The so-called "liberal world over" isn't only dead, it never really existed. The so-called "free world" couldn't stand up to their own clients in the MENA, we can't expect them to stand up to the Chinese regime. You fought the good fight, Hong Kong, and your courage will live on.
Here's a lesson from a MENA activist: Never trust the so-called "free world", it's a Western world that's drunk it's own Kool-Aid and is high on its own fantasies that freedom only exists thanks to them. Meanwhile their politics and economics runs on corruption and greed.
We've been dealt a bad hand, my sisters and brothers in the non-Western world. Many in the West have solid principles, but they're cynical now, and few have the courage of their conviction (some hardly have any conviction left). They can barely keep it together, let alone help.
This is my best advice to you: Center your own people and your own communities because nobody else will. We'll always be a sideshow for them. Center your own communities because if *you* don't, we won't even be remembered and none of them will miss us.
And remember, my sisters and brothers, to never accept a position of piggybacking off someone else's power. *Nobody will center you*. Do not appeal to the "free world". Rely upon your own people, their genius and their resilience, and build power with them and around them.
Do not give up. Yes they may imprison us, torture us, kill us, but can't you see why? Can't you see how scared they are of us? If they weren't scared, would they be so brutal? They're afraid of us. Do not give up, freedom is not free, and death isn't the worst of fates.
Winning is living your principles. Losing is saying yes to a tyrant. I do not know if I'll live to see a day of victory, but I know that I'll be on the battlefield until my last breath. That's how I know I'll never lose.
