"How can you face your comrades?" Many readers will have seen this line on one platform or another, and some may even have heard it said to their face. Whenever someone declines to take part in a particular act of resistance, there is always somebody who quietly delivers this line. The intent behind it is well-meaning: it asks us not to forget the comrades who have been sacrificed or arrested, not to give up the struggle, and to keep going. But have you ever considered that this very line may well amount to emotional blackmail?
Emotional blackmail
Emotional blackmail usually arises within an intimate relationship (it might be a relative, a partner or a close friend). The blackmailer will (sometimes without even being aware of it) exploit the Fear, Obligation and Guilt within that relationship to make the person being blackmailed fall in line with their wishes. Within an intimate relationship, the person being blackmailed may dearly hope to find acceptance and love in it. When the blackmailer wants the other person to meet certain expectations or aims, they may withdraw their acceptance, care and love, leaving the other person afraid of losing them; or they may make the other person feel duty-bound to meet the blackmailer's expectations, and feel inwardly tormented for falling short. Throughout this process, fear, obligation and guilt erode the judgement of the person being blackmailed, and their thinking too becomes clouded. Of course, emotional blackmail cannot succeed through one party's efforts alone; the person being blackmailed also has a responsibility to build up their own sense of security and to keep themselves from being blackmailed.
I once knew a friend who had wanted to take up ballet professionally for as long as she could remember, so in Form Six she sat the audition for the academy of the arts behind her parents' backs, and she was successful in getting an offer. But when her parents learned that she had also been admitted to all three of the so-called prestigious subjects, they unanimously opposed her enrolling at the academy of the arts. At that point her mother said to her in tears: "The two of us have worked so hard to raise you — how can you be so unfilial? If you go to the academy of the arts, who is going to support us in the future? If you insist on choosing to dance, then don't call us your parents anymore!" And this line is a very textbook case of emotional blackmail. It used the threat of severing the mother–daughter bond to pressure her into going against her own wishes, and it turned the fear that she might one day be unable to support her parents into a source of guilt, all to change her decision. In the end she followed her parents' wishes and enrolled to study the sciences, yet every day she regretted not having stood by her own decision. Is that a good outcome?
Can social movements involve emotional blackmail too?
You may be thinking: if emotional blackmail is built on an intimate relationship, can it really be applied to a social movement? From where I stand, it can. The movement has now been going on for more than a year. Even though the protesters keep their faces covered and stay anonymous when out on the front lines, they have also walked together through streets thick with gunfire and tear gas — they are comrades who have been through life and death together. And precisely because no one knows who the person beside you holding up an umbrella or hurling something back really is, when a comment along the lines of "How can you face your comrades?" appears online, it is all too easy to take whoever left it for a brother-in-arms we have been through life and death with — and just as easy to fall prey to their emotional blackmail.
As for whether the line "How can you face your comrades?" amounts to emotional blackmail, we can judge it by whether the line draws on the fear, obligation and guilt within the relationship. We call one another comrades, and we each hope to be a worthy comrade, recognised by the others. In this movement, the sacrifice, the contribution and the results never really line up from one person to the next, so it is easy to feel you are not doing enough. At such moments, with a fellow traveller beside you, or when you see comrades posting comments of this kind online, panic comes easily. Even though you reached your decision not to take part in a particular act of resistance after weighing it from every angle, you may still question your own decision, afraid that by not taking part you will lose the acceptance of your fellow comrades.
The elements of obligation and guilt are even more pronounced in this kind of line. The implication behind it is that comrades have a duty to take part in every single action, while "how can you face them" is aimed squarely at the guilt within the relationship. Even if you chose not to take part after weighing the risks or the cost-effectiveness, there is still a chance you will feel tormented because you feel you have "failed to face" the other comrades; you may feel you have let down those who are now in detention or imprisoned, and so come to feel duty-bound to take part in acts of resistance you had originally thought you should not.
Protesting with you, I am glad
This is a fight Hongkongers have waged for a year, and in every Hongkonger's heart each comrade holds a place. Of course, resistance is not a search for happiness, but neither should emotional blackmail be allowed to make the burden on comrades any heavier. If a comrade takes part in some act of resistance because of emotional blackmail and is arrested in the end, is that the outcome we all wish for? Among comrades, what matters is mutual respect; the weight of resistance lies in thinking. In this movement, if we can also stay rational and respect our fellow travellers, our strength will be greater. Do not make excessive demands that comrades take part in every action, because taking part in resistance requires weighing the effectiveness and the personal risk involved. Do not throw yourself in blindly — every comrade's life matters enormously too. Perhaps we cannot win in the short term; over this stretch of time we should hold on to a good frame of mind all the more. As long as we have given our best, there is no need to be too hard on ourselves, nor should we let other people's words shake the judgement we arrived at through rational thinking.
Hongkongers, let us keep resisting together.
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