me as a traitor were the worst enemies of Russia, of the Russian people, of Russian culture. But predictably, they tried to represent my criticism of the Soviet tyranny as my racist hatred for "everything Soviet-Russian” that these lickspittles heroically upheld, in their opinion.
You, Mr. Kiat, and lickspittles of tyranny like you, are the worst enemies of China, of the Chinese people, of Chinese culture.
Nor is there anything Chinese about your e-mail. When I criticized the political establishment of the United States for its invasion of Iraq BEFORE that invasion, the U.S. lickspittles of a future possible tyranny vilified me exactly the way you, Mr. Kiat, have vilified me and the Chinese dissidents.
No, there is nothing Chinese about your e-mail, Mr. Kiat – such messages have been sent to critics of tyranny by Soviet Russians, German Nazis, U.S. "patriots” and Chinese "patriots” like you.
Indeed, there is nothing Chinese about you, except for your accident of birth in China (and not in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany or the United States). I am a student and admirer of Chinese culture. Your e-mail does not evince any knowledge of Chinese culture – it expresses only "patriotic” slogans that any Soviet Russian, Nazi German or "patriotic” American could express.
A world populated by tyrants and their fanatical lickspittles is doomed in our age of post-nuclear superweapons.
Servile conformists like you contribute to Western racism and supremacy with respect to the Chinese, for you may induce many Westerners to forget about those free proud Chinese that the Chinese dissidents are and to assume that all Chinese are like you, ready to curry favor with any power sufficiently strong and ruthless and to vilify its critics. On the other hand, I have never assumed that the Chinese dissidents should just transfer Western democracy onto China. A country of great culture, China may develop its own constitutionalism, that is, "the protection against the tyranny of the political rulers,” as John Stuart Mill put it.
No, I am not against China – I am against the political rulers’ Tiananmen massacre on the scale of a square or on the scale of the West.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.