Thread by @JirousFilip

On Sunday, group of Mainland Chinese took down Hong Kong-style Lennon walls on the original Prague Lennon Wall and repainted with "China" and no. 70 with in PRC flag style. All this while taking pics and vids of their conduct yelling "We love China". Hard to get more distasteful.

THREAD:

Turns out it was a group of local Overseas Chinese (sinopsis.cz/prazska-lennon…) that took down the HK Lennon walls off the Prague Lennon Wall and then repainted anything related to #antiELABhk . Graphic designer Liao who authored the 70 with wrong PRC flag comments:

"Lennon Wall is a wall that expresses the feelings of people who like art and it brings real aesthetic value. It's not a place for political bickering."

Chinese tourist and 华侨 immediately started pictures with the Chinese posts.

archive.fo/M7KSX

Liao continues: "We support freedom of expression a artistic freedom, but we won't allow any person or organization to use so-called art to damage the world peace and let any opinions damaging the world peace or artistic freedom become the tool of political duping."

Another Chinese blogger talks about a vigil held by the Overseas Chinese, because they ran into some trouble with "Hongkong separatists" and "local anti-Chinese elements" leading to the number being sprayed over with "FREE HK" posts.

archive.fo/IHzaa

Local tour guides also mention that "CHINA" quickly became " #chinazi ". The patriotic Chinese crowd hurried to repaint it again and protect their artistry (hlidacipes.org/hongkongske-pr…), turning the "ZI" into a star as seen below (don't have CHINAZI pic, #sad ).

But it seems that the wall is now slowly coming back to its original purpose.

It is rather significant that while we here commemorate 30 years from 1989 and celebrate the courage of ppl here and the Chinese pro-democracy protestors, current Chinese patriotic youth has...

a completely different concept of patriotism than three decades ago. This of course has to do with the Patriotic Education Campaign started in 1990s. As @zuoluogu puts it in an article for @sinopsiscz (sinopsis.cz/en/the-ccps-gr…) :

The so-called “Hundred years of national humiliation” (百年国耻) narrative... was developed into a full-blown “patriotic education campaign” (爱国主义教育运动) in the wake of Tian’anmen and is now the CCP’s longest running and arguably most successful political campaign ever...

This campaign helps account for CCP support amongst the Chinese Diaspora(s)... The great wave of Chinese students who went abroad from the 1990s onwards have also by and large been successfully ‘inoculated’ against liberal values..."

The current patriotic youth that doesn't even understand that their own actions are highly political and promoted an agenda of the CCP at the original Lennon Wall, a sanctuary of struggle for freedom and democracy, is truly telling. This is a great metaphor for CCP's...

ability to repurpose democratic tools and bodies to promote its own goals.

One can only wonder what would've happened if the movement in 1989 as e. g. @tingdc remembers it (sinopsis.cz/en/beyond-beij…) succeeded like it did here in the Czech Republic.

@tingdc @crehage @AsiaReportcom