The huge crowds of protesters in Hong Kong adapt rapidly to the tactics used by their police and by their government, and so far the authorities haven’t been able to stop them.
In a brief piece at The New Statesman, Anthony Dapiran summarizes seven of the protesters’ tactics:
- Mobile protests; no occupations
- Open-source, leaderless protest
- Communicating peer-to-peer via Bluetooth
- In-crowd supply lines facilitated by sign language
- Neutralizing tear gas with traffic cones (or towels) and water
- Avoiding stampedes by marching in step
- Crowdfunding ads to catch international attention
It all reminds me of Bill’s ruminations on The Common Sense Resistance, of Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds’ book An Army of Davids, of Pierre Omidyar’s book The Starfish and the Spider, and of the principles of weak points and strong points explained long ago by Sun Tzu in Part VI of his famous treatise The Art of War.
How well these tactics work against tanks and PLA troops remains to be seen, but we can learn a lot from the ingenious Hong Kongers. Here’s hoping we never need to use similar tactics against our authorities.