Thread by @DrewPavlou

Thread: I’ve lost more than 1000 followers since I voiced my opposition to Trump. Friends and family pressure me, telling me to just shut my mouth because I’m “sabotaging” myself. But I simply can’t stay silent because my conscience cries out against Trump’s cruelties.

Earlier this year, at the age of just 20, I was faced with a similar choice. I opened my email inbox and there it was: UQ had sent me a whopping 186 page charge sheet outlining the case for my expulsion. They’d spent hundreds of thousands putting me under intense surveillance.

They’d combed through years worth of my social media content trying to find anything that could be used against me. Earlier this year, when I lost a fellow student and mate to suicide, bullies taunted me over it. I went off at them. The university even used this against me.

I knew what this was about. We all did. The university authorities had threatened me with this exact measure time and time again - they would expel me unless I shut up about the university’s ties with China and stopped my protests. Now they’d finally gone through with the threat.

I was terrified. I felt my life was over. I hopped in the car, drove off to some dark carpark to cry my eyes out. I knew I could make it stop by just giving in and shutting up. But I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t live with myself staying silent on these atrocities.

So at the age of just 20 years old, I made a decision that would change the course of my life forever: I decided that instead of shutting up and silencing myself on China, I would possibly fuck up my entire future getting expelled from UQ. I’d risk losing my education.

I knew what the Chinese government was doing to Hong Kongers, brutalizing students my age in the streets. I knew what they were doing to Tibetans, wiping out their culture. I knew what they were doing to Uyghurs because I had Uyghur mates with family members in the camps.

I could have chosen the easy way out. I sat on the UQ Senate, in a hallowed position that was the most coveted resume padding spot around. I had good marks. I could have treated it as a networking opportunity, lined myself up a nice grad job, made money, lived a charmed life.

Was I going to do any of that in the face of a terrible genocide? Would I put my own self interest above the rights of an innocent people being persecuted? FUCK NO. I would sooner have dashed myself against the rocks. I doubled down on my protests and UQ expelled me.

People think I just did it for the fame, to get myself on Sixty Minutes. Sure, being honest, I did enjoy some of the attention. But there are far easier ways to find fame that don’t involve so much pain.

Because for a year after that first protest, I had almost no relationship with my family despite living under the same roof. I lost dozens of friends. Couldn’t sleep. With UQ’s harassment, with death threats from Chinese nationalists, I had to start taking medication for anxiety.

I only did it because my conscience cried out about the atrocities Australia’s largest trading partner was committing. I knew one day my grandchildren would ask me where I stood at this moment in history. I wanted to be able to look them in the eye and tell them I spoke up.

Now, I feel a similar dilemma. I know I’d have way more followers if I was just another out-and-out right winger attacking China. If I just supported Trump, I wouldn’t have hundreds of abusive messages every day from people supposed to be my “supporters.”

I could get on TV, get a book deal, make some money. But I couldn’t live with myself. Because again, my conscience cries out - it cries out against a man who separated hundreds of children from their parents at the border, decimating families for years to come.

It cries out against a man who gave out tax cuts to billionaires while tens of millions of American kids don’t know where their next meals are coming from. Against a man who tried to take millions of Americans off their healthcare during a pandemic.

Against a man who never met a despot and dictator he didn’t like. Against a man who helped Saudi Arabian butchers brutalize and starve Yemeni kids with a terrifying bombing campaign and blockade. Against a man who has taken every chance he can to divide based on race and religion

My conscience cries out against Trump, and that’s why I can’t be silent, even if I lost every follower I have